Paleo Diet while on Vacation

Vacation is a time to relax and enjoy life. Its easy to make the excuse to "cheat" on vacation. Actually it was pretty easy to stay on track. I ate a lot of grilled fish and salad. The fresh fish was awesome! They had a fresh catch on the menu every day. I must confess I did allow myself apple pie with ice cream on Valentines day. Although it was very tasty, it really was not worth it. I will not be making that mistake again.
The weather was perfect and my hotel offered unlimited kayaking. I went out every day for at least 30 min and once for 3 hours with a guide. It was so much fun! I think I will purchase a kayak and do some fishing. Exercise camouflaged as fun and I may bring home dinner!

Beef Tongue

Ingredients:

• 1beef tongue
• 1 carrot
• 1 rib celery
• 1 med onion
• 5 cloves garlic
  

Directions:

Take a large pot that accommodates the tongue, place all ingredient in and cover with water. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer, cover with lid and cook for 3 hours. Remove tongue and when cooled peel tough outer skin. You can eat it cold, or (what I prefer) fry it in a pan, I generally do not add any oil as it renders its own fat. Fry it until nice and crispy/brown on each side. I is one of my favorite dishes.

Boiled beef tongue on a bed of Kale

Fried tongue slices with a side of mushrooms and onions sauteed in duck fat

Calf Heart

Ingredients:

• 1 calf heart trimmed and cut into thin bite size strips
• balsamic vinegar (splash)
• salt pepper
• 1 tsp dry thyme

Directions:

This is where your boning knife comes in handy. For a video of how to trim a beef heart go to:

http://www.offalgood.com/site/videos/how-to-butcher-a-beef-heart

Marinate heart strips in a splash of balsamic vinegar/salt/pepper/thyme mix well and marinate over night in the fridge. Drain liquid and grill or saute in a hot iron skillet. I had sauteed broccoli rabe with mine and a glass of chilled green tea.

Braised honeycomb Beef tripe

This is another of my favorite child hood dishes i love it when my mom makes it.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs honeycomb Beef tripe
• 6 med onions
• 8 cloves garlic
• salt pepper to taste
• 2 bay leaves
• fat/oil to cook

Directions:

Boil tripe for 15 minutes. discard water, rinse tripe under cold water to cool. Ring tripe out (like a towel) to remove excess water. Cut tripe into bite size pieces. I cut 2-3 inch strips and cut those into triangles. while tripe is boiling rough cut onions and saute in fat/oil (I used duck fat that I rendered and have sitting in the fridge). Saute onions on med heat until browned. When onions are almost done add chopped garlic. I use 2 med non-stick pans and saute simultaneously. add salt/pepper to taste to onions as they are sauteing. Take a heavy iron pot like a dutch oven and placed browned onions in it. using the onion pans saute tripe until browned. if a lot of water is rendered out, just drain and continue, otherwise it will take a long time to brown the tripe. Place tripe in the heavy pot along with 3-4 bay leaves. Mix to distribute the onions. deglaze pans with water or stock or white wine if you have it around, add liquid to pot. there should be about 1/3 liquid in the pot. place on med heat and reduce to low heat in 5-10 min. cook on low heat for 3 hours or until the onions have dissolved forming a sauce and the tripe is tender. if there is a lot of liquid open the lid a bit an allow the liquid to reduce to a thick sweet onoiny sauce.

Makin' Jerky 1.0

Drying meat has been around for a very long time. It is probably one of the earliest ways ancient man was able to store meat without spoiling. It also makes a great travel food as it is relatively light compared to the original thing. And it makes a great snack! Unfortunately Beef Jerky is expensive. Its possible to make good jerky at home. There are a number of methods.

1. Commercial Dehydrator - a good dehydrator will set you back a few hundred dollars.
2. Homemade dehydrator - can make your own for a few bucks
a- Fan method
b- box method
c-oven method

Contrary to popular belief Jerky is made by drying via air traveling over meat and evaporating the moisture, not heat. in fact as long as you have wind, heat is unnecessary. where heat does come into play is when it creates an air current between heated and unheated air. this is how wind is formed, FYI

Then there is the question of the marinade. Theoretically, True Paleo Jerky was just dried meat. cut thin and allowed to hang in the breeze until mummified.

pretty much all the current Jerky marinades include soy sauce and Worcestershire sauces, technically not very Paleo. So I decided to experiment.

I found a schematic for making a home dehydrator for around $10

http://www.rawpaleodiet.com/uploads...nstructions.pdf

Here is my version:



Hanging meat strips.

I dried it in my basement using a 150 watt bulb. I only used fresh ground pepper and garlic powder. It took about 24 hrs.

The meat tasted like crap. Next time I will definitely marinade.