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I just wanted to remind y’all that tonight for the Cookbook Giveaway! It ends at midnight PCT!

Okay, on to the good stuff…Chinese food!

I grew up eating at Chinese food and Beef and Broccoli was always my favorite, so we wanted to try a paleo friendly version. This was a delicious and easy meal (for under $10) that the whole family really enjoyed.

  Here’s what you need:

• 3/4 lb sirloin steak, cut into bite sized pieces
• 1 orange, zest and juice
• gluten free tamari soy sauce, 3/4 cup
• sesame oil, 1/4 cup
• fresh ginger, 1 & 1/2 tbsp
• 1-2 tbsp dry white wine
• red pepper flakes, scallions and sesame seeds (optional)
• celtic sea salt (I added about 1/2 tsp since I used the low sodium tamari)

Tate actually said today “I love to help you cook mom”. I think what he meant was I like to help you make a mess and use potentially dangerous cooking utensils (like a grater).   But I like to have him involved because lord knows he’s still learning.   After camp today, he came home and said his friend had some “grass fed noodles” that he would like to try because they “make your muscles strong”.  At least he’s trying…

Here’s what you need to do:

1.  Grate your ginger (or just use a butter knife to scoop some out if it’s frozen)

2.  Grate your orange peel for the zest

3.  Juice your orange and put orange and ginger all in a small bowl and set aside.

I can blame this mess on Tate, but it typically our kitchen doesn’t look much better than this…

4.  Add tamari, seseame seeds, (scallions, red pepper flakes and sesame optional) and set aside.

5.  Now cut your sirloin into bite sizes pieces.

6.  Put the meat and half the marinade in a zip lock bag and seal tight.

7.  Steam the broccoli for just a few minutes.

8.  Cook the meat for about 2 minutes, add the broccoli and the rest of the marinade and let cook on low for a few minutes.  Then turn off and let the juices soak in for awhile before dinner time.

Enjoy!

About 6 years ago my husband and his best buddy started dressing up in themes for the 4th of July Peachtree Road Race 10k. It’s been a super fun, and yet odd (I’ll get to that part) tradition. Every year, as their group grows they get more and more creative.

So for their first year, if you couldn’t guess it from the picture below, they dressed as secret service agents.  The next year was “running with the bulls”, followed by Olympic Swimmers (yes, with Speedos),  then Redneck Chipendales (my personal favorite), next was 70’s tennis stars, and then there was classic stars of the WWF.

Black suits in the summer in Hotlanta was not such a great idea, but they finished in character of course.  Now you see why they actually wore Speedos one year!

For those of you that don’t know me well, this is so NOT my personality but yes, I did run it one year with the guys and what an experience it was. I was Elizabeth, Rando Macho Man’s wife  (at least, that’s what I was told as I know nothing about wrestling). We also had Hulk Hogan, Jake the Snake, and a few others behind.  While it was a fun experience to share with my hubby and his friends, I don’t think I’ll be joining the group again anytime soon. It takes guts to run like these guys do! And believe me, they are a loud group so there’s no sneaking by in this race.

Both wrestling race photos courtsey of WSB-TV.com

Okay, so back to the part about their “odd” tradition. So not only do theese guys get in full costume and character, and boy do they have character, but once before and twice during the race, they stop at  couple of stations (they stash the night before) and eat a hotdog, drink a Pabst Blue Ribbon, and eat an apple pie.   As they say “What is more American?”. I chose to skip this part of the tradition when I ran with them.   But wow, seeing them eat this stuff, and then run seconds later…they have stomachs of steel!

So the kids kept asking why we had this junk in the house if it is so unhealthy.   Good question.   I decided to read the ingredients to them.  I don’t think I’ve ever read these ingredients (I always read ingredients) because well, I never thought to buy them.  This is what we found in the list:

Oscar Myer Hotdogs:

• beef
• corn syrup
• potassium lactate
• dextrose
• sodium phosphates
• diacetate
• ascorbic acid
• sodium nitrates

Shouldn’t we be able to pronounce the food we eat?  Or, at least know what it is for that matter?? Even spell check didn’t know what some of the words were…

By the way, I may not know what all of these chemicals are but I do know it’s a fact that sodium nitrates have been linked with cancer.  For more information on nitrates, read here and here for starters.

Okay, and for the buns there are a lot of ingredients, but I’ll just highlight a few:

• enriched bleached flour
• high fructose corn syrup
• soybean oil
• wheat bluent
• mono diglycerides
• ethoxylated diglycerides
• sodium stearoyl lactylate
• calcium peroxide
• azodicarbonamide
• l-cysteine
• ammonium sulfate

What?? That is not food. It’s just not.  It’s chemicals, and some of them are really nasty! I wanted to google a few of these things to see what they actually were, like ammonium sulfate, and the second thing that pops up in the search was, “adding ammonium sulfate to Round Up”.  Hmmm…

A client of mine was telling her friends that I said I would rather her kids eat an organic grass fed hotdog over gluten, sugar filled sugar (yes, even Kashi) cereal.  They were pretty surprised by that and while the hotdog isn’t the perfect breakfast, let’s see why I suggested it over the anti-nutrient, inflammatory alternative…

Let’s look at the ingredients in our hotdogs:

• organic Grass fed beef
• sea salt
• organic spices
• organic garlic
• organic onion
• paprika
• celery powder

With all of this said, once a year (or once in awhile) won’t hurt my hubby and his friends, so go for it guys and have a blast!!! Just don’t make habit out of it.

Go get ’em Baywatch Lifeguards!!