Scallop and Bacon Sauté

If you haven't had Scallops with Bacon before, you are seriously missing out. If you aren't a fan of Seafood, try it with Chicken. Actually, Dave truly believes Bacon makes everything taste better and I am inclined to agree.
Unfortunately Bacon has a pretty bad reputation for being an unhealthily processed meat. It's high in fat and the majority are chemically cured, full of nitrates and sodium, pumped with water, artificial colours and flavours.
This pretty much sucks. We've avoided eating a lot of Bacon and don't eat shaved Ham or feed it to our kids for the reasons listed above.
But I found out recently (thanks to Aunty Linda and Google) about a company here who produce naturally cured Bacon and Ham. It's made the old fashioned way with no chemicals or additives whatsoever. You can buy direct from their factory (and also in supermarkets) so I went down to Wairau and got me some meat! They are called Hendersons and I suggest you check them out. I bought just about a bit of everything and it was all awesome.

Anyway back to the food! Frozen Scallops were on special last week at Pack n Save so I splashed out knowing that one night it would just be Dave and I for dinner and we wouldn't have to share these with the kids.
All I could think about all day was Scallops with Bacon, Scallops with Bacon. I never considered what we would have with it. This food fixation happens fairly regularly. So here's my method five minutes before dinner when I realise we should probably eat some vegetables too. 1. look in the fridge, 2. choose veges, 3.work out how best to cook them. Oh yeah, I'm living on the edge.
First I chopped up some Middle Bacon and pan fried it in some Olive Oil. I removed the Bacon and cooked some Brussel Sprouts, Spinach and crushed Garlic in the Bacon juices. Then I added that to my Bacon plate, threw some butter in the pan, turned up the heat and quickly cooked the scallops. You really don't want to do these babies for more than 2 minutes. Rubbery Scallops ain't great. Toss everything back in the pan for a minute, add some salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice and serve. I had field mushrooms with mine and Dave had Bok Choy. Delicious!

I've just changed the settings so that anyone can leave a comment now. I had no idea it was set so that you had to be a registered user. Boo!
If you try this or have any questions or suggestions let me know.
Kate =)

Venison Stew

So far the biggest challenge for me, is coming to grips with the amount of meat protein that you are meant to eat on a Paleo diet. My Mum and Dad don't eat red meat (since I was 10) and my Sister is mostly Vegetarian too. I've always believed (and am yet to be completely convinced otherwise) that eating too much meat was bad, that it could cause bowel cancer.
Dave on the other hand has come from the opposite end of the scale. A completely typical Kiwi meat and 3 Veg family. He would probably eat as much meat as I could put in front of him. For the last few years I have been trying to reduce out meat intake by having 2 Vegetarian meals a week. That's really tough now when you take legumes and grains out of the equation.
To make myself feel better about this sudden overload of meat, I've been balancing it out with tons of vegetables. I'd much prefer it if Veges were at the bottom of the Paleo food pyramid instead of Meat, Fish and Eggs.
Check out this photo below, there are 8 different veges and a fruit too =)

Venison Stew
-served a family of 5 with leftovers for 2 for lunch

500 grams of Venison rump steak, chopped into chunks.
1 onion, finely diced.
2 cloves of Garlic finely cut.
3 carrots, chopped into rounds.
3 Celery Stalks, chopped about the same size.
1 parsnip ,cut up into even size pieces.
2 Orange Kumara, also cut into even size pieces.
A head of Broccolli cut into florets and the stalk peeled and chopped.
Half a bag of Spinach Leaves.
A tin of tomatoes ( I used basil seasoned ).
Salt and Pepper, herbs and spices to taste.

Fry up the onion, garlic, carrots and celery until onion is clear and veges are starting to soften. Add tomatoes and seasonings and let simmer while you prepare the rest.
Cover Parsnip and Kumara with boiling water and cook until soft enough to mash.
Heat a pan with Olive Oil and cook Venison quickly over a high heat. You want it to still be a bit pink in the middle. Stir it through the stew and serve it up with Parsnip/Kumara mash, lightly steamed Broccoli and Spinach leaves. Enjoy!


This was really good considering I made it up from looking at what we had in the cupboard and fridge! This was the last of our veges, everything I'd bought on the Wednesday was gone by Saturday night. That's never happened before. This week I bought three times as much.
I'm not usually a Venison fan, I find it to taste quite Gamey. But although you could tell this wasn't beef, it didn't have an overly strong flavour. It worked really nicely with the tomato based stew.
The Parsnip/Kumara mash was nice but maybe I overdid it a little in the mashing department. It didn't need to be baby food consistency. Oops ;) It's also a lot sweeter than mashed potato and that takes a little getting used to. I added more salt to mine.
For the kids I did do a Potato mash, they love their spuds. I like to make sure there's something on their plate I know they will eat.
Sweet S thought the meat was tough, but then she says that about all meat. She puts too much in her mouth and then I think she can't be bothered chewing it. She also told me she only liked Celery raw, not cooked but I convinced her to try again and she did eat it all. She didn't eat the spinach on it's own but she will eat it if I've combined it into something.
Initially I didn't put Spinach on Big C's plate but when he saw me dishing up everyone else he felt like he was missing out and asked for it. He ate it too, funny kid. Spinach was one of my most hated veges as a child.
Miss Izzy ate everything too but then she usually cleans her plate.

All in all a good result, and I'd definitely make it again, with Beef or Chicken if we didn't have Venison.

Kate =)