Guilty Kitchen’s Kale and Bison Roll-ups

Today, Elizabeth Nyland from Guilty Kitchen will be sharing one of her go-to healthy recipes. Elizabeth is a self-proclaimed fitness and foodie bad-ass who knows a thing or two about over-coming adversity. She makes no excuses and has forged her own path to wellness, weight-loss and feeling great! Need some fit-spiration? Check out Guilty Kitchen the blog or follow Elizabeth on Instagram.

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Ever wonder what to do with all of that kale besides boring old kale chips?

Are you a member of a CSA or Community Supported Agriculture? CSAs are springing up all over North America as convenient ways to eat locally produced foods. Farmers produce a crop (be it vegetable, animal, fruit, fish or eggs) and people buy shares. The product is delivered to your door or picked up at farm stands in your neighbourhood. CSAs provide a great way for anyone and everyone to participate in supporting local farmers. The farmer is assured his crop will be sold, and you, the buyer get to enjoy fresh, local food at better then market value (most of the time).

But what happens when you receive a lot of the same vegetable? Worse, you keep getting a vegetable that you have no idea what to do with or have very little use for? I often see kale as a popular CSA vegetable as it is as easy as weeds to grow and makes for a great addition to any CSA box. The problem is, most people don’t know what to do with it beyond sautéing, green smoothies, making it into the ever popular kale “chip” or throwing it chopped up into their salads or mashed potatoes. But kale has many uses indeed.

Kale is a wonderful vegetable filled with vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C, manganese, fiber, copper, calcium, vitamin B6, potassium, iron, magnesium, vitamin E, omega-3 fats, vitamin B2, protein, vitamin B1, folate, phosphorus and vitamin B3. It’s a super vegetable!

It’s also delicious and for anyone following low carb, paleo, gluten free or grain free diets, it’s a miracle in the wrap department! Lettuce makes a convenient wrap, but kale is far superior in the health department.

So if your CSA box is filling your fridge with kale leaves and you’ve had just about enough of green smoothies and kale chips, then try this great wrap for dinner. It also saves well for leftovers the next day, a self contained lunch for anyone on the go.

Kale and Bison Roll Ups

Ingredients

• 6 large kale leaves
• 1 tsp coconut oil
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced or grated
• 3/4 cup shredded carrot
• 2 cups shredded zucchini, squeezed of excess moisture
• 2 cups shredded green cabbage
• 500g extra lean grass fed ground beef or bison (or a mixture of the two)
• sea salt to taste
• fresh cracked pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp coconut aminos or soy sauce
• 1/4 tsp cayenne
• 1 1/2 tsp dried oregano, chopped
• 1/4 tsp coriander
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes (optional garnish)
• 1/2 an avocado, sliced (optional garnish)
• 1/4 cup chopped chives (optional garnish)

Instructions

1. Cut the stems off the Kale at the bottom of the leaf. Flip the kale over and run the knife parallel to the leaf (along the stem) to make it flatter. This will also help when you bite into it.
2. Fill a pot fitted with a steamer attachment with two inches of water. Bring to a boil and arrange leaves flat in the steamer. Steam for about 3 minutes. Remove and drain on towels. Set aside until needed.
3. In a heavy saucepan (cast iron is best), heat coconut oil until hot. Place the onion and garlic in the pan and cook for about 5 minutes, or until onions are browned. Add in the other vegetables and cook until softened.
4. Add in the ground meat and cook for another 7-8 minutes, or until browned. Season with salt, pepper, coconut aminos and other spices. Remove from heat and set aside.
5. Place a large spoonful of the meat mixture onto a flattened and laid out kale leaf, top with optional garnishes. Roll the bottom of the leaf over the meat, then each side into the middle and finally roll up like a burrito. Set seam side down on plates and serve.
6. These are great dipped in creamy aiolis and served with a side salad!

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Dieting 101

 

You want to lose weight?  It’s really very simple.  Just go to the bookstore or library and pick a fad diet.  Then stick to it for the rest of your life.  The fact that we have fad diets that soon go out of favour should be no cause for concern.

Try The F-Plan, the high fibre solution to shedding excess pounds.  You’ll eat more bran and beans than you ever thought possible.  Basically, you’ll shit yourself skinny.  And add more methane to the atmosphere than a herd of cows.

Odd, actually, how so much of the diet lingo plays on our resembling a cow.  You wouldn’t think that it would work in a diet book writer’s favour to liken us to our ruminant kin, but a lot of diets recommend “grazing” in place of “eating.”  Rather than sitting down to a filling meal, we should graze small amounts of food all day.  If thinking about yourself as a cow is up your alley, try any diet that promotes grazing.  (Draw the line, though, at the whole regurgitate and rechew the food.  Unless you’re a model.  Then, by all means, barf up your lunch to keep stick thin, since this is really the only way to achieve your birth weight of 8lbs 6oz, but keep quiet about it lest you give the girls and women who look at you eating disorders, because, really, when we look at you we are not supposed to think “vomit.”)

But why stop with cows?  Why not go further back the chain of kinship to our hunter-gatherer ancestors?  The Fast Diet has a simple premise: our ancestors lived by feast and famine, and so should we.  We are not grazers, after all, and we need to experience real hunger.  Famine.  Progress has brought us indoor plumbing and the internet, but the famine of our ancestors is the way forward.  The pangs of hunger are a good sign that you are losing weight.  Therefore, on just two days a week, you will not eat.  Well, you can have dinner.  As long as it’s only 600 calories.  The whole family has to be fast on the fast diet: the adults will fast, and the kids had better learn to run fast from the really nasty Neanderthal creature that seems to have take over their mother’s body on the days she does not eat.  She may or may not return to normal on the days she’s actually allowed food.

Let’s try a different cave-dwelling ancestor: The Paleo Diet.  (AKA The South Beach Diet.  AKA The Atkin’s Diet.)  Our ancestors ate a plant- and protein-rich diet, and so should we.  The fact that their life expectancy was 30 should not deter you at all.  Live fast, die young.

Actually, while on the topic of ancestors, don’t forget the arguments in Wheat Belly.  Our forebears did not eat the strains of wheat we currently grow and that are currently the root of all evil.  Eliminate gluten.

Back to the cows for a minute.  We are the only mammals that drink milk past infancy, so you should probably also eliminate dairy.

A cleanse!  A cleanse will cover all these bases.  For just four short weeks, eliminate: solid food for breakfast and lunch, caffeine, sugar, alcohol, dairy, wheat AND the will to live.  If that does not help you lose weight, I don’t know what will.