Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Apples

Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Apples

1-2 lb pork tenderloin

2 Tbls olive oil

1 tsp sea salt

1 tbls Dijon mustard

1 tsp dried thyme

1/4 tsp pepper

2 apples (I used Gala), cored and thickly sliced

1/2 onion, sliced (you can use more than this, but I'm not much of an onion person, so I only use a little)

1. Preheat oven to 425°F.
2. Trim pork to remove the silver skin. Rub the tenderloin with 1 Tbls olive oil, then rub all over with salt.
3. Heat 1 Tbls olive oil over medium-high heat in a cast-iron skillet. Once hot, place the tenderloin in the pan and cook for 3 minutes on each side (there's four sides in case you were wondering).
4. Remove tenderloin from the pan and set aside. Add the apples and onions to the pan and cook for 4-5  minutes
5. While the apples and onions cook, rub the tenderloin with the mustard, thyme, and pepper.
6. Place the tenderloin on top of the apples and onions and transfer to the oven. Cook for 15-20 minutes or until the internal temperature of the pork reaches 145-150°F.
7. Transfer the pork to a plate and cover with aluminum. Let rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

Stuffed Pumpkin

Stuffed Pumpkin

1 pie/sugar pumpkin

3 links mild/sweet Italian sausage

2 Granny Smith apples, cut into chunks

1 cup walnuts, crushed/chopped

1 onion, chopped

1 Tbls coconut oil

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp nutmeg

salt and pepper to taste

Adjust your oven racks so that you have enough room to fit the pumpkin you bought into the oven. Preheat oven to 350F.

Prep your pumpkin like you would if you were carving it. Start by thoroughly washing the outside of the pumpkin. Next, cut the top to make a lid. Then scrape the insides of the pumpkin to remove the seeds and the stringy bits. Save the seeds... I'll explain why. Once the inside is sufficiently clean, set the pumpkin aside.

Pumpkin Seeds: Switch over to your seeds. Rinse them to remove the pumpkiny bits, and spread over a paper towel to dry them a little bit. Transfer to a bowl and sprinkle with salt and pepper, or any other combination of spices, i.e. cinnamon and cayenne pepper. Stir up the seeds and spices and then spread over a tin foil-lined baking pan. Bake for 20 minutes at 350F. At this point the seeds will be nice and crunchy.

Chop up your onion. Heat coconut oil over medium heat in a pan on the stove. Once hot, add your onion and cook until translucent. While the onion is cooking, chop up your apple and walnuts. Alternatively, you can just put the walnuts in a sealed Ziploc bag and crush the nuts by pounding with your fist - this is what I did. After the onion has cooked down, add the apple and walnuts. Take your Italian sausage and remove from the casing (you can also buy bulk sausage from most grocers and save this step and some change). Break down the sausage so you don't have giant chunks.  Transfer to the pan with the onions, apples, and walnuts. Add 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp cloves, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, and salt and pepper to taste. Brown the meat.

While this is cooking, grab your pumpkin and place onto the foil-lined pan you used for baking the pumpkin seeds. When the sausage is done cooking, transfer your sausage mixture to your pumpkin. Pour in 1 cup of chicken broth (you can use water if you'd like, just add a bit more salt to the mixture).

Replace the lid of the pumpkin and slide into the oven.

Bake the pumpkin for 1 to 1.5 hours. Check after 1 hour. Your pumpkin is ready when you can easily pull the flesh off of the underside of the lid by scraping with a fork.
And here's your final product. When you serve, just scoop out some of the pumpkin flesh with your spoon/serving utensil.

Oktoberfest Spirit

Happy October everyone! I'm happy to report that we had fall-like weather over the weekend, which made me exceptionally happy.

Because it's October and that always makes me think of Oktoberfest, bratwurst, and Halloween, I decided to indulge and make some bratwurst with cabbage. Here's how it goes...

Slow-Cooker German Bratwurst

3 cloves garlic

1 onion, sliced

2 Gala apples, peeled and sliced

1 Tbls lemon juice

1/2 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp black ground pepper

3 Tbls apple cider vinegar

1 tsp parsley

1/2 Tbls Dijon mustard

1 head red cabbage, shredded

1 package bratwurst, sliced

Start by slicing your onions. Layer the bottom of your slow-cooker with the onions. Next, slice your apples and layer the slices over the onions. Sprinkle the cloves, and 1/2 tsp parsley over the apples. Pour 1 Tbls apple cider vinegar and 3 Tbls beef broth over the apples and onions. Spread the shredded cabbage over the apples and onions, followed by the bratwurst slices. Sprinkle the 1/2 tsp parsley. Pour the remaining broth and and apple cider vinegar over the top. Put the cover on the slow-cooker and set for 8 hours on low. (Set for 8 hours, but you're only going to cook it for 6 hours.) After two hours, stir the ingredients. Continue cooking for another 4 hours and turn off the slow-cooker. Done. Happy Oktoberfest!

Note: My slow-cooker can only be set on low when I set the time for 8 or 10 hours. You want it set on low, but you don't want to cook it for too long because it'll end up looking like mine did... brown. I went to a concert while this was cooking and it sat on "Warm" for a while. The purple color of the red cabbage permeated everything and it turned brownish. It may not look appealing, but it tastes good. And it's perfect if you're in the mood for Oktoberfest.

Apple Butter

Because I was bad and didn't post for a while, here's a sweet and easy treat for you... Forgive me?

Apple butter is a pretty basic recipe, and it epitomizes autumn! I might have mentioned once or twice that I've been longing for fall. Just maybe. One of my co-workers told me today that I looked like fall. I politely thanked him, but in my head I was dancing around and cheering. Mission accomplished!

Apple Butter

9 apples (of a 5-lb bag of Gala apples, I used all but two, mainly because I got tired of peeling and chopping apples)

1/4 cup honey

3 tablespoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 tsp ginger

Peel and then chop your apples into small slices (I stopped at Wal-mart on the way home from work yesterday to buy an apple slicer specifically for this purpose - only $3.97).

Of course, you'll have to cut the pieces smaller after the slicer does its job. Transfer all of the apple chunks to your trusty Crock-pot. Spread the seasonings and honey over the top of your apples.

After 2 hours of cooking.

I waited until after cooking for two hours once there was a bit more liquid to mix everything up. However, if you're just going to let the slow-cooker do its thing and not touch it, i.e., overnight or during your work day, go ahead and mix everything now.

Cover and set the slow-cooker on low heat for 8 hours. If your slow-cooker isn't programmable, you can do what my buddy BA does. Get a plug-in timer, set the timer so that the electricity will be supplied for 8 hours, and plug your slow-cooker into that. Genius! This saves you electricity costs, too. And you can use it when you go out of town so it looks like you're still there. Or if you come home after dark and want a light on in your house so you don't trip over things as you make your way to the light switch.

After 8 hours, your apples should look like this:

Use your food processor or blender to blend the soft cinnamon-y apples until smooth. Transfer to jars/storage containers. You're done. The apple butter can cool in the jars and you can spread it on Paleo crackers (recipe to come), or on pork, or even it it by itself. Crazy! If you eat bread, you could have an apple butter sandwich, just replace the almond butter with apple butter, or use both. However, if you're like me and will normally eat apples with a bit of almond butter, I don't recommend exchanging apple butter for almond butter: apple slices with apple butter might be a bit too much apple. You'd be consuming a lot of natural sugars (way more than Paleo-recommended levels)!


Next step: Pumpkin butter! Mmmmm... pumpkin!

P90X - Day 19

Again, I didn't wake up early enough to workout. Cue the whomp, whomp failure soundtrack now. I did Legs and Back at 9:30 p.m., so at least I got it done.

I was talking to my ATL friend SK on the phone over the weekend and I told her that I somehow feel like food will solve my problems, in particular health problems. I mention this because yesterday my stomach didn't feel great after eating lunch. This is what I ate for lunch: Spring mix, Tomato, Cucumber, Carrots, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Mushroom, Celery, Bell Pepper, Cabbage, Pumpkin Seeds, Walnuts, Almonds, Chopped Egg, Sundried Tomatoes, Grapes, Strawberries, Apple, Mandarin Orange, with Chipotle Chicken and Sundried Tomato Dressing. So something in that list must have upset my stomach. And do you know what my immediate reaction to the not-great stomach feeling was? I should eat something to help it. Excuse me? What? How does that make any sense? If I'm full, and my stomach doesn't feel good, why should I want to eat more food? I'm weird. Or maybe this is more common than I think. Maybe other people are like this as well. Who knows? But I get this weird empty yet full feeling in my stomach, and it can last for hours. The empty-full/upset stomach feeling frequently occurs when I eat apples (pH 3.3-3.9) and sometimes carrots (pH 5.9-6.3). So possibly the apple or the carrots was the culprit from lunch. I've wondered about this a lot in the past. Raw apples and carrots tend to make me feel funny after eating them. I thought maybe it was a pH/acidity thing, and obviously the apple is acidic, but the carrot isn't too acidic, so I don't know if that's really the issue. I haven't tested my response to cooked apples or carrots, but now I feel like I should.  I'm hesitant to do so though because I like carrots and apples, and I'm not sure if I want to find out that my body doesn't tolerate them well. I'm also interested in seeing whether the pH balance of food affects me, but I have no desire to put that much effort into measuring the pH of my food. Thanks, but no. If you're interested in checking out some of the pH values of various foods:, you can check out this website: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/food-ph-d_403.html.

I've also realized that I don't feel like a meal is complete until I finish it off with something sweet. I've noticed this more and more lately. And it's annoying me. Do I need a sweet? No. Am I even hungry? No. Do I want a sweet? You bet your ass I do. In my week of meetings we've had catered lunches. On Wednesday, there was cheesecake as a dessert. I spent ~3 hours having a stare-down with that cheesecake, thoroughly testing my resolve not to eat dairy. I've always loved cheesecakes, so it was a tough battle. I won out, and snacked on some carrots instead. But man. Wednesday afternoon was rough. There were multiple times that I thought I can have just one piece. One piece isn't bad. It's fine. Granted, then I counter with: If you cave in to the cheesecake, what else are you going to cave in to? You already didn't work out before work. Yay willpower!

P90X - Day 9

Plyometrics. "The mother of all workouts."

I first heard the term "plyometrics" when I was a freshman in college. I was in a sorority my freshman year and we started training for Tug, a giant tug-of-war competition held every spring. We did hill sprints, stadium runs, toes-up wall sits, the erg (rowing machine), and plyometrics. Plyometrics consists of squats, lunges, and jumping, with combinations of these three exercises. Plyo helps to improve speed; it's vaguely similar to long-distance runners doing sprints. Sure, you're going to be running 26.2 miles, not sprinting it (though if you ask me, those Olympic marathoners are sprinting at 4:45-ish minute-miles). But you need to work on your short bursts of speed to build your way up to your goal time. When I was training for a half-marathon with Team in Training, my coaches provided a schedule that included cross-training (i.e. cycling), easy runs, short sprints, and form runs (to focus on your running technique), in addition to our long runs.

All this talk of running reminds me that I need to start training for a half-marathon again. I need to find a running buddy.

I bought a bag of Gala apples over the weekend and I needed something to do with them...

Cinnamon Apple Chips
1 apple, sliced (I used Gala, but you can go for a sweeter variety if you choose)
2 Tbls cinnamon
1 Tbls pumpkin pie spice (optional)

Preheat oven to 250 F. Slice your apple (perpendicular to its core). Lay pieces on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with cinnamon, as much or as little as you like/love. Bake for 45-60 minutes, flipping halfway. The apple slices should be thoroughly dried out, but not burnt. It'll look all crinkly and delicious.

Chicken, Cabbage, and Apple Salad

This recipe is based on one that I found in The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf (I varied the quantities a bit). I'm not usually a fan of cabbage, but boy does this taste good.

Chicken, Cabbage, and Apple Salad

• 2 chicken breasts, diced
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1/8 tsp cloves
• 1/3 head of cabbage, shredded
• 1/2 Granny Smith apple, thinly sliced
• pepper to taste
• sea salt to taste

Heat olive oil in skillet on medium heat. Add the chicken, allspice, and cloves; sauté until chicken is cooked. Once the chicken is done, mix it with the shredded cabbage and apple. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil (I used about a teaspoon). Eat and enjoy.

You know how I hate touching raw chicken... Well I managed to dice the chicken for this recipe without any issues. I didn't even think about the fact that it was raw chicken until I had this nice pile of diced meat. Oh yeah! I'm improving!