What We Ate Last Week

Shall I be ambitious and say that I am going to start posting twice a week? My homeschooled daughter has started classes (some at home and others at community college) and we are about to move my son into college so I really don’t have much going on. 😉

I do have some recipes I’ve been perfecting and want to get written up for you and so my plan is to post one recipe a week and one “What We Ate Last Week” post each week. I love reading those posts from others because they give me ideas when I’m in a cooking slump.

Also, have you noticed that the old paleo bloggers are not blogging anymore? There are a couple who I have followed for years and they are either posting about once every three months, not at all, or only linking to other things they’re doing, like podcasts. I know there are still lots of us out there following some version of Paleo/Keto/Carnivore and so I hope to be a consistent source of information and encouragement for you right here on my old-fashioned blog.

As always, I love feedback from you so please let me know what type of content you’d like to see more of.

Here we go with what we ate last week:

Still working on those chicken fries. I have come up with a version I really like that is slightly different than the posted version – they contain a little cream cheese. I find that the cream cheese gives them a really nice texture and flavor. Bottom line, this is a very flexible recipe – you can use different types of cheese, more eggs if you like, a little binder like almond flour or pork rind crumbs if needed.

This is the quintessential carnivore meal: steak and shrimp. The steak bring the fat (and protein, of course) and the shrimp bring added protein. That’s a little sugar free yum yum sauce on the side. I’ve been testing store bought keto-friendly sauces so look for that review coming soon.

BBQ chicken carnivore pizza. Yes, we can have variety on a carnivore diet. The crust here is made from cheese, pork rind crumbs, eggs and butter. I made a quick sugar free BBQ sauce, then topped with roasted chicken, bell peppers (on my husband’s half), bacon and pickled jalapeños. I would have added pineapple for him too, but we didn’t have any.

I bought a giant slab of pork belly at Costco (it was surprisingly cheap considering how expensive this is at restaurants) and have been trying to figure out ways to cook it. I’ve seen people simply pop it into the air fryer, but I didn’t like those results. This is an attempt at a sweet and savory version, which was very good, but not quite good enough to share.

Cheeseburger meatballs made in the air fryer. These are just basic cheeseburger ingredients: ground beef, shredded cheddar, an egg, a little almond flour and some bacon crumbles, but put them in a different format (meatballs rather than patties) and it tricks the brain into thinking it’s not just another regular burger night.

And lastly this week, a fried fish experiment. I was researching how to make crispy, keto fish and was led to believe that you just can’t get it crispy in the air fryer because the fish is so moist itself. So I coated my fish in beaten egg and then a pork rind crumb crust and deep-fried half in a pot on the stove and air fried the rest. The result: the “real fried” fish was good, but tasted a little oily and did not keep its crispiness. The air fryer version was way easier, less messy and tasted even better. It was not super crispy, either but it was still very tasty. I used cod, so perhaps a dryer fish would yield more crispy results?

If you are good at counting to seven, you will notice that I have only included six dinners here and that is because my husband and I have a date night once a week where we go out to dinner. Sometimes we go someplace a little fancier and in those instances, I usually eat carnivore – steak and shrimp mostly. But the vast majority of the time, we go to quick and easy places and I just splurge. We have a local place that does gluten free chicken tenders and they have the yummiest fries and fried cheese curds! That’s a big splurge meal for me. I generally don’t feel amazing afterward, but I enjoy it in the moment. We eat Mexican a lot and that’s actually pretty carnivore and definitely keto. I take my own pork rinds and eat the queso and guacamole with those. Then we’ll share an order of fajitas. I try to pick out the meat, but usually end up eating some of the peppers and onions too because I just can’t resist!

That’s it for this week’s meals. Let me know if you have any questions or have content suggestions for me. Happy cooking (and eating)!