Nutty Roasted Broccoli & PandaPaws

My apologies for the lack of post-age yesterday. Turns out that sickness had not run its course. Thursday night I tossed and turned for hours before finally falling asleep. I had a splitting headache, my throat was dry and crackly, and my feet kept getting hot despite having the fan on full blast and my window cracked open. I. Hate. Hot. Feet. I hate hot body parts when I'm trying to sleep, actually. Which is why I keep my room like an icebox. And probably why I'm sick in the first place. Whatever. Both Thursday and Friday were absolutely gorgeous here though. After my run with Elle, I organized a ginormous 3" binder full of consent forms and other papers I've been using to organize data. The 3" binder filled up pretty quickly, so it looks like I'll have to go bigger at some point. We did this outside though and I was in shorts and a sweatshirt. It was glooorious. My feet are really cute too, I know, you don't have to tell me twice. Bleh.

Because I'm a lone wolf in this whole Paleo-eating excursion, I had 19 meatballs to crush (17 when you factor in the ones I gave to Smells) in 2 days before I was willing to make anything else that could potentially go bad in our ginormous clusterf*ck of a fridge. Seriously, it's like play tetris in there. I want my own fridge built into some secret room so. bad. And a freezer. And a huge kitchen that's clean and pretty and has top-of-the-line appliances and cooking gear. Mom, can I move back home please? I digress (all the damn time), so I've been eating meatballs for like breakfast lunch and dinner so I don't have much to share. But I do have some awesome side dishes and the beautiful weather we had allowed Smells, Cecil (Allyson's dog, also called Sienna and a bunch of other names), Allyson, Anissa, and me to go for some adventures. Yay!

This "Nutty Roasted Broccoli" is the product of one of my many "I just don't wanna make another boring roasted vegetable" moments. What is awesome on roasted vegetables? Parmesan cheese. But I'm sticking to the little-to-no dairy guideline for this whole 40 day challenge thing, so that was a no. The next best thing in my mind was obviously nuts. The answer is always nuts. What would you like to eat? Nuts. What would you like to snack on? Nuts. What would you like to crush in your mouth? Nuts. What's your favorite thing about the opposite sex? Nut-waitaminute ew! Their ability to eat with the same voracity as me, obviously. Ok so the answer may not always be nuts. But you get the point. I'm really dependent on pine nuts as my go-to flavor enhancer for things. They're amazing, but some people don't like the taste as much as I do. I never even toast them when it calls for toasted pine nuts. They taste amaze without any toastiness. Made that word up. So I decided to broaden my nutty horizons and use Macadamia nuts. Also to honor the fact that in a month or so I will be in Hawaii, HULA! The Macadamia nuts I have are unfortunately salted. Costco you fail on the raw nut selection. But that's ok, because I don't salt the broccoli before I roast it, so I think I break even.

"Nutty Roasted Broccoli"

• 2 large heads of broccoli, cut into florets
• 3-4 garlic cloves, sliced 
• Olive oil (I used 1 tbsp, you can use more, I'm still somewhat oil-averse)
• Freshly ground pepper, to taste
• 1/2 cup Macadamia nuts

1. Preheat oven to 425*

2. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil, spray lightly with olive oil, spread broccoli florets out on the pan so that they're in a single layer.

3. Add garlic slices to the pan, evenly distributed amongst the broccoli, toss with 1tbsp olive oil (or more) and course ground pepper. Redistribute the broccoli evenly. 

4. Roast for about 15-18 minutes.

While the broccoli is roasting...

5. Take the Macadamia nuts and grind into coarse, crushed pieces either with a mortar and pestle or in a plastic bag w/ a rolling pin. Or hammer. Or textbook. Get creative. The only reason I have a mortar and pestle is because my lovely sister knows how much I love guacamole and got me one for Christmas :)
6. When the broccoli has been roasting for 15-18 minutes, remove, sprinkle with the Macadamia nut crumbs, and stick back in the oven for 5 more minutes. That's it!

Pretty easy, huh? The Macadamia nuts give the broccoli a nice nutty, crunchy flavor and they taste really good toasted like that!

I'm starting to think that my night's sleep could have drastically been improved had my cuddle partner learned to share a bed. Look at that. She think's she's so cute and then she kicks me. Hard. Elle has violent dreams. Probably where she's chasing Blair (my cat), squirrels, lasers, ballies, squeaky toys, light reflections on walls...the list goes on. We are far too similar, that pup and me. Both neurotic, both weird, both antisocial at dog parks/large social gatherings, but we really like ya when we're in more intimate settings!

Elle does have a couple girlfriends though. She really likes Allyson's dog Sienna/Cecil/SiSi. So we go on puppy dates. Yesterday was absolutely beautiful so we went to Pandapas Pond in the Jefferson National Forest. I like calling it Panda-Paws, because that's just so much cuter that Pandapas.

Eleanor and Cecil getting dirty and having a freaking
grand ol' time together. Gotta love pups having fun.




Elle seriously thought she was going to be able to
catch one of those geese below too.
They were pissed.
She probably would get her ass kicked by a goose.

They wanted to play with the geese so badly. By the time we were done with our little excursion they were sooooo dirty. Elle's fur absorbs dirt and mud like it's nobody's business. The interior of my car now looks like it was smeared with poop. Thankfully it doesn't smell like that. I will be getting a full car wash at some point. My wheels are soopa dirty too. Bianca (car) is such a rugged individual.

Elle got a full puppy wash. Good. Lord. It was like pulling teeth from a T-Rex. I don't have a hose outside my house so I had to bathe her. Literally. In my bath tub. She HATES baths so much. And I hate giving her baths. Then I blew her dry with my hair-dryer. She loved that part even more.

That picture to the right? My friday night. Plus A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas. And blackberry glazed salmon, roasted sweet potatoes, and asparagus from Gillie's. Minus the 4-pack mini bottles of wine, which I never got to. Some day. Gotta love being sick. Since I missed out on yesterday's WOD and because classes are cancelled today I'm going to do yesterdays which was 7 minutes of straight burpees. We're starting to do the CrossFit Games Open WODs, which you can find here. Obviously I'm in no state to ever qualify in the near future. But you gotta start somewhere. So with 7 minutes of burpees, I shall start. May or may not post tomorrow depending on whether or not I survive. Chow!

Home On the Range Bison Balls

Couple of updates - I added a tab up at the top labeled "Stalk-Worthy" or something along those lines. I have medium-term memory issues. Basically, they're websites I frequently peruse/stalk, whatever you want to call it. Most of them share my philosophy on the whole Paleo lifestyle and they're really well-designed and organized. Unlike this blog.

I'm too school to be cool.

This morning I noticed something after the WOD: I wasn't completely dead and immobile. I'm finishing up my 3rd week of CrossFit and today was the first day I actually felt....progress? Maybe not in terms of the actual workouts. I still have to scale like a motherf*cker. But I felt tired from the workout in all the right places, but still able to do more. Does that make sense? It's an absolutely gorgeous day out and I've been feeling like I've been neglecting Elle - despite taking her for a walk in the pouring rain yesterday and making sure she gets daily car rides - so I decided to go for a brisk jog with her. Get those old bones of hers movin'. So we hit the Huckleberry and ran about 2.5 miles.

She wasn't very happy, but hey, now at least I won't feel as bad for sitting and doing work for a while. I even stopped to do a couple of box jumps on a bench. Talk about strange looks from on-coming people. Elle is such a b*tchass too. I let her off the leash when we run cuz she likes to trail me and she's really good about staying right with me and not smelling other people. But other people get a little freaked out when they see a 75 lb. German Shepherd roaming free, ready to strike at any moment. Yeah. Right. Elle is the biggest pu$$y I know. So whenever I see people walking/running/biking alone I make her sit and we pause for a minute. Good dog. But, whenever I see people with other dogs, I put her on-leash and say "Quiet" because this b*tch loves to bark at other dogs. What makes things worse is when the leash goes on, she goes into "protect" mode. It's not that she's dog or leash aggressive, it's just she thinks she has to protect me or something. That's fine and all and she's good at staying quiet with big dogs. But when there are little yappy rat-dogs, all hell breaks loose. This is what I think goes on through her head:

Ohhhmygod. Is that a cat? WTF is that? What do I do? Mom? This thing looks weird. Must prepare for battle. It might morph and shift into a ginormous cat-monster. WAIT, WTFx2? It's barking?? Wait no that's not a bark, this is WOOOOF (sonic boom) yeaahh whatchu know about that cat-dog??

Then the woman/old lady walking the tiny fake-dog is all like oh my god, what a vicious German Shepherd. Those dogs are so dangerous. Puuuhhhlease. She's all bark, no bite. And you know what? I'm not going to apologize when your yappy dogs are clearrrrly instigating her. Get a real dog. Then we'll talk. I'm sorry to all you people who own small dogs. To be fair, I do like most of them. Like corgis - omg, so cute. They're like little limo dogs. But anything that Paris Hilton may have once owned - nuh uh. Not for me. I like dogs that can sniff bombs and eat criminals and detect cancer and provide emotional/physical support. Not your whiny wannabe cats.

Then again, look at this baby. Gotta love German Shepherd ear canals. And genetics. And auto-immune issues aka allergies. Poor Eleanor has recurring yeast infections in her right ear. No, they're not antibiotic resistant. In fact, the respond quite rapidly to treatment. Which she abhors. I clean out some of the superficial yeast, hence this picture and her look of pure terror. Grow up ya big baby. The poor thing though must be a breeding ground for yeast. It gets real nasty up in there. She cocks her head to the right and walks all funny, she scratches at her ears and then licks her foot, real nasty. But we're doin our best to fix it.

A couple more things before we get to the recipe. We listen to a diverse range of music in the box, but what really gets me pumped up is what I listen to beforehand. Recently I've been on a Dillon Francis kick. He makes "moombahton" which is "a sub-genre of electronic dance music" (thanks Wikipedia) that typically has a tempo of around 110bpm. PERFECT for running (because I'm slow as sh*t) and it's groovy. You can check out and buy his stuff here. His remix of Calvin Harris' "Feel So Close" is one of my fav's ATM, but he just came out with a new EP called "Something, Something, Awesome." which I should be becoming obsessed with soon.

Alright, so recipe time. Bison/Buffalo meat has been gaining a strong hold in the alternative meat market with consumers. Why? The meat you get from free-range bison typically resembles and is comparable to meat that one would expect to get from game animals or "paleo" meat animals. This paper from the Journal of Animal Science (2002) compares the muscle fatty acid profiles and cholesterol concentrations of bison, beef cattle, elk, and chicken. Nutritional benefits aside, bison tastes incredible. In my opinion, it's more tender than beef and has a more palatable flavor that blends well with a variety of ingredients, such as zucchini and carrots. Why do I know this? Because Elle is my taste tester. And I think I've said this before, but she will not eat anything that slightly resembles the taste of a vegetable. She got 2 baby meatballs last night and was so. freaking. excited.

Home On the Range Bison Balls w/ Spaghetti-Squash Pasta:
Makes about 19 meatballs

• 1 medium Spaghetti squash
• Low sugar marinara sauce of choice (I used Muir Glen)
• 1 lb. ground bison meat
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup almond meal
• 1/2 cup zucchini, chopped (about 1 medium zucchini - use it up)
• 1/2 cup carrot, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup yellow onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic (or more), finely minced
• 2 tablespoons dried parsely **
• 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon course ground pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/4 teaspoon chili powder

**When it comes to spices, I like to play by my own rules, but those are the measurements I based everything around**

1. Preheat the oven to 350*

2. Slice the spaghetti squash in half, vertically, and scoop out the seeds - as if it were a pumpkin. A yellow, oblong pumpkin. 

3. Spray the bottom of a baking sheet with olive oil spray and place the spaghetti squash cut side down.

4. Bake for 40 minutes.

While the spaghetti squash is baking...

1. Combine the bison meat (separated by hand into little chunks into a large mixing bowl) with the zucchini, carrot, onion, and garlic cloves. Mix together before adding anything else. This makes it easier to combine everything in my opinion. You could also food-process the vegetables if you'd like a finer meatball instead of a "chunky" one. I like to see the vegetables though. 

2. Add the egg, almond meal, and spices and mix with a large spoon to combine. Then use your hands. Really get in there and massage the ingredients together. If you have a dog, they will be very happy about this step.

3. Grab another baking sheet and line it with parchment paper. Scoop tablespoon sized balls and place them on the baking sheet (no spray needed!). 

4. Stick them in the oven (350* as well) for 15-20 minutes or until cooked through. Now, I timed this so that by the time I was finished making the meatballs, the spaghetti squash had about 12 minutes to go. I popped the meatballs in along side the squash and added 8 minutes when the squash was ready to come out. This allowed the squash to cool a bit before moving on to the next step...

5. When the squash has cooled, flip over and use a fork to rake the fleshy part. You should get nice spaghetti lookin' strands. Scoop them into a bowl. 

6. When the meatballs are done, flip the oven on to broil and get the tops of the balls to brown. Then you can either combine everything together with as much warmed up marinara sauce as you'd like, or separate them so you can enjoy the two (squash and meatballs) separately, if you so desire.

I chose to store the two separately so I could have some meatballs sans-pasta with my eggs this morning. YUM. Hot sauce - as always - is encouraged.

Going back to what I said yesterday, this is the brand of almond butter I'm not a fan of. Super sugary. Does that mean that I'm gonna let it go to waste? ....Do you know who you're talking to? If it's there - I will eat. Spoonfuls upon spoonfuls. Why, if I don't like it so much? Because I want it to be gone so I can buy more of the self-mushed kind. That's why. Jeeze.

Now go enjoy the day, if you're lucky to live 

somewhere where it is super beautiful out!  

SweetGreen Inspired Ensalada, Ole!

Today has been quite uneventful. It's like 40+ degrees and as sunny as my side-up eggs were this morning. Does that make sense? I don't know. IDGAF.OS. I'm a lucky girl in that my "job" allows me to work from home. What do I do? Basically assemble a sh*t ton of random data on Excel spreadsheets for my professor to one day use in a study on students and GPA's and freshmen and our Capstone Experience. What is a capstone experience, might you ask? Well it's this thing tech started doing when I came here where you complete a project - be it undergraduate research, a formal, high-level course, study abroad, independent studies, internships, etc. - and that project has to apply to the "real world" and it's supposed to better suit you for life after graduation. Clearly mine had a profound effect since I now sit in my bed, behind my computer, and blog while trying to organize data. 
Nah but actually mine was really awesome. I went to the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute to take 16 credits (granted by George Mason University) in Conservation Biology. 
Baaaasically it was amazing. Life changing. Stellar - if you will. And it really got me set on the grad-school, exotic animal track instead of the vet-school pups and kitty cats track. Not that dogs and cats and vets suck. I just cry like a baby when anything dies. I'm a weak human being damnit. Anyway at SCBI I did some pretty cool stuff. Like tackle a deer. It's for science people. I don't feel like explaining. PETA will probably come after me and be like "WTF Y U NO humanely weigh and measure deer body length with yo EYESSSS" and I'll be all like STFU. On mention of PETA, I just gotta preach for a minute. Maybe you don't care about critical thinking and live inside your own brain and listen to whatever anyone tells you and don't question anything you can skip ahead. Actually, you can stop reading this blog. Cuz you'll probably be a jerk. BUT for those of you that DO care about the intellectual integrity of our world I ask you this: PLEASE question everything - not to a paranoid, the government is controlling/watching our every move extent - but in a do your homework kind of way. How do you do your homework? Why I'm glad you asked! Read. Cautiously. Get both sides of an opinion. I read books on biology and God from a religious point of view in addition to an atheist point of view. For example: Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth R. Miller - he's a believer. Or The Greatest Show on Earth by DEFINITE atheist Richard Dawkins. The same goes for Paleo and ALL other diets. Everyone thinks they have the right answer. Just make sure you get both sides of an argument and fact check. 


So now for a bit on what I've been eating. Last night I had a Barramundi filet seasoned with white and black sesame seeds and pepper. Barramundi is a rad white fish. Also known as the Asian Sea Bass, this little sucker is from the waters of Australia. It's sustainable, and, nutritionally, it's like a tilapia-salmon hybrid. You can learn more about it here if you'd like! All you do for this guy is season, wrap him up in foil, and bake at 400*F for 20 minutes. Literally - so. easy. 


 My lil' barramundi - is it weird that I'm affectionately addressing my food now? - was accompanied by a salad inspired by what I'm obsessed with at this place called "SweetGreen". It's back home though in Northern VA and so I can't have it here :( wah. Basically, SweetGreen can make anyone love a salad. Even Mark who gets this ah-mazing chicken caesar - definitely not paleo. But a ton of their salad add-ins are local, sustainable, DELICIOUS, and did I say delicious already? I always "build-my-own" so I decided I might as well try to replicate it at my apartment because it can't be that hard right? I always get this carrot chili vinaigrette that is aahhhmazing but they don't post their recipes ANYWHERE. Fail. So I made my own. It's spicy - if you're a little b*tch, which I can be - and you don't need much at all. I made a ginormous salad and used waaaay too much and I still have a significant amount left. 

Carrot-Beet-Radish-Sprouty Salad w/ Jalepeno Carrot Vinaigrette

• As much Salad base as your heart desires (I used some crazy spring-mix but usually use baby arugula)
• 1/4 cup beets, quartered (raw or cooked)
• 1/4 cup carrots, sliced
• 1/4 cup radishes, sliced
• 1/3 cup kidney beans (if you're strict paleo you can omit this. I won't be offended)
• A few to several basil leaves, sliced vertically
• Handful of sprouts (I used alfalfa/radish)
• Pine nuts (or other nuts) - to taste aka 7 handfulls for ET

Directions: Combine. Got it? Good. 

Jalepeno Carrot Vinaigrette

• 1/4 cup hemp oil (or other oil, probably not olive oil though)
• 1/4 cup carrot juice (100% - make your own or purchase)
• 1/8 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 jalepeno, finely chopped (more if you're a BEAST, less if you're a baby)
• Powdered ginger, garlic powder, & chili powder to taste
• I did about 2 pinches each

Directions: Combine & whisk. Think you can handle that? I think so too. 

Peeking behind the salad is a pile of TERRA brand sweet potato chips. Not shown to actual scale. I def ate like 4-7 more handfuls of those than I should have. That Synergy purple drank? Kombucha. Fermented mushroom vinegary tea drink with raw chia seeds in it. I'm addicted. I have been ever since I learned of the mother during my Mysterious Mushrooms & Magical Molds class. No, we did not trip on mushrooms for extra credit. Yes, it was one of the best classes I've taken at tech AND the professor I've just learned is a fellow CrossFitter!! How cool? I always thought Kombucha sounded Asian, but it's actually a Russian drink. It boasts of how it's the "elixer of life and longevity" or some hippie bullsh*t on the back. I just love the taste and the chia seeds are like a freaking party in your mouth. Ever had bubble tea and sloshed those tapioca balls around in your mouth? Chia seeds are 109257012984x more fun to play with.

Time to go play in the melting snow. Until later!