Tag Archives: curry

Ode to Fall (Curried Roasted Sugar Pumpkin and Sausage)

29 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by in Meat, Paleo Recipes, recipes, squash

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A Haiku:

How We Love Thee Fall

Pumpkins, Leaves, Cold Clear Crisp Days

Get In Your Kitchen!

Fall is deep upon us. Having to throw an extra blanket on the bed and donning the slippers before trying to find your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, can only mean one thing: WINTER SQUASHES ARE HERE!!!!!

Oh man, we love our squashes. We’re venturing out a little and trying our hand at new squashes this year too. We’ve already tried a Sweet Mama squash (in the Kabocha family) and are eyeing a few others too as the nights get colder and we look for those healthier comfort foods.

Below is the recipe that will not only bring tons of comfort to your belly but it’s looks pretty amazing with the deep orange pumpkin and the wilted spinach mixed in. The fun thing about this recipe is you can change it up in so many ways just using the three basic ingredients: Squash, Sausage and Spinach. Try a different squash. Try a different Sausage. Try a different leafy green. Mix up your spices and BAM BAM BAM a totally new creation!

(oh looky there it’s a one picture recipe again!)

pumpkin and italian sausage

Enjoy!

Paleo Curried Roasted Sugar Pumpkin and Italian Sausage

Ingredients:

  • 1 Sugar Pumpkin (seeded, peeled and cubed)
  • 1 lb Favorite Sausage (we used spicy Italian – remove casings)
  • 4 Cloves of Garlic (more or less depending on your taste buds)
  • 4 Cups Spinach
  • 1 Tsp Curry Paste
  • 1 Tsp Olive Oil (to lightly coat squash prior to roasting)

Preheat oven to 350F

This is seriously a super easy recipe. No seriously. Easy Peasy. It’s even easier if you don’t feel like peeling the sugar pumpkin first. You can just cut it in half, remove seeds then roast (flat half down) until fork can poke through the skin. When we cook a squash we tend to remove the outer shell first. If you cut the skin off, then cube, lightly coat with olive oil and roast until tender (about 20-30 minutes depending on oven). Halfway through the roasting process add the cloves of garlic and finish roasting.

While pumpkin is roasting, remove casings from sausage and in saute pan cook thoroughly on medium heat.

Here’s where timing gets a little tricky. We all want to eat hot foods during the colder months so the best way to do this is: Begin roasting. When you add the garlic cloves to roasting pumpkin, then start sausage.

About the time the sausage is done, so will the pumpkin. Remove sausage from saute pan but leave the delicious drippings (if you save fat for future cooking then remove half and save) otherwise dispose of half. Turn down burner to low and wilt spinach slightly in remaining sausage drippings.

In food processor add sweet pumpkin (if you roasted it in half you MUST remove the skin first), garlic, and curry paste. Pulse until mashed to your preference. Add spinach and pulse just a few times to mix.

Plate sausage in mound (did we just say mound???) and top with amazing curried pumpkin. Eat like it’s going out of style then head back to your favorite farmer’s market or store for more winter squashes because the possibilities are endless!

~ Now that’s good eatin folks!

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Paleo Coconut Curry Chicken…

02 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Chicken, Meat, Paleo Recipes, recipes, Stew, Vegetables

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Summer is coming to a close. Leaves are quickly turning those lovely deep oranges and reds that we love so much as we meander in our neighborhood trying to get the walks in that we miss so much during the winter months.

The seasons change pretty quickly around here. One day you’re planning a big barbecue, throwing the frisbee around outdoors and lathering on that suntan lotion and the next day you’re putting on your hoodie, pulling out your rainboots and thinking about when you’re going to need to make the winter tire appointment.

It also means that local foods around here change. Root veggies become the predominate staple and instead of those big old summer salads you begin to think about hearty stews that warm your insides.

This is one of those hearty stews. We found this little recipe over at Nom Nom Paleo and as usual changed things up according to what we had and what we like. The recipe below is a little larger than most recipes because when we cook we’re also thinking about lunches for the coming work week. Change amounts according to what you need but seriously it’s better to have more and cook less if you ask us!

Enjoy!

Coconut Curry Chicken Stew

Ingredients:

  • 2 1/2 pounds boneless chicken breasts (or thighs),
  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil or fat of choice
  • 2 large onion, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons Thai curry paste
  • 1 can coconut milk (full fat is preferable)
  • Lots of veggies ( we used asparagus/sugar peas/peppers)
  • Garlic, minced (we used 8 cloves)
  • Spices according to your likes (we used chili powder/paprika/salt/pepper)
  • Zucchini (optional – used for “noodles”

The players

As usual, you want to think about food handling safety while prepping so it’s better to prep veggies THEN prep chicken.

Veggies

cute bowl

*** Side Note: A friend of ours gave us some stuff to sell at an upcoming yard sale and we found this cool bowl in with the goodies. Yhea, not gonna lie, we’re totally keeping it for ourselves***

Once you’ve cut your chicken into desired size, you want to add your spices. Again, in the Martin/Dowe household we do love a little spice in our life:

  • 2 Tbsp Chili powder
  • 1 Tbsp paprika
  • A little Salt
  • A lot of pepper

Chicken...

Heat up your coconut oil (or FoC) in saucepan or wok and cook chicken thoroughly. Remove from pan and set aside…

mmmmmm chicken...

Once removed, add garlic to pan or wok and saute for a minute or two…

garlic...

Add veggies of choice and saute. Don’t over cook. Keep them crunchy!

veggies!

While veggies are in the saucepan/wok, mix coconut milk and curry paste together in separate bowl. Add sauce to veggies and return chicken to pan. Turn down the heat and let simmer…

Now if you’re adding the zucchini as a base this is where you want to make your “noodles”. We have this really handy grater:

"noodles"

You can also use mandolin and slice thin or use practice your knife skills and do it by hand. In separate saucepan heat up a little coconut oil/FoC and saute the “noodles”…BE CAREFUL and don’t over cook. These little strings of deliciousness only take a minute to heat up. After that they turn to mush…

noodles

Serve and Enjoy!

Paleo Coconut Curry Chicken

We only cooked enough “noodles” for the one meal. If you want to stretch this out a little you can add quinoa as a base (which by the way if freaking amazing with the coconut curry sauce!).

We were able to get one meal and 4 lunches out of the whole shebang!

~Now that’s good eatin’ folks!

The rare seafood feast!

29 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Paleo Recipes, recipes, Seafood, Soups, Stew

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When Meegan has to go out of town there is one stead fast rule for Tara:

EAT SEAFOOD!

(and lots of it)

Weeks before a trip you’ll find Tara planning the breakfast/lunch/dinner menu so that full advantage can be had to buying the seafood, eating the seafood and clearing out any remnants of said life from the waters.

Having stumbled upon this little beauty of a recipe over at EverydayPaleo, the possibilities are endless. A big batch is frozen in the freezer waiting for the next out of town excursion but we’ve also recreated it using chicken and for those vegetarians out there this would be a great meal any day of the week, minus the meat with lots of extra veggies.

As always we changed things up according to our tastes and what was readily available in our kitchen!

Enjoy

Paleo Caribbean Seafood Stew

Ingredients:

  • 2 lbs raw seafood (what you like is what should be in there!)
  • 1 Yellow Onion (diced)
  • 3 Zucchini (sliced)
  • 1/2 Pint Grape Tomatoes
  • 1 Can Coconut Milk (we use full fat version)
  • 1 Tbsp Cumin
  • 1 Tbsp Yellow Curry
  • 1 tsp Paprika
  • Garlic, minced (We used 5 cloves)
  • 1 Tbsp FoC (Fat of Choice; we used bacon fat)

The Players

Prepare your vegetables!

zucchini / tomatoes

Be sure to keep onions separate from tomatoes and zucchini.

In large pot on medium heat, saute diced onions in FoC until just before browned, add garlic and continue to saute for another minute or two.

Onion / Garlic goodness

Add tomatoes, zucchini and spices to your soup pot and mix well. Continue to cook on medium heat for about 2-3 minutes then add coconut milk and bring to simmer.

Veggies in curry goodness

Add seafood and cook for 5 – 10 minutes or until seafood is cooked thoroughly.

Caribbean Seafood Stew

This was served over quinoa but is pretty hearty in and of itself. For a little more of a kick you can add chili powder. Play around with the spices to find the right combination for you!

Now that’s good eatin’ folks!

Some cool changes and Paleo Thai Curry Beef…

04 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Beef, Meat, Paleo Recipes, recipes, Uncategorized, Vegetables

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We took a big leap this week and bought our domain name. Funny because we had originally wanted the domain name www(dot)TheHDD(dot)com but when we began our research we found out that we would need to purchase the name from some other company…

For $3000!!!!

(seriously, that’s just ridiculous)

We’ve had this blog for just over a year (can you believe it) and figured it was time to take our commitment one step further and drop the “wordpress” in our dot com and lucky for us thehealthydynamicduo hadn’t been bought up by some strange virtual real estate monster…

Yay for us!

In other news, we found a really cool program for eco friendly printing options over at PrintFriendly. Now when you want to print out one of our recipes you can just hit the “Eco friendly print” button on the bottom and it will take you to another page where you have the option to print without pictures! You can also delete any text you deem unnecessary (we can get a bit wordy) and change the text size so its easier to read.

Yay for you!

You can test out Eco Friendly Print option with this recipe cause look at all the extra stuff you can delete just for the heck of it! Now let’s get on to the recipe portion of this blog post shall we?

We love Thai food.

Give us a plate of pad Thai and a large helping of panang curry and we feel like nothing can go wrong with the world. The heat of the spices warming out mouths while the noodle-y goodness fills our bellies.

As Paleo eaters we enjoy the occasional “splurge” on foods we love but we know all too often if we’re not careful one splurge turns into two, turns into “can you please shove this entire chocolate cake in my mouth”…It doesn’t happen to everyone but for us we know it can happen pretty easily.

To combat the urge to eat out in search of those splurge meals we try to recreate them at home. We know it may not be exactly what we get when we sit down at a restaurant but we also know our meal won’t come with processed foods, extra salt and ingredients we have a hard time pronouncing.

We found the original Thai Curry Beef recipe over at Paleo Parents and as usual changed a few ingredients according to our tastes (and what we had in the fridge).

Enjoy!

Paleo Thai Curry Beef

Ingredients:

  • 2 lbs Beef (we used flank steak cut into thin strips)
  • 1 Onion (peeled and chopped)
  • Carrots (2 -3 large or small organic bunch from local farm – peeled and chopped)
  • 1 Leek (cleaned and chopped)
  • 1 Head of Chinese Cabbage (washed and chopped)
  • Garlic (we used 7 cloves)
  • 1/2 C Coconut Milk
  • 1 Tbsp Curry Paste (red or yellow)
  • 1 Tbsp wheat free soy sauce ( or coconut aminos)
  • 1 Tbsp Fish Sauce
  • 1 Tbsp FoC (Fat of Choice)

The Players

The Sauces

In wok or frying pan on med/high add FoC. Add beef and brown on all sides. Remove beef and set aside.

Beef

In same heated wok/frying pan add onions/carrots/leek and cook until tender.

Onion Carrots and Leek

Return beef to wok/frying pan. Add curry paste and stir to coat meat/vegetables. Add coconut milk and mix thoroughly. Add wheat free soy sauce (or coconut aminos) and fish sauce, stir and reduce heat to simmer.

beef and veggies

Simmer for about 20 minutes.

Serve on bed of Chinese Cabbage

Paleo Thai Curry Beef

~ Now that’s good eatin’ folks!

Coconut Oil Winner and Paleo Garlic “Cous Cous” with Shrimp…

09 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in Paleo Recipes, recipes, Seafood, Vegetables

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One of the advantages to following a relatively new blog, is that when there is a rare giveaway and you are a regular reader (or at least a sometimes checker outer) your chances of winning are pretty good.

We’ve entered giveaways that have had upwards of 500 – 1500 entries and after all the hoops jumped, pages likes and tweets tweeted we crossed our fingers in hopes of being winners (but really every day that we wake up and take care of our bodies to the best of our abilities already makes us winner – Okay that was cheesy but you get the point).

Let’s not beat around the kitchen stove:

The winning entry belonged to Sarah over at Thinfluenced. She’s on a journey that has many paths. Tara has a special *fist bump* for her because Sarah is currently training for a 100 mile bike ride with Team in Training in honor of her son Cole and if you’ve followed Tara’s journey you know TnT was how she completed her first half marathon (in honor of her Grammy) back in  November of 2010. Here’s a link to Sarah’s donation page: GO TEAM!

Here’s a little secret about the Duo that is Healthy and Dynamic: One of us loves seafood (pretty much if it swims in the water it’s prime eatins) and the other one has no love for the food from the sea…It gets a good laugh seeing how we’re both from an ocean state/province and seafood is of the abundance. Eating paleo and not having seafood/fish in the Martin/Dowe makes for an interesting scenario. You can’t switch things up by grilling a salmon or throwing some shrimp on the barbie.

Unless one of us is out of town!

A few weeks ago Meegan (loves seafood) was out of town and Tara (lurrrrrrrves seafood) took full advantage of having the kitchen all to herself by making up a big batch of curried “cous cous” with shrimp! The original recipe was found over at Arizona Caveman. The paleo friendly cous cous is actually riced cauliflower and we’ve used it in many different recipes and find it to be quite delicious. It’s a great substitute when cutting out rice and other grains. It’s easier than you think and can be done with both a food processor or a blender…

Enjoy

Garlic Curry Shrimp with Paleo “Cous Cous”

Ingredients:

  • Shrimp – 12 Large or 24 medium. Thawed, peeled and deveined.
  • 1 Medium Head of Cauliflower.
  • 2 Medium Peppers (remember color is everything) chopped.
  • 8 Cloves of Garlic minced.
  • 4-5 Mushrooms chopped.
  • 1/2 C Veggie Broth
  • 6 Tbsp Coconut oil of Fat of Choice.
  • 4 tsp Curry Powder or Curry Paste
  • Salt / Pepper to taste

(extra items: small baking dish / aluminum foil / food processor or blender)

Preheat oven to 350F.

THE SHRIMP!

In medium saucepan, use 2 Tbsp of FoC and cook 4 cloves of minced garlic for about a minute. Add 2 tsp of curry powder, salt and pepper and stir until mixed well (should have nice curry color and it should smell amazing!). Add shrimp and cook another minute making sure to coat the shrimp on both sides.

Put shrimp in small baking dish (or casserole dish). The trick is to make sure they aren’t on top of each other but also tightly packed in single layer. Top off with additional Tbsp of FoC and cover with aluminum foil. Bake in oven for 20 minutes at 350F.

THE COUS COUS

Cut cauliflower into small florets and place in food processor or blender (if using a blender don’t try to rice entire cauliflower at once, instead do a few handfuls at a time and empty out blender in between).

Pulse cauliflower until it looks like a rice consistency.

In same sauce pan as before heat the rest of FoC and cook remaining garlic for about a minute, add peppers and mushrooms and saute for a few minutes. Add rest of curry powder and continue to saute until peppers are tender.

Add riced cauliflower and mix evenly. Add half of the veggie broth and simmer for about 5 minutes. Give it a little taste test. If it tastes as if all the curry is mixed well then let it simmer for an additional 3-4 minutes and call it good. If not, add a little more bother until desired consistency is achieved. I only used the 1/4 cup then just a splash more to help cook the cauliflower to perfection.

Remove Shrimp from oven and serve over paleo cous cous.

~Now that’s good eatin’ folks!