pastured eggs – Harmonious Belly

I ended up taking several days away from the cleanse for various reasons, mostly due to social events and meetings with friends that came up. Connecting with the people I care about is important to me, so I take advantage of it when I can. Good news is that I didn’t over do it with sweets and I ate smaller portion sizes, not because of a conscious decision, but because my body is better regulated these days after eating mostly real food; I don’t feel the need to overindulge. The times spend with friends were so fun and I’m really glad I had those opportunities.

Day 5 (Thursday) started with 2 pastured eggs topped with a spicy fermented relish. I love this relish, and adore pastured eggs, so it was a great combination for me. And I get my fermented foods right off at the start of the day. I also had some pear ginger tea.

Lunch was leftover pumpkin chicken curry, based on the pumpkin shrimp curry for that week. I don’t care for shrimp and I had this lovely pastured chicken breast, so I made the curry earlier in the week, simply swapping one protein for the other. It worked out great! I also used coconut oil, which added a nice flavor. And it was delicious over the carrot brown rice pilaf. I soaked the brown rice in water and whey to deactivate the phytic acid.

Dinner was a spur of the moment trip to Adrienne’s, my favorite pizza spot in Manhattan. I was pleased to have comfortably restrained myself to two slices – they make something called an Old Fashioned, which is essentially a grandma pizza. It’s fantastic; we get it with pepperoni. We treated ourselves to a serving of their delicious meatballs and a glass of wine, with a couple of sweet treats at the end (I wasn’t able to finish my tiramisu, and I am a sucker for tiramisu).

Continue reading “Food Lover’s Cleanse 2012, Days 5-8”

Lately, I’ve gone to a number of meetups with the Traditional Community Kitchen. This is an official Meetup group based in NYC, and one that I help organize (I’m a Co-Organizer and to some extent the Social Media Manager). It’s been one of the most fun social groups I’ve been a part of in NYC, and I’ve met some delightful people there that have become friends. Everyone is really friendly and eager to both teach what they know and learn from each other.

If you are in the NYC area, and interested in cooking together – whether your orientation is WAPF, paleo/primal, grain- or gluten-free, vegetarian, or simply an overall curious person looking for more inspiration to eat whole, real food – I highly recommend joining this group and coming to one of our meetups!

So, one of the most recent meetups was actually a repeat event – making a big pot of meatballs. This recipe was originally developed by Hannah Springer here in NYC, and she shared it with one of our meetup members, who passed it on to the rest of us. We’ve all really enjoyed the resulting delicious savory meatballs (which I like to make on the smaller side), enough so to make them together again.

They are different from any other recipe I’ve seen for meatballs, in that they are free of grains. Essentially, they are all meat, with the addition of egg, cream, and a few other things. I’m not personally avoiding grains, but for those omnivores that are, this is a great recipe

I remember the first event – which took place at my home – to be really fun. This second event was a lot of fun, too, and held at another member’s home. The four of us chopped onions and I was glad to talk about my favorite way of chopping onions, which I’m happy to say sped up the chopping process – chopping onions can be a painful experience, so getting through them as fast as possible is a real benefit.

We then mixed those onions with spices and some pastured lard, and fried ’em up. You can only imagine how wonderful the house started to smell while this was going on.

Continue reading “Grain-Free Meatballs”