Older Bolder Life

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Questionable Science Thursday: The Save the World Dietary Guidelines (and 7 Grams)

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There’s been a flood of commentary on the EAT-Lancet Commission’s report in the general media, conventional health, and ancestral communities over the past week.

I’ve not had time this week to round up everything worth sharing about the commission’s report and ongoing work, though some of the talking points presented (via the media, and the dietary recommendations released) are certainly worth noting.

From a Guardian article posted 17 January 2019 (emphasis mine) –

A complete overhaul of what we eat may be the only way to meet the needs of a planet in crisis. So what’s on – and off – the menu?

The world faces many challenges over the coming decades, but one of the most significant will be how to feed its expanding global population. By 2050, there will be about 10 billion of us, and how to feed us all, healthily and from sustainable food sources, is something that is already being looked at. The Norway-based thinktank (sic) Eat and the British journal the Lancet have teamed up to commission an in-depth, worldwide study, which launches at 35 different locations around the world today, into what it would take to solve this problem – and the ambition is huge.

The commissioners lay out important caveats. Their solution is contingent on global efforts to stabilise population growth, the achievement of the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement on climate change and stemming worldwide changes in land use, among other things. But they are clear that it depends on far more than just these basic requirements. The initial report presents a flexible daily diet for all food groups based on the best health science, which also limits the impact of food production on the planet...

7 Grams You Say???

The article goes on to ponder what the plan would allow the typical Brit to consume; one point of interest to the author (and Mark Sisson at Mark’s Daily Apple as well) is the suggested limit of 7 grams of red meat per day (the allowable range is listed as a whopping 0-14 grams).

Just for grins, I thought it might be notable to see what 7 grams of food might actually look like.

Seven grams of red meat is so tiny it’s all but impossible to creatively capture in a simple, single image, hence the use of small (about the size of my little finger nail) salad olives above – three of which weigh right at 7 grams.

Impressive.

Some Further Reading to Do After Enjoying Your Steak Tonight…

By all means read the full article linked in the Guardian above as an example of recent media coverage.

Here’s the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health site. For the inquisitive, there are a series of “Briefs” posted at the bottom of the landing page.

Here’s the EAT-Lancet Commission Hub page at The Lancet.

There have been a plethora of spirited responses to the guidelines across a broad spectrum of perspectives, one particularly insightful one from an ancestral health angle is this one from Diana Rogers, RD at Sustainable Dish – 20 Ways EAT Lancet’s Global Diet is Wrongfully Vilifying Meat.

More to come (getting a big project put to bed this week…).

Enjoy that steak tonight, even if you chew up (literally and figuratively) an entire year’s EAT-Lancet allotment of red meat in one meal.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast 18 January 2019: Older Bolder Chorizo No. 1

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I know it might be considered to be out of fashion in some food circles, but we’ve been playing around with Southwestern and Tex-Mex inspired meatza preps lately.

We’ve dialed in our meatza / pizza sauce recipe (on the schedule to share in the next few weeks), and have been using both bulk pork sausage and seasoned ground beef as our meatza base. Last week I cobbled together a very good Tex-Mex meatza using this homemade Older Bolder Chorizo No. 1; it was amazing.

Having spent many a year growing up (and schooling) here in the Lone Star state, we’ve been fans of good chorizo around our camp for some time, having fiddled with chorizo recipes off and on now for well over a decade.

Sourcing good chorizo can be a challenge in that many if not most of the commercially prepared and marketed versions (of bulk chorizo, not the cured Spanish version) are incredibly greasy and contain parts of critters that you’d never ponder eating if you really knew they had been tossed in the grinder.

Speaking of grinder, hopefully you’re fresh grinding pasture-raised pork for your sausage at home; your homemade sausage game will never be the same with a grinder within easy reach.

And like most comfort foods prepared with care and attention, using the freshest ingredients, this version of chorizo is very likely nothing like you’ve tasted before and much more akin to the artisanal sausages (think Bruce Adell’s) you’ve thrown on the grill.  Even better, this one is child’s play simple, and you can tinker with spices to make you and your clan happy.

Finally, we’ve taken to adding in just a few whole cumin seeds too; they add some interesting texture much like fennel seeds in good handmade Italian sausage.

Best made a day in advance to fully develop the flavors, you can cook this crumbled, in patties, and even stuffed into casings for the grill. And oh yea, it’s a masterpiece meatza base…

2 lb fresh ground pork or turkey (mix of white and dark meat)
1 bunch fresh cilantro, leaves and small stems, chopped
2 serrano chile peppers, seeded and finely diced
1-2 tbsp red chile powder
1 tbsp sweet paprika (though smoked would work great here too)
1-2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chipotle chile powder
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp kosher salt (or to taste)
Scant 1/4 cup red wine vinegar

This is another one of those recipes that couldn’t be easier.

Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl (using your hands if you’re of the mind to) until well combined. I like to let it rest in the fridge overnight before use, and I’d suggest taking a tablespoon or two of the mixture, cooking it, and adjusting spices to your taste.

Use and store as you would any fresh sausage.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast 11 January: Texas Quiche with Sweet Potato Hashbrown Crust

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Now and again we get a hankering for a great quiche, though like many of you, we stopped cooking traditionally-crusted quiches at home several years as we became more Primally/Paleo aligned with our nutrition plan.

While entertaining our adult daughter from Montana over the holidays, she and my wife asked for a quiche dinner one evening. After doing a bit of digging, and consulting with our friend Chef Libby in Austin, I adapted one of our favorite quiche recipes using a spiced, sweet potato hashbrown-inspired crust and a Texas-style sausage, mushroom, onion, and pepper filling.

Quiches are wonderfully malleable creations, in that you can fiddle with the filling ingredients to your heart’s content – changing the protein(s), vegetables, and cheese to suit your (family’s) tastes and what’s available in the fridge at the time.

Note this recipe makes two quiches in 9-inch, deep dish pie plates or one bigger quiche in a deeper quiche pan. We usually make two and hold one in the fridge for a day or two.

SP Crust
2-3 sweet potatoes, grated
2 tbsp AO/EVOO
Optional: 2 tsp cumin
Optional: 2 tsp chile powder
Optional: 1 tsp salt

Quiche Filling
8 eggs
1 can full fat coconut milk
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp good salt

1 lb good sausage, browned, crumbled (see comment above)
1/2 sweet or yellow onion, diced
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
7-ounce can chopped green chiles (or more)
1-2 jalapeno (or other) chiles, stemmed, seeded, diced
2 cups Monterrey Jack or Pepper Jack cheese, grated (maybe more)
Optional: 1 tbsp pickled jalapenos with juice, chopped small

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine the crust ingredients and pat into 2 deep 9-inch pie plates; we find the crust releases easier if you lightly coat the plates first with either avocado or extra virgin olive oil. Bake the crusts for 20-30 minutes until the sweet potatoes begin to brown. Remove from oven and set aside.

Meanwhile, sauté the sausage until browned, breaking it up as you go; when nearly done, add the onion, mushrooms, and chiles and sauté until softened.

While the sausage is sizzling, combine the eggs, coconut milk, cumin, and salt in a blender or by hand using a whisk.

Now sprinkle 1/4 of the cheese into each pie plate, then divide the sausage and pepper mixture between the two. Top with the remaining cheese, and divide the egg mixture between the two plates. Place on a baking sheet, and bake for 50-60 minutes until the quiche is set and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean (may need more time if your pie plates are particularly deep).

Allow to cool 15 minutes before slicing; cool completely before covering and storing in the fridge.

Enjoy.

Older Bolder Holiday Mains: A Baker’s Dozen for Your Table

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Though I’m guessing a lot of our Older Bolder readers have their holiday menu already planned by now, we thought it would be fun to throw out a list of suggestions for an uptown, something-different holiday meal main dish. (And yes, the list is protein-centric in terms of main dish offerings.)

We’re huge fans of flavorful, interesting, creative food, hence the inclusion of several “not your grandma’s typical holiday fare” recipes below.

And for the traditionalists out there, who can’t imagine the Christmas or New Year’s table without a medium rare Prime Rib Roast, the first link in the series is to Kenji Lopez’s Serious Eats post on Prime Rib – it’s the best we’ve ever come across; watch his video (on his site) if you’ve not before. (Image below via Serious Eats)

Break out of your routine this year and craft a culinary masterpiece that you’ve not shared with friends and family before.

The Best Prime Rib Recipe You’ll Find from Serious Eats

Bacon Wrapped Pork Tenderloin

Mustard-Crusted Prime Rib Roast

Ancho Slathered Southwestern Leg of Lamb

Citrus and Chile Braised Short Ribs

Roast Goose with Oranges and Madeira

Pork Shoulder Al’Diavolo

Lamb Shoulder with Citrus Fennel Salad

Seared Scallops with Brown Butter and Lemon Sauce

Spicy Tamarind and Honey Glazed Ham

Rib Rub Pork Shoulder

Roasted Pork with Sage, Rosemary, and Garlic

Leg of Lamb with Garlic and Rosemary

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast 14 December: Boeuf Bourguignon

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This is one of our family’s Holiday season classics, most often making it onto the menu for either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day dinner.

My lovely wife spent time in North Africa and Switzerland growing up, and became something of a Francophile along the way; in fact, those years inspired one of her careers as a linguist and educator.

Her interest in France and French history no doubt inspired our family tradition of enjoying Boeuf at the holiday. While Boeuf Bourguignon unquestionably had its origin as a peasants’ recipe, with food historians tracing its lineage to the Middle Ages, used then as a way to manage tough, less-desired cuts of meat using long, slow cooking and braising methods, through the 20th century it became a bistro favorite and developed an ‘up-town flair’.

Traditional recipes call for browning the beef after flouring; the flour serving both as a browning agent and a thickener for the rich broth that develops in cooking. Those who are gluten-intolerant should of course go without; we almost never use flour in any form, but this is one recipe where, in the big picture, we’re willing to overlook that 1/3 of a cup. You make the call; the same goes for the 2 teaspoons of sugar sprinkled over the onions and mushrooms…

This recipe is quite forgiving, and is probably even better the second or third day as the flavors meld and mature; it even freezes very well, though we never seem to have enough left over to put up for the long haul.

The recipe looks a bit long and complicated, though it’s not and flows very nicely in the kitchen.

4 lb beef chuck, trimmed, cut into 1 and 1/2-inch pieces
1/3 cup flour
2 tsp good salt
2 tsp fresh ground pepper
5 tbsp butter, divided
3 tbsp avocado or EVOO
1/2 lb thick-sliced bacon, diced
5 garlic cloves, peeled, thinly sliced
4 carrots, 1/2-inch diagonal slices
2 leeks, white and light green parts only, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
3 bay leaves
3 sprigs fresh thyme
1 tbsp asian fish sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 cups burgundy wine (maybe more)
Beef broth (one quart container should do, see below)
20-30 small white pearl onions, trimmed and skins removed
1 lb mushrooms, mixed, sliced thickly
3 tbsp butter
Juice of one lemon
2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup fresh parsley, optional

Preheat your trusty oven to 350.

Dredge the meat in the flour, salt, and pepper; heat 2 tbsp butter and one tbsp oil of choice in a large skillet. Sauté one-third of the meat until browned on all sides, remove to a dutch oven or large, heavy roasting pan and repeat two more times.

Now into the same skillet, add the bacon and sauté for several minutes until the fat begins to render; then add the garlic, carrots, leeks, and 1/2 cup parsley. Cook, stirring frequently, until the bacon is cooked through and there’s a bit of caramelization on the vegetables. Add the bay leaves and thyme, stir in, then dump the bacon mixture into the dutch oven/roasting pan with the beef.

Now add the wine and enough broth to just cover the meat, then the soy and fish sauces, adjust for salt, cover, and then into the oven for 90 minutes, checking halfway through to see if more broth/wine is needed.

Take a break for an hour, then sauté the prepped onions and mushrooms in 3 tbsp of butter until lightly browned,  sprinkle with the lemon juice and sugar, cooking and stirring for another 3 minutes or so. Add the mushroom-onion mixture to the beef, stir it in, then cover again and cook for another hour (or more) until the beef is fall apart tender.

Remove from the oven, let rest 10 minutes, skim any visible fat and remove the bay and thyme leaves. Adjust for salt and pepper, and serve hot with more fresh chopped parsley.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast 7 December: Bazinga (Christmas) Chili

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I first shared this recipe back in 2011 on a fly fishing blog called Chi Wulff; from that post –

Traditions are a funny thing.

Though admittedly our clan has a fair number of traditions that we more or less cling to with stogged fidelity, some traditions can begin to reek of routine.

And routine has crushed the heart and soul of many a fine man and woman.

So it was with a dumbstruck stare that She Who Must Be Obeyed eyed me after I announced several days ago I thought we should break from tradition this year and serve tamales and chili for Christmas dinner.

As a bit of background, we’re once again entertaining what could be shaping up to be a bizarrely diverse group of friends and fishers who couldn’t be with their own families for the holiday.

SWMBO was probably envisioning a meal of a traditional (there’s the ‘t’ word again) ham with all the trimmings, eaten at a beautifully set and decorated table, complete with fresh flowers, two expertly chosen wines, ruthlessly efficient wait staff and classical music playing softly in the background.

I deftly countered with the fact that this has been a brazenly non-traditional year for us, and that traditions, which are often just dull routines dressed up in their Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes, are simply meant to be broken now and again.

Her response…”Bazinga…”

…For a high-brow company meal, have your butcher grind a nice cut (sirloin or tri-tip for us) into a large chili grind and pick up some fresh-made, well-spiced bulk sausage too. This recipe works incredibly well with brisket diced small.

This recipe, at first glance, looks like it uses almost an obscene amount of chili powder – it does call for a fair amount, though most chili powder doesn’t really provide heat – it provides flavor (use a really good, really fresh chili powder). Try it once as the recipe is written and you’ll see what we mean. Just don’t spill any of this deep red treasure on anything white. The touch of brown sugar also softens the bite of the red chile just enough to work a little magic (without breaking the carb budget).

3 lb. London broil, tri-tip, chuck or sirloin ground into rough chili grind or cubed
8 ounces bulk sausage (spicy)
1 large sweet onion, chopped fine
2 tbs avocado oil or EVOO
2-4 cups beef broth
1 8-oz. can tomato sauce (Hunt’s by tradition)
1 can Rotel tomatoes
1 bottle robust beer
11 tbsp commercial chili powder (Spices Etc or Gebhardt’s)
2 tsp garlic powder
1-3 tbsp Tabasco sauce
1 tbsp ground cumin
Kosher salt to taste
Optional: 1-2 tbsp brown sugar

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat the oil and then brown the beef (will probably need to do in two batches); then add to your favorite chili pot. Now brown the sausage, breaking it up as you go, then add the onions when about halfway browned; cook until just soft and the sausage is brown. Add to the chili pot.

Now add two cups of the beef broth, bring to a slow simmer. Add the tomato sauce, Rotel tomatoes, beer, 6 tbs of the chili powder, garlic powder, 1 tbs of the brown sugar if using and 1 tbs of Tabasco. Simmer uncovered for an hour and half, stirring occasionally and adding more broth as needed to keep it fairly soupy.

Now add the rest of the chili powder (yep, another five tablespoons), a tsp of salt and the cumin. Taste for sweetness – we like to have just the tiniest smidgen of sweetness as an undercurrent to the heat and other flavors – we almost always end up using 2 tbsp of brown sugar. Keep simmering for at least another 30 minutes.

Now it’s time to fine tune the flavors. Taste for chili flavor, heat, and salt. If your chili powder is wimpy you might end up adding even a bit more chili powder, adjust the hot sauce and salt as well. Reduce or thin to desired consistency.

Serve it up as you see fit; we can’t imagine this without a bit of grated cheese, chopped onion and cilantro, maybe a pepper or two, and a dollop of sour cream.

Enjoy.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast 30 November: Puerco Guisada

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As we turn the corner from late fall into early winter, here’s one to help you beat back the crush of winter’s hand – Puerco Guisada, a south Texas / Mexico inspired take on the spicy ‘meat in gravy’ stew (carne guisada) gracing every worthy taco stand from Austin to the southern border in Texas.

One might certainly argue this dish is traditionally made with beef (carne guisada) – and you can certainly do that by exchanging the pork with a cut of chuck or bottom round – though the pork version seems a tad lighter and sweeter to us.

This puerco guisada is another one of those recipes that are so simple they’re child’s play, thought there are a couple of caveats to note. Flavors are dramatically improved by actually browning the meat in the oil up front; if you overcrowd the meat it steams and doesn’t brown. Browning in two or three batches works wonders and leaves a hoard of those tasty browned ‘pan crispins’ behind to scrape up and flavor the stew.

The other caveat pertains to the peppers; jalapenos and serranos can very dramatically in their heat level. Cut off a small chip of the pepper and touch it to your tongue to get an idea about the heat; the last two jalapenos I picked out of the bin were searingly hot, so we left out the serranos on that batch (even though they add a slightly different heat and flavor pattern).

This Puerco Guisada makes for a killer bowl of spicy goodness standing alone (with a few toppings of course) and it makes a mouth-watering taco or burrito too. We’ve even been known to use it to make a puerco guisada huevos rancheros for breakfast when special company is in the house.

4ish pounds of pork shoulder or loin, trimmed, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
4 tbsp avocado oil
1 large sweet onion, diced
2 jalapeno peppers, stemmed, seeded, and diced
2 serrano peppers, stemmed, seeded, and diced
6 garlic cloves, minced
14-oz can diced tomatoes with liquid or 3 fresh tomatoes with seeds and core, diced
2 tbsp ground cumin
2 tbsp good chili powder
2 tsp (preferably Mexican) oregano
1/2 cup chopped cilantro or more
2 bay leaves
2 cups of water
1 bottle cerveza (Corona or Negro Modelo for the spirit of things)
Optional: 1 tbsp masa if needed for thickening

In your trusty dutch oven, heat 1/3 of the oil over medium high heat and brown 1/3 of the meat; remove to a plate and repeat to brown all the meat.

Add a splash of oil if needed, and sauté the onions and peppers until soft; then add the garlic, and cook, stirring now and again, for another couple of minutes.

Now add the pork back to the dutch oven, along with the tomatoes, cumin, chili powder, oregano, bay leaves, water and beer. Stir until well combined, turn up the heat and bring to a gentle boil, stirring frequently.

Now turn down to a simmer and let it go low and slow for 4 to 5 hours, stirring once an hour; you’ll notice the pork begins to tenderize and break down a bit, thickening the mixture as the water cooks off. (You can always add the masa at the end to thicken it more, though we never do.)

Traditionally this would be served steaming hot in a big bowl, sprinkled with grated cheese, maybe a few chopped fresh peppers, cilantro, and fresh or pickled onions. The possibilities are endless as noted above.

Enjoy.