November’s fitness goal turned out to be such a fun one! Dance almost never fails to lift my mood and energize my body. I tried a new class, BollyX, a bit like Zumba or Cardio Dance in that it’s a hybrid between actual dance and an aerobics class. It’s got great upbeat Bollywood music and was packed with other young women. The nature of Bollywood dance – big movements, lots of jumping – made it easy to follow along and dance big without feeling self-conscious. I also stuck with ballet, although I’m going to a new class early Sunday mornings and it is so hard to do ballet first thing in the morning. My range of motion is about half what it is at the end of the day. In the interest of total honesty, I have to admit that I didn’t quite make it to 6 classes during November. But I did go this week and trying something totally new was a big win for me, so I’m giving myself a slight pass.

I’m going to make December’s goal about something that I’ve been explicitly avoiding all year: weight. In part, I’ve avoided making a weight-focused goal because I truly believe that these goals are about health and fitness, not a number on a scale. And I stand by that. But there’s also a part of me that’s a little bit afraid of that number, because I know that whatever I may tell myself, it’s a pretty good representation of the progress I’ve made. Of course, I could lose a ton of weight and be extremely unhealthy, both physically and mentally, or I could gain a ton of weight and attribute it all to muscle mass. But, at least for my body and personality, neither of those scenarios is very realistic. Although it kind of scares me to write numbers down here, I’m going to. I started the year at a weight of 145 pounds, which is easily an all time high for me. It’s hard to admit, but it’s a weight that’s decidedly too high for my 5’3″ frame, and looking back at pictures from last January does not make me feel good. Over the year I’ve slowly worked my way down to a weight that’s closer to a healthy weight for my build, hitting 132 at my lowest. Now I’m hovering around 136, a weight that’s healthy but a bit too close to backsliding for my taste. I’d like to start 2015 feeling really good about my health and fitness, so I’m aiming for the 130-133 range. If I can accomplish that during the biggest eating month of the year, I’ll be very proud.

In a way, this goal represents all the things I’ve learned about what does and doesn’t work for me over the course of this year. Some rules I’m living by to make this happen:

• No alcohol on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Wednesdays. This should be easy, but I’ve definitely slipped into a habit where a glass of wine after work is the norm, not the exception, and I don’t want that habit to go too far. In a season when holiday parties, happy hours, and hot toddies seem to be around every corner, it’s easier to have a simple rule – so I don’t end the week wondering why I’m completely dragging and then realize that I had a drink every night.
• No sweets for breakfast. Starting the day out with something savory and protein-rich may take a little extra effort, but so much of the “easy” breakfast food is packed with sugar. I’m curious to see how much of an impact this has on my energy levels (and how long I can stick with it!)
• Target 5 workouts a week. 4 workouts a week seems to be my magic number for maintaining my weight, 3 is a little too light, and 5 is the max that’s doable if I want to maintain the sanity of my schedule. I want to make the most of the dry streets and relative warmth before we slip into three months of ice and cold (e.g. no running).
• Remember vegetables! When they’re not staring me in the face from the excess of our garden, it’s easy to forget about them. I’m trying to sneak as much spinach and broccoli into my diet as I can this month.

I’m not planning on continuing these monthly goal posts in 2015. While they’ve been a helpful tool for me to hold myself accountable, I’ve actually been thinking about how to make my life less list and goal oriented and more relaxed next year. For the most part, I’ve accomplished what I set out to do – get myself back in shape (from a point of absolute zero), and make regular exercise and conscious eating a natural part of my routine. But, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop sharing healthy recipes and thoughts on health here! This month’s recipe is a Roasted Parsnip and White Bean soup, topped with Guanciale and Fried Sage (arguably counteracting the health benefits of a vegetable-based soup, but oh well). It’s a recipe I came up with while walking home from work one day, playing around with different ideas for our parsnip harvest. The sweetness of the roasted parsnips is complemented beautifully by the creaminess of the white beans and the salty, fattiness of the guanciale topping. It’s a thick soup, almost more of a puree, but a swirl of cream added at the end lightens it and gives it a luxurious mouthfeel. This recipe used up the last of our parsnips, otherwise I’d be making more of this ASAP and freezing it for later.

Past Fitness Challenges

January: 10 Visits to the YMCA; Recipe: Gluten-Free Olive-and-Feta Corn Muffins
February: One vegan meal every day; Recipe: Pakistani Chickpea Pulao with Sweet-Hot Date-Onion Chutney
March: Run 40  miles in 20 days; Recipe: Chocolate-Dipped Almond Butter Cookie Bites
April: Walk 8,000 steps a day; Recipe: Herb-Flecked Spring Couscous
May: 180 minutes of Nike Training Club; Recipe: Warm Arugula Salad with Maple Mustard Dressing
June: Fresh fruit/veggies at every meal; Recipe: Chickpea Crepes with Grilled Curried Chicken and Mango Salsa
July: 8 different types of exercise; Recipe: Homemade Spinach Wraps with Chopped Greek Salad Filling
August: Relax; Recipe: Green Tea and Zucchini Noodles with Honey Ginger Sauce
September: Average mile pace below 8’10″; Recipe: Potato, Poblano, and Chard Enchiladas with Salsa Verde

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Roasted Parsnip and White Bean Soup with Guanciale and Fried Sage

A Katie at the Kitchen Door original recipe. Serves 4.

• 6 medium parsnips, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
• 3 TBS olive oil, divided
• coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 2 oz. guanciale, cut into 1/4 inch cubes (about 1/3 cup)
• 1 onion, peeled and thinly sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
• 12 leaves sage, divided
• 1 large yukon gold potato, cut into 1 inch cubes
• 4 c. chicken or vegetable stock
• 1 can (15 oz.) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 TBS salted butter
• 1/2 c. heavy cream (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Toss parsnips with 2 TBS of the olive oil, then spread out on a roasting pan. Sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper. Roast parsnips until tender, about 30 minutes, flipping halfway through. Remove from the oven and set aside.
2. In a large non-stick saucepan, heat the remaining 1 TBS olive oil over medium heat. Add the guanciale and cook, stirring frequently, until browned on all sides, about 5-7 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to remove the cooked guanciale and set aside. Chop 4 of the 12 sage leaves finely. Add the onion, garlic, and chopped sage to the saucepan and saute, stirring frequently, until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the potatoes and cook 2 minutes longer, then add the roasted parsnips and the stock.
3. Bring soup to a simmer and cook until potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes. Add the rinsed cannellini beans, and cook until heated through, another 5 minutes. Transfer the soup to a blender and blend on high until very smooth. Return to the pot and keep warm over low heat. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
4. Before serving, melt 2 TBS butter in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Once fully melted and bubbling, add remaining 8 sage leaves to melted butter and cook until crisp, about 30 seconds. Remove to a paper-towel lined plate and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.
5. Ladle the soup into bowls and top with the cooked guanciale cubes and the fried sage leaves. If desired, drizzle 2 TBS of heavy cream on top of each bowl. Serve with toasted sourdough bread.

The post Monthly Fitness Goals: December // White Bean and Parsnip Soup with Guanciale and Fried Sage appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

If any of you follow me on Twitter (do it! I promise I’ll do my best to say vaguely entertaining things), you may have noticed that I’ve been tweeting some nonsense about #March15ADay for the past 7 days. Basically, I’ve challenged myself to workout for at least 15 minutes every day in March. Things that count as workouts are running, lifting, jump rope, ballet, and NTC workouts (which I’m really loving). Things that do not count are walking to the subway and lying on the floor with my arms spread out while telling myself that I’m stretching (I have, in the past, counted this as exercise). Vigorous cooking does not count either.

Tonight marks the end of my first week – I’ve gone running twice, done a 20 minute jump rope session, and done targeted strength training for my arms, abs, and back. I’m kinda sore. But proud of myself! When it’s 10 o’clock at night and I haven’t done anything yet, I close my eyes and imagine myself looking fabulous in a linen dress that I don’t own yet on a hillside in Italy where I’ll be in 49 days (49? Am I prematurely excited?) and it’s highly motivating. I’d love it if any of you want to join me for the remainder of the month and tweeted your workouts! It’s always helpful to have a group of people to hold you accountable for something like this.

To support my health kick, I’m also trying to eat a lot more green stuff. I’ve said it before, but I sometimes have a tough time with salads – I want to like my salad, so as I walk down the salad bar I add ingredients I love, and before I know it, I have a container full of bacon, hard-boiled eggs, feta cheese, and chickpeas, with a few pathetic leaves of spinach on top. NOT THE POINT, KATIE. So when I find a salad recipe that’s both tasty and healthy, and that I can easily make ahead and bring in to work all week, I’m thrilled. This roast vegetable salad, from the newly released The Little Paris Kitchen (see my full review here!), fits the bill perfectly. Make the goat cheese mousse if you’re feeling creative, but if not, regular goat cheese crumbled on top would be just as yummy.

Roast Vegetable Salad with Goat Cheese Mousse

Recipe adapted slightly from The Little Paris Kitchen. Serves 4.

• 4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
• 2 Granny Smith apples, cored and cut into 1 inch chunks
• 2 parsnips, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
• 1 large beet, trimmed and scrubbed
• 7 TBS olive or sunflower oil, divided
• salt to taste
• 4 oz. bacon, cut into pieces and cooked until crisp
• 2 TBS cider vinegar
• 4 oz. goat cheese
• 1/4 c. milk
• 1/4 c. whipping cream
• 5-6 oz. of salad greens (I used spinach)

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Toss the carrots, apples, and parsnips with 2 TBS of the oil, and sprinkle liberally with salt. Spread out on a large baking tray. Place the beet inside a tinfoil package, drizzle with 1 TBS of the oil and a sprinkle of salt, and seal the tinfoil package. Place on the baking tray with the other vegetables. Roast for 45 minutes, flipping the chopped veggies once to prevent them from burning. Remove the chopped vegetables and set aside, and continue to roast the beet until you can pierce it easily with a fork (the length of time will depend on the size of the beet, it could take an additional 10-30 minutes). Once the beet is cooked, remove from the oven and let cool just until you can handle it comfortably. Then, peel the beet with your hands – the peel should slip easily off. Thinly slice the cooked beet and place with the other veggies. Toss the roasted veggies with the bacon pieces.
2. Mix together the remaining 4 TBS of olive oil with the cider vinegar to make the dressing. Season to taste with salt. Set aside.
3. Beat the cheese and the milk together until soft and lump free. In a separate bowl, whip the cream until stiff peaks form. Fold the whipped cream into the cheese a bit at a time, until it is thoroughly combined. Place in a frosting piping bag.
4. Arrange the salad leaves on four plates. Top with the veggie-bacon mix, and drizzle with the dressing. Use the piping bag to place small blobs of the goat cheese mousse on top of the salad. Serve immediately.

The post March Fitness Challenge // Roast Vegetable Salad with Goat Cheese Mousse appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

The last time I saw my Grandpa Archie was this summer, at my cousin Danny’s wedding. My grandparents (and most of the rest of my family) all live out in Colorado, so I see them infrequently, at best.  Grandpa Archie, who is 100% Onondaga Indian (I know, cool, right?), and not the most verbose man, is hilarious to hang out with, and the wedding was no exception. Being from Colorado, he’s also a true meat-lover, and as we were driving from the ceremony to the reception, six of us packed into a five person car in the pouring rain, he turned around and said to me: “So, Katie.  On that blog of yours, you ever cook any meat?”  I tried to explain that I eat a lot of vegetarian food because it’s cheaper and I mainly use meat as a flavoring, to which I got the response “Just give it to me straight.  Do you cook meat?”

I had to admit that, no, I don’t really cook much meat. And it’s not because I don’t like it – when I go out to eat, I frequently order lamb and duck and burgers, and when I’m at my parents, one of my favorite meals is grilled steak tips and baked potatoes. But besides a little bit of chorizo or bacon, or the occasional beef stew, meat doesn’t typically enter my weekly cooking rotation. The biggest reason for this? I don’t really know how to cook meat, and it makes me nervous to think about how badly I might ruin a $20 steak if I tried to cook it at home.

So when I received Bruce Aidell’s The Great Meat Cookbook, I flipped through it with a mix of excitement and trepidation. My first instinct was to bookmark recipes I felt comfortable with, which basically fell into two categories – things made with ground beef, and things where you cook a tough cut for 3 hours until it’s super tender. But as I did so, I realized that cooking things I already knew how to cook wasn’t the point – I wanted to learn how to put an impressive roast on the table! So I began to dig into Bruce’s explanations, which are thorough and straightforward. I think this book could teach you most of what you need to know about meat: some of the topics covered include how to judge meat quality while shopping, how to tell when meat is done cooking, the label choices we have today (grass-fed vs. organic vs. natural, etc.), and dozens of cuts and how best to cook each one for each animal covered (beef, bison, pork, lamb, goat, and veal, plus a section on various cured meats). For a meat newbie like myself, there’s a lot to absorb.

Once I had convinced myself that I needed to try something new, I fell to the task of choosing a recipe to make. Not an easy choice, given all the delicious-sounding contenders! High on my list were Roasted Ginger-Orange-Glazed Prime Rib Bones, Grilled Pork Chops Stuffed with Fontina, Sun-Dried Tomatoes, and Prosciutto, and Butterflied Leg of Lamb with Olive Crust. In the end I chose to make Turkish Pomegranate-Glazed Lamb Shoulder Chops and Carrots. Not quite a show-stopping roast, but a cut and cooking technique that was new to me. Even though I scaled down the recipe quite a bit, and accidentally bought the wrong type of lamb chop (even after all that reading about the cuts), this recipe was really good. Sitting down to a plate of tender lamb with a sweet pomegranate molasses glaze and a pile of carrots and parsnips sprinkled with pomegranate and mint, I felt like I had really accomplished something.

I’m going to keep working with this book, and maybe by next Christmas I’ll be able to put the Standing Rib Roast with Bacon and Rosemary Jus and Yorkshire Puddings on the table to oohs and ahs!

The bottom line: The Great Meat Cookbook is a straightforward and complete guide to cooking beef, bison, pork, cured meats, lamb, goat, and veal. It covers the entire process of preparing meat in detail, from choosing a cut and picking out the best pieces in the grocery store, all the way to what to serve with it. The recipes themselves are appealing and clearly explained, with plenty of globally-inspired preparations alongside American classics. For any meat-newbie, this book is a valuable and non-intimidating introduction to preparing dishes that will impress!

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary review copy of The Great Meat Cookbook, but was not otherwise compensated and all opinions are my own.

Turkish Pomegranate-Glazed Lamb Chops and Carrots

Recipe from The Great Meat Cookbook. Serves 6.

• 6 lamb blade shoulder chops (about 3 pounds total)
• 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 2 TBS olive oil
• 1 TBS butter
• 2 TBS grated or finely chopped fresh ginger
• 1/2 c. finely chopped shallots
• 1 c. finely chopped onions
• 1 c. chicken broth
• 1 c. pomegranate molasses
• 2 lbs medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1 inch lengths
• 1/2 lb parsnips, peeled and cut into 1 inch lengths
• 1/2 c. fresh pomegranate arils
• 1/4 c. toasted pine nuts
• 2 TBS fresh basil chiffonade
• 2 TBS fresh mint chiffonade

1. Cut each chop into two pieces by cutting between the flat side of the blade bone and the meat. Combine the red pepper flakes, salt, cumin, pepper, cardamom, and nutmeg in a small bowl, then rub over the chops on both sides. Let sit for 30 minutes at room temperature, or wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
2. Heat the oil and butter in a large, deep frying pan over medium high-heat. Once completely melted, add the chops and brown for 2-3 minutes per side. You may need to do this in two batches – try not to crowd the chops or they won’t brown as nicely. Remove the chops to a plate and set aside.
3. Add the ginger, shallots, and onions to the pan and saute, stirring occasionally, until soft and golden, about 5 minutes. Add the chicken broth to deglaze the pan, scraping up any browned bits stuck to the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Bring to a boil, then add the pomegranate molasses and reduce to a simmer. Return the chops to the pan, cover, and cook for 40 minutes, or until the chops are tender. Skim any fat floating on the top and discard. Move the chops back to the plate and set aside.
4. Add the carrots and parsnips to the pan and stir to coat with the braising liquid. Cover the pan and cook until the vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes. Place the cooked vegetables on the plate with the chops, and bring the remaining liquid to a boil. Reduce until it thickens and becomes syrupy, 5-10 minutes. Return the vegetables and the chops to the pan, lower the heat to very low, and cook, turning everything frequently, until the chops and vegetables are reheated and covered with a thin glaze.
5. Place the vegetables and chops on a platter and sprinkle with the pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, basil and mint. Serve warm with a side of rice or bulghur.

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