Jimmy Dean, meet Jenny Dub (and Trevor)

We've matched your meat, sir...

For Christmas, Santa got me the meat grinder attachment for my mixer. It hasn't left its box. Truth be told, I was really intimidated by the contraption. What if I don't choose the right meat to grind? What will I make? Don't I also need the sausage stuffer attachment if I want to make sausage??

Then I remembered: It's just food.  If I mess it up, I can probably still eat it.  And if it does all go to pot, no one has to know, right?  Right.

In a previous post, I hinted that I buy lots of food.  I'm what you might call a food hoarder.  The only reason I'm not actually one, is that I eventually use the food.  But it's true, I do buy a ridiculous amount of food.  The redeeming part of this is that I always shop sales and specials. I almost never pay full price, especially for meat, dairy and eggs.

See all those eggs?  All that milk? That was just the first trip to the store... They're on sale aaalllllllll week!

Specials like this usually end up shaping my menu for the week. So when I found a 3lb beef bottom round roast for $2.50/lb I jumped on that really quickly!

It made its home in my fridge for a few days next to a pork blade roast that I had snagged for about $2/lb.

So the next logical step (since they became friends) was to make SAUSAGE!!

First, chop the meat into chunks. I had about 3 lb of each.

Then grind it all together in the fancy brand new meat grinder!

Season to taste. This got complicated... I may have divided my 6lb of ground meat into 4 different batches because I couldn't choose just one seasoning style. 

So I had: breakfast sausage (nutmeg, salt, cinnamon, pepper), steak (Montreal steak seasoning), Mexican hot pepper (pepper purée I had made previously, a chopped up jalapeño, salt, red chile flakes, and cayenne pepper), and Italian (rosemary, basil, oregano, garlic)

Make sure to test them before finishing so you know they're delicious. In fact, test it twice to make doubly sure!

I didn't have casing, so I just made bulk sausage and cooked it up as patties.

What's your favorite spice blend in meat?

The egg has been thrown. On it.

I got 2lb of beef sirloin steaks tonight for about $5 and Trevor marinated them for me in a mixture composed of soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, and citric acid.  We let them sit for a few hours and then boiled them in a shallow pool of their own marinade for about a minute per side. Then (and this is where it gets good!) we poached eggs in the broth.

Top the beef with the eggs and NOM!!

Voila! Throw an egg on it!

Nutrition info: 1 serving= 6oz sirloin, 3 large eggs: 426 kcal; 21g fat; 1.1 carbs; 56g protein

Low cal fish tacos

A couple months ago, one of the Hispanic markets had alaskan white pollock for $2/lb, so naturally I bought 10 lbs (those of you who know me are not surprised by this at all.)  Since then, it's been sitting in my freezer taking up space. This week, I finally decided that its time had come.

So I took a couple pounds and stuck it in the fridge to thaw.  Then came the intimidating part: how can I cook this so it tastes like something while keeping in line with my macro requirements for the meal.  White fishes are notoriously tasteless, and this stuff was not high quality. 

About 20 min before I was ready to use it, i removed the fish from the fridge, dried it (it had released a bunch of water during the thaw) and added about 1/4 cup lime juice to the dish so it could marinate a bit while I contemplated further prep.

Here's how it went...

I put 30g defatted soy flour in a dish with a little salt, black pepper, cayenne, and cilantro then mixed it up really well.

Then I dredged the fish portions through the flour mixture, and pan fried them until they were flaky and cooked through. 

For service, I placed about 2-3 oz of fish on a whole cabbage leaf (lettuce wrap style) and topped with broccoli slaw mix, diced tomatoes, and homemade adobo sauce with lime juice. Here's what it looked like on the plate:

Serving size: 4oz fish, 20g broccoli slaw mix, 1/2 cup diced tomatoes, 2 cabbage leaves; 170 kcal, 1.2g fat; 12g carbs, 4.9g fiber; 29.1g protein

It's ALIIIVE!: home fermentation projects Part 1- Yoghurt!

You know it's good because it has an h in it...

Fermenting things is fun.  It's nice to set something up and forget about it, then come back to a new food that's even BETTER than before!  Beer is the classic example.  Take some lowly grains and leave them sitting around in liquid for a while and voíla! Beer.  well... kind of... Sure, beer-making takes a lot of equipment and maybe it's a little more complicated than I let on, but there are lots of other things you can ferment at home that are way easier, just as yummy, and most are even kid-friendly.

Another benefit to fermenting your own food is that you know without a doubt what has been done to that food.  When you buy food, you're trusting the producers, and consequently the labels, to tell you what's in that container.  Making it yourself also allows you license to get creative and sometimes even clean out the fridge.  I mean, come on, who doesn't need that once in a while?

Some of the most commonly home-fermented foods are saurkraut and yoghurt.  These are followed by the less common kefir and kombucha.

Today, in installment 1 of a several part series on home fermentation, we're going to show you how we make our yogurt.  Depending on the length of time you allow the fermentation to proceed and how well you drain it, your yoghurt can even achieve a cream cheese or ricotta consistency.

So what is fermentation?  The textbook definition is the metabolic process converting sugar to acids, gases, or ethanol by bacteria or yeast. This is how our yoghurt will end up being sugar free. The bacteria in your starter culture (commercial Greek yogurt) will multiply in your milk, eating the sugar and converting it into lactic acid. The acid denatures the proteins is milk, thickening the solution into what we know as yogurt.

Homemade Fat-free Carb-free yoghurt

What you'll need: 

Fat-free Milk (you'll get about a pound of product per gallon of milk)

thermometer

Greek Yogurt (yes, from the store-- make sure it has live active cultures in it, not cornstarch)

A fine mesh sieve

Cheesecloth

What you'll do:

Heat the milk in a saucepan until it reaches 170oF  Next, allow the milk to cool to 110 degrees

Inoculate the cooled milk with a spoonful of the commercial Greek yogurt to get the party started.

Allow the mixture to sit at about 100oF for about 16 hours.  During this time, your bacteria will grow and multiply on their sugar highs and acidify the milk as a result.  We like to set our culture outside for this part.  Phoenix in the summer is the perfect place to do this.  Keep it out of the sun (we like to do ours overnight).

Then set the sieve on a big bowl, line it with cheesecloth and pour in your yoghurt. Like this:

Let it strain at room temperature for about 24h. This time can be changed depending on the consistency you want. Longer straining time makes a more ricotta-like texture, shorter straining time leaves the product creamier. 

Then what?

EAT!

I really like mixing TVP into mine, it's almost like putting granola into yogurt.

You can save some of your yoghurt to use as inoculant in the next batch. This way you have a perpetual starter for making yoghurt at home!

Emergency!

This morning I left my house without food for lunch and pre-workout. To anyone who plans their food for the day, this can be an absolute catastrophe! Panic inducing!

What's worse, I couldn't go back home to get anything.  AND I had 2 meals before I would be home again: lunch and pre-workout.  AND I needed to be able to make it through my workout. Here were my options as I saw them:

1) don't eat

2) go to a restaurant for lunch and do the best I can

3) try the vending machine at work

4) hit the grocery store on the way to work

Number 1 is just silly, so we won't even discuss that option. There's no way I could miss both of those meals and not die in the gym tonight.

Number 2 is always an option, but I'm pretty cheap and I know I'll be upset if I pay $10/lb for boiled chicken.  

I seriously considered number 3. I carry about 200 calories of pork rinds in my car at all times. I could eat those and maybe grab beef jerky from the vending machine to accompany them. The high-carb, low-fat pre-workout meal that I would require later would be tougher to find in the vending machine.  Also, I didn't have much change on me, so I would be limited by my cash on hand or to the kindness of coworkers willing to spot me.

Since I had some extra time before I had to be at work, I opted to stop at the market. The macros I need for each meal are pretty much exactly opposite from one another, so this is what I ended up getting: 

 

For $8, I got 8 packets of instant oatmeal (weight control) and 24oz of lunch meat. That's enough for about 4 lunches and 4 pre workouts for me.  Then when I got to work, I rummaged through the fridge and found these:

Score!

I also had a hard boiled egg leftover from a lunch last week that I had stashed in a refrigerator drawer.

When all was said and done, this was my lunch:

And this was my pre workout:

Lunch ended up at 245 kcal, 11.2g fat, <1g carb, 31g protein

My pre-workout meal ended up being (in addition to delicious!!) 320 kcal, 6g fat, 58g carbs, 12g fiber, 14g protein

Not too bad for thrown together grub!

Best of all, I rocked my workout. BOOM!

This is science. And Waffles.

Chemistry is science.  Cooking is chemistry.  Therefore, cooking is science!

We are Jenn and Trevor, a couple of biochemists who spend a truly inordinate amount of our free time inside the kitchen or dreaming of food.  We are also athletes who pay very close attention to our diets.

As we all know, dieting can lead to a host of nasty mental triggers and trip-ups. Trevor and I like to use dieting as a means of optimizing our kitchen chemistry skills.  Using many standard and some not-so-standard ingredients and methods, we have created some really good food.  Between the two of us, we have lots of tricks, workarounds and substitutions, but our favorite way to intensify our meals is to

Throw an Egg on It!

Welcome to our adventure. (And I do mean adventure, it can be a wild ride!)

For example...

Today I wanted waffles.  We hit up a sale at our local thrift store yesterday and I found a belgian waffle maker for $2.50.  This was going to cause trouble... We all know that Belgian Waffles are super carbohydrate dense.  48g in 1 serving?!  I might eat that many carbs in 2 whole days. Today wasn't a gym day so the fewer carbs the better, eliminating those waffles from my menu.  Has that ever stopped me from getting waffles?

No, not so much.

By combining eggs, pork rinds (yes, pork rinds!) flax, butter and yogurt (I know, right?!) we made ourselves some amazing diet-acceptable waffle substitutes.

These did not last long...

Low Carb Cinnamon  Waffles

What you'll need:

4 ounces pork rinds, about 1 cup
19g flaxseed meal
20g butter
4 eggs (200g)

113g nonfat greek yogurt

3 packets of granulated Splenda
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp vanilla 

1/2C water

Desired toppings *

What you'll do:

Put the pork rinds in a food processor until well ground. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs well; stir in all but the pork rinds.  Plug in your waffle iron to preheat it.  Add the pork rinds and let stand for 10 minutes (while the waffle iron heats) until the batter thickens. It won't look like traditional waffle batter, it will be much tighter (not as runny).  Ladle the batter into the hot waffle iron and cook. Fill the waffle iron with more batter than normal since there won't be as much spreading of this batter.  Remove them when nice and brown and firm to the touch. I like to pop them into the toaster oven for 10 min or so to get them REALLY crispy.  When they are cooked to you liking, serve with your desired toppings.

This batter is so savory, it doesn't need much dressing up after cooking, but if you must, you can add Low carb maple syrup, low carb honey, fruit, whipped cream, sugar free jam, etc*

 I got 425g of waffles and made it 4 servings .

These freeze really well.  Escpecially if you pop them in the toaster to thaw/crispify them.

*Toppings are not included in the counts below. 

Per Serving (106g): 293 Calories; 18g Fat; 28g Protein; 2.4g Carbohydrate; 1.4g Dietary Fiber; 1g Net Carbs

Overall, I was happy with these waffles.  The batter comes together nicely, though it behaves somewhat differently than traditional batter.  Without gluten present for structure and elasticity in capturing air bubbles, the rising potential is limited to the egg proteins.  I have a couple ideas to work around these obstacles .... stay tuned for round 2.