The Cook & The Coach Blog

Bacon Apple Butter

4/30/2018

One of the big things that separates a good meal from a great meal is a sauce! If you like to eat out at nice restaurants like we do, that is something that they all have in common, a fantastic sauce pairing that goes along with the main course.

It can provide a balance of flavors, it can tie a dish together, and it can provide a needed level of moisture/fat with a leaner cut of meat. After years of watching cooking shows and a little experimentation myself I've learned some basics in sauce making and how to combine flavors. If you are novice learning some basic skills in this world will certainly help.

Here is a link to an article talking about the 5 French Mother Sauces. Might sound a little fancy but most sauces that exist in the world are a spinoff of these base sauces. From this you can play with flavors that pair with your main dish. Another thing I would recommend is a book that I pull out on occasion, The Flavor Bible.

This book is fantastic in that it allows you to look up a food, say pork, then it gives you a list of other foods, veggies, and spices that pair well with it. So combine that with the basics of how to make a sauce and you are pretty much set!

The cool thing about The Flavor Bible is that it highlights the ingredients that work best. For this Bacon Apple Butter, I knew we were making pork so take a look at pairings above...

Apples; in ALL CAPS means it is great
Bacon; highligthed
Butter; also highlighted
Cinnamon; also highlighted
Lemon; ALL CAPS
Onions; can't see it here but ALL CAPS

You could call me a good cook/chef but I'm just a rule follower! Pick things that pair well together and it is a lot harder to screw up flavors.

Ingredients

4 strips thick cut bacon, chopped
1/2 yellow onion, diced
1 apple, skinned and diced
1 cup applesauce
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp cinnamon
Juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup water
Salt and pepper

Directions

Add the bacon to a medium saucepan, and render out the fat.
Remove bacon bits and most of the bacon grease, leaving behind about 1 tbsp.
Add onion and apple and cook for 6-8 minutes until onion is softened. Add the remaining ingredients, including 1/2 the bacon bits, cover and simmer on low for 15 minutes or up to 45 minutes.
Use the remaining bacon bits as a garnish on top of your finished dish.

Curry Meatloaf with Cilantro Yogurt Sauce

2/5/2018

East Meets West...

All the comfort of my grandma's homemade meatloaf combined with all of the flavor you would get from some of the best Indian curry dishes that I've had. Sounds about perfect, right???

This dish is pretty straightforward to make, nothing fancy, unless you want to make your own curry powder. If you do make your own curry powder with fresh roasted spices, please let me know how you do it or let me know where I can buy it. Even without your own curry powder this is one of those dishes that you can make and impress the heck out of some friends or family.

Don't take my word for it though. If you like meatloaf but love some ethnic food, this is a great combo. Pair it with one of your favorite veggies. We did some roasted asparagus but anything will work. Can't wait for you to try. After you do, we would for you to come back and let us know what you thought.

Ingredients

Meatloaf Ingredients

1 1/4 pounds of ground turkey
1 medium onion, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
1 celery stalk, diced
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 cup mashed sweet potatoes
3 tbsp curry powder
2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
2 eggs, beaten

Yogurt Sauce

1/2 cup plain greek yogurt
Juice of one lime, roughly 2 tbsp
Juice of 1/2 lemon, roughly 2 tbsp
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
Pinch of salt

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In a skillet add your coconut oil and sautee the onion, carrot and celery for roughly 10 minutes until softened and mostly cooked through.
In a mixing bowl add the remaining meatloaf ingredients and mix thoroughly before adding the cooked veggies.
Stir to combine well.
Spay an 8" x. 8" baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Transfer meatloaf mixture to the baking dish and spread out to an even thickness.
Bake for 30-40 minutes or until the meatloaf begins to pull away from the edges and is cooked through.
While the meatloaf is cooking, you can add all of the yogurt ingredients to a small dish and stir to combine.
The meatloaf should make 6 decent size portions once cooked. Serve each piece with a tbsp or 2 of the yogurt sauce and garnish with some fresh cilantro.

Roasted Brussel Sprouts

1/16/2018

I know some people that begin to drive heave if they are threatened to eat a brussel sprout. A couple are in my immediate family. Growing up my mom on occasion would make them but they were usually either steam or boiled with some butter on them. Although I could probably stomach that now, at the time it was one of the most disgusting flavors. The smell was similar to what a Band-Aid smells like and I could only imagine what they taste like.

Had my mom prepared sprouts this way, I'm guessing there would have been a 50/50 chance that I would have actually eaten them. I mean they are still green and green food in our house was immediately met with rejection, unless it was Jello. That stuff was delicious! Just don't ruin it by putting fruit in it!

The process of roasting brussels is pretty straightforward. One key is making sure you start with fresh brussels not the frozen version. If you get the frozen ones, they will be more apt to just steam and bring you and I back to that Band-Aid flavor and smell. So start fresh! Then all you need to do is trim a little bit of the chewy stem off of them if there is some. We like to half or quarter ours from there depending on the size. You could roast them whole but they would take a LONG time so that's not advised. Once you halve them, spread them out evenly on a baking sheet. Drizzle with roughly 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil per pound of brussels. Season generously with salt and I like a little pepper also but not always.

Once seasoned, put them the oven that was preheated to 425. Depending on the size they should take anywhere from 20-30 minutes and I like to stir them half way through. What you are looking for is for them to start turning slightly brown if not black. In the cooking world that's called carmelization! Do it! They aren't burnt, they are perfect that way. It will bring out some of the natural sugars that are in a plant that is inherently bitter and if prepared poorly can taste like Band-Aids!

Try it this, I bet you will like brussels for the first time! Or at worst you won't hate them.

Want to take this next week off from planning your own Healthy Meals? Let us do the work for you! Follow the link below and we will give you are 5 Day Meal Guide for free!

Creamy Butternut Squash Soup with Sausage with Maple Crema

11/8/2017

Simple. Delicious. Sweet. Spicy. Hearty.

If you've made soup before you've probably tried version of this soup. I see it on menus all the time especially this time of year. I've made it a handful of times and this version is by far my favorite. Call me a sucker for some good sausage. Or maybe just the simplicity and letting the fresh veggies and quality stock.

This recipe only has a few ingredients but it is built on a solid chicken stock. We have our recipe over here on how you can make your own. I think some of the keys to a good stock is getting a good pressure cooker, because who has time to cook stock for 48 hours. Also chicken feet! Yup I said it, chicken feet. The collagen from all the connective tissue in chicken feet add a richness that nearly impossible to get any other way. Just try and thank me later. You can find chicken feet at most groceries. I've seen them at every Asian market that I've ever been to also.

To make this soup even better and because we like pretty pictures, we added a maple crema. Sound fancy but it basically is just a dairy product mixed with something else that is liquid. Calling it that is just my inner chef coming out. Or maybe it is from watching too many episodes of Top Chef! Either way it is delicious and makes this dish well rounded. Sweet from the apple and maple, slightly smokey from the sausage, and a hint of spice from the cayenne. So good!

We would love to hear from you if and when you try this and what you think.

Ingredients

Soup Ingredients

1/2 pound pork sausage
1 small onion, diced
Medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cubed
2 apples, seeded and chopped
6 cups of chicken broth or enough to cover soup ingredients
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper
Dash of cayenne pepper (optional)

Maple Crema Ingredients

3 tbsp greek yogurt
1 tbsp almond milk
2 tbsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

In a large dutch oven add your sausage and cook over medium heat. Cook for 8-10 minutes or until cooked through and a lot of the fat has rendered out.
Remove the sausage from pot, add the onion and cook until transucent, roughly 6-8 minutes.
Add the remaining ingredients other than the cayenne pepper to the pot and bring to boil. Once it is boiling reduce heat to medium and simmer for 25 minutes.
While the soup is simmering, mix the Maple Crema ingredients in a small bowl and whisk to combine.
Remove the bay leaf and cinnamon stick. Transfer the soup to a blender and blend to remove all chunks from the soup. Make sure you remove the top plastic piece of your blender when you are blending hot items to ensure you don't have an explosion of soup. Our Vitamix is naturally vented.
If you are eating right away go ahead and pour directly into bowls. If not go ahead and return to the pot and simmer as long as needed, stirring occasionally.
Add 1/4 cup of sausage to each bowl then drizzle with Maple Crema and if you like a little spice add a dash of cayenne pepper.

Pumpkin Spice Protein Pancakes

11/1/2017

It wouldn't be fall if we didn't throw a pumpkin recipe at you. Since we love pancakes here you go! We've been making a variation of these pancakes for the longest time. However the texture on those other ones just wasn't quite where I would like it when it comes to a pancake. So just a couple little tweaks and we have this new one which I think will be our go to pancake recipe for a quite some time.

If you are wondering what the hell the broccoli is doing in the picture, I thought this was a pancake recipe, you aren't the first one to think that is a weird combo. This combo is a great a solution for a number of people that we work with on a regular basis. Two staples that people usually fall short of on a daily basis is protein and veggies. Why not start your day with a healthy dose of both?

Why are protein and veggies important? Particularly for people trying to lose weight these two things will likely be your biggest help in seeing measurable progress in a short period of time. By getting adequate protein, 20-40 grams, per meal you will fill yourself with bulk but with lower calories. Same goes for the veggies, due the high fiber in veggies you are adding bulk without adding calories. It's because of this that you are able to eat to the point of being full all while staying in a calorie deficit.

If you are curious how much protein and fiber you should specifically be eating head over to our Calorie Calculator page and submit some information and I will get you a customized plan to let you how much of each you should be eating. This will be based on your size, activity level, and your goals.

Otherwise enjoy the heck out of these pancakes, we sure did!

Macronutrient Information

Calories: 95
Protein: 10.9 g
Fat: 4.4 g
Carbs: 3.5 g
Sugars: 0.9 g
Fiber: 1.6 g

Ingredients

1/2 can of pumpkin pie filling, roughly 3/4 of a cup plus a little bit
3 eggs
3/4 cup of unflavored whey isolate protein powder
1 tsp vanilla extract (omit if using a vanilla protein powder)
3/4 cup of unsweetened almond milk
1/4 cup ground flax seed
1/4 cup almond flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
Dash of ground clove
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp of salt

Directions

Add the wet ingredients, pumpkin, eggs, almond milk, vanilla to a bowl or blender and mix to combine. We like to use our Vitamix to mix these in.
Add the dry ingredients and mix until combined. I've found different flax and almond meals tend to absorb liquid at different rates. You may need to a little more water or almond milk to an appropriate consistency. What you are looking for is something that easily pours and spreads out on a griddle.
Heat a griddle to medium heat or 300 degrees if you have an electric one like us. Spray with a nonstick spary, we use a coconut oil variety.
Pour batter onto griddle making about 4" pancakes. With this recipe you should get about 10 pancakes out of 1 batch.
Enjoy!

Parmesan Turkey Meatballs

9/19/2017

One of Laura's favorite things on the planet is a good meatball! One of my favorite things on the planet is some good pasta! Being gluten free now for almost 3 years I don't nearly get good pasta all that often. One item that didn't make the cut on things to bring in our RV was my pasta roller and cutter! So we have to stick to store bought GF pasta which isn't always the best. W'eve had pretty good luck lately with the Barilla GF pasta. It's a corn based pasta which obviously isn't health food but every once in a while we are all for having a good pasta meal.

I know you didn't come here to learn about GF pastas, so let's about this meatball!! One challenge with meatballs is they traditionally have breadcrumbs in them which unless they are made from GF bread is off limits in our house. Some things that I've used as that binder substitute in other recipes are sweet potatoes, quiona, ground up GF crackers. With this recipe I opted to skip the binder. It did make the meatballs a little stickier when rolling them into balls but is was manageable and still made a good meatball, texture-wise. If you want to alleviate that stick meat batter, go ahead and add a 1/2 cup of bread crumb or any other binder to the mixture.

We also like to find any opportunity to sneak greens into our food. Feel free to follow suit and add some like we did or leave them out. If it would have just been Laura and I eating these we would have likely added more. We were able to sneak these in and Eli still enjoyed the meatballs which is a big bonus.

We paired this meal up with our basic marinara sauce that you can find here, just leave out the ground beef since you are doing the meatball.

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 onion, diced
2 handfuls of spinach
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 1/4 lb ground turkey
1 egg
1/2 c shredded parmesan
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
Fresh parsley
Salt and pepper

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Saute onions and garlic in a pan along with the olive oil. After a few minutes and the onions start to turn translucent, add your greens and continue to cook until those are thoroughly wilted and the onion is cooked through.
In a separate bowl add remaining ingredients, minus the fresh parsley and mix thoroughly. Add the sauteed veggies and mix those in too.
Once you have that mixed together, roll into 1 inch balls or maybe slightly larger. Place on a baking sheet.
Bake for 15 minutes. Enjoy on their own or with some delicious pasta and marinara sauce. Top with some fresh parsley and grated Parmesan for added boost of flavor!

Deconstructed Egg Roll

7/30/2017

One food that I have yet to find since going gluten free is a fried egg roll...they just don't exist out in restaurants and we didn't opt for the RV with the deep fat fryer. We've had a number of our challengers post in our accountability groups about creating different versions of this dish. I finally got around to make some myself and have to say it hit the spot.

We were a little spoiled too, since the two days before this my aunt picked most of the veggies that went in this dish straight out of her garden. Fresh cabbage, fresh carrots, and fresh onions!!! The only thing we added to the dish was some red pepper, garlic and the pork. Oh and a few spices and some asian sauces!

Ingredients

1 pound pork sausage
1 small onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
3 large carrots, sliced
3 tbsp minced garlic, roughly 3 cloves
4 green onions, sliced
1 small head of cabbage, grated or sliced, roughly 5 cups
1 inch of ginger, minced or 2 drops of ginger essential oil
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1/4 cup tamari, coconut aminos or low sodium soy sauce
2 tbsp coconut nectar or brown sugar (optional)
1 tbsp siracha (optional)

Directions

In a large skillet or dutch oven add the sausage and cook over medium heat until cooked through.
Remove sausage from the pan leaving the drippings behind. Add the carrot, bell pepper, ginger, and onion and cook for 8 minutes until carrots begin to soften and onion is translucent.
Add garlic, cook for 2 more minutes.
Add the cabbage along with all the other ingredients, cook over medium heat for 5 minutes stirring frequently.
Cover, and reduce heat to medium low and simmer for 15 minutes stirring once or twice.
Serve and eat as is if you are wanting a low carb meal or you can serve over the top of some prepared rice. Garnish with a little cilantro and enjoy!

Simple Homemade Pizza Sauce

6/28/2017

Pizza... everybody loves it! Even those of us that are living a healthier life love to indulge in it. It's actually one reason why I bought the domain, www.healthierpizza.com. Don't try heading over there yet, at this point it is just an idea in my head. The idea came to me because a healthy life shouldn't be one that is absent of pizza.

Upgrading some of the ingredients is the place to start. We have other posts on upgrading the crusts with whole wheat flour or using cauliflower. We have a fun recipe where we eliminate dairy and add some extra veggies with this Thai pizza. We even love the pizza so much we incorporated the flavors into this lentil dish.

With all of these, I had yet to create a delicious and healthier option for one of the most basic components, a good red sauce. Last night while Laura was away, Eli and I decided to make some pizzas. We tried out a new premade gluten free crust from Mikey's. The crust is made from paleo friendly ingredients and was pretty tasty! We topped that with a homemade red sauce that took 2 minutes to mix up then just a little time to simmer on the stove.

Check it out and let us know what you think. If you end up tweaking it feel free to comment below with what you did. This is one thing I'm always playing around with and improving.

Ingredients

1 Can of Organic Tomato Sauce
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dry basil
2 tsp dry oregano
1/2 tsp fennel seed
Salt and Pepper

Directions

Add all the ingredients to a small sauce pan and simmer covered for a minimum of 10 minutes, up to an hour for more flavor.

What Weighs More... 1 LB of Broccoli or 1 LB of Nachos?

3/15/2017

If you've followed us for a while you know we aren't big fans of counting calories. It's not that we don't think they matter because they do 100% when it comes to weight loss. The thing that people get confused about though is just doing straight up math with calories in versus calories out and if those numbers tip a certain direction your weight will also change. Your metabolism is a bit more complicated than what your fitbit tells you that you burned during your exercise session that day and what My Fitness Pal tells you that you consumed.

What's our approach then to help people lose weight! It comes down to nutrient density and calorie density. Our bodies are pretty intelligent and for most people they know when to stop eating in order to maintain our weight. The thing that happens when people eat processed foods, the triggers that tell us to stop eating don't get tripped. The other way that these triggers don't go off is when we consume food at a fast pace!

So our approach is to consume high quality, whole foods at a slow pace and stop when you are close to being full and you will likely lose weight. If you are trying to maintain, then you eat to being full. Yeah there is certainly some nuance that can come into play around macronutrients and timing but for the most part this strategy works.

This is where the question of, what weighs more... a pound of broccoli or a pound of nachos? Let's breakdown this comparison:

Nutrition Facts - Broccoli
Serving Size: 1 Pound
Calories: 150
Fat: 1.5 g
Sodium: 147 mg
Potassium: 1404 mg
Carbohydrate: 30 g
Fiber: 11.4 g
Protein: 12.6 g

Nutrition Facts - Beef Nachos
Serving Size: 1 Pound
Calories: 861
Fat: 44.1 g
Sodium: 710 mg
Potassium: 439 mg
Carbohydrate: 76 g
Fiber: 8 g
Protein: 47 g

I took the challenge myself of eating both a pound of nachos and pound of broccoli in one sitting. Let's just say it was an interesting experience. Overall both "meals" filled me up equally and the rate at which I ate definitely slowed down towards the end of both.

I mentioned it was an interesting experience... what that means is I actually became physically ill by consuming one whole pound of broccoli. My stomach and GI tract just couldn't handle processing that amount of broccoli. The nachos, no problem... I was eating again in a few hours. Why this happened I don't know the exact answer. Fiber content maybe, but I've consumed 11 grams of fiber in one sitting before this. Vitamin or mineral overdose, possible but not probable. If you have an answer let me know, I'm curious.

To put things in perspective a bit on whether or not this is a lot of food. The average American eats between 3 and 5 pounds of food per day, we will call it 4 on average. So, a one pound meal probably isn't that unusual. To break things down a bit further, the average American consumes around 2,700 calories per day. So doing a little math the average pound of food that an American consumes is around 675 calories (2,700 calories divided by 4 pounds of food). Based on the nutrition facts, you can see that broccoli falls WELL below that average and the nachos a fair amount above that number. Can you see how eating whole foods and especially non starchy veggies can help a person consume fewer calories?

The reason a lot of diets fail I believe is because our body is naturally satiated by a certain poundage of food. If all you are doing is eating smaller portions of your current foods your body is going to crave more food to fill itself up. I wrote up a whole other post on this topic, Are You Smoking Shorter Cigarettes to Get Healthy? If you aren't filling your body with a certain poundage of food you either need to resort to some incredible willpower or you will likely binge a time or two.

If your goal is weight loss and you don't want to micromanage every gram of food that goes into your body here's what we would recommend:

Fill half your plate with nutrient dense, non-starchy vegetables at each meal
Eat a palm size portion of protein with each meal
The remainder of your plate can either be a starch like potatoes or rice or it can be a fat like avocado or cheese
Sit at a table and slow down when you eat and don't forget to chew your food
Stop eating when you feel that first sign of being full
DO NOT eat a pound of broccoli by itself!

If our approach to losing weight seems like something you would like to try, we are constantly running online support groups where we teach people about how they can have a healthy relationship with food and use it to support your weight loss and not as the enemy.

I'm interested in your next Support Group

Gluten Free Turkey Meatloaf with Savory Mushroom Sauce

1/13/2017

Meatloaf... it was a staple in our house growing up! My mom would always make it with beef and slather on the ketchup sauce on top. It was actually quite tasty, except for the onions. I despised onions when I was a kid. Not the flavor as much as the crunch that you would occasionally get from one that wasn't cooked enough.

Times have changed quite a bit! The breadcrumbs that you would normally add to meatloaf would now make me breakout in a rash. The high fructose corn syrup in the ketchup, yeah... we are just going to avoid that if we can. That's the backstory on how this recipe got created.

I suppose with mushroom sauce this maybe is closer to the salsibury steak that we would occasionally have in our tv dinners. No matter what you call it, I hope you call it delicious! We certainly enjoyed it!

Ingredients

Meatloaf

2 1/2 lbs of ground turkey
1 large yellow onion, diced
1 tbsp grassfed butter
1 cup of mashed sweet potato
3 eggs
2 tbsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp dried oregano
Salt and pepper to taste

Savory Mushroom Sauce

3 cups sliced bella mushrooms
2 tbsp grassfed butter
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp tapioca starch
2 tbsp sherry wine
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1/2 -1 cup water or broth
1 tsp galic powder
2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp red chili flakes (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Meatloaf

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In a skillet saute the onions in butter and season with salt and pepper. Cook until it they become slightly caramelized.
In a large bowl combine the other ingredients along with the cooked onion. Make sure to not throw your hot onions on top of raw eggs otherwise you end up with scrambled eggs. Either mix the eggs or onion into the meat first.
Once everything is thoroughly mixed transfer to a large baking dish or loaf pan. We used a 6" x 9" baking dish and it fit right up to the top!
Bake for one hour or until the inner temp gets to 170 in the center of the meatloaf. The ends cook faster.
Remove from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes.

Savory Mushroom Sauce

In the same skillet you cooked the onions, add butter, oil and mushrooms and cook over medium heat until the mushrooms have reduced in size and started giving off some liquid.
Add the sherry wine and cook for 2 minutes.
Add the tapioca starch and stir until the starch dissolves into the liquid in the pan. Add 1/2 cup of water or broth and stir until well incorporated. You should have a gravy-like texture at this point.
Add in the remaining seasonings and stir occasionally.
The sauce will take 15 minutes or so to make. You can start cooking it when your meatloaf has a few minutes left to cook. Feel free to add more water to the sauce if the texture starts getting too thick. The longer you cook it the thicker it will get.
Once your meatloaf has rested, cut and serve with a spoonful of the sauce over the top. We enjoyed it with some grilled asparagus and side salad! Hope you enjoy and let us know if you try it.

About Us

Dan and Laura Suedbeck have embraced an entrepreneurial lifestyle. They are constantly challenging the status quo and challenge others to do so too. They believe that you don't always have to change your situation, sometimes you just need to change the lens you view the world through. Their focus is helping people find purpose and passion with their lives all while getting healthy. Click here to find out more about them.

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