Good Morning! Today is a big day for many of you. It’s the official start of this year’s contest – the individual weigh-in. <Insert dramatic music here> Congratulations on stepping up to the plate and taking charge of your health.
As you will learn in the coming weeks what has brought you to where you are is normal and actually hard-wired into our bodies. It’s the convenience of modern society that has screwed up all the goodness of it! Well, we’re going to re-write that code and revel in delicious food again. For anyone who has ever “dieted” before, FAT has become verboten. This is simply a tragedy. We will cover the ins and outs of dietary fat, but in the meantime here is a quick and easy way to reuse all those bacon drippings from Sunday breakfast! (be sure to see the “NOTES” below the recipe!)
Turkey-less Thanksgiving Throw Together (courtesy of Health-bent.com)
Ingredients
· 1 lb sausage, casing removed and crumbled (preferably Breakfast, but Italian would work nice too)
· 1 medium butternut squash or pumpkin, peeled & chopped medium
· 1/3 c fresh cranberries
· 1/4 c almond flour or crushed pork rinds
· 2 T F.O.C., melted (sausage renderings, bacon fat, olive oil, butter)
· 2 T rosemary
· 2 T sage
Method
Heat your oven to 400ºF.
In a large sauté pan, brown the sausage.
In a large oven-proof dish, add the browned sausage, squash and cranberries. In a small bowl mix together the herbs, almond flour and fat. Sprinkle on top of the squash/sausage mixture.
Place tin foil over the top and roast until the cranberries have burst and the squash is tender, about 30-40 minutes.
Remove the foil from the dish and broil the top if you’d like it a bit crunchy.
NOTES: Miss Stacey and I make “throw together's” almost every week. They are awesome and delicious. Not to mention super crazy easy. Once you’ve made one, you’ve got the idea and can make your own crazy renditions.
· Try different fats.
· Go with a mixture of ground beef and pork.
· Use sweet potatoes or various other root vegetables (No white potatoes! Those are officially banned.).
· Get crazy with your spice cabinet.
· Add other veggies that you like. Onions, mushrooms, and even kale work really well.
· Oh yeah – dietary fat (the stuff you eat) does not go straight to the thighs. Body fat is made by the body. Keep your insulin levels low and dietary fat cannot be stored. Personally, I eat 60% of my daily calories as fat, yet still have a single digit body fat percentage. Lard happens to be my favorite. We’ll have a whole class on this soon!
This will make approximately 5 servings. We go by ounces of protein. Break it up however you’d like Four to five ounces of meat for the dad, three for mom, two for kiddos, three if they’re over 13 and active. A nice 3 ounce dish leftover. Don’t worry about measuring. Just visualize, divvy up, and go. Afterwards, enjoy 4 oz red wine with a small piece of DARK (72% or higher) chocolate. And go for a short (10 – 15 mins) walk as a family.
One last thing. We will be keeping a food diary so now is a great time to get started. Any kind of notebook will suffice (I use an At-A-Glance planner). Write down everything you eat and drink. Down to the very last M&M. Yes, it’s a pain. But it’s crucial to your success. Member (and loyal sis) Bonnie logged every food and workout from 1 Jan to 26 Sep; 267 days of Food, Glorious Food!
Have a great Wednesday!
Mmmm…Bacon. ;-)
Mike.
P.S. Quote of the week: “Hey Vegetarians. If you love animals so much, why do you keep eating all of their food?” Posted on Twitter by @J_Ryan_; retweeted by @CAthletics
No comments:
Post a Comment