Tag Archives: Chicken

Two weeks of Paleo – Oven Roast Chicken with Vegetables

by KC | Leave a comment

It has been 2 weeks since I started following Paleo rules. So I thought it’s time to write down, what has changed for me so in future, when I feel like stuff my face mindlessly with sweets, alcohol and white bread, I might think again.

  • I feel energized, I don’t feel like falling to sleep 2pm at my desk.
  • Not eating sugar stopped me crave for sugars. I eat fruit, dried fruit and honey, which are sweet, but they don’t make me feel like I need chocolate or bag of sweets every other hour.
  • I don’t have this stuffed feeling after meals, maybe i’st because I don’t eat any grains or maybe I just eat as much I need as I know that I can have something as soon I feel hungry again. It’s not a diet, it’s lifestyle and suits me well as there is no limit how much you eat just what you eat.
  • I think I lost a bit of weight, I’m not sure, as I stopped weighing myself about 5 month ago. Weighing is bit pointless, as I know, when I put some weight on, my clothes get tighter. It’s so liberating not to worry about numbers on the scale. I rather look in a mirror and try to like, what I see.
  • Huge part of starting to be more healthy, was my troubles with my knees. That’s the price you pay if you do all your young life competitive sports and suddenly when you get older you are not able to choose, what you doing. I haven’t played volleyball quite a few years now. I’m scared that if I go and jump again, I end up with another injury and have to stop all physical exercise all together. At the moment I still have bit of a pain in my knees, but mostly I ignore it and still go my new found passion -tennis trainings. They are better, much better than they were few weeks ago, when walking downstairs made me shout swear words. So, fingers cross, after another few weeks I don’t need heat patch myself for trainings anymore.
  • No alcohol rule have given me early starts on weekends, more energy and no hangovers, simple. And probably stopped cravings – usually with wine I want something sweet.
  • Saves me money –  it’s difficult to get paleo stuff in our deli ( any deli really) so I take my lunch with me to the office.

Processed with VSCOcam with m3 preset

This recipe is simple and tastes delicious. I had some chicken thighs. I put different vegetables to the oiled roasting pan – quartered fennel, sliced courgettes, halved mushrooms, pak choi leaves, you can use any veg, which needs using up. Sprinkled with lemon juice, chopped chilli, sea salt and dried fenkol. I placed chicken thighs over the vegetables,  sprinkled some more sea salt and pepper over the meat and cooked in the oven about  an hour on Gas Mark 6. The beautiful green colour fades away after an hour in the oven, but taste is still good – chicken and fennel is pair made in heaven in my opinion.

Processed with VSCOcam with c1 preset

 

 

33 day of Paleo and being good, I mean getting healthier again.

by KC | 1 Comment

Today I started my 33 days of Paleo aka “being healthy and getting back on the track!” I did it last year. Main reason being, getting my scalp psoriasis under the control, but what happened was, my psoriasis got worse but my weight dropped and my knees felt like new. I have been struggling with my knees past month, not that I stop myself doing sport and moving around, but getting downstairs at the work is real pain and companied with lots of swearing. I hate it and I really have to do something about it and I definitely don’t want to stop my tennis trainings.

I have already stopped all sugary stuff and alcohol since 19th of March, when lent started, with few exception as we Estonians celebrate our independence day on 24th and this year it included 3 celebrations with free booze and food so I decided to not put too much pressure on myself. 🙂

So from today:

– no sugars (honey is aloud)

– no alcohol

– no bread, pasta, rice, or any other grains

– no milk based products (maybe occasional cream on my 1 cup of coffee / a day)

– no ready meals or anything what includes ingredients I don’t know or are not natural

– no potatoes, beans

– no vegetable oils or groundnut oil ( will have olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil or any nuts oil)

I will eat lots of vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds, meat, fish and seafood, nut and olive oils, herbs and spices.

My healthy month started with this chicken roast and homemade mayonnaise.

Chicken-Paleo

For this dish you can use any vegetables you have left over at home or any your favourite ones. I had celeriac, parsnip, carrots, courgette, red onions, swede and lots of garlic. I brushed the roasting pan with olive oil and then placed all the veg on to the pan and mixed them, so they would be covered with bit of a oil. I cut one orange to slices and put it also on to the pan. I placed the medium roasting chicken stuffed with one whole lime, some garlic gloves and herbs ( I have rosemary and sage in my garden), top of the vegetables. All goes to the oven for 1 hour and 40 minutes (depends of the size of the chicken) Gas mark 5. For rest of the family, I made some roast potatoes on the separate tray. The smell was divine, mixture of lime, garlic, rosemary and sage. Children were worried that it will taste lemony and they won’t like it, but they plates were cleared no time. Roast chicken is one meal, which gets finished to the last piece in our house. Children have legs, S has breast, I have wings and breast, cats get all leftover meat, dog gets skin and any soft bones and rest of it goes to making chicken stock. Everyone is happy.

For the mayonnaise I placed 1 fresh egg and salt and pepper and one garlic clove to the jug and whizzed it with blender. Then added slowly 200ml of oil. I used hazelnut oil. Olive oil gives bit too strong taste. I have tried also walnut oil, which was lovely. After 1 minute the mixture should thicken, and you have lovely homemade, no e-s or anything weird mayonnaise. Season with sea salt, pepper and lemon juice. I must say sometimes it bit of a mystery how you get the mayo thickened. Like today – I started as usual but after 3 minutes of vigorous whizzing the mixture was still runny. So I started new egg and beat it with salt and pepper for 1 minute and started to add avocado oil and it thickened almost immediately. I didn’t want to waste my first mixture so I poured it slowly in to the new mayonnaise and it all thickened nicely to the lovely creamy mayonnaise. So I have no idea what was going on. If anyone knows, what might have gone wrong, let me know, It has happened couple of times before, but most of the times I have no problem making beautiful mayonnaise at all.

Mayonnaise - paleo

What do you feed your children? Today it was Kung Pao Chicken!

by KC | Leave a comment

I think it’s the question lot of parent ask daily bases from themselves. You want to feed them healthy fresh food, but most of children have totally different idea from you, what they need and want. With my first one I tried to follow books and follow them word by word, but she didn’t have any of it.  You could eat the veggie yourself and meal without fruit wasn’t going down very well and porridge – this grey stuff, which came out from HIPP box was only good enough to go straight to bin. Then the second child came around, veggies were welcoming addition to any meal. Fruit was flying around the kitchen and porridge filled him up to have good run around up until lunch. By age of 6 his favourite was bowl of mussels in some tasty, spicy dressing, which made him lot’s of admiring fans in our dinners at pubs.

Then I had period when I cooked things in two different saucepan – one for us and another one for children, using same ingredients but leaving out anything I thought would put them off their dinner. It was mission impossible as they had very different tastes – my daughter likes anything traditional and quite bland, my son loves spicy and well seasoned food.

Now, my children are almost 10 and 12 there is no more messing around they have to eat what I make to us, but they are aloud after tasting it to say that they don’t really like it and eat plain rice or whatever we having with our meal. No extra meals! Have to wait until next meal time and hope they will like it.

I’m just too lazy to have a argument with them and I deffinetly don’t like them develop unhealthy relationship with food.

I’m sure they have sometimes bit too much of sugar and maybe not enough veg, but I’m hoping that my passion to food will leave some kind of mark to their attitude to the food.

Kung Pao Chicken

Enough for 3-4 people

Around 500 grams of chicken breast, cut about 1cm pieces

1 tablespoon cornflower

2 tablespoon oil (I used walnut oil as I’m using just nut oils or olive oils only nowadays , but you can use vegetable oil)

3 spring onions

3 garlic cloves – I chopped it

dried chilli flakes – according to the taste, I didn’t’ use too much as my daughter not keen on too spicy food, but enough to get her used to more spicier food

2 tablespoons fresh ginger, chopped

4 tablespoons of rice vinegar

4 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablspoons oyster sauce

4 teaspoon sugar ( you can reduce the qty, but I liked it like this)

dry roasted peanuts about 1/2 dl

I also added 1 medium courgette and 1 small aubergine, chopped

Cooked rice for serving

==========

1. Mix the chicken pieces with cornflower in the bowl.

2.Heat the oil in the wok or big frying pan

3. Add chicken and stir fry until cooked through – about 5-7 minutes

4. Remove the chicken from the pan an set aside

5. Add the veggies if using and add bit more oil, stir fry 2-3 minutes and then add ginger, garlic, spring onions and chilli flakes, stir fry another minute or two.

6. Remove from the heat

7. In a small bowl mix the soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar and oyster sauce. Stir well and add to the pan to the vegetables.

8. Return chicken to the pan and stir until chicken is coated with the sauce.

9. Add peanuts, heat through an mix well

10. Serve once with cooked rice.

Both my children eat all the chicken I put their plates . They did leave some vegetable bits and my daughter don’t like any nuts, but I think it went down well and one new thing in their list they have tried.

Mission successful!

Chicken