I made myself and easy dinner tonight; beef strips with butternut squash and cajun spices, topped with coriander. And served it with roasted broccoli, again.
Coriander is my absolute favourite spice to top just about any dish with!
Normally mine doesn't really keep that well in my fridge, so I decided to chop it up this time and keep it in a tupperware. I hope it'll work! I still have lots of ideas on how to use it this week.
I even started growing my own herbs this week, and while I'm not quite sure it's actually going to work (I don't have a garden or balcony) I really enjoy the process of trying to grow something. I've got parsley, coriander, thyme, basil, chives and mint. The seeds should have sprouted within the next 10 days or so, and if there's anything to show, I'll make sure to put a picture up. Let's see what happens..
I needed chocolate and cookies today.. And I had a good reason for that.
The best way to combine my needs: chocolate cookies!
I kept them simple, only used 5 different ingredients and sweetened them with dates instead of agave or something similar. I like my chocolate to be bitter, so if you like yours to be a little sweeter, simply add a few more dates.
Right now, I'm watching Prison Break, my latest addiction, and am enjoying these cookies at the same time. Pretty good!
Used my Dutch oven again today! It's only the second time I used it, but more ideas on using it keep popping into my head. I love it!
Tonight I made this rosemary basil chicken, with onions, butternut squash and tomatoes. Quite good! Normally, when I'd fry chicken fillets, they'd end up a little (and sometimes very) dry because I'm afraid to undercook them..
This way, they were still nice and moist on the inside, while cooked through. And the process was easy. I basically threw everything in the pan, transfered it to my oven and while the oven was doing its job I did the dishes. How's that for multitasking!
Today I used a rather unusual vegetable to cook with: kohlrabi leaves!
They had beautiful kohlrabis at the market, with all the leaves still in tact. Normally, I'd just pull those off and throw them away, but I figured those might actually be edible.. After some googling I found out you can use them as you would use any other leafy green vegetable, so I used them in a stir-fry with salmon and parsnip. Tastes really good!
I'm not quite sure what you could compare the taste of the kohlrabi leaves with as they don't have a specific taste. They just make a good addition to pretty much any dish.
I served mine with zucchini fritters, although judging from the picture (and the amount of fritters) you could also say I served my fritters with the salmon stir-fry. Made a tasty meal either way!
My CrossFit workouts seem to have improved my running big time! I went for a run yesterday and it was so easy, it took me hardly any effort.
Of course the beautiful weather helped as well.
As for my CrossFit workouts, they're getting easier as well! I've already increased some of the weights I use and I hardly get any sore muscles afterwards anymore. What I'm most proud of, is that I now use a slightly less thick rubber band for my pullups than I used to, and still get my reps done as prescribed.
I made a huge amount of beef stew today, to store in my freezer. I love being able to pull it out of the freezer when I feel like it. Some days you just don't have the time to do a large amount of cooking.
Today I ate the last pieces of Wednesday's chicken. I never knew leftover chicken could be so tasty! The meat I ate today was from the wings and thighs, very tasty. I think I like it even better than the breast meat.
Out of the chicken carcass I'd made some chicken stock too. I saved part of it in my freezer, for soup I guess, and I saved some in my fridge. I already put some in my beef stew, and it also worked really well with today's dinner.
I've been pretty lazy last week.. Only went to the gym once, and didn't really feel like doing a lot of cooking. I blame it on the exam I had last Thursday and this was my way of dealing with the stress. Not exactly the best way to so (especially since it included eating a lot of nuts, dried fruits and there might have been some potato crisps too) but 2 days later, I realised I feel much better when eating clean Paleo and going for regular workouts. And that's exactly what I'm going to do! I'm thinking about going for a run today and I might cycle to the market as well. Not sure yet..
Today I still had some peppers in my fridge and thought it would be nice to roast them in my oven. It's been such a long time since I had those, and the ones I had came out of a jar so I never really had the real deal. They're soo good! And my home smells really nice because of the roasting too.
I did it! I roasted a chicken for the very first time! And it was soo good and delicious!
I'm definitely going to do this again.
Of course I used my new Dutch oven for it, and I'm so glad I did. Very easy to use and I could just pop it into the oven.
Over the past few days I had been looking for the perfect recipe to start with, while using my Dutch oven. I ended up using a recipe from my cookbook 'Mastering the art of French Cooking' by Julia Child, as a base, and just added whatever I thought would be good.
I was a little scared of cleaning the chicken, but I was lucky because the chicken I bought had already been cleaned properly. *big relief*
The other good thing about it was that I didn't need any kitchen string because my chicken had already been tied.
