Let's Squash This Spaghetti Thing Right Now!

Okay, I finally tried out spaghetti squash!  My friend Sherry sent me a link on how to make it, and it seemed very easy.  I won't go into the cooking details, so here's the link she sent:

http://homecooking.about.com/od/vegetablerecipes/ss/spagsquashsbs.htm

At first I thought I'd just toss it in garlic and olive oil to test it out, but all real tests for spaghetti have to include tomato sauce otherwise the results don't count.  It's like testing a running shoe without laces.  So I made a quick and easy marinara sauce by sauteing some garlic, onions, celery, black pepper, basil, oregano, crushed red pepper flakes (all ingredients, all organic, all the time), and then I added the organic strained tomatoes I love (you know the drill, you lazy bastards, look it up in my previous blog about condiments).  It's quick, easy, and delicious, when you don't want to spend all day making a gallon of sauce (or as we called it in Brooklyn, gravy), and then eating it for a week, and freezing the rest.

I also had some skinless boneless chicken breasts in the freezer, so I defrosted a couple, and went about making a cheese-less Chicken Parmesan.  I know, that's an oxymoron, but what are you gonna do?  I thought about doing a mini cheat by adding some organic mozzarella, but I couldn't find anything that was from a grass fed cow, so I skipped it.  I know, I know, sacrilege, but if the sauce and breading is tasty enough, you don't really miss the cheese that much.  Okay, I'm lying, you miss it, but it's still delicious.  Maybe I should call it Chicken Pizzaiola to make it more accurate.  There, you happy?!

To cook the chicken, I pretty much followed my fried chicken recipe (LOOK IT UP!), only instead of making a fried chicken breading, I used Italian spices instead.  Into the ground almonds (a great paleo substitute for bread crumbs) went garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, thyme, oregano, and Italian parsley.  Browned in a pan, finished in the oven, and it's done (here already, now stop bothering me and look it up yourselves: http://cookingcaveman.blogspot.com/2010/08/southern-fried-chicken-and-golden.html)

Okay, I plated the chicken, scraped all the spaghetti squash from the skin, plated it next to the chick, and sauced that sucker.  Here's what it looked like:

Hmm... needs a sprinkle of parsley:

Uh... it still looks a little yellow to me.  Let's give this thing a stir:

Okay... at least now it looks like spaghetti!  But it doesn't taste like spaghetti.  I mean, my zucchini substitute doesn't either, but at least zucchini is the right color.  But much more importantly, when you bite into zucchini, it doesn't CRUNCH!  The squash does.  Not bad like a potato chip, but there's a definite crunch.  I mean there's al dente, and then there's so al dente it crunches.  Not good.  The texture is ALL WRONG!  And I know I cooked it long enough, because I tried to cook some leftovers today to try and soften it up but it still crunches!  My verdict; spaghetti squash can be used as a good ingredient in a side dish, just not one that you're trying to pass off as pasta.  Meanwhile, my Spirooli came in the mail today, so later in the week I'll be making Spaghetti Bolognese with zucchini and I bet it comes off fantastic!  I have an idea how to replace the Marsala wine with caveman friendly substitutes!  Stay tuned.

By the way, the Chicken Pizzaiola was FANTASTIC!  Try it next time instead of Chicken Parmesan if you want something a little healthier.  Or use the almond flour for any breaded chicken recipe, and your body will thank you for it.  Ugga-Bugga!

A Farewell to Plum Sauce!

Little Jeff Nimoy

Attempted to deploy,

A paleo friendly game plan;

He made with his thumbs,

A sauce made from plums,

And said, "Ugga-Bugga, I'm a Caveman!"

Lame, I know, but I wanted a poem to commiserate the end of this season's Asian BBQ Plum sauce, the single greatest thing I've ever eaten.  Last time I made it (I think for the buffalo ribs blog), I froze a bunch of it, thinking that plums were now out of season, so if I wanted any this winter, I'd have to freeze some.  But I couldn't wait for winter.  Last week I made those incredible chicken wings with the sauce, which I'm calling Plum Loco Wings!  They were amazing.  So amazing, that I used practically the same recipe on a Plum Loco Pork Loin last night.  I made a dry rub of garlic powder, onion powder, thyme, nutmeg, cinnamon, dash of clove, black pepper, and cayenne powder.  Then I browned the pork loin in olive oil, and finished it in the oven (see Pork Loin blog for the cooking instructions, you lazy cavemen bastards).  And of course, it was drenched in that fabulous sauce!  I both glazed the outside with the sauce, and generously dipped each bite into it as well.  Hot damn, is this shit good! (That's a statement, not a question.)

But now I'm sad, because, alas, the sauce is no more until red and/or purple sweet plums come back in season.  But that's okay, because like all of life, there is a season to everything, just ask Bob Dylan and The Byrds.  In fact, I bet that song was originally a recipe for a cookbook.  "For every season, Turn, Turn, Turn.  Place mixture in a bowl and Turn, Turn, Turn.  Put pizza in the oven and Turn, Turn, Turn."  So I will wait until spring/summer of 2011.

In the meantime, I look forward to my new find of zucchini pasta, and plan to make a million noodle recipes that I used to love!  I bought a Spirooli on-line the other day, and it's going to be able to make long strands of zucchini spaghetti!  I can even use them as ramen noodles!  Plus, lots of other hearty meals to get me through the brutal Los Angeles winter.  There's nothing better than a hot bowl of ramen soup, next to a roaring fire, while the temperature outside dips to a winter low of 61 degrees (at night, of course, during the day it's 74).  Brrr!  But the way, the roaring fire isn't in a fireplace, it's a brush fire in the Hollywood Hills.  The air quality outside is horrible, but in here, smells like home cookin'!  See you soon with a new recipe.  Ugga-Bugga!

Italian Sausage Fra Diavlo over Caveman Fettucini!

I was craving Italian sausage last night, so I defrosted some organic ground pork, and attempted to make my own.  I had all the ingredients in the house, so all I was missing was the casing.  I don't have a sausage maker anyway, so I had to figure out some other way to hold its shape.  No worries, it worked out great!  And another perfect opportunity to experiment with my zucchini pasta!

First, I added spices to the pork, which had about 20% fat, yummy, and no, not bad for you at all (I'm so sick of talking about fat to you lazy bastards, so look up the info yourselves in my previous blog entries).  Fresh ground black pepper, fresh minced garlic, fresh thyme, onion powder, and plenty of fennel seeds and crushed red pepper (I love REALLY HOT Italian sausage!).  Very simple recipe, not too many ingredients (all ingredients, all organic, all the time).  Mixed it all together (use your hands, it's the best tool for mixing, but wash them first, you filthy bastards), and formed them into links.

Then I browned them in my cast iron skillet in olive oil.  They held their shape beautifully!  Next I set out to make the sauce.  It was going to be a real simple tomato sauce, do to my leftovers.  Usually I like to make a chunky marinara sauce, using whole crushed tomatoes, slow cooked over many hours.  But I had an open jar of the organic strained tomatoes I used to make my Buffalo Wing Hot Pepper Sauce the other night, so I had to use it up.  I reached for an onion to chop it up and start my sauce, when I realized I still had some of the hot sauce left over too!  In fact, if you remember from my last blog about hot wings, I was contemplating straining all the little bits of garlic, celery, red jalapeno, and red onion, but I was too lazy.  Finally, being a lazy bastard paid off for me!  I threw all the leftover hot sauce into the pan, added the leftover strained tomatoes, and some oregano, and suddenly I had Fra Diavlo sauce!  Fra Diavlo means "Brother Devil" in Italian, because of it's hot and spicy flavor.  Some call it Arrabbiata sauce, which means "angry," but I think Fra Diavlo is specifically made with whole peppers (like the red jalapenos I used) and Arrabbiata is made with crushed red pepper flakes.   I let the browned sausages simmer in the spicy sauce for 40 minutes.  From a simple tomato sauce meal, I used leftovers to make an amazing Fra Diavlo sauce!  Like I always say, your home menus are only limited by your pantry, your super market, and your imagination!

While it cooked, I sliced the zucchini.  I don't own a mandolin slicer to make perfect shapes, so I just used my peeler, and sliced long strips of zucchini, about the size of fettucini.  Now in the past, I've gotten it to look like pasta (the strips of zucchini peel looked like spinach fettucini), but it never quite had the texture of pasta.  So this time I figured if I don't cook it, like I've done in the past, the texture might be a little more "al dente," if you will.  And it worked.  I just did a quick dip into the tomato sauce, and plated it.  The zucchini softened slightly, but wasn't mushy at all like zucchini can get when you cook it.  Then I plated the sausage and tell me this doesn't look like a real pasta dish:

It does, right?  And although it doesn't taste like pasta, it definitely had the texture, and twirled on my fork beautifully!  Also, since to me zucchini doesn't have much flavor anyway, the sauce really stood out, and this was the closest I've come to the pasta experience so far.  People keep telling me to try spaghetti squash, and I will at some point, but for now, this works!  I can now re-create pasta dishes without using grains, like wheat or rice, and still feel satisfied like I'm eating pasta!  I'm going to buy a slicer one day and try to cut the zucchini a little finer into linguine or spaghetti, and I bet I'll be even more satisfied.  By the way, not only the sauce and the pasta were fantastic, but the sausages came out perfectly!!!!  Italian sausage made with organic pork and zero salt.  Italian grandmothers are rolling around in their graves right now.  But the salt in their sausages probably helped put them in their graves, and the lack of salt in mine, will keep me out of the grave for a while (I hope).  Trust me, if you use pure, fresh ingredients, the flavors will explode and you will not miss salt.  You might miss pasta, but keep experimenting like I did, and you can recreate any unhealthy dish into a healthy one!  Ugga-Bugga!

Hot Wings-Two Ways!

I was watching "Throw Down with Bobby Flay" the other day, a Food Network show where Bobby challenges some super cook at their own specialty.  This time he challenged a Hot Wings specialist, who brought her native Caribbean flavors to Super Wings in Brooklyn, and won the "title" of "Best Wings In Brooklyn."  I never knew Brooklyn to have such a title, and truthfully, not sure I had a hot wing until I went to upstate New York, where people know what they're talking about when it comes to wings (They're called Buffalo Wings for a reason folks, referring to Buffalo, New York, not the big furry animal gouging out Johnny Knocksville's crotch in Jack Ass 3D).  Still, I'm sure her Crown Heights wings are wonderful.  But I used a combination of hers and Bobby's recipes, and I decided to make my own.  I never attempted to make hot wings before, because the frying process intimidated me too much.  But now that I figured out how to work the deep fryer my friend Julie gave me, I'm looking for more and more deep fried recipes.  This one is a no-brainer.

I wanted to first make the classic Buffalo Wings, usually made with a hot sauce of the cook's choice, like Frank's Red Hot Sauce.  I also had some of my famous Asian BBQ Plum Sauce in the freezer, so I figured I'd make half one way, and half the other.  But the process for both was the same, up until the end.  Turns out that hot wings consist of three main steps.

1. The marinade.
2. The glaze.
3. The dipping sauce.

The Super Wings woman used only fresh herbs, and spices, and marinated her wings overnight.  But Bobby used a dry rub, and it gave his wings such a nice crispy exterior, so I went that route.  First, I separated the wings into three sections, the drumette, the flat wing, and the tip.  I never did this before, either buying the parts pre-cut, or just baking the chicken wing whole, and pulling the wing apart as I ate it.  It was surprisingly easy to do, and I don't know what I was so afraid of.  But the next time I'll ask the butcher if he would do it for me, because frankly, handling raw chicken grosses me out, organic or not.

I threw the tips into a pot with water (yes, I do only use filtered water, stored in BPA safe plastic containers to keep in step with my chemical free lifestyle), and added (all ingredients, all organic, all the time) fresh sprigs of thyme, dill, and parsley, a whole clove of garlic, whole black peppercorns, half an onion, and chunks of carrot,  celery, and turnip.  I slow cooked it for 2 hours, strained the liquid into a container, and popped it in the freezer for chicken stock to be used in a future dish.  See, it's easy to make your own stock.  Every canned soup stock I see in a store has added salt, even the low sodium stuff, so I'm forced to make my own, and this is a quick and easy way to do it, without too much work.  I'm getting freakin' good at this shit!

Okay, back to the wings!  I made a dry rub of garlic powder, onion powder, thyme, nutmeg, cinnamon, dash of clove, black pepper, and cayenne powder.  I didn't let the wings sit in them overnight, just because I didn't have the time, but they were sitting in it all day long, for a good 6 to 8 hours or so.

Next I started deconstructing classic Buffalo style hot sauce, so I could recreate it caveman style.  Typically the ingredients are a tomato base (no problem, plenty of organic tomatoes around), hot peppers (organic, caveman friendly, check), salt (whoops, okay our first stumbling block), butter (we can rebound, knowing olive oil makes a great substitute) and vinegar (thanks for playing our game, we have some lovely parting gifts for you on your way out).

Let's tackle the vinegar first.  When a recipe calls for vinegar I usually just use lemon juice to replace it.  But I didn't think the lemon flavor would go well with Buffalo Wings.  So I tried lime juice and I think I have a new favorite replacement!  It tastes a lot more like vinegar than lemon juice.  I think the difference is lemon juice is tart, but lime juice is plain old sour!  Deliciously speaking, of course.  The sourness of the lime made me forget all about the vinegar, and because it's not fermented, it's incredibly more healthy for me as well.

Now the salt.  Since I had that Swiss Chard a few weeks ago, and realized it was so naturally salty, I've been doing more and more research on what foods had the highest amount of natural salt in it.  Turns out celery has some of the highest amounts of salt in it, which is actually one of the reasons it's so healthy for you.  We all need salt to live, but when you add too much, you mess up the sodium/potassium ratio in your body, and too much sodium can lead to all those nasty health problems I'm always preaching about.  But celery has a perfect balance of sodium and potassium, so it's safe to eat.  It's kind of amazing what you taste once you only eat pure food, and eliminate salt from your diet.  Before I went caveman, I'd eat celery and reach for the salt shaker immediately.  Now, it tastes SO SALTY to me!  You taste every trace of a flavor when your taste buds come alive again after years of laying dormant.  I decided to use celery in a lot of recipes that normally call for salt, if the celery flavor goes well with it, of course.  I took an empty jar the other day, filled it with lime juice, water, whole sprigs of dill, whole cloves of garlic, whole black peppercorns, caraway seeds, and 2 stalks of celery.  Then I filled the rest of the jar with cucumber spears, and hopefully in a week, I'll have something resembling a caveman pickle!  Stay tuned!

What was I talking about?  Oh yeah, Buffalo Hot Sauce!  Into the food processor went some red onion, garlic, celery, and a gorgeous whole red jalapeno I got at the farmers market!  It'll be perfect to add some good heat, and beautiful red color to the sauce.  Once it was all finely chopped, I threw it into a pan with olive oil and black pepper, and lightly sauteed it until it started to soften up.  Then I added some of that jarred strained organic tomatoes I get from Whole Foods (see blog about making ketchup, and other condiments), and some water to thin it out.  Finally I just kept adding lime juice until I thought it tasted "vinegary" enough.  You know what?  Damn, it was GOOOOOOD!  My mouth was blissfully on fire.  Not the bad kind where you need a mouth fire extinguisher, but the kind where you want to keep eating more!  The lime gave it a nice vinegar flavor, and the celery made it wonderfully salty (to me anyway; to you I'm guessing it would taste bland).  I was gonna throw it into a blender, and then strain it so that the sauce would be thin and smooth, but I was kinda digging the little bits of jalapeno, celery, garlic, and red onion.  I thought they'd even look good on the chicken wing, so I left it.  Plus, who the hell wants to work that hard?!  Blending, straining, Holy Jeez, give me a break people, I'm already making my own stock, my own hot sauce, my own ketchup, mayo, etc, CRAP, I NEED A BREAK!

Besides, it looked so pretty.  Take a look:

Yummy!  Look at that great read color!  The next step was the dipping sauce.  Classically, chunky bleu cheese dressing.  Hmm... no dairy allowed on the caveman diet.  This is going to be tough.  In fact, impossible, so let's think of something else.  Some restaurants serve it with ranch dressing!  I can't use buttermilk, but I do have a great paleo ranch dressing recipe I can use!  Okay, it'll have to do, let's go for it!  One cup of paleo mayo (all this crap's on the recipe page), and one cup of coconut milk (coconut milk, really?).  Yes, really.  Trust me, you don't taste the coconut or I wouldn't be eating it.  Coconut has really been an intriguing find for this caveman.  Eaten alone, it tastes like coconut, but when cooking with the oil, or using the flour for a pie crust, or the milk for salad dressing, the taste disappears into the dish.  Occasionally you get a whiff of coconut, but that's it, and it's not unpleasant, it seems to just add another level to the dish.  Anyway, the difference between coconut milk, coconut butter, and coconut cream, is all water content.  The milk has the most water.  I couldn't find organic coconut milk, but I did find coconut butter, so I just added water to it, and viola, coconut milk!  Then a teaspoon of garlic powder, a teaspoon of black pepper, and about two tablespoons of fresh chopped dill.  Finally, lemon juice until it tastes like ranch dressing.  Taste it.  Go ahead, I'll wait.  Pretty good, huh?  Not quite ranch dressing, but kinda close!  And the little clumps of coconut butter that I didn't quite break down when mixing it into coconut milk, kind of gives the texture of chunky bleu cheese dressing!  This is gonna work out better than I had hoped!

Into the fryer went the wings!  Can't use peanut oil because peanuts are actually not nuts, but legumes, and therefore toxic, so I used sunflower oil.  If only I had some organic lard!  After all that talk for years about how bad lard is for you, turns out organic lard is better for you than most of the processed veggie oils on the market (duck fat is even healthier!).  The dry rub gave it a gorgeous crispy coating!  Fried it at 375 for 9 minutes, and then put half into the red hot sauce with olive oil, and half into my Asian BBQ Plum Sauce with olive oil, plus I added some sliced red jalapeno to spice it up even more.  Served them both up with Paleo Ranch Dressing.  Let's taste the Buffalo Hot Wings first:

Ugga-Bugga!  Caveman Like!!!!!!!!  Delicious.  Although next time I should blend and strain the red sauce to get rid of all those little bits of jalapeno, celery, garlic, and red onion (I am such a lazy bastard).  Other than that, it REALLY tastes like Buffalo Wings!  Amazing, considering there's no salt, butter, OR vinegar!  Dipping it into the Ranch Dressing tastes great, although I must say the occasional whiff of coconut is a little disarming, and doesn't really go with Buffalo Wings.  Okay, let's taste my Plum Loco Wings:

Holy Caveman, Batman, that's the bomb!  I know I keep saying this, but I'm serious, this plum sauce is the best thing I've ever tasted!!!!!  I've got to figure out how to jar this stuff and sell it at Whole Foods for $20 bucks a pop!  It's incredible!  The ginger, the jalapeno, the plums, the honey, the garlic, it all goes so perfectly with chicken wings!  I've baked them in this sauce before, but frying them, and then glazing them afterwards changes the whole dynamic and brings it to a new level of goodness!!  And the occasional whiff of coconut from the dipping sauce, goes PERFECTLY with this glaze!  I should enter this bad boy into the "Best Wings in Brooklyn" contest, dipping sauce and all, and I'll blow that Super Wings back to the Caribbean!!!

I figured I'd eat one Buffalo Wing, then one Plum Loco Wing, and continue to alternate until I was full.  But the plum sauce is too good.  It keeps calling to you, like an entity.  As good as the Buffalo hot wings were, and they were great, it was unfair of me to put it next to the plum sauce.  So I put all the plum wings away for tomorrow's meal, and enjoyed what I originally set out to make, Buffalo Hot Wings, with a Ranch Dressing dipping sauce.  All caveman friendly, no salt, no vinegar, no dairy, and no peanut oil.  And they were still Ugga-Bugga Good!  I can't believe I actually made my own hot sauce!  My life is saved!  Before this diet, I put hot sauce on everything!  We're gonna have to add this to the 10 Condiments God gave Moses when he opened the Mt. Sinai Delicatessen.  I'm gonna have to come up with recipes now that are old hot sauce favorites.  Give me some time.  By the way, I'm getting closer still to the ever elusive non-potato (or sweet potato) french fry.  Coming soon to a fat bastard near you.  Ugga-Bugga!

Turn The Heat On, It's A Chili Weekend!

I managed to get through three weeks of Stage 2 with only one meal of cheating.  The cheat was unintended, however well worth it.  When I decided to go back on Stage 2 (see blog "Exit, Stage 2") I didn't realize that right in the middle of my plan was a previously scheduled meal of wonderful gorging.  I'm a NY Giants football fan, and my buddy Mike is a Chicago Bears fan, so when we saw they were playing each other on the NFL schedule this year, we decided to watch the game together and order both NY Pizza from Joe's (the Greenwich Village landmark that opened two locations in LA recently) and Italian Beef sandwiches from the legendary Chicago eatery Portillo's (they mailed it frozen).  So aside from one night of gastronomical bliss, I stayed on Stage 2 event free.  And I definitely felt better after completing the three weeks.  I noticed I did lose whatever small amounts of summer fat I put on, but more importantly, I lost that sluggish feeling, my skin is clear, and my energy has returned.  I immediately celebrated by having Thai food with my friend Amy, and although I was unscathed weeks earlier by the pizza and Portillo's, my stomach was doing flip flops after a plate of Pad Thai.  So it was right back to caveman eating.

Stage 3, which is maintaining the diet for the rest of your life, suggests listening to your body and fulfilling any cravings you're having.  I was definitely craving steak, maybe because I was still trying to fight off the last of that cold I knocked out by eating all those peppers (look up the blog yourself, you lazy bastards) with some much needed iron.  So off to Whole Foods I went for grass fed steak.  But everything was SO FRIGGIN' EXPENSIVE!  This diet ain't cheap folks, organics can be costly, so you have to pick your battles.  Normally for beef I just get the Trader Joe's organic grass fed ground beef at $5.99 a pound, not only for the price, but because it has 15% fat (all omega-3 fat by the way, and wonderful for your health), so it's much tastier (fat IS flavor) than grass fed steak which is MUCH leaner than 15%.  But still, I didn't want a hamburger steak, I wanted a STEAK steak.  But my two favorite cuts, filet mignon, and rib eye were well over $20 bucks a pound each.  Screw that noise.  The cheapest cut of grass fed beef in steak form they had was top sirloin, at $8.99 a pound, so I got one large steak.

When I got home, I cut it into three pieces, seasoned each side with the Holy Trinity (garlic powder, onion powder, and black pepper), and pan fried it in my cast iron skillet, until medium rare.  I served it up with some swiss chard and mushrooms sauteed in olive oil and garlic.  Check it out:

I don't know about you, but every time I cook a steak at home I'm disappointed.  It tastes okay, but it always has so much gristle that I wind up spitting out half the steak!  I feel like I just wasted all that damn money!  And unfortunately this time was no different.  I ate one half of the smallest piece of steak, spit out the other gristly half (I know, gross right, and all that wasted money), and saved the leftovers, not knowing what to do with them yet.

The next night, despite getting back on the caveman bandwagon, I still wanted to satisfy another  craving I was having, even though I knew it was really bad for me.  I was DYING for a reuben sandwich, one of my favorites.  I even planned to cheat that night, and defrosted nothing for dinner.  But as the meal got closer, I started feeling more and more guilty about it.  I just thought that I didn't want all that corn fed hormone injected beef in my system after just getting clean, not to mention all the salt, and processed cheese, and whatever traces of pesticide are left in the sauerkraut, and then the toxins in the rye bread, and the chemicals in the thousand island dressing ("OKAY, I GET IT, CAVEMAN, STOP RUINING MY APPETITE FOREVER, AND MAKING ME AFRAID TO EAT ANYTHING IN A RESTAURANT EVER AGAIN!")...

Sorry.  But you get my point.  So I started really examining what I was craving and tried to narrow it down.  I realized what I really wanted was salt.  Not a bad thing, we need salt to live, but it's definitely a cheat to add salt to food, and we don't need it, but I was craving it regardless.  So I decided to have a mini-cheat, instead of a full blown cheat.  An example of a mini-cheat, as opposed to a full blown cheat is, a reuben sandwich from Jerry's deli is a full blown cheat.  An organic hot dog, made with grass fed beef, with organic mustard and organic sauerkraut is a mini-cheat.  The salt in the meal and the vinegar in the mustard is bad for me, but at least it's still all organic, therefore, I consider it a mini-cheat.  So that's what I had instead of the reuben.  I served up the dog on some soft rye bread I made with walnut flour (see recipe page), and intended to fold over like a bun.

It also gave me an opportunity to test out my new deep fryer that my friend Julie gave me after she tasted my coconut shrimp for the first time.  She's such a wonderful supporter of my diet and my blog, and wanted to make life easier for me.  I started preparing for another experiment with a side of caveman fries for my hot dog.  In the past, I couldn't get whatever root veggie I was using as a potato substitute to get crispy on the outside, like a classic french fry.  They always came out delicious, but soggy.  This time I decided to use a batter like I use with my onion rings (see recipe page), in hopes to solve the crispy problem.  They came out golden brown, and looked PERFECT!  And since I had the oil going in the deep fryer, I decided to cook the hot dog New Jersey style and make a ripper!  Rippers are great, deep fried hot dogs, who get their name from how their skin rips in the deep fryer.  But this organic hot dog was skinless, so unfortunately it didn't RIP!  But it was still crisp and yummy.  Okay, it was no Nathan's, or Katz's, or Gray Papaya's, but it was still pretty decent (the brand is called Applegate Farms).  I topped the kraut with some organic crushed red pepper.  Take a look:

Alas though, the fries still were a little too soggy to be like real french fries.  They tasted great (I used turnip), and they were seasoned great in the Holy Trinity and some paprika, and they even held their shape.  But they didn't quite do the trick.  I'll keep trying.

Okay, so now I had these leftover soggy fries, hot dogs, and sirloin steak.  And I thought a great way to combine all these leftovers for another meal was... CHILI!!!!!  Chili dogs, chili fries, and bowls of chili!  It was a perfect way to use up that gristle strewn sirloin.

In a big ass pot I sauteed a brown onion, 2 large garlic cloves, and a head of celery in olive oil (all ingredients, all organic, all the time).  Then I browned a pound of ground grass fed beef in with them.  Then I added 2 large diced red peppers, 1 large poblano pepper, and 1 TEENSY-TINY Habanero pepper, the hottest pepper on earth.  You can use jalapeno if you don't like it as hot as I do, but I used this little monster.  You can also deseed it to make it milder, just don't touch your eyes after handling it, or you'll be in BIG TROUBLE!  I added the spices: ground cumin (for that great Mexican flavor), black pepper, oregano, fresh parsley, and a ton of fresh cilantro.  Then I skinned three huge heirloom tomatoes and crushed them into the pot with my hands, juice and all.  Some people strain part of the juice or it'll become too soupy, but I wanted the liquid for the sirloin steak.  I just shoved the leftover steak on the bottom of the pot and let that liquid soften it up until it was tender and stringy.  Once it was, I removed the steak, let it cool, pulled all the meat off the gristle, tossed the bad bits, and added the meat back into the chili!

Finally, I love a dollop of sour cream on top of my chili, but dairy is a caveman no-no.  So I made some fresh creamy guacamole instead (see recipe page)!  Usually I spice up the guac with jalapeno, but this time I left it completely mild, since I wanted to cool down that habanero in the chili, like sour cream does.  And it needed cooling down!  It's amazing how a little habanero pepper, the size of a ping pong ball can turn an entire pot of chili into an inferno!  But it did.  It pushed even me to my heat index limits.  There was sweat at my hair line and on the back of my neck, just the way I love it!  Look at this beauty:

Ground beef and sirloin, and all those wonderful veggies, with the cool creamy guacamole on top.  A complete caveman meal, no beans or salt!  Serve it over the caveman fries, and it's still a pure food meal.  For a mini cheat, serve it over an organic hot dog, or serve it with some salt-free organic corn chips.  It was cold and rainy in LA all weekend too, so it was perfect.  Try it at your next Superbowl party, and instead of "Touchdown!" people will be yelling, "Ugga-Bugga!"

Peppers; They're Not Just For Breakfast Anymore!

Since I started this diet at the beginning of 2010, I have not had a full blown stay-in-bed cold yet!  I have felt a little sick though from time to time, but through proper eating, I've been able to keep the cold at bay until the feeling passes.  So what are the right foods?  Traditionally, if you're Jewish, chicken soup.  I'll skip that, it takes me a month to make caveman chicken soup, and another month to eat it all by myself.  What else?  O.J.!  Okay, let's explore that.  Oranges have 116% of your daily vitamin C requirements.  But next time you're feeling a little sick, don't reach for a glass of orange juice, reach for a bell pepper instead!  Sounds crazy right?  Well, did you know that green bell peppers have twice as much vitamin C as an orange?!  A red bell pepper has THREE TIMES AS MUCH!

Let's also take a closer look at our old friend, the glass of orange juice, being marketed towards you since forever by an advertising firm hired by orange growers.  First of all, let's assume, for the sake of a caveman discussion, that you're drinking ORGANIC orange juice, so I can't argue with you about any growth hormones, or pesticides, or genetically engineered seeds, etc, that are probably in your glass (you don't have to pay extra for that stuff, in fact you pay less for non-organics, they're practically giving the hormones and pesticides away!).  Even so, think about how many oranges you'd have to squeeze, just to drink one glass of orange juice.  Maybe three, four, seven, eight?  Not unheard of, depending on the size of the glass.  Well, could you sit down and EAT eight oranges?  Probably not.  You probably couldn't even eat three without getting sick of it.  But you'd have no problem guzzling down it's juice.  Well, that juice is full of sugar, and even though it's an acceptable sugar, it's way too much for your body to use, and eventually, it will get stored as body fat (see: thighs).

But our little buddy, the pepper?  Not many sugars at all, and LOADED with vitamin C, as well as many other great things for your health!  There are even some spicy peppers that have FIVE times as much vitamin C as oranges.  So next time you want some vitamin C, skip the juice, and EAT an orange!  Or better yet, eat a pepper!  Chili peppers are great for you too, but not everyone can handle the heat, so I won't give you grief if you're not a spice nut like me.  Trust me, when I was younger, I couldn't handle the heat either, but I've grown to adapt and now I love it!

Anyway, why am I bringing all this up (Yeah, why, get to the pictures already!)?  Calm down, I will.  It's because I had a little tickle in my throat and a runny nose the other day, so I reached for the peppers!  I usually always have a handful of them in the fridge for cooking, because the farmers market I go to always has a great selection.  You have to be careful when cooking peppers though, if you're going strictly for their vitamin C, because cooking kills a lot of vitamin C out of food.  So if you're eating them for medicinal purposes like me, you want to eat them RAW!

So for breakfast yesterday, I sliced some spicy red serrano chili pepper and threw it on top of some sunny side eggs I cooked in olive oil.  I'm really sorry I didn't take a photo of this, because it looked beautiful!  I promise I'll make it again, and make it look even yummier by putting the whole thing on top of rosemary walnut bread!  THEN, I'll take some pics.  The hot spice also helps unclog your sinuses naturally, so if you're not a big medicine taker like me, then this stuff is better than Sudafed!

For lunch I diced up a red and a green jalapeno into some fresh guacamole that I whipped up (see blog entitled "Caveman Cannot Live On Bread Alone" for recipe), and ate it with red and green bell pepper  slices as a corn chip replacement.  It was yummy, delicious, filling, and above all, loaded with vitamin C, one of the best known antioxidants on the planet.  Sorry, again, I didn't take a photo.

Then for dinner (yes, a photo is coming), I sliced up another red jalapeno, and cooked it this time (yes some vitamin C gets cooked out, but there was still probably more left in it than in a raw orange) in a pasta dish.

(Hold on, did you say pasta?)  Yes, pasta, now what I did was... (HOLD THE F--- ON!  HOW COULD YOU NAME THIS BLOG ABOUT A FRIGGIN' PEPPER WHEN YOU FIGURED OUT HOW TO MAKE CAVEMAN PASTA WITH NO WHEAT!!!!????)

You're really developing quite the temper, you know that?  The answer is because, if you're a regular reader, you know I've been experimenting for some time with using zucchini as a pasta substitute, and although I'm getting closer, I'm not quite there yet, and it's still not blog worthy.  But I'm trying.  For you, the fat bastards of America.

Now, as I was saying before you rudely interrupted, for dinner I put some olive oil in a pan, sauteed some garlic, and some red jalapeno, and then threw in some shrimp (see blog "Replacing Rice" for this same cooking technique), and then some lemon juice (also filled with vitamin C, but the cooking probably killed it all).  Finally I threw in some zucchini that I sliced with a peeler into long-ish fake fettucini.  Served it up, threw some fresh cilantro on top because I didn't have any parsley, some fresh ground black pepper (all ingredients, all organic, all the time), and it was done.  Here's what it looked like:

Not a bad looking pasta dish, now that I see it.  But it didn't have that satisfying pasta taste, bite, and all around yumminess.  Still, my sinuses dripped happily.  This morning, I made a variation of an old Brooklyn favorite, peppers and eggs!  Usually you eat it in a hero sandwich (or as we pronounced it in Brooklyn, "sangwich"), but I had this nice big poblano green pepper (mild, and about the same vitamin C as an orange, with none of the sugar), so I cut it lengthwise, and filled it with eggs and onions (see blog named "Caveman Dinner, Wednesday, 8/11/10"), then ate the pepper raw, like an open face sangwich.  Take a look:

So after about two days of eating peppers, as well as drinking antioxidant rich green tea, any signs of a cold are gone!  Another success story.  I love NOT being sick!  And there's a nasty bug going around right now that too many of my friends are catching.  But their immune systems are not as boosted as mine because of all the caveman food I've been eating.  Another buddy, unfortunately was just diagnosed with prostate cancer, and his doctors first prescription was, "Change your diet."  I believe it.  I think I've told you before, we all have these cancer cells slowly building up in us from eating things like wheat, legumes, potatoes, pesticides, and other toxin carrying foods.  After about 50, 60, 70 years of this diet, the cancer cells keep feeding on these toxins until they get big enough and decide to finally show up.  But if you stop eating things that feed the cancer cells, the cancer cells stop growing and stay the size they are forever.  Hopefully, I stopped feeding mine in time, and I'll lead a long healthy life.

A few years ago, I dated this real whacko who told me she can read into the future, and took a look at my palm.  I told her I always had a weird feeling I would die young, but she said, "No, you're going to live a very long, healthy life."  I blew it off thinking she was full of it, but now that I'm on this diet, and I see the amazing health results I achieved in only a few months, I think I owe her an apology.  Let's see, what was her number?  Oh here it is, 1-800-FREAKAZOID.  Okay, maybe I won't call her, besides that's too many numbers, and there's no Z on the phone.  But I'm starting to think she wasn't so full of it after all.  I now think I will live a long healthy life.  Someone actually thought I was in my 20's the other day.  Yes, she was blind and feeling my face at the time, but who am I to judge?!

All Hail Kale!

I've been craving salad lately, and since I had the steamers for lunch yesterday, I thought a perfect dinner would be a nice hearty salad.  I had no chicken or meat to add to it though, so I figured a nice hearty lettuce would be perfect, and I did have the first of the winter kale from the farmers market!  I've spoken about kale before, but let's get into it in detail now.

While I'm not going to go into every little detail of Kale (you can look it up yourselves, you lazy bastards on this website I found by googling kale: http://www.truthaboutabs.com/superfood-garnish-kale.html) I will say that it's on almost every "super food" list I've seen.  The super foods are the top foods that are best for your health.  Things like wild salmon, walnuts (both for their high amount of Omega-3 fat you always hear me preaching about), and dark green leafy veggies like kale!  It's LOADED with antioxidants, and vitamins, and although a little harsh to eat raw, because it's so thick and rigid, if you cook it a little it's quite delicious!  Mostly I use them as a potato chip substitute in the form of Kale Chips (see recipes page), but I've also eaten them in my friend Eva's soup (sorry, don't have that recipe converted to caveman yet), and sauteed them in olive oil and garlic (all ingredients, all organic, all the time), and it's great that way too ("Hey Caveman Genius, what isn't great in olive oil and garlic?!  Yabba-Dabba-Duh!").  No need to get nasty, I'm just trying to help.  Well, based on that ridicule, I'm going to show you a new way to eat kale, RAW, but not harsh.  Don't believe it?  Come on, I'll show you.

I saw this prep technique on the new show from the new winner of "The Next Food Network Star, " an Indian chick named Aarti, and her show "Aarti Parti" (see, I'm not the only schmuck out there rhyming my titles).  I'm not that into the show because she uses all these Indian spices that I don't own, and let's face it, this organic crap can get expensive.  I'm not about to plunk down a week's paycheck for an organic spice rack that I'll use once in a blue moon (assuming I ever have another paycheck, that is).  But I still like it to see her recipes that I can potentially recreate as a caveman dish, using food I already have in the cave, um I mean home.  She made a kale salad, and to soften the really thick hearty leaves, she poured on the dressing, and massaged the kale!  It's been a while since I had my kale massaged, so I gave it a try (Caveman like double entendre, ugga-bugga).

First, I was about to make my dressing, but then I realized my dressing was already made from lunch!  That's right, my steamers meal (see last blog entitled "Steamers!" for recipe) had a lot of leftover "mock butter" that I made to dip the clams into.  Well, when warm, it tastes like butter, but when cold, it tastes like salad dressing.  All it consisted of was olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, crushed red pepper flakes, and cilantro (yep, you guessed it, all organic, all blah, all blah blah).  I took it out of the fridge and the dressing was made!  Just a word on salad dressing though that I picked up on all the cooking shows I watch (it's becoming a little crazy, I'm beginning to watch more cooking shows than sports).  They all say that for every one part of acid, you should add two to three parts fat (depending on taste).  In other words, for one part lemon juice (acid), you should add two to three parts olive oil (fat).  Again, don't be freaked out about the word "fat," you've been tricked by Madison Ave into thinking it's bad for you, it's the best thing for you, if it's the right fat.  I'm sick of talking about it, so go look it up yourself in my past blogs.  Do I have to do EVERYTHING for you, you lazy bastards?!

Now the kale.  Strip the leaves off the stems, and, although Aarti and the other TV chefs say discard the stems, DON'T THROW THEM AWAY!  Save them for my "healthy rice" recipe (see recipes page).  Any thick stem from a green leafy veggie will work as healthy rice, so throw them into a green bag and save them for a rice meal.  Did we talk about green bags?  I forget.  Green Bags are from the "As Seen On TV" brand, and they keep produce fresh for weeks longer than plain old plastic containers and bags. They have saved my life on this diet, because without them, I'd have to just buy enough food for a day or two, considering everything's organic and would spoil fast, and then go to the grocery store again for another day or two of food.  I don't know about you, but even with all this unemployed free time on my hands, I don't want to go grocery shopping every two days!

Back to the kale.  Slice or pull apart the leaves into bite sized pieces, and throw them into a big salad bowl.  Pour half the dressing on top, wash your hands (if you haven't already, you filthy bastards), and start massaging!  Just keep giving it all a good squeeze for about 2-3 minutes.  You'll see that in no time, the thick hearty leaves will start to soften in your hands (like some of your husbands in bed, am I right ladies, huh?  Who's with me?  You're a great crowd!).  They'll also become fragrant, and the dark green color will brighten up as well.  What seemed like am impossible salad to chew a minute ago, now looks delicious!  Once it's massaged enough, put it aside, wash your hands, and start throwing in your other ingredients.  I always use whatever I have in the house for my salads, so you do the same, based on what you have and what you like.  In this case, I had some beautiful red bell pepper (which looked great against the green of the kale), some white onion I sliced VERY thin, some walnuts I crushed up in my hands, and some gala apples!  I find that when you're making a bitter salad (in this case the bitter coming from the kale, and the lemon juice from the dressing), a nice sweet ingredient makes the whole salad come together beautifully!  I sliced the apple into little chunks, threw it all into the kale salad bowl, threw in the remainder of the dressing, and tossed it together.  Take a look:

Gorgeous!  Even though the kale is nice and soft after its massage, it's still hearty and filling!  The apples make the whole thing come alive, and they go perfectly with the walnuts!  It's so yummy.  After this massage, I guarantee a happy ending!  Enjoy.

Steamers!

I was in the mood for an old favorite today, and the Caveman Diet preaches to satisfy any craving you have, so I just made myself a delicious little snack.  When I was a kid a big treat for us was to go into Hoboken, NJ for a meal at the famous (and now defunct) Hoboken Clam Broth House.  Later on I was fortunate enough to live in Hoboken, and I ate there frequently.  They had a special on Tuesday nights, a pound and a half Maine lobster, fries, cole slaw, and an ice cold draft beer for $14 bucks!  But I always started with a bucket of steamers!  Steamers are little clams, also called manilla clams, but they can be made with little necks as well as many other varieties.  It's such a simple dish, but so delicious, and so fun to eat!

All the dish consists of are a bunch of steamed clams, a cup of clam broth, and a cup of drawn butter.  If you're a regular reader, you already know that on the Caveman Diet, "one of these things is not like the other!"  Funny how songs from Sesame Street still stick in your head for 40 years.  Okay, let's test your Caveman IQ, is the bad food the clams?  Well, if they're wild caught, they're fine.  In fact, they're great for you, loaded with Omega-3, which is the best fat on earth, and the key to good health.  If they're farm raised, forget it, it's loaded with bad saturated fat, and horrible for you, even though they're probably delicious, because bad saturated fat tastes yummy.  But you're not doing yourself any favors by eating farm raised fish, so don't.

Okay, back to the quiz, is it the clam broth?  Well, if you were to buy it in a store, you'd be hard pressed to find a brand that doesn't add salt, which is another no-no on the Caveman Diet.  There is already the perfect amount of salt in all the food you eat, the perfect amount to keep you alive, and if you add any extra you are literally ruining your health!  Think about salt for a second.  If you drink salt water, you throw up.  If you drink enough of it, you'll die (of dehydration, of all things!).  If you're a slug, it'll melt you!  Well, think about all of that the next time you reach for the salt shaker.  It's just not worth the high blood pressure, and once you're off salt for a while, your taste buds will come alive again and you'll taste what food should REALLY taste like (sorry to tell you this folks, but tons of your taste buds are already dead, and that's why the more salt you use, the more you want, so you can add flavor to your dead taste buds).  Anyway, I can't find any clam broth without salt, so either I'll make my own, or skip it altogether because, by nature, I'm a lazy bastard.  The only reason for the broth anyway is to rinse off any excess sand from the clam after peeling it away from the shell, so I'm just using hot water for that part.

Okay, geniuses, the answer is DRAWN BUTTER!  There are actually two schools of thought about dairy on the paleo diet.  One is, if it's organic, from grass fed cows, sheep, goats, etc, then go for it.  But the bulk of us (including myself) feel that there would almost NEVER be an opportunity for a caveman to eat dairy.  IF they happened to kill a nursing animal, then I guess they would gorge on whatever milk they found in the carcass (hungry yet with all this sexy food talk?).  But that would be pretty rare if you ask me.  Plus, there's a reason some people are lactose intolerant.  It's because we're supposed to be, it's just a fluke of nature that most of us aren't.  No other animal but humans drink another animals' milk.  It's not natural.  And the caveman diet is all about natural, so I stay away from dairy.  However, if you read my blog on french roasted chicken (look it up yourself you lazy bastards), then you also know that olive oil makes a great substitute for butter.  So that's what I did this time.  I put some olive oil in a sauce pan, added garlic, crushed red pepper flakes, cilantro, and lemon juice and warmed it up while steaming the clams.

As for the clams, I went to Whole Foods and bought a couple dozen of WILD CAUGHT manilla clams ($6 bucks a pound, not bad).  When I got home, I rinsed them off in the sink, and threw them into a big pot, with a steam basket inside (they're cheap and work great).  I put a little water in the pot, just under the bottom of the steam basket, turned the heat on medium high, and covered it.  In about 5 minutes they were done!  Take the lid off and it looks like this:

Check out that steam!  If any of the clams don't open, throw them away, it means they were probably dead before you cooked them, and they could make you VERY sick if you eat them.  Transfer them to a bowl, serve up the oil/lemon juice "mock drawn butter" mixture in a little cup, and put a cup full of hot water next to it all.  Then follow these simple instructions:

1. Pull clam meat out of shell.
2. Dip clam into hot water to rinse off any excess sand.
3. Dip clam into delicious mock drawn butter mixture.
4. Eat.
5. Repeat steps 1-4.

So simple a caveman can do it.  Ugga-Bugga!

High In The Sky Apple Pie!

The game has changed, folks.  No more of this wimpy cooking caveman crap, we've gone to the next level.  It's one thing to make a dish using only organic caveman items like Mexican Shrimp Scampi, or Roasted Chicken.  "Oh boy, Mr. Caveman Big Shot, you took all natural veggies, herbs, spices, and meat and cooked a meal with it?  I'll alert the friggin' media!  Sheesh, what a stuck up, Jerk!  I hope he gains all that weight back!"  No, no, you don't understand.  What I've done this time will win me the Nobel Prize for Former Fat Bastards.  Like Dr. Frankenstein (It's pronounced Frahn-ken-Steene), I have taken bits and pieces of inanimate food and created an APPLE PIE!!!!!  I'm not sure you heard me.  I used all caveman ingredients and MADE AN APPLE PIE!!!!!!!  That means no wheat flour, no processed sugar (brown or white), no butter, no milk, no cream, no lard.  And it came out GREAT!!!!!!  Take a look see:

Let's backtrack.  Last week I attempted my first pie, pumpkin.  It was "just okay," mainly do to my screwing up the spices.  My main problem was way too much cloves.  I didn't realize it until I was eating the leftovers, but the cloves were making it almost inedible.  The taste was dominating my mouth.  But it was more than that.  Then I started realizing, I was having trouble tasting anything after eating the pumpkin pie.  It finally dawned on me that my mouth had become a little numb!  Then I remembered back to the movie (and my favorite book) "Marathon Man" ("Is it safe?")!  The dentist uses simple oil of cloves to numb the tooth pain he was inflicting on Dustin Hoffman!  I half expected Lawrence Olivier to come into my kitchen and start drilling into my teeth (Nazi bastard!).

Anyway, I had enough of pumpkin pie for a while.  But the thing that was encouraging was the pie crust.  I used coconut flour, which was nothing more than organic ground coconut (all ingredients on the caveman diet are all organic, all the time), eggs, coconut oil, and honey.  I nailed it!  It tasted just like pie crust!  It didn't even taste like coconut, which can be overwhelming in whatever dish you use it in, but in the pie crust it only had a hint of coconut flavor.  So when I saw organic apples on sale at Whole Foods (69 cents a pound, unheard of for organic produce), I decided to make an apple pie!

My good friends Brad & Sean'a invited me over to be my guinea pigs.  They were interested for some time now in seeing if this food I blog about was as good as I claimed, so they graciously offered to buy the groceries if I do the shopping and cook.  I wasn't looking to cook for another group of people (see my catering blunder blog), but I haven't seen them in a while, and it was a great chance to share a meal with two of my favorite people.  Plus, it was a great opportunity to test this apple pie!  I really had no idea how it would turn out, so I made sure I made some tried and true caveman recipes for dinner, in case dessert was a disaster!

There were four of us, Brad, Sean'a, and my buddy Jonathan (no, not pork loin Jonathan, voice over Jonathan, another great friend).  None of them had had my cooking before, but all were healthy eaters, so no one grabbed for the salt shaker when I served dinner, even though I warned them they might need it if they thought it was bland.  I started them off with a little appetizer while I cooked.  Simple and delicious, Caveman Bruschetta.  I baked some rosemary walnut bread (same as my almond bread recipe, only I ground walnuts into flour instead of almonds, because I was using almonds in the main course), sliced it into small squares, and then scooped over it a simple raw mixture of chopped heirloom tomato, garlic, basil, and olive oil.  That's it.  Fresh, delicious, and a nice light way to start a meal.  It was fantastic!  Look:

Pretty good, huh?

For the main course, I made the Caveman Fried Chicken and Golden Encrusted Brussels Sprouts (look it up in the August archives for the recipes, you lazy bastards).  I burned the veggies a bit, but it just added to the caramelization, so they were still yummy.  The chicken was PERFECT, better than I ever made it before.  Perfectly seasoned and perfectly cooked.  This is what Seana's plate looked like:

Yummy, yummy yummy!  By the way, Sean'a took all these photos.  She's an amazing photographer, and she didn't even use her professional camera for these.

But while we ate dinner, I kept checking on the pie.  It took me all day to make it.  My day started early, first researching different apple pie recipes, looking for one that would be the easiest to convert to caveman style.  I finally picked one, and went to work.  I went to a restaurant supply store to buy a gadget that would core and peel apples, but they were out of stock.  But as I drove home dreading the idea of peeling apples all day, I passed by a K-Mart, and found an apple peeler for $14!  It makes life a lot easier, but you know what, it was still a royal pain in the ass!  I still had to de-core, and then slice those suckers, and it took a while.

I bought one large Granny Smith apple (which most recipes recommended) and the rest were gala apples.  Granny Smith is a tart apple and galas are sweet.  I figured the sweeter the better, because I wasn't adding sugar (which every recipe called for), but I did want one Granny Smith for contrast.  As I sliced them I dumped them into a bowl with water and a little lemon juice to prevent discoloring.  When apples hit the open air, they start to oxidize, or in simple terms, they turn brown (why didn't you just say that in the first place, Asshole!)  Sorry.

I then threw the apples into a skillet with a little of the lemon water and added about a half a cup of honey.  Now although honey is pure sugar, and therefore by definition, bad for you, it's still a pure food, and not refined, like cane or brown sugar.  So compared to those sugars, it's downright healthy.  But in general, it's best to avoid sugar.  Even fruit should be eaten in extreme moderation, even if it is organic.  I put in about a tablespoon of cinnamon, a half tablespoon of nutmeg, and a TINY speckle of clove, just enough to keep the Nazi's away.

I reduced the mixture to a simple syrup.  When it was thick and coated all the apples, I transferred it to a bowl for cooling.  The apples were still firm.  I didn't want to cook them too much and make them mushy, because then I would have apple sauce pie.  All I wanted to do was release some of their liquid, so that when I baked the pie, it wouldn't shrink too much under the top crust.  Then I added a step that I wish I hadn't.  I sprinkled on some arrowroot to thicken the mixture, because some recipes said corn starch will make it all bake together thick and syrupy, but truthfully, all it did was take a gorgeous brown syrup and make it cloudy.  I think the mixture would have been fine without it, and I'll leave it out next time I make it.

Once the apple filling was cool, I made the crust.  I took 6 eggs, about a cup of honey, and 12 tablespoons of coconut oil, mixed them together, and then slowly added coconut flour until it was thick and dough like (but not too dry!).  I greased my 9 inch apple pan with coconut oil, and just formed a crust with my hands, making sure there wasn't any part too thick, especially around the edges.  Then I added the apple filling, and formed more dough on top to cover it all.  I took a knife and cut three slices in the top to make sure the pie could vent, and when I got to Seana's, I put it in the oven at 350, covering the edges in foil to prevent them from burning (they burned a little, because I didn't remember to do it until I saw the edges start to burn).

After about an hour, I saw the top was done, and this is what it looked like:

Oh yeah!  I had high hopes at this point.  But we really didn't know what we had until it cooled and we cut into it.  We finished dinner, which was quite good if I can pat myself on the back for a moment (wait, I'm about to beat myself to death with compliments), while the pie cooled.

30 minutes later we were ready to see if the experiment was a success or failure.  Brad did the honors of cutting into it (I was too nervous and scared).  But take a look at the results:

Doesn't that look like pie????!!!!!  Look at that crust!  It looks like pie crust!

I especially love how the sides came out.  I know I keep repeating myself, but it LOOKS LIKE PIE CUST!  The pie crust tasted like pie crust!  The apple pie filling tasted like apple pie filling!  The snozzberries tasted like snozzberries!  Okay, that's a quote from Willy Wonka, but you get my point!  Not only did it "remind me" of pie, like the pumpkin did, it actually tasted like apple pie!!!!  It looked, smelled and tasted great!  If you didn't know I made it without any dairy, sugar, or wheat flour, you would have guessed you were eating traditional apple pie!  It's one thing to say we were eating healthy fried chicken (which we were), but it's another all together to say we were eating healthy APPLE PIE (WHICH WE WERE!!)!!  Of all the recipes I've converted to caveman cooking, this one, for me, is by far the closest thing to the real deal.  And to think, when I started this diet, I assumed the only dessert I would ever eat again would be fresh fruit.  Now I'm eating pie that tastes like pie.  Real pie.  I think I'm gonna faint.

Brad commented he even liked it better than the real deal, because he never liked apple pie, thinking it's usually too sweet.  But this one seemed just right, and it tasted ultra fresh!  I want to thank Brad, and especially my co-conspirator Sean'a, who plotted with me about turning this apple pie experiment into a reality.  They also had the idea I should cook for other families, as long as they paid for the groceries, and invited at least three hot single girls.  Now that's something I can affirmatively say, "Ugga-Bugga" to!

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Replacing Rice

When I was on the low carb craze I was constantly trying to find replacements for the big four of complex carbs: bread, pasta, potatoes, and rice.  And when I went Caveman the search continued, although packaged food was no longer an option.  Well, if you're a regular reader you'll know that I bake my own bread using organic nut flour I grind myself, so we can scratch that one off the list.  We also know that a nice substitute for potatoes are root veggies like rutabaga, turnip, celery root, and beets, so we have that carb loaded tuber taken care of.  Pasta?  I'm still trying.  I came close using zucchini, but not close enough to blog about it.  Give me some time, trust me, I'm more anxious to find a pasta replacement to eat than you are to read about it.  That leaves rice.  Well, I have a confession to make.  I found a rice replacement months before starting this blog, I just haven't made it since I started writing about my caveman adventures.  It's pretty simple too.

Since I started this diet ("crazy diet" as all my "friends" call it when they continue to roll their eyes at me, despite the health results I've achieved), I've tried many new things.  Plus, many more things I've eaten before but never cooked.  Greens are a good example.  Collard Greens have long been a favorite of mine, mostly as part of one of my favorite meals, a plate of soul food, fried chicken, macaroni 'n cheese, and collard greens.  Yum!  I never knew how to cook collards (or cared to know), but this diet has forced me to broaden my horizons.  Since this diet, I've cooked collard greens, kale, mustard greens, and chard.  I have to say collard greens are now my least favorite of the group.  I love mustard greens because of the mustard flavor (I can barely pass by a Jewish deli without stopping in for at least a hot dog, so mustard runs through my veins).  My love of kale has been covered in previous blogs (look it up, you lazy bastards).  And I love my new favorite chard, because it is naturally salty!!!  Besides coffee and pasta, salt has been the hardest thing for me to give up on the caveman diet (I still cheat with coffee once a week, on Sunday mornings).  So anything that naturally has salt (meaning I don't have to add salt to it) is a welcome addition to my dinner table!  I've passed Swiss Chard in the grocery store many times, but was too bewildered by its thick red stems and giant green leaves to even attempt to cook it.  But I had Rainbow Chard the other day for the first time and I was wowed by it!  Like a salty spinach!

"What the hell does this have to do with rice, Numnutz?"  Patience.

All these greens have something in common.  Whenever I see demos of cooking them, only the leaves are used.  The stems are usually thrown away.  Now why I decided to cook the stems I have no idea, but I did, and I'm glad I did.  First time I tried it I threw some kale stems in the food processor, and chopped them as fine as possible.  Then I simply sauteed them in olive oil, garlic, and black pepper.  I cooked them until they were almost soft, but definitely far from mushy, and then served food over it as if it were rice.  Any dish you make that's usually served over rice will work with this trick.  I started calling it green rice, or healthy rice, certainly the healthiest "rice" you will ever have in your life.  No, it doesn't taste like rice, so stop calling me a liar.  And it'll never be white.  But it does have the texture and feel of rice in your mouth, and it's not a far leap to trick yourself into thinking that's what you're eating, especially if you NEVER eat rice like me.  Memory is a weird thing, the longer you're separated from something, the harder it is to remember it, so when you have this, after not eating rice in forever, you can actually think "Hey, this is a lot like rice," without feeling like you're a complete moron.

Since I had some Rainbow Chard for the first time the other day, and discovered it's salty goodness, I saved the stems for a shrimp dish I enjoy making.  Same technique, throw the stems in the food processor and chop 'til fine.  I like the rainbow stems because they're all different colors, whereas the other greens' stems are, well, green (duh).  If you use Swiss Chard it will be a nice red color, so keep that in mind when picking ingredients for whatever you're serving on top of it.  The caveman diet preaches eating different colored items during each meal, to get different nutritional benefits the earth has to offer, so Rainbow Chard is a good way to get green, red, yellow, and orange all on your plate at the same time.  Saute in olive oil, garlic, and black pepper until it's no longer crisp, but not mushy.  Set aside.

Now for my shrimp dish.  I first made this to recreate a Thai dish my friend Kristin and I used to love.  I first made it with peanut oil, but now I use olive oil, because peanuts are legumes, and not allowed on the paleo diet (peanuts are not nuts, they're legumes and are toxic in their raw state).  The original dish called for mint, but I use whatever I have around now, like basil, or cilantro, which I used tonight.  It also calls for different colored bell peppers, but I had some chili peppers I bought at the farmers market this weekend, so I used Poblano, which are mild, and Serrano, which are spicy!  Any combinations of oil, peppers, and herbs will work with this dish, so cater it to your favorite flavors, or whatever you have in the house that needs to be used up.

I heated up some olive oil in a pan, then added the ingredients one at a time, to build flavors (a trick I'm learning from watching Michael Symon's new show "How to Cook Like An Iron Chef").  I added fresh garlic (I could have added ginger too if I wanted to keep it Thai, but the chili's are from mexico, so I left it out for a more Mexican flavor), then some sliced red onion, then the peppers, then three quarters of the cilantro, some black pepper, and then the shrimp.  Shrimp are so easy, unless you try to clean them, involving de-veining, and all that bullshit.  Life is too short.  I bought a bag of raw, frozen, WILD (must be wild, farm raised shrimp are full of bad cholesterol, but wild shrimp are full of good cholesterol!) shrimp from Trader Joe's, and all my work has been done for me.  Just about 2-3 minutes on each side, until the shrimp have a nice bright orange or pink color (depending on the shrimp you use).  Right before it's done I add the juice of about a half a lime, and the dish is done!  Plate the healthy "rice" and serve the shrimp dish over it, add the remaining fresh cilantro, and dig in!

Mmmm, Caveman like shrimp!  No like tails!  Take tails off before eating!  Fake rice fool Caveman!  Caveman idiot!  But this idiot eating shrimp, and you're eating crap!  Who's idiot now?  Ugga-Bugga!!

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Friday Night Chicken - French Roasted Caveman Style

As you remember, Friday nights in my house growing up almost always meant chicken.  Mostly my grandmother would just use paprika, garlic powder, black pepper, and a ton of salt, and the skin would be kind of dry as it came out of the oven, but still delicious.  Plain, by today's standards, but delicious.  So this year I decided to try to make chicken on Fridays whenever possible, as a tribute to my grandmother, and I'm always looking for new ways to cook it.  Well, this one is very simple, and I think it's going to be very easy to adapt the recipe to caveman style.

I saw this on Food Network, which I am almost always tuned into.  One day I was watching "Ten Dollar Dinners" with Melissa d'Arabian.  She's the woman who won the Next Food Network Star competition a couple of years ago, but obviously she never shops organically if she can make a whole meal for a family of 4 for $10 bucks!  Regardless, she spent a lot of time in Paris, and fell in love with the way they roasted chicken, promising a crispy skin combined, with ultra moist chicken.  This is a great time to try it out.

I bought a whole organic chicken from Whole Foods, put the giblets in the freezer (still afraid of them for now), rinsed it, and patted it very dry using paper towel.  Melissa's recipe calls for a half stick of butter, but you already know us cavemen don't eat dairy, so I'm substituting it with delicious olive oil (all ingredients, all organic, all the time).  Then she advises the only way to recreate the French style she grew to love, was to use FRESH HERBS!  One day soon I'm gonna plant an herb garden, but for now, I picked some fresh rosemary from my friends Brian & Michele's garden, and bought some fresh thyme.  I chopped them finely, along with a large clove of garlic, added black pepper, and let them sit in the olive oil for a half hour, hoping to give them a light infuse (check me out with the cooking glossary!).  The only spice I didn't add that the recipe called for was salt!  Hopefully the olive oil will brown the skin for me as well as the butter did for Melissa (we're on a first name basis now).

She also put a little white wine in the bottom of the roasting pan.  Well, I don't even own a roasting pan, let alone white wine, so something's got to give (I think my aluminum foil lined baking pan will do fine).  Unfortunately no alcohol on the Caveman diet (although a day doesn't go by that I don't need a drink, and I don't even have kids!), because booze is fermented, and aside from the occasional piece of rotting fermented fruit a caveman would find on the ground, he would go buzz-less his whole life (poor prehistoric bastard).  So instead of white wine, I poured a little lemon juice into the pan with an equal amount of filtered water.  Not enough to fully cover the pan, just enough to add moisture to the cooking.

I rubbed half the oil mixture all over the chicken and ESPECIALLY under the breast skin!  Then into the pan it went breast side DOWN!  This is because A) the white meat cooks fastest, and is the easiest part to dry out, so this slows it down a bit, and B) because the juices from the fattier dark meat will drip down almost marinating the breast on the bottom, and making it juicer.  Into a preheated 425 degree oven for ONLY 15 minutes!  425 is way too high to usually cook a chicken, but Melissa says this will help get the skin nice and crispy, so who am I to argue with my new best friend.  That's my Melissa!

Melissa's other part of the traditional French recipe is to cook red skin potatoes with the chicken.  Well, taters are a major no-no for the caveman, so instead I found some beautiful orange beets at Whole Foods.  They were small like red potatoes and I figured they are a perfect paleo substitute.  I cut them into quarters, and drizzled them with olive oil, black pepper, onion powder, fresh minced garlic, and crushed red pepper!  I tossed them and let them sit while the chicken cooked.  I used to hate beets because my only knowledge of them were either my grandmother's disgusting looking borscht, or the pickled variety I'd pick off my salads because I simply didn't like the taste.  But the previously mentioned Brian & Michele made them for me this year by roasting them and they were delicious!  The only problem is, the darker the beet, the darker your excretion.  There's nothing scarier after a day of eating red beets than seeing your pee-pee and poo-poo colored bright red!  I came back in off the ledge once I realized it was a false alarm!

Once the bird cooked on 425 for 15 minutes, I took it out of the oven and the pan.  Then I added the beets, and they will act as a roasting rack for the chicken during the rest of the cooking.  I put the chicken on the beets, breast side UP this time, brushed on the rest of the olive oil mixture, coating everything I could get my brush on, put it back in the oven, and lowered the heat to 325.  I'll leave it there for a little over an hour, until the meat thermometer placed right inside the thigh reads 160.  Your house will smell so AMAZING while it cooks!  I am getting so incredibly hungry!!!  I hope my neighbors get a whiff of that fragrant rosemary and delicious chicken!  I hope they're so jealous that they move!

It's done now, and I'm supposed to let it rest for ten minutes, but it smells so GOOD, I'm not sure I can wait.  But if you want your chicken juicy, you'll let it sit.  Let's gaze at it together while I wait patiently, drooling on my apron:

Oh my friggin' caveman club, it looks GREAT!!  Just tasted it and it's amazing!  Crispy skin, and juicy chicken, as my BFF Melissa promised.  She suggests taking some lemon juice and deglazing the pan, and reducing it to make it into a sauce, but truthfully, I don't think it needs it, it's perfect!  Since I'm only one guy, I'm gonna be eating leftover chicken for a day or two, but it's so good, I don't care!  Obviously not every French recipe can be converted to caveman cooking, but olive oil is a great substitute for butter in many cases if you put some thought into it, and infinitely more healthy for you!!!!  "Bon Appetite," or as we say in the French cave, " Le Ugga-Bugga!"

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