Paleo Thai Chicken Coconut Soup is awesome

Week 1, Day 4

First of all....

Now that that's over with....

Breakfast- still eating those peppers with a sad little egg in them. I can't believe a chicken had to die for these.

Lunch was way more interesting! The Thai Coconut Soup was super delicious. I'm at school today-- so I had to heat it up in the microwave-- and the coconut milk base didn't get weird or anything. I put a cup in the freezer to see if it would freeze/ thaw okay (since milk products sometimes get weird when frozen and thawed). I'll let you know how it goes...

Here's most of my lunch-- a big bowl of soup, spinach bread with some pepperoni and a spinach salad (not pictured). I'm hoping spinach is going to make me strong like popeye!! Spinach is such an incredible food. It can be prepared in so many ways-- in an omelette or quiche for breakfast, a salad for lunch, stir fry for dinner-- and it's like top shelf liquor in terms of healthfulness (that is a really bad simile). Spinach contains phyto-nutrients, antioxidants, and a whole alphabet of vitamins. However, spinach recently let me down when I realized it isn't quite the iron and calcium powerhouse that I thought it was-- while it does contain a significant amount of iron and calcium, it also contains oxalate which decreases calcium and iron absorption. BUMMER. Oh well- I still love you, spinach... but watch it.

Dinner tonight is a recipe from PaleOMG: Crockpot Ropa Vieja. 

http://paleomg.com/crockpot-ropa-vieja-cuban-style-rice/

I love Latin food. Really love it. I saw Ropa Vieja on the menu at my favorite restaurant (Paladar in Woodmere). However, I was totally beefed-out at the time (we had steak probably 3-4 days in a row), so I just wasn't feeling beef when I was there. I was pumped to find the paleo-ized version online!

This morning I pulled out my prepped ingredients and beef roast and threw them in the crockpot. Here's the before and after:

I'm not sure how many pounds this roast is-- it looked like 3-4. We bought a quarter grassfed cow last year, and this is one of the last roasts from ol' Bessie. I would highly recommend purchasing a portion of a cow if you're a beef-eater. It's much cheaper (I think we paid <$5 per pound for fresh, local grassfed beef, compared to $10 at the regular grocery), and it tastes great. The only challenge in finding somewhere to store a few hundred pounds of frozen cow. I have some different cuts of meat- but it's forcing me to learn and be creative--always a good thing.

This would be delicious with some plantain chips. Too bad we ate all of them on Sunday, LOL.

Next week I'm definitely going to have to be better about planning the meals. This week was a good start-- I did a lot of prep on Sunday, but I didn't really think about how MUCH we would eat at each meal--so I wasn't really prepared for the fact that we didn't have a lot of leftovers--thus I needed to make additional dishes. Next week, I'll be ready!