A Place of Brightness: recipe

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The Versatility of the Paleo Diet

I was raised in Wisconsin on what was basically a traditional farmers' diet. (My parents came from farming stock, both in our Norwegian homeland and here in America.) And that meant that you needed four things to appear in the meal.

That was always:

1) Meat (Paleo awesome)
2) A Starch (Paleo forbidden)
3) A Vegetable (Paleo probable, depending)
4) A Desert (Paleo unacceptable)

Since turning Paleo, I've learned that dinner does not have to include so many things.

So here was dinner tonight. We went to our CrossFit Gym and had a great workout. We come home and I slice up two large onions. I get them frying in just a little olive oil. There's nothing more awesome than caramelized onions.

My wife wanted Salmon. So I get two fillets cooking for her. I want red meat, so I get a T-Bone steak broiling for me.

Fifteen minutes later, dinner goes on the plates. Here it is. And it was awesome:

Monday, November 21, 2011

Paleo French Fries!

Now, every now and then, you really have a hankering for some carbs. Paleo enthusiasts know that we can't indulge that every day, but when we do, one of the best outlets to that is something derived from the Sweet Potato. The Sweet Potato is highly nutritious, has been consumed by our ancestors for a long time, and has just a little less carbs in it than a white potato.

I don't splurge and eat Sweet Potato every day. For the last week all our meals have been meat and vegetables. But tonight, it was time.

Here's what you do. Skin one Sweet Potato. I sliced it into fries of about one centimeter by five centimeters. I fried them in canola oil with a tablespoon of chicken grease I collected off an organic chicken we cooked on Sunday.

After they were deeply browned and even starting to blacken a bit, I took them out of the oil and dried them on a paper towel.

Here they are. They were gloriously good:

Now, I will be eating some organic stuffing alongside my turkey on Thursday. I'll have to be strict for a few weeks after that. But the great thing about the Paleo Diet is that I know exactly how to go about that. Just don't eat carbs.

In Saecula Saeculorum, the 4th Novel in the Valquist Series

In this fourth novel of the Valquist Series, Andrew Valquist is retired (?) from the National Security Agency and teaching Latin at a Classical Academy in the Washington DC area. But in the world of espionage, looks can be deceiving. He's not necessarily happy with the role he has played in all this, but the school was actually a joint NSA/MI-6 Project in which four young people have been unwittingly prepared for a mission to travel back in time to ancient Rome to retrieve information from a library that may save the modern world from certain destruction. They know they have to at least try to save humanity, but can they also save each other?

Next Stop: Spanish, the 3rd Novel in the Valquist Series

This third novel in the Valquist Series can be read as an espionage action-adventure in its own right, but also you can use it as a way to either brush up on your Spanish or learn functional Spanish for the first time! John Valquist needs to learn Spanish. But he's in luck, since his uncle Andrew is a language expert and a former (?) spy who is taking him on a vacation to Spain so he can study the language. In Next Stop: Spanish, you have the chance to see and study the words John studies, and then watch him add more and more Spanish into his dialogue as the story progresses. During this vacation, they get pulled into espionage intrigue (why do these things always happen to the Valquist family?). In the dramatic conclusion, John will need to put together everything he has learned to save his uncle!

Amor Vincit Omnia: the 2nd Novel in the Valquist Series

In this second novel of the Valquist Series, Keith Massey takes you into the halls of the National Security Agency, where he himself worked for four years after 9/11 and an Arabic linguist. You follow our hero Andrew Valquist, as he starts work as a new recruit at the NSA. Little does he know that on his first on the job, he's about to fly off on an unexpected overseas assignment. He'll be even more surprised when he learns that his background in ancient Latin will be crucial to the mission!