Short on ribs, long on flavor!

 

I love short ribs.  I'm a real sucker for meat that falls off the bone, and then practically into my mouth.  I made these beautiful babies on a Sunday and could hardly wait to get to Sunday dinner!

What you'll need:

• 4 short ribs (or 2-3 per person)
• 1/4 cups corn starch
• 2 pieces of bacon, diced
• 1 T cooking oil 
• 2 carrots, diced
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 shallots, diced
• 3 cups stock
• 2 cups dry red wine
• 1 t rosemary
• salt and pepper to taste

Pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees. Pat your short ribs dry with a paper towel and season them generously with salt and pepper. Coat lightly with corn starch.

Over medium-high heat, brown your bacon pieces. Remove to a piece of paper towel.

If there's not enough bacon fat, add 1T of cooking oil to the pan and brown your short ribs. Once they are brown, remove from pan and set aside.

Chop your onion, carrots and shallots.  Then add to your pan once the short ribs are brown.

Cook vegetables until translucent, add salt and pepper to taste.

Add your wine, rosemary and your stock and bring to a simmer.

Add your ribs back to the pot.

Cover and place in the oven for 2 1/2 hours.  The meat will have pulled away from the bone once you're ready.

A lot of my liquid cooked away, but the flavors were divine! 

I mashed up a sweet potato, made a side salad and went to town.  This was a great meal!

A Whole30 Riff on Pork Saltimbocca

In Italian, saltimbocca translates to "jumps in the mouth," which could either mean flavorful, or really, really creepy.  I'm going to go with flavorful.

I was brainstorming at work today as to what to do with the pork chops I had defrosting in the fridge and I struck upon the idea of a pork chop saltimbocca.  Like so many ideas I have, the Internet was already way ahead of me.  I found a recipe from Michael Symon and then gave it my own twists to accommodate my diet and my laziness.  And it turned out to be AMAZINGLY delicious!

What you'll need:

• cling wrap
• 3 pork chops
• 3 slices of Prosciutto
• approximately 1 tsp. dried sage divided among the pork chops (or 1 fresh sage leaf per chop)
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 T grapeseed oil (or cooking oil of your choice)
• 4 cups arugula, divided
• lemon slices for garnish

Dry the pork chops with a paper towel, then place on a piece of cling wrap.  Season the top of the chops with salt, pepper and sage.

 Then cover each chop with a piece of prosciutto.

Top the bunch with another piece of cling wrap and pound flat with your favorite utensil.  Me?  I used a rolling pin, because I don't have one of those fancy hammers. It works for me, especially on days when I need to relieve a little tension!

Preheat your pan to medium high, add your oil and your pork chops, prosciutto side down.  Season the other side with salt and pepper once it's in the pan.

Cook each side for about 3-4 minutes, and then removed the chops to a paper towel lined plate.

Add half your arugula to the hot pan and wilt (about 30 seconds).  Toss the wilted arugula with the raw arugula.

  Garnish with sliced lemon and enjoy!

Whole30 Reflections and Non-Scale Victories

I got my labs back this week from the end of my Whole30 and I am happy to report that they look great!

• My triglycerides are down 152 points from my labs in March (not a typo)!
• My overall cholesterol is down 38 points!
• My HDL went down a little, so I need to make sure I'm sticking with the healthy fats and get it back up.
• My LDL is exactly the same, still a little high, but I'm going to keep working on it.
• Also, I feel like my hair has been growing faster.  Could that be?  I'm not sure. 

These factors, along with a weight loss of about 14 pounds, I would call my Whole30 a success.  I don't know that I ever got the "tiger blood" feeling that others talk about. I still don't bound out of bed every morning to greet the day, but I never have, so 30 days is probably not enough time to change my entire personality. 

When you make a change like this to your life, it's hard not to ask for the moon.  In 30 days you want to be thinner, healthier, happier, better looking and also negotiate world peace!  

I think the lesson I came away with is that it doesn't happen that way.  Put away the scale (except for maybe once a month), and focus on how you feel.  I've learned a lot about how I use food as a coping mechanism and a social crutch.  I find it hard to plan events and socialize without food and drinks, this is still something I'm learning how to do.

I grew up in a family that feeds you out of love.  "You're sick?  What can I make you to eat?"  "You won the spelling bee?  You're getting a special dinner, young lady!"  "You're sad?  How about an ice cream?"  I'm pretty sure that's in my DNA, and it probably won't ever change, so I need to focus on offering up healthy and whole foods to my loved ones, rather than, you know, carbs and cheese mixed together in some format.  I think being aware of my tendency to use food (and cocktails) as a reward is also a big step forward for me.

Since finishing the Whole30, I've remained (mostly) faithful to the plan.  I have added back a little cheese from time to time, I've had about a glass of wine a week, out with friends and I've stopped worrying quite so much about small amounts of sugar in my sausage and bacon.  I also haven't been as strict when eating out, I don't make the chef come out and tell me exactly what's in the vinaigrette or whether they make their mayonnaise in-house. Oh, and I've had 1 Blizzard.  Frankly, it was disappointing.