Black and Blue Burger

1.5 pounds grass fed ground beef

1 t fresh ground black pepper
2 t granulated onion
1/4 t cayenne
1 t granulated garlic
1/2 t paprika
1/2 t rubbed thyme or 1 t fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Combine ingredients in a bowl, adjusting seasonings to taste.  Mix together, but if you're like me and enjoy a little streak of flavor, leave it slightly undermixed and season in the skillet with additional salt and ground pepper.  Form patties and fry over medium to medium high (depending on thickness) until juices run pink/clear.

Top with blue cheese the last 1-2 minutes of cooking and then a strip of bacon or crumbles.  You can even press the cheese into the middle and/or the bacon, but I like the presentation.  A dry red wine is also a nice complement and a delicious way to get your polyphenols!

How German Potato Salad will make you healthier and thinner

When I read about potatoes as a beneficial food, I was all ears.  As a staple of every holiday meal,  they fit most people's description of comfort food, and, well, BACON!  They fit in the Paleo gray area, but for all but a few of my athletes, I encourage most to work them back in about weekly once they've weeded out the useless processed carbs.  One of the biggest reasons being something called resistant starch

Chris Kresser has an excellent article on the finer points of why this is a fantastic thing to have in your diet, helps us with insulin sensitivity and why having the right gut flora help you maintain a healthy weight, but the gist of it comes down to foods like cooked,  cooled potatoes have the ability to provide food to some very important gut flora.  Lots of fiber provide food for these happy little bacteria to eat,  but not all can make it the distance that resistant starch can.  For example according to the Sonnenburgs from their book The Good Gut , sugar and processed foods (which act like sugars) barely make it further than the large intestine, leaving the bacteria we want and need for our health to snack on our intestinal mucosal layer or die.  Here is where resistant starch comes in... in the cooked and cooled potatoes of a potato salad.   My German potato salad is more often cooled and slightly reheated so it suits this nutritional lesson perfectly.  It also contains onions, a great source of inulin... another food for our microbial friends, plus a dab of pectin from the unpasteurized cider vinegar and you have a feast for both tongue and tummy!

German Potato Salad

6 c cubed unpeeled potatoes
1/2 lb bacon
1 medium onion, chopped
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1/3 c unpasteurized cider vinegar
1/4 c water  (from the cooked potatoes)
3 T cane sugar
3 T chopped parsley

Boil the cubed potatoes in cold lightly salted water until tender.  Meanwhile, fry the bacon until crisp, crumble the bacon, and reserve the drippings.  Fry the onions until tender and lightly browned.  Add salt, pepper, vinegar, and water and set asside.

Drain the cooked potatoes,  add the crumbled bacon, and the vinegar mixture.

If you're like me, this is a favorite take-along for potlucks.  So refrigerate overnight and bring up to temp in your crockpot and top with parsley before serving.

Why REAL chicken soup is for sick days

Ah, a warm steamy broth, fragrant with aromatic flavors and herbs can be music to even the tenderest of tummies not to mention the stuffiest of heads.  Even before formalized hospitals broths were used as the first foods to welcome weary patients back to the conscious world.  Not to mention in modern hospitals, patients will still be offered a form of this.  Sadly, convenience and cost has eclipsed even the highest of hospital standards and even they have forgone what is most healthy for patients.  I'm talking about bouillon.  No, not the french preparation, but the handy little beef and chicken flavored "soup starters".  I'm not opposed to a non-msg form to add flavor here and there, but it is offering you nothing else.

If you keep your hipster ear to the ground, you will already know the Paleo buzz words "Bone Broth".  But keep your scarf on sister, it's really not that new.  In the culinary world, it's referred to as a stock.

A simple stock or bone broth consists of lots of bones, joints, and cartilage roasted or not, thrown into a pot often with veggies like celery, onion, garlic, carrots, brought to a boil then simmered for hours even days until all their good things are extracted.  Some choose to add a couple tablespoons of cider vinegar to help release minerals.  Either way it should give you a lovely flavorful soup base or even something to sip straight!

Before anyone really thought about the glorious flavor stocks impart into all sorts of cooking, hungry folks... very hungry folks... learned to get every last bit out of every scrap God graciously gave them.  In so doing, they reaped extra benefits they likely didn't even realize they were getting:  tons of minerals like calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, to name just a few and some really interesting proteins we'll discuss here. 
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Collagen, found in bone, skin, and cartilage, is a big reason to have real "bone broth".  It is broken down in smaller pieces so it is easier for you to absorb.  When you are ill, your body is trying to repair damaged tissues and as we age our ability to repair our connective tissue decreases. This is just one way of giving it those needed building blocks. 

Gelatin is another aspect of "bone broth".  It is the stuff that looks like meat jelly when you pull out your leftover meats out of the fridge.   Gelatin provides glycine and proline, two amino acids that help you make your own collagen and rebuild more of these connective tissues, not to mention it supports joint health, and healthy skin.  All of these proteins not only heal your gut, but are very low-inflammatory for very sensitive tummies.

By the time you add some other goodies to your soup, like carrots, parsley, celery, onion, you'll be getting beta-carotene, true vitamin C (not ascorbic acid) that initiates tissue repair, pre-biotic fiber and inulin to build up your gut flora for prevention of that next nasty virus that heads your way. 

And here's a yummy recipe from Nourished Kitchen for gluten-free dumplings made with spouted grains (we'll blog more on that another day).  I normally opt for all grain-free, but the nut-based flours, I find, tend to fall apart with cooking.  Enjoy!