Tuna Melt Patties

So as a quick update, I've lost about 12 pounds on the "I just had my wisdom teeth pulled and eating hurts and is gross" diet.  I had some complications that made eating solid food even worse than it would have been, although lately I've been doing pretty good.

My blood pressure has been at a reasonable-for-now 135/85.  Not down to my goal yet, but getting there.

I thought I'd put up an recipe I made for something soft.  I took the picture back in January but I'll probably make a salmon version tonight (because I've recently learned tuna makes me feel awful).

Tuna Melt Patties

Ingredients: 

• 2 cans of tuna (I've done this with solid albacore as well as chunk light; the former is higher in omega-3 fatty acids)
• About a half cup of shredded cheddar cheese (you can omit this if you'd like but it'll be more a tuna burger than a tuna melt patty)
• 1 egg
• Friendly oil (butter, ghee, coconut oil, etc) for frying

Put the tuna and egg in a mixing bowl.  Mix it up good with a hand mixer so it's nice and smooth, almost like a mousse.  Add the cheese.

Oil the pan and heat it to medium-high.  Form the batter into patties... it can be difficult to get it to stay together, perseverance is key.  Lay them out on the pan.  I cooked them for about three minutes on each side.

Pecan and Flax Crusted Walleye

My dad and brothers brought back a bunch of walleye from the lake, and for some reason the phrase "pecan crusted walleye" was really stuck in my head, and I had ground pecans, so I decided to look up and modify a recipe for this dish.

The above were some fillets I baked. I actually preferred pan frying them in some butter, but the baked was also very good.

You need:

• 1 pound walleye fillets
• 1 cup ground pecans
• 1/4 cup ground flax seed
• 1 egg
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons healthy oil, such as grassfed butter or coconut oil (I used all grassfed butter, but I feel like half butter half coconut oil would be great) if pan frying.

Start by blending together the egg, garlic powder, paprika, and salt and pepper.  In a shallow dish, combine the pecans and ground flax until they're married together really nicely.

The rest of it is really simple.  Moisten the fillets all over and then dip in the pecan/flax mixture.  If baking, lay them on a pan (I used a roasting pan, but I use that for damn near everything).  Bake at 350^oF for about twenty minutes, or until the flesh flakes easily with a fork.  If pan frying, heat the oil in a pan and then fry them a couple minutes on each side until--again--it flakes easy with a fork.

I spritzed each fillet with lime before eating.

This is really fragile when it comes to plating, so if you're trying to look fancy be warned that you're going to have to be really gentle with these when transferring from the pan to the plate.

Fish, More Fish, and a Waldorf Salad

My brother came back from the Army recently and with that he and my dad have taken up a lot of fishing.  Unfortunately--or somewhat fortunately, for me--nobody in my family seems to eat a lot of fish except for me.  So I've been making quite a bit of it.  I've also been making a lot of Waldorf salad based on a recipe in a paleo cookbook I own.  Anyway...

For the above I took a filleted Walleye, put Hawaiian black salt and pepper on it, and squeezed lemon on it.  I baked it on a grill pan for about 20 minutes at 350^oF.

The above--which may or may not look suspiciously similar--is a filleted Largemouth Bass.  I prepared in in pretty much the same way I prepared the Walleye, about 20 minutes at 350^oF, lemon.

And finally, my salad:

It's really simple:  Cut up an apple and a few sticks of celery, add a few handfuls of walnuts, and add mayonnaise.  I'm not going to judge you too hard if you buy mayonnaise at the store, but it's virtually impossible to buy paleo-appropriate mayo.  Right now there's a huge fad where mayo manufacturers are putting out varieties that slap "OLIVE OIL!!!" all over the container even though it's just regular soybean-oil or canola-oil mayo with some olive oil added for flavor.

Mayonnaise is really easy to make, though, if you have an immersion blender and patience.  Put a couple egg yolks at the bottom of a jar, add a teaspoon mustard (most recipes specify dry, but I've found wet mustard also works great), a quarter teaspoon salt, a tablespoon each of lemon juice and vinegar (I use apple cider; you can also just use two tablespoons of lemon juice).  Put the immersion blender into it and start dribbling in a cup of extra light olive oil a few drops at a time.  Keep going and mixing until either you run out of olive oil or you are no longer able to actually mix it in.  Make sure you hold the jar in place, because one time when I did this as soon as the mayo emulsified the mixer turned it into a massive spin-art all the fuck over the place.

There are plenty of mayo recipes out there that you can experiment with and if necessary modify.  You can use avocado oil instead of olive, or even coconut oil or bacon grease (but for oils that are solid at room temperature realize that you need to use it right away or it'll solidify!).  If you really like olive oil, you might try extra virgin (although I feel like that'd be really strong). 

Quick Paleo Meals and Snacks

I'll admit it:  I can be slightly lazy when it comes to cooking.  I do it, and I do cook quite a bit, but especially in the mornings when I get up to go to work, I basically am one of those that tries to stay in bed as late as possible.  For a while I was just fasting through work, but lately I've been having a hard time doing that without feeling awful, so very quick and easy fixes are in order.  This is a list of some of those.

Canned Tuna with Mustard
 My last recipe was for salmon with mustard, but really I put stone ground mustard on almost anything.  Canned tuna is cheap (the pictured can is Chicken of the Sea, but more sustainable, pole-caught canned tuna is often available, too).  I choose albacore tuna for its higher omega-3 fatty acids and usually without added salt.  And it's really easy:  Open can, add mustard, eat.  It's like tuna salad without the mayonnaise.

Canned Sardines and Herring
I don't usually put mustard on these... but you can.  Read the ingredients because sometimes they add non-paleo oils or sugar.  They're usually pretty salty, too, so if you're like me and trying to watch that you should pay attention to this.

Olives, Pickles, Dilly Beans
It should be clear by now that there are a lot of salty snacks on this list.  These are very salty (you can rinse off the brine if you want less sodium), but otherwise they're a good choice.

Baby Carrots
Baby carrots get a bad rap because they're literally just adult carrots that have been carved down.  I eat these for breakfast relatively often, though, because they're accessible, they taste good, and they're inexpensive.

Seaweed Snacks

I am pretty addicted to these things.  They are usually from South Korea and come in a wide variety of flavors.  Unfortunately many of them are made with sketchy oils.  The brand I've pictured--SeaSnax--is the only brand I currently eat, which only uses olive oil.  It is, of course, up to you if you want to get a cheaper one that isn't quite as ideal in the oil department.

Plantain Chips
You need to be really careful with this because plantain chips vary a lot as far as added ingredients.  There are plantain chips available that are nothing but plantains and either coconut or palm oil.  They're starchy and have lots of carbohydrates, but if this doesn't matter to you, go for it.

Fresh Fruit
I will mention this even though I've been having lots of problems right now overeating cherries.  It isn't making me lose weight much slower, but it is giving me stomachaches.  Fruit is sugary, but not all paleo eaters are going for low- or reduced-carbs anyway.  For those of you who aren't, go right on ahead.  Go for the whole fruit, not a smoothie or juice.

Boiled Eggs
Boiled eggs are easy to make by just... well, boiling eggs for about twenty minutes (a lot of people are really picky about things like getting the yolks perfectly yellow... I don't actually care, although you're welcome to go research and perfect your technique if you do.  Pre-cooked hard-boiled eggs are also common in cafeterias and gas stations, so when I'm off at work or visiting my alma mater and need to eat something, these are often there for me.

Jerky
Packaged jerky often has ingredients that you might not want to consume, like sugar and soy products, so if you buy it you really should read the ingredients.  When I'm not doing strict paleo I might get a bag at a gas station because it's a better option than, say, a granola bar.  Typically, though, you should just make it yourself.  If you have a dehydrator, an easy thing to do is take lean ground beef, mix in spices you like (salt, coconut aminos or soy sauce if you eat it, various types of pepper, I like adding celery salt and sesame seeds), make thin patties from it, and put it in a dehydrator until it's... well, dry.  If you don't put salt in it, you will need to pay close attention to where you keep it and don't let it sit around.

Recipe: Mustard-Coated Salmon

I'm posting this recipe here because it's basically been saving my life for the past few days.  One of the issues with a Whole 30 diet is that a lot of the spice mixes I use (like lemon pepper or seasoned salt) have ingredients that I can't eat for that duration, even if I normally think they aren't a big deal... many of them have sugar, a lot have MSG, etc.

I don't remember when I started putting mustard on salmon.  I know I did it a lot a year and a half or so ago when I was working at a group home, because it was easy and delicious, and I think this comes from that era of my life.  I don't remember if I got the recipe from someone else, either.  I feel like I came up with it on my own due to an obsession with whole-grain and stone-ground mustard.

And this recipe is really easy.  You need:

• Salmon fillets (I usually just make one, because I usually am eating alone anyway)
• About a tablespoon of whole-grain or stone-ground mustard for each fillet.  I often use more.  Make sure you read the ingredients to make sure there aren't any weird ingredients like sugar or soybean oil.

You have two options here.  You can either cook it on a grill (because grilling things makes everything taste better) or you can bake them in an oven on a grill pan (you probably can bake them in any pan, but I use a grill pan).

For grilling, just put the fillets on the grill, cook both sides until it looks cooked (I don't have a time for you, sorry, grills vary a lot and I've never actually timed it), then smother mustard on one side and allow it to cook in for thirty seconds or so.

For baking, you can smother the mustard on before cooking.  Bake it at 375oF for about fifteen or twenty minutes.  If it's too raw for you, or you have a particularly thick fillet, you can of course leave it in longer.

Recipe: Pan-Fried Panfish

When I was growing up, we ate a lot of panfish we caught from the lake.  Unfortunately, it was almost always dredged in wheat flower and fried in soybean oil.  When I first started experimenting with paleo and lacto-paleo ways of eating and started eating them without flour, my family looked at me like I was a total fucking weirdo.  Truth be told, I love fish and don't need to flour or fry them, but I was interested to see if I could make a paleo-friendly version of it, especially since I live in Wisconsin, land of the Friday fish fry.  This was the result:

Pan-Fried Panfish
This is a simple recipe that I've been tweaking recently for bluegills or other sunfish.  I say "tweaking" because I've been having a hard time getting a good level of salt (in my case potassium chloride, which is marketed as a "salt substitute" but for the record is still a salt).  This is the best version so far:

1. Fillets of bluegill (I typically get around 15-20 with this recipe)
2. 1/4+ refined coconut oil (you can use unrefined coconut oil if you really like coconut; start with 1/4 cup but keep extra on standby)
3. 1/2 cup arrowroot powder (you could probably use coconut flour... but I hate coconut flour so I don't)
4. 1 tablespoon paprika
5. 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
6. 1/4 teaspoon salt (table salt or any of the fancy salts paleo eaters like, like Himalayan pink salt or sea salt; if you're reducing your sodium like me you can use potassium chloride OR omit)
7. Black pepper to taste (I just dash it on afterward)

Heat a frying pan over medium heat with 1/4 cup coconut oil in it.  Mix all the dry ingredients except the pepper together in a bowl or plastic bag and mix thoroughly.

Once the coconut oil is melted and hot, dredge the fillets a few at a time and lay in the oil.  I typically just put two or three in the plastic bag and shake, but if you don't want the waste just dredge them in the bowl by laying them in the mix on each side.  Let fry for about a minute before flipping and getting the other side.  When both sides are done, I put them on a plate layered with newspaper to catch the extra oil.

Continue until either the dry mix or the fillets are gone.

If you run out of oil:
I keep oil on standby and when it starts getting low I add it a tablespoon at a time.  This recipe is designed to reduce waste as a person who doesn't fry in oil often.  If you regularly deep fry things, you can always just do it that way and strain the oil for later use.

If you run out of dry mix and you only have a couple fillets left:
I usually just add a little arrowroot powder, paprika, and salt to stretch it out.

I eat this plain, but if you want tartar sauce it's ridiculously easy to make a paleo version.  Just make mayonnaise (there are loads of recipes for this online, just replace any generic vegetable or soybean oil with a paleo-friendly oil like light olive oil or avocado oil and get rid of any sugar people sometimes add; AllRecipes has this one that's already friendly) and mix it with dill pickle relish (again, check ingredients for sugary stuff and other odd ingredients).