IT'S SPRING

I just feel so emotionally connected to the season and the weather lately. The sun and the birds and the green bushy flowering things are just making me all giddy on the inside whilst frolicking on the outside. The words "Tra-La-La" spring easily to mind this time of year I am afraid.

Spring is a rebirth, it feels like not just an opportunity, but almost a command to rejuvenate everything about ourselves. The animals and plants are goading us into it with all their chirping and blooming and sparkling in the dewy morning sunlight that they do so well. 

I am heeding the call of nature by trying to be healthy and good to my body, and trying to really soak in and appreciate everything around me, because I know it's fleeting. Hence, the picture posted above! I feel like if I turn around, I will miss everything.

I am really trying to hold on to this connectedness to the world around me. No matter how wired I am to the rest of the world, I am trying not to forget that there's probably unmatched beauty right outside my door. Oh and also that sometimes cliches are cliches because they're true.

Primal Cheatza Pizza (A Recipe in Pictures)

Pizza cravings -Who among us is immune to the siren song of cheese, sauce, and crust? (Well, probably lots of us, but just follow me here.) It's an American staple that is unbelievably hard to avoid, and if you've given up eating grains, and therefore crust, it may be something you're missing very very much.

I think I may have mentioned before that I enjoy cheese. And while I am a huge fan, I'm not sure if I enjoy it quite enough to make my fake pizza, or cheatza as I like to call it, on a regular basis. The crust is made, following this recipe, from about 50% cheese. Don't get me wrong, it's yummy, if you're trying to avoid carbs, gluten, or grains, it's a great way to banish the pizza cravings. It's just a lot of cheese.

Also part of the whole primal eating blueprint is not eating dairy, or just eating raw, grass fed cheese or yogurt once in a while. I admit I have definitely added cheese back into the mix, and I'm trying to stick to those harder to find good kinds. For my cheatza though, the highest quality mozzarella I could find was Kraft made with no hormones or antibiotics. While that's better Velveeta I suppose, it definitely helps put the CHEAT in this cheatza.

First I assembled the crust ingredients: Shredded Cauliflower, Eggs, Mozzarella, and Oregano.

 

Then I (incorrectly) mixed my ingredients. (I guess you were supposed to steam the shredded cauliflower before you mixed it all into a crust dough-like-thing. It still turned out well, but I think this may have contributed to the burnt edges you will see in the pictures.) I then patted the mix down into a pizza shape on a pizza pan.

This is what the crust looked like after about 14 minutes in the oven. So pretty!

Without letting the crust cool, which I figure would help melt the cheese, I piled on my MORE cheese and toppings. I used my old family classic: black olives, green peppers, and onions(these are red).

After about 6 minutes in a hot boiler the cheatza looks just like pizza, although maybe a little more rough around the edges.

Like I said before, there is a lot of cheese on this baby. I really did enjoy it though, I just felt ultra heavy and overly cheeseified after a few pieces. All in all though, well worth the effort. The left overs made for perfect lunches paired with a big salad. 

Mmmmm... Cheatza

Semi-Primal Burgers with Semi-Primal Buns

A.K.A. the best freaking thing I have eaten it a long time! I devoured my burger like a wild primaly animal. Sadly I only had enough turkey to make two of these so we only got one each. I totally could have scarfed at least one more.

The buns I used followed this recipe that I originally found from a link on Mark's Daily Apple. In this application they were a revelation! I couldn't believe how perfect everything tasted together. Eaten alone though, or with just turkey bacon as I tried to do for breakfast yesterday, the buns get a big "Eh". They tasted too dry and eggy for me. For the burgers though, perfect. I actually cut the edges off the buns, where I thought they looked too dry.

Sometimes you just gotta have cheese, right? I mean unless you're vegan or 100% primal, or my friend Shana who had to give it up during her pregnancy. (You are all stronger than I.) I know cheese is not totally Primal, but it's not entirely cheating either. I was really craving a gooey cheese burger, with a little turkey bacon for good measure, and that's exactly what I got.

(Primal?) Bacon Cheese Stuffed Turkey Burgers

1 Pound Ground Turkey (7% fat)

4 Slices Turkey Bacon

1/2 Cup Grated Cheese

1 Onion

1-2 Teaspoons of your favorite Grill Seasoning or Seasoning Blend

A good squirt of Mustard and (Primal) Ketchup and (Primal) Worcestershire Sauce

Sea Salt and Pepper

A little Olive Oil for Cooking

Saute onion over low/medium heat. Cook until they start to smell sweet. You don't want to brown them, just cook them slowly to the point of carmelization. (About 10 minutes) About half way through the cooking add the grill seasoning to the onions, this will give the spices a chance to mellow.

Cook your bacon in the pan while the onions cool to the side.

Mix together turkey meat, condiments, salt & pepper, and onion mixture once cool. Don't over mix, it will mess up your burger texture. Good texture is a burger's friend.

Place crumbled bacon and grated cheese on a plate next to you, where you won't contaminate more than you need with your raw turkey hands.

Form turkey mixture into four equalish parts. Grab one part, form it into a ball, then flatten it with your hand. Take a good amount of cheese and crumbled bacon and stick it right in the middle of that flatten piece of turkey. Fold it over and pat into a burger-like shape. The less holes the better, unless you like a pool of runny cheese cooking under your burger, which you might!

Heat a little olive oil in your pan over medium-high heat, you want a fairly hot pan - burgers should sizzle when they hit it. Cook the burgers, lowering the heat to medium after about 5 minutes. Flip when browned on the bottom. Cook second side on Medium for about 5-10 minutes til cooked through. (burger will be sort of firm to the touch and juices will run clear) Let them rest for a few minutes before serving.

Assemble your burgers.

Go, "YUM!"

All in all this was one of the most satisfying things I have had in a long time. I probably won't make them this decedent all the time, but there are a million variations to try, and now that I have a bun to use as a building block, I feel like the possibilities are endless.

Another Reason I Enjoy Shopping at Trader Joes

Horsin' Around with Hair

In Touch Weekly did something very strange to some horses [Via Jezebel]...

I keep going between liking them in a "Oh! Look at the pretty pretty My Little Ponies!" sort of way, and laughing in disbelief. I would probably think it was less odd if a horse stylist had done this instead of a human. I supposed opposable thumbs are sort of a requirement for doing extensive braid work though.

Frak You and Your Fraking Pizza

Beware the nerdulence of this post. As of now we're not eating pizza in my house hold due to our primal cave-people like eating, but once upon a time (last month) we feasted on the sweet sweet cheesy doughiness of Nerddom. You see Battlestar Galactica was one of our most favoritest shows, and when the last episode aired last month we wanted to celebrate. We got some sort of alcoholic drink I believe, and set out to make the best pizzas in all the universe. Of course if you've never seen this show, this post will probably mean nothing to you, and the pizzas will just be confusing. I recommend catching up on all seasons of the show, and then coming back to bask in our cheestastic glutenous glory. Even if you have no idea what the giant robot head is (it's an original model cylon!) you can at least figure out what frak means, right?

Really more food should be Sci-Fi themed. What about a Dr. Who scarf fruit roll up?

Recipe: Primal Apple Crisp

I have had a severe lack of dessert since the start of my primal living experiment, which ended up lasting much longer than a week. I hopefully have broken through the wall of grumpiness and depression which may have been cause by sugar withdrawals, but that doesn't mean I have forsaken an after dinner treat completely. I've been eating a lot of fruit when I want a treat, but sometimes that just doesn't cut it.

I have been wanting to make apple crisp for a while. I think I did find a straight forward primal recipe for one at some point, but yesterday when I went to make it, I couldn't fine one recipe that didn't have something verboten in it. I basically dissected and picked apart several recipes from around the web, and used things I  had on hand already, creating something all my own.

Nina's Primal Apple Crisp

Topping:

1 Cup Nuts (A lot of recipes call for all almonds, I used Almonds, Pecans, and some Macadamia)

3 Tablespoons Arrowroot

1/4 teaspoon Salt (I omitted this because some of my nuts were salted)

4 Tablespoons Cold Butter (sub coconut oil to Veganize!)

1 teaspoon Vanilla

1/4 Cup Agave Nectar*

Fruit:

5-6 Apples (I used Granny Smiths, McIntoshs, and Galas)

Juice and Zest of 1 Lime & 1/2 Orange (most recipes called for lemon but I used what I had)

1 Tablespoon Arrowroot

2 Tablespoons Agave

1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon Fresh Nutmeg

*I use agave nectar in any recipe that calls for cooked honey. Cooked honey is considered poisonous in Ayurveda. Which my father has adamantly reminded me of my whole life. I'd rather not temp fate.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Mix dry ingredients of topping mixture in work bowl of food processor, pulse till nuts are small chunks. Add agave, butter in small pieces, and vanilla. Pulse until incorporated, butter may still be chunky.

Peel and chop apples in a separate bowl. Add juice, zest, arrowroot, agave, cinnamon, and nutmeg, mix.

In a sprayed or buttered baking dish, add apples, then top with blobs of topping mixture.

Bake for 45 minutes, til golden brown and bubbly.

This was good. Very very good. It's not as sweet as traditional apple crisp, but I thought you really got a feeling for a true sweetness of the apples without missing out on the sweet sweet goo that you have come to expect with a good apple crisp. The nuts got all toasty (be careful not to burn them) and made for almost a cookie tasting topping. We just wanted to eat only this for dinner when it came out of the oven. I will make this again.. and again.. and again.

Our Map of Middle Earth

(This Lord of the Rings map belonged to my uncle in the '60s.)

Just the Funny Bits: Teabagging

You would have to be living in a cave (with no wifi) this week to not have heard the term "teabagging" at least 100 times. Fox News and some other right wing groups organized "tea parties" on tax day, to protest taxes and big government. Without barrels of loose tea around to dump into harbors, landlocked protesters took to throwing or wearing old tea bags. Many protesters talked about "teabagging Barack Obama" without knowledge of the terms common street (or bedroom) usage. 

(Ok, some of them knew.)

MSNBC got on board early with the mocking. Rachel Maddow and a guest spent a good ten minutes trying to cram the words "tea bagging" as many time as possible into one segment without giggling, and David Shuster quipped the winning pun, "if you are planning simultaneous tea bagging all around the country, you're going to need a Dick Armey." Ahhh yes, that one was good. The Daily Show even mused that MSNBC was the new Daily Show, with Jon Stewart refusing to go back to waiting tables. I wouldn't worry Jon, your scrotal humor crown is in no danger, not with hilarious field reporting the likes of John Oliver's on Thursday night. (I have the full episode here, John Oliver's is the second segment.)

I thought for sure the Daily Show had put the tea bag to rest (it's had a busy week), but not so. Today I find people [BoingBoing] going to the tea bagging source, who is apparently John Waters, to ask where the term originates. 

JOHN WATERS: "Teabagging" is by my definition the act of dragging your testicles across your partner's forehead. In the UK it is dipping your testicles in your partner's mouth. I didn't invent the term or the act but DID introduce it to film in my movie "Pecker." "Teabagging" was a popular dance step that male go-go boys did to their customers for tips at The Atlantis, a now defunct bar in Baltimore. Hope this helps. -- John Waters

John Waters is always so full of helpful answers to sleazy questions! Here's a clip from what is one of our family favorites, Pecker [also BoingBoing], if you didn't make it to the protests, you get a chance to see some tea bagging in action. (See it's so hard not to make a bad joke!)

In Local News: Fire

It's not anywhere near as interesting as when my actual building was on fire and we had to evacuate:

But the field next to our office is currently on fire. All I could get was a bad cell phone picture, I'm not really sure if you can tell there is fire there.

My on the scene reporting has gathered that they are just letting the fire burn itself out and that the fire truck isn't even going to do anything cool.

Bill O'Reilly Indroduces You to the World of Nintendo

This video is awesome for two reason, first it is insanely retro and brings me back to the early days of Nintendo, it's hilarious to see how adults found this newfangled contraption so bizarre. Even more bizarre, and the second reason this video is awesome, is that Bill O'Reilly is the guy introducing the segment! Also at the end he complains that "Lincoln Logs" are the way to go. It's nice to see that he hated newness even back then, it's really sort of frightening to watch him try and pretend to be nice though. He is lucky they invented Fox News as a home for people like him or his head might have exploded long ago.

Zooey Daschanel Makes Cotton More Cute

Usually I am trying to forgive or forget my favorite celebrity's shilling of some random product. Of course Zooey Deschenel has some sort of magic power where everything she does makes you love her more. This commercial for cotton is just one more of those things. I don't' really have anything against cotton either, in fact I would say it is my most worn, if not my favorite fabric. Watching Zooey prance around in adorable cotton outfits and sing a little ditty about it seems to put a big smile on my face. How is she so fricking cute?

Raw Talent: Susan Boyle

I didn't link this video yesterday because I figured it would be on every website imaginable by today. I am posting it now though because I really want to make sure that no one misses it. This woman, Susan Boyle, is amazing. When she walks on to the stage of Britain's Got Talent, everyone laughs at her, thinking she is one of the many freaks they take delight in mocking on these shows. Then, she opens her mouth to sing, and boy does she show them. I've watched this video about three times now, and I love this lady more every time. 

Enjoy! (YouTube)

How to Make a Night to Remember Even More Memorable:

Behold: The Vulva Prom Dress! The designers at Light in the Box were trying to make a heart shaped ruffle, but ended up with oh so much more. What say you? If a girl had walked into your high school prom wearing this, would you have thought she was so cool that she was in on the joke and doing it as an ironic nod to prom night, or was she just helping her date along with a handy visual aid?

My Primal Week and Beyond

One week down. As of Tuesday my week experiment in primal living is complete. I've read lot, cooked and ate a lot, and lost a lot of weight without much effort. Ahh, it is that last part there that probably has me stuck on the primal living kick my friends. I mean there are not many among us not looking for that magic potion that makes the pounds fly off. I think going primal is probably closest thing to that potion that I have seen work on myself (Okay besides trying fen-phen back in the day, but permanent heart damage probably isn't a good trade off for weight loss).

I spent much of this week compiling information on what exactly the parameters of primal living were, then I stumbled upon a really good explanation and starting point at Mark Sisson's Daily Apple, one of the best sites all round for information on primal diet and fitness. 

Mike and I were doing great all week, especially Mike. He has been cooking and getting creative like nobodies business (cept mine!) and says he has more energy than he has had in years. He is really a true convert, he hasn't had an eating plan click with his physiology the way this one has ever before. I feel like it's been a little harder for me though, honestly my mind keep trying to think of excuses of why I need carbs, and my monthly chocolate cravings were leading me to the edge of insanity for a few nights there. 

Here is some pretty pictures of bunless burgers Mike made us, just to break up the Nina-rambles.

Saturday was our "cheat day" due to the fact that we were taking Mike's younger brother, and his girl friend, out to Chinese. We ate noodles, a little rice, and what I'm sure is a large about of sugar in the sauces. We both felt heavy and tired that night, and I've convinced myself that this cheat is also the reason I soon after got so deathly ill. I am usually the one person left standing while some awful cold or flu mows down my compatriots, this time though I was a casualty; it was bad. 

I was down for two whole days, only seeing the sun when Mike was nice enough to prop me on the couch and open the curtains so I could watch the sunset and the rainbows from my prism dance across the walls. The rest of my time since Monday night has been spent in bed, sleeping, coughing, or whining. Today though, I am back at work, still far from 100% but sometimes you just can't stay in bed any longer.

Since my week ended on such a sickly note, it's hard for me to take stock of how I am truly feeling. I do know that I seemed to have lost my low blood sugar crankiness from not eating. I just get sort of a general feeling of hunger in my stomach without the swimmy headed nauseous feeling that used to come with skipping meals or waiting too long to eat. This is good, now if the carb and chocolate cravings would go away, and the lingering sense that I am being deprived of the foodie world I love so dearly, I would be golden. Fucking golden. 

Bottom line? We're sticking with it.