So here’s what happened:

this stuff was in the fridge + I needed to eat = this recipe

Ingredients

• 1 head romaine lettuce, chopped
• 2 greedy handfuls baby spinach, chopped
• 3 oz prosciutto, sliced into strips
• 3 eggs, hard boiled and chopped
• 1 ripe pear, chopped
• goat cheese, optional

For the Dressing

• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 2 T dijon mustard
• 2 T olive oil
• 3 sprigs fresh thyme, finely minced
• s&p

Method

Toss the chopped lettuces and hard boiled eggs (+ goat cheese, if you’re using it) in a large bowl.

Heat a saute pan over medium heat and add the prosciutto slices. Let them crisp up in the pan, about 5-6 minutes total. Toss them with the lettuces.

Place the chopped pear in a bowl that has the lemon juice from the salad dressing ingredients. Coat the pear pieces with juice. Pears tend to brown when they’re exposed to air, so coating them in lemon juice will solve that problem. Toss the pears in with the lettuces.

Add the mustard, olive oil, thyme and some s&p to what’s left of the lemon juice. Whisk or shake to combine.

A note about fresh thyme

If the thyme is young, the stalks will be tender. If it’s old, the stalks will be woody. So, if you happen to have some young stalks, I recommend chopping up the leaves, including the stalks, very finely, as you’ll never know the difference and it’s such a big pain in the butt to take thyme leaves off their stalks anyway. If you’ve got woody stalks, well…sorry.

I made this to go alongside a pork butt Brandon smoked this weekend. I figured why not chop up some standard guac ingredients, toss in some refresher veggies like cukes and voila, I’ve made a chewable guacamole, though that title doesn’t sound quite as appetizing as guacamole salad, to me anyway. When we sat down to eat, I kept hovering over Brandon, eyeballing how many forkfuls of salad he was putting into his mouth. I said, more than once (read: nagged), “Heyyyy babeeeee, make sure to leave some so I can have it for leftovers. *Smile*”  I was kind of obsessed with this.

Ingredients

• 2 avocados, diced
• 1 English cucumber, diced
• 4 large-ish tomatillos, diced
• 1/2 red onion, finely diced
• handful cilantro, chopped
• 2 limes, juiced
• salt

Method

The only thing I really need to explain (probably) is how to deal with tomatillos, so here goes…

Remove the green husks. You’ll feel that the tomatillo is slightly sticky to the touch. Rinse those suckers under some warm water, then chop ‘em up like the rest of the ingredients.

In a large bowl, add all ingredients together. Consume.

I love mayonnaise. Well…I don’t love it enough to eat it out of the jar by the spoonful (I also can’t eat almond or coconut butter by the spoonful..not a big fan of that stuff on its own.), but I’m not ashamed of the extensive amount of mayo slathering, mayo dipping and just general mayo canoodling that I do. Mayonnaise is such a versatile refrigerator staple, that you can mix or dip it into any lingering veggie and be set with a delicious meal or snack.

Ingredients

• 1 smallish head green cabbage (mine was 1 ½ lbs), thinly sliced
• 1 chipotle pepper in adobo (not 1 can) + 1 T adobo sauce
• ½ c mayo, preferably homemade with avocado oil
• 1 lime, juiced
• 1 T apple cider vinegar
• 1 T honey
• handful cilantro, chopped
• salt

Method

In a large bowl, whisk together the chipolte, mayo, lime juice, vinegar, honey and cilantro. Taste and add salt according to your preference. Toss in the sliced cabbage and mix. I tried using a spatula, and that just annoyed me…so I recommend mixing with my favorite kitchen tool, hands.

Cover with plastic wrap and let marinate for at least 30 minutes.

You could also use this slaw dressing as a salad dressing.

I’ve said it a million times, and I’ll say it again, I am not a fan of salad, unless it’s coated and covered in tasty treats and dressing. The “Paleo” part of me feels guilty about this, as it seems like an integral meal that’s part of everyone’s Paleo diet, except mine (and Brandon’s by default). But then I read a blog post from this girl (master of the CrossFit universe), and saw that we share the same view about salad. So obviously I drew the super scientific conclusion that: not liking salad makes you really good at CrossFit. So from this point forward, not only do I feel completely justified, I have vowed to start un-liking salad even more, so I can be just as good at CrossFit as Juli.

Ingredients

For the Salad

• 2 heads of romaine lettuce
• Parmesan cheese
• 1 lb chicken
• 1/2 – 3/4 lb bacon

For the Dressing

• 1/2 c bacon fat, liquid but cooled
• 1 egg yolk
• ½ lemon, juiced
• 1 garlic clove, finely grated
• handful finely grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 t worcestershire sauce
• ¼ t anchovy paste or ½ anchovy (NOT ½ a can/tin)
• s & p

Method

For the Salad

It doesn’t really matter how much of any of this stuff you put into a bowl, so you don’t need to follow the amounts or anything, I’m just letting you know what we did.

What I do care about is the bacon. We want to get out around 1/2 cup of fat for the dressing and still have some left over to cook the chicken in.

So mainly concern yourself with: browning the bacon and then sauteing the chicken.

Add all that stuff into the salad, along with whatever else you’d like.

The dressing is the important part. Onward…

For the Dressing

This is a no stressing dressing! Combine all the ingredients into a jar with a screw top lid. Shake until everything looks creamy. Taste and make sure it doesn’t need any adjustments. Done.

A note about this dressing: Because bacon fat is mostly saturated, it will solidify at room temp and in the fridge. It’s best to drizzle the dressing only on the portion of salad you’re eating…not on the whole thing, unless you plan to eat it all in one sitting. Store the dressing in the fridge and reheat it in the microwave for a few seconds to get it nice and fluid again.

And finally…We’ve also made a bacon fat honey mustard. It’s just a delicious.

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.

Another dish inspired by the leftovers lingering in the fridge. Okay that was boring, I know. Sometimes… actually, most times, it’s hard to find the words to type at the beginning of a recipe. Most times, all I can think of saying is what actually went through my head when I first dreamt up the recipe, and that’s usually quite yawn-worthy. Do you really read the “introduction”? Every food blog writes one. How the hell do they always have something to say? Brandon and I are not that interesting. Example: do you really want to know that tonight, Brandon and I painted the hall bath ‘Nutshell’ from the Martha Stewart paint collection? Probably not.

Anyway. After re-thinking what I called this recipe, I hope you don’t schluff this off. It really does sound like the recipe would call for a grilled chicken boob, with the usual fajita suspects, plopped on top of lettuce. The Paleo world has been there, done that.  And though the picture does predominantly feature lettuce, let’s look past that and see it for what it really is… eye candy (due to my lack of pho-tog skills, I have resorted to cheap tricks. I am truly a faux-tographer.). Let me explain, before the comment sections blows up with, “Eye candy isn’t Paleo. You suck.”

Eye candy (noun);

visual feast, eyeful; gloss, tinsel, veneer, decoration, glitter, flamboyance, gaudiness; ritz, glitz, garishness, razzle-dazzle, razzmatazz; sight for sore eyes.

I hope you see this recipe for what it is…a rescue for the pervasive chicken and its dry, lackluster, but always plump, boobies.

Ingredients

• 1- 1½ lbs chicken, cooked anyway you like & chopped (breasts or a mix of breasts & thighs or leftover rotisserie chicken)
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 2 green onions, chopped
• 1 handful cilantro, chopped
• 1/3 c mayo, preferably homemade
• 1 lime, juiced
• salt, to taste
• hot sauce or chili garlic sauce, to taste

Method

In a medium bowl, whisk together the mayo, lime juice, cilantro, salt and chili sauce. Add the chopped chicken, bell pepper and green onion. Mix to combine. Let the salad sit in the fridge, so the flavors can meld, at least 30 minutes. Serve cold.

We’re re-mixing the normal mayo-based salad. Don’t get me wrong, I like chicken salad (I’m partial to this one), but sometimes you just want something different. We’re using the classic ‘Holy Trinity’ of bell pepper, celery and onion found in Creole & Cajun dishes as the base of our salad, mixing in some Old Bay spiced mayo and viola–something different. We had planned to toss in some crawfish tails too–but after a trip to the grocery store, we kind of forgot about them and left them in the trunk to um…hang out. So, we nixed that idea and just bumped up the amount of shrimp.

Ingredients

• 1 ½ lbs shrimp, peeled & deveined
• 2 bell peppers, diced (whatever color is your favorite–or cheapest)
• 4 stalks celery (and the leaves), diced
• 3 green onions, diced
• 2 recipes mayo (about ½-¾ c)
• 1 ½ t Old Bay seasoning (taste and then add more if you’d like, it’s quite strong)
• 1 lemon, juiced
• s&p

Method

Bring a pot of water to boil, add the shrimp and cook until they’re pink, about 5 minutes. Once the shrimp are cool enough to handle, chop them up into bite size pieces. Dry them off really well with a dish/paper towel.

In your serving bowl, mix together all the ingredients.

Serve cold.

HB NOTE: I used the lightest green stalks of the celery. Since we’re eating it raw, it makes sense to use the most tender celery pieces and reserve the other dark green stalks for sauteing. Also, many people don’t know that the leaves of celery are edible–and make a wonderful salad, at that. We’ve made a few recipes using the celery root too.

It was one of those nights where nothing had been planned for dinner and we’re both scratching our heads at 9 p.m. wondering what we’re going to eat (and which one of us was going to pull kitchen duty). I always keep some hard boiled eggs in the fridge and if there isn’t bacon in our fridge, there’s always bacon in our freezer. Thankfully, because bacon is already cut into slices, it takes no time at all to thaw out. So, here you have it– a clean out the fridge salad, that really needs no recipe, so follow the quantities as loosely or as stringently as you’d like…you can do no wrong.

Ingredients

For the Salad

• 2 heads romaine lettuce, chopped small
• 4 hard boiled eggs, chopped
• 7 slices bacon, crumbled
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 3 green onions, choppped

For the Dressing

• 1/3 c bacon drippings
• 2 T Dijon mustard
• 1 T honey
• s&p

Method

First and foremost, get the bacon sizzlin’ in a saute pan. I usually use a sheet/cookie tray and pop the bacon in the oven–and that’s fine too, but for this recipe, I’m using the bacon dripping for the base of the dressing, so I figured it was easier to pour the drippings from a saute pan rather than from a cookie sheet. Once the bacon is crisped to your liking, remove it and let is drain on a paper towel lined plate. Turn the heat off the pan and let the bacon drippings cool.

While the bacon is doing its thing, go ahead and prep your lettuce and veggies, and toss them into your serving dish.

For the Dressing

Using a jar with a screw top lid (think jam, pickles, etc.) combine all the ingredients and shake the living day lights out of the jar. This is the least messy, most efficient way to emulsify the ingredients. A note about the dressing: because bacon fat is mostly saturated, it will solidify at room temp and in the fridge. It’s best to drizzle the dressing only on the portion of salad you’re eating…not on the whole thing, unless you plan to eat it all in one sitting.

Store the dressing in the fridge and reheat it in the microwave for a few seconds to get it nice and fluid again.

I swear to you, I was the biggest pizza fan that ever existed. It was our cheat meal almost every Friday night. About a year and a half ago, I realized that it wasn’t pizza that I loved, it was the flavors piled on top of the crust. There is no real flavor in the crust, it’s just a vehicle for the tastiness on top. I haven’t had a pizza, in the traditional, or even paleo-ified sense, since. So here you have it, instead of picking off the toppings during this year’s Super Bowl party you can eat an entire bowl full of ‘salad’.

Ingredients

• 1 7 oz. package of Applegate pepperoni slices, chopped or sliced*
• 2 bell peppers, choose your favorite color, chopped or sliced
• 1 eggplant, diced
• 1 red onion, diced
• 6 oz mushrooms, sliced
• chili flakes, to taste
• olive oil
• black or green olives, roughly chopped
• banana peppers, roughly chopped
• fresh basil, torn with your hands into small pieces
• any other pizza-like topping you dig

For the Dressing

• 3 T pizza sauce
• 1 T red wine vinegar
• 1/4 c olive oil

Method

Over medium-high heat, saute the pepperoni pieces until they’re crispy. Remove from the pan and let them hang out in your serving dish. Add some fat to your saute pan, along with peppers, onion, eggplant and mushrooms. Let all the ingredients sweat it out together, until they’ve softened and developed some caramelized-like color. Add the veggie mixture to your serving bowl, along with the chili flakes, olives, banana peppers and basil.

For the Dressing

Whisk all the ingredients together. Drizzle over the pizza salad and toss to combine. Serve the salad hot–though cold pizza salad is just as yum in the tum.

*I only mention this brand because it’s free of preservatives like sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite, BHT, etc. Feel free to substitute (or add!) bacon, sausage or any ground meat.

Yup, that’s a long ass title..but I said it. There’s no other way…I mean, what are you supposed to do when you love Caesar salad, Greek salad and buffalo chicken? Mix them all together and see what comes out. What came out was deliciousness. We roasted garlic for the Caesar dressing to add some serious flavor and are omitting dairy (parmesan). It may seem like a tedious task, but I highly, highly recommend you try it–even do a few heads, as opposed to a few cloves, because it keeps really well in the fridge and can be added to ANYTHING that calls for garlic. It’s worth the trouble, I promise.

Buffalo Chicken

• 1 lb chicken, chopped in ½” cubes
• 2 T FOC (fat of choice)
• 3 T hot sauce
• 1 t cajun seasoning (no salt added)–if you can’t find it or don’t have it, just use hot sauce

Heat FOC and add diced chicken. Sear on high heat before flipping to facilitate the browning action. When the chicken is cooked through (10-15 minutes total, 5-7.5 per side) add hot sauce and cajun seasoning directly to pan…stir in and keep on low heat until ready to serve.

Roasted Garlic Dressing

• ½ C avocado mayo
• 2 T white wine or apple cider vinegar
• 6 cloves roasted garlic
• S & lots of P

Make mayo per directions. Peel the garlic cloves and place in a piece of  foil, drizzle with olive oil and crumple the foil into a pouch shape. Roast the garlic in a 400°F oven until golden brown (about 10 minutes). Don’t burn it! Add all the ingredients to food processor and blend until smooth. Parmesan would be a welcome addition here, if you wish. We didn’t use it and know it’ll be delicious either way.

For the Salad

• 2 heads romaine, chopped
• roasted red peppers, diced
• kalamata olives
• anchovies, if you like ‘em
• 4 portobello mushrooms, sliced thin
• balsamic vinegar
• S&P

Clean and remove gills from mushrooms. Slice thin. Saute the shrooms in your FOC, until softened. If you want, remove the chicken from the pan and use it to saute the shrooms. Add a splash of balsamic vinegar and S&P.

Serve romaine topped with sauteed mushrooms, diced red pepper, olives, buffalo chicken and garlic dressing.