We’re headed to West Palm Beach, Florida this weekend to compete in the CrossFit Games Southeast Regionals with our team. We’ve been trying to practice the workouts together and what not, which has us coming home later than usual, which has dinner  hitting the table later than usual too. Since I work from home, sometimes I’m able to whip something up in the afternoon and then just reheat it for dinner–it’s like some twisted version of leftovers. With this, I had some previously roasted sweet potatoes in the fridge, so I just popped those out, assembled the pizza deliciousness, reheated everybody and we were able to gorge at a reasonable hour.

Ingredients

• 4 medium sweet potatoes
• 8 oz mushrooms, sliced
• black olives, sliced
• 1 lb sausage
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• Parmesan cheese, finely grated (optional)
• any pizza toppings you like will work

For the Sauce

• 2 c tomato sauce
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 T onion powder
• 1 T dried oregano
• 2 t garlic powder
• s&p

Method

Get your oven to 400ºF.

Prick and place your sweet potatoes on a baking sheet. Let them roast until their insides are soft and mushy, about 30 minutes. I would not recommend microwaving these, as I think the oven develops a sweeter flavor than the microwave, just my 2 cents.

While the potatoes are roasting, whisk together the sauce ingredients. Taste and adjust to your preferences, then set aside.

While the potatoes are still roasting…

In a large saute pan, crumble and brown the sausage. Remove the meat from the pan, reserving the rendered fat. Toss in the mushrooms and onions. Let them cook until the mushrooms have browned and the onions are soft.

Once the potatoes are done, slice them in half (lengthwise) and arrange the halves nicely on the baking sheet. Smash and loosen the sweets’ insides with a fork.

Ladle a few spoonfuls of sauce on top of the sweet potato, followed by the mushroom/onion saute, sausage and olives. If you’re using Parmesan, add a little finely cheese to help glue everything together.

Toss the baking sheet back in the oven for a couple minutes, to re-warm everything.

[updated from 08/19/2010]

Mmmmmm, bacon candy canes. This could be a side dish or a meal all on it’s own, who am I to say?

Ingredients

• 2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into matchsticks about the width of your pinky finger.
• 8 oz bacon, don’t use thick cut

Method

Get your oven to 425°F and place your oven rack in the center of the oven. Slice each piece of bacon in half, lengthwise and then in half, widthwise. So you’ll have 4 strips cut from 1 piece of bacon. Wrap 1 strip of bacon around 1 matchstick sweet potato. Lay on a baking sheet that’s been lined with a silicone pat or parchment paper. Repeat until all the bacon is gone. If you have left over sweet potatoes, toss ‘em on the pan too, they’ll cook beautifully in all the rendered bacon fat. Bake for 15 minutes until the sweet potatoes feel soft. Then turn the oven to broil and let the tops get crispy.

Optional: Serve with the dressing (minus the vinegar) from Chipotle Slaw

As the month of January is winding down, I assume the Super Bowl is somewhere nearby. I don’t know when the Super Bowl is (Yes, I know how to Google, I just don’t care enough.) or who’s playing (don’t care about that either). I unapologetically know jack shit about football and I plan to keep it that way, but I imagine a sub 30 minute meal made of pork would be a welcome addition to the table o’ football grub.

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground pork
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 c almond flour
• 1 jalapeño, finely diced
• 1 t chili garlic sauce
• 2 green onions, finely chopped
• handful cilantro
• 1/4 t sesame oil
• 1/3 c mayo
• s&p

Method

Preheat your oven to 350ºF.

Add the ground pork, egg, egg yolk and almond flour to a mixing bowl.

Now, the rest of the ingredients (minus the mayo and sesame oil) are for both the meatballs and the dipping sauce. Chop once, use twice, right? So halve up everything and mix one half in with the meatball mixture and the other half in with the mayo and sesame oil.

Stick the dipping sauce in the fridge while we finish up with the meatballs.

Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper. Use a small ice cream/cookie scoop to portion out the meatball mixture onto the baking sheet.

Place the meatballs in the oven and bake until cooked through, about 15 minutes.

Turn the oven on broil and brown the tops of the meatballs.

***Updated***

Cheese. Considered a cheat by Paleo Purists. We hate the word cheat, by the way. So much so that we’ve written an entire post about it. Dairy is a gray area in Paleo Land and therefore considered a “Scarlett Letter” ingredient. We know that. But we have functioning brains, and decide for ourselves when and how we consume dairy. You can do whatever you want, it really doesn’t affect us. Love you, but can the dogma please. That being said, if your functioning brain tells you not to eat dairy, then we’ve added an avocado cream recipe that makes a mighty fine cheese alternative.

Ingredients

• 5 poblano* peppers
• 1 lb. fresh chorizo**, casings removed (slit the back of the sausage with a knife and unwrap the meat from the case) and crumbled
• 4 oz. mushrooms, diced
• 1 small yellow onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• handful chopped cilantro
• 3 oz. raw sharp cheddar
• 2 oz. goat cheese

• 2 avocados
• 1 lime, juiced

Method

Preheat your oven to 450ºF.

Slice the tops off your poblano peppers (reserve them, minus the stem), then cut them in half, lengthwise. Remove the white membrane and the seeds. Coat in a little bit of fat and place in the oven to soften. We’re trying to roast and soften ‘em up before we stuff ‘em.

While the peppers are working in the oven, saute the chorizo, onions, garlic, mushrooms and the chopped pieces of the poblano pepper tops, until everything is soft, about 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the cheeses and cilantro.

Take the peppers out of the oven.

Using a spoon, stuff the chorizo filling into each pepper and place back into the oven to melt the cheeses and warm everything up.

If you don’t eat dairy, this is a great cheese substitute:

To make the avocado cream, use a fork to mash up the avocados with the lime juice. Serve with the rellenos.

*Poblano chile peppers are mild mexican chiles. Think of it as the less bitter, mexican version of green bell peppers. They’re found at most grocery stores, around the other chile peppers.

**If you can’t find fresh chorizo (dried chorizo is hard and usually labeled Spanish, fresh is soft and usually labeled Mexican), you could substitute fresh andouille or make the chili recipe from the chili cheese dog recipe.

Last Saturday was a busy day. After breakfast we knew we’d have no real time to eat again until that night. So we threw together the biggest, most protein and fat packed meal we could possibly conceive. It was enough food to keep a cowboy full for hours…believe me, I feed one. It’s the usual suspects here: eggs, sweet potatoes, sausage, cilantro and avocado. I was inspired by our Baked Bibimbap to make a baked version of Huevoes Rancheros. Runny yolks oozing alongside crispy, sweet potatoes and salty sausage. I’m sorry if you’re bored by my constant use of these ingredients, but I obviously am not bored (and I’m not sorry either :p). They can do no wrong in my book.

Ingredients

• 1 lb breakfast sausage
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, diced
• 5 eggs
• 1 avocado, diced
• handful cilantro
• hot sauce
• raw cheese, optional
• s & p

Method

Preheat your oven to 400ºF.

In an oven safe skillet, we used cast iron, crumble and brown the sausage.

Once it’s brown, use a slotted spoon to remove the sausage and let it hang out while we cook the sweet potatoes. Try to reserve as much of the grease as possible.

Toss the sweet potatoes into the sausage grease and let them get crispy and cooked through.

Add the sausage back into the pan.

Make a few wells in the pan–one well for each egg. Crack your eggs into the wells.

Place the skillet in the oven. We’re just baking the skillet long enough for the eggs to set, about 5 minutes.

Now, turn the oven to broil and hit up the top side of the eggs for a few minutes, but don’t let the yolk cook all the way through–unless you don’t like runny yolks. But man, oh man, the runny yolks go down really nicely with the crispy sweet potatoes. Just sayin’.

Remove the pan from the oven and douse the whole thing with avocado, cilantro and hot sauce.

Serve by scooping out an egg, along with its neighboring goodies, with a large spoon.

The cheap, leafy green veggie that is often overcooked into slimy, tasteless mush. Did you guess collard greens or did the title give it away? Hmmm. We only eat them once a year (shame on us), New Year’s Day (some silly ‘good luck’ tradition), well…maybe with BBQ every once in a while too. So I imagine the aforementioned description is most people’s idea of collard greens and is likely the reason why it’s a low-level, bottom of the totem pole kind of vegetable. It bothers me that kale is the new “vogue” vegetable–while collards are closely related and much, much cheaper. They are the underdog. So, collard greens, this is our ode to you and a peek into their un-slimy, un-mushy, un-tasteless (tasteful?) side.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of collard greens, roughly 8-10 cups of leaves
• 1 lb fresh chorizo, casing removed by slitting with a knife and un-peeling from the meat
• 1 quart chicken stock
• 1/2 c apple cider vinegar, we use Bragg
• 1 T coconut aminos or gluten-free soy sauce
• 1 T hot sauce
• s & p

Method

In a medium-sized soup pot (you’ll need a lid, so choose accordingly), brown the chorizo (you may need a bit of fat to help get things going).

While the chorizo is browning, prepare the collard greens by removing the leaves from the thick, fibrous stems. You can do that by cutting away the leaf with a knife or just tear the leaf with your hands. Make sure the collards are in bite size pieces though, no one wants to have what looks like seaweed dribbling down their face while they eat.

Add the stock, vinegar, soy sauce and hot sauce. Place the lid, slightly ajar, over the soup pot and let everything cook together, about 20 minutes, until the collards have wilted down and softened. Taste and adjust seasonings, you may want more vinegar or hot sauce.

Does a gluten-free lifestyle mean you have to miss out on beer braised bratwurst from now until eternity? Of course not. There’s always the gluten-free hard stuff. But either way, gluten-free or not, I’ve never really thought beer braised brats tasted like much more than just…brats. So we’ve decided to amp up the flavor by using hard apple cider in place of the beer. Hard apple cider is naturally gluten-free and full of delicious caramel, fruity flavor, a near perfect compliment to sausage, onions and peppers.

Ingredients

• 2 T butter
• 1 yellow onion, sliced thinly
• 1 red or yellow bell pepper, sliced
• 1 lb fresh bratwursts
• 1, 12 oz. bottle hard (or not hard) sparkling apple cider

Read the recipe preparation on Food Renegade here:

http://www.foodrenegade.com/cider-braised-brats-onions-peppers/

Bratwurst. What does that make you think of? Beer? Can’t have it (unless it’s GF I suppose), move on. Mustard? German potato Salad? Me too! What is German potato salad? It’s a vinegar and mustard based potato salad that’s got some bacon and green onions strewn about. Very tasty stuff. Potatoes are really okey dokey in our book, but if you’re watching your waist line, perhaps try this recipe out.

Ingredients

• 1 lb fresh bratwurst
• f.o.c. (fat of choice), we used bacon fat
• 1 lb turnips, peeled and diced
• 1 t brown mustard seeds (optional)
• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 1/4 c apple cider vinegar
• 1/3 c dijon mustard
• s & p

Method

Remove the casing from the sausage by slitting your knife along the back side of the sausage. Unwrap the casing and pull out the meat. Place the meat in a saute pan and brown it up. Remove the sausage from the pan and place in your serving dish. Melt down an obscenely large amount of your fat of choice. Turn the heat down to medium-low and add the mustard seed (if using), onion and turnip. Cook until everybody’s tender. Add the turnip and onion to the sausage. Pour in the apple cider vinegar and mustard (just eye ball it). Mix around, taste and adjust any seasoning. Serve hot.

I love messy, sticky, “get it all over your face” barbecue. I don’t love super sweet sauces and dry, shredded to a pulp meat. So this recipe contains neither of those things. Instead of the typical pork butt/shoulder, I pulled meat from the mother of all ribs, the spareribs and instead of gloppy, super sweet sauce, I was inspired by a commenter to use coffee as the base of the sauce, for an earthy, mellow and really full-flavored sauce.

Spareribs are more fatty (and I mean that in a good way), have some odd cartilage pieces floating about and can be a little difficult to eat, but the taste is like no other. So instead of taking the good with the bad…let’s just take the good. Mix the tender, moist rib meat together with a marinade that doubles as a barbecue sauce and you’ve got a recipe for a messy, sticky good time.

Ingredients

• ~5 lbs pork spare ribs, untrimmed
• 3/4 c brewed coffee
• 1/4 c molasses
• 1/4 c dijon mustard
• 1/4 c wheat-free soy sauce or coconut aminos
• 1 T worsterchire sauce
• 1 T hot sauce
• 1/3 c tomato sauce or ketchup

Method

Preheat your oven to 300°F. Position one oven rack in the center of the oven and another below it, with enough space in between to allow for a pan to fit. Lay the ribs on a sheet pan. Whisk together everything but the tomato sauce/ketchup. Reserving 1 cup of marinade, pour the marinade over the pork, massaging and rubbing, making sure to coat both sides. Let the ribs come to room temperature, and bast the marinade every so often, until they do.

Place the ribs meaty side down, bony side up. Cover, as tightly as you can, with aluminum foil. Place them on the middle rack of your oven. Fill a pan (cake, roasting, whatever) with water. Place that on the lower rack. This will create steam and keep the ribs moist.

Let the ribs go, until the meat falls off the bone, about 3-4 hours.

Once the meat is cool enough to handle, pull it.

To make the barbeque sauce…

Pour the reserved marinade into a sauce pot and add the tomato sauce/ketchup. Let it simmer and reduce by about half. Taste and adjust the seasoning however you want…more hot sauce, more molasses, etc.

I figured I’d take advantage of what’s going to be the last of the tomato supply around these parts (until next summer) by slow roasting them and tossing them together with an assortment of Italian-like odds ‘n ends I had lying around.

Ingredients

• 1 lb hot Italian sausage
• assortment of veggies (eggplant, onion, mushrooms, zucchini, etc.), chopped
• 2 pints cherry tomatoes, halved
• olive oil
• s&p
• fresh mozzarella or raw cheddar
• fresh basil, chopped

Method

Preheat your oven to 300ºF. Line a sheet pan with a silpat, if you have one, or parchment paper (just to keep the little buggers from sticking). Place the halved tomatoes, cut side up (skin side down) on the sheet pan. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt & pepper. Place in the oven and let them cook down until the tomato edges are slightly crisp, curled up and the juicy insides no longer quite so juicy–about 20 minutes. Once the tomatoes are done, remove them from the oven and crank up the oven to 375ºF.

In a large saute pan, brown the sausage along with any other vegetables you’re using.

Now it’s time for assemblage. Get out an oven-safe baking dish, somewhere around 8×8, and start layering with the sausage/veggie mixture. Now add the oven roasted tomatoes, basil and cheese. Continue layering until everything’s all used up, trying to end with cheese and basil.

Stick in the oven and get the cheese melty and gooey, anywhere from 5-10 minutes.