Holy Molé Tenderloin (featuring Elliott's Pork Paste)

A scene from my kitchen. I said, "Elliott, can you make something to put on this hunk of meat? I want one of those concoctions with chili powder and cocoa and cinnamon that sounds weird at first but then tastes like seven different kinds of awesome." My big brother proceeded to do my bidding. He produced a magical paste-like substance that we slathered all over our pork tenderloin, and Elliott's Pork Paste was born. His one mistake was not adding any Frank's hot sauce, but I made a mental note and fixed the recipe the next time around. 

Elliott's Pork Paste is the love child of a rub and a marinade. You can put it on any kind of meat, but I've found that it works particularly well on pork or turkey tenderloins. I would probably eat a car tire if you drowned it in this stuff, though. And before any nitpickers call me out, I admit that this isn't exactly a legitimate molé sauce. However, the flavors are similar (chili, cocoa, cinnamon, cumin, lime, etc.) and I couldn't think of anything else to call it. It's molé-esque, so leave me alone.


Unrelated side note: If you leave a comment for me on the contact form, I will be delighted to respond to you personally, but I need some form of contact information. (So will the person who asked me to get back to them please leave me another note with an email address? Thanks!) 

Ingredients

2 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp onion powder

2 tsp chili powder

1 tsp cumin

2 tsp paprika

1 tsp oregano

1/4 tsp white pepper (if you happen to have it. Substitute black if you don't.)

1 tsp coarse ground sea salt

2 tsp cocoa powder

1 tsp cinnamon

2 Tbsp erythritol, Splenda, or not-sugar of your choice

juice of whole lime

1.5 Tbsp red wine vinegar

1 tsp Frank's RedHot (That's the bare minimum. Bonus points if you add more)

2-3 Tbsp warm water

1 package pork or turkey tenderloins

Directions   (Printable PDF)
Mix all ingredients except for the warm water and raw meat in a small bowl. Add water slowly until you achieve the consistency of a saucy paste. 

Pierce the meat with a fork in several places, then coat thoroughly with the paste-sauce (read: drown those suckers). Cover and refrigerate for several hours (if you have time/want it to be really good. You can go straight to the cooking, though).

I give you two options for the cooking method: roast or grill. For the oven folks, roast it uncovered at 350 until the meat thermometer reaches the acceptable temperature. If you're a griller, the best method is to put the meat over indirect heat and turn it occasionally. With a three-burner grill, I put the meat in the center with the center burner on fairly low and the left and right burners on medium-high.

My dad kept saying that our little tenderloins looked like Graboids from Tremors (if you haven't seen them, the four films are paragons of high-quality cinema). They really kind of did, but that didn't stop anyone from packing it in at dinner.

Need a side dish? Try some jicama hash browns.

HIIT Workout #6 (One for the runners)

So far, all of my HIIT workouts have been circuits involving three to six different exercises. Most of them aren't terribly complex, but today I have a one-exercise workout that literally anyone can do. You don't need any prior workout experience or knowledge of terminology. You also don't need a gym membership or any equipment. You just somewhere to run, whether it's outside on the sidewalk, at a track, or even a indoor basketball court.

Sprinting HIIT Workout
Sprint for 60-90 seconds
Walk or jog for 30-60 seconds, depending on your fitness level
Repeat for 20-30 minutes

"I Don't Have a Watch" Variation
Pick a point in the distance, like a stop sign or fire hydrant, and sprint to it. Moving targets are bad, especially if they're moving away from you at a speed faster than you can run. Once you reach it, walk or jog until you catch your breath, then repeat.

Large Hill Variation (you will need a hill)
Sprint up the hill* (if this takes less than a minute, find a bigger hill)
Walk/jog down the hill
Repeat for 20-30 minutes
*For extra fun, do some pushups at the top!

You are not a mountain goat. Put down the Clif Bar.

Look at a Clif Bar wrapper. What’s the guy doing? Climbing a cliff, right? The last person I saw with Clif Bar was a kid at a library. Before that it was some guy in a big fancy suit grabbing a snack at CVS before his big fancy meeting. These people were not about to go get in touch with their inner mountain goats. They had no cliffs to climb. The businessman might have been gearing up to walk a block or two, but the library kid didn’t look like he had any plans to move for the rest of the day.

People think Clif Bars are healthy because the have oats in them and they taste less good than Snickers. Companies spend lots of marketing money to take advantage of people who don’t know much about nutrition and/or are dumb. But have you seen the nutrition facts? The average Clif Bar has about 240 calories and 21-25 grams of sugar. A pack of Reese’s has 210 calories and 21 grams of sugar. Guess what? It’s the same sucrose, and Clif has more of it. I’m not saying Clif is worse than candy – it has a couple of grams of fiber, a little more protein, and some random vitamins – but it’s not much better. The bars are designed to provide energy for sustained strenuous activity, not to be a midmorning snack for a typical sedentary person. Next time you pick one up, ask yourself the following question: am I on a cliff? If the answer is no, put it down and find yourself something else to eat.

I’m hating on Clif, but there are plenty of other offenders. KIND is another brand that makes me disgruntled. Nutritionally, they’re a step up from Clif, but their shtick bugs me: “wholesome ingredients you can see and pronounce.” If you read the label, you see “non-GMO sugar” listed among said wholesome ingredients. Well I’m so very glad that no genetically modified organisms were involved in the making of that bar, but that’s like saying you’re going to shoot someone with a gun that was not manufactured by orphans in a sweatshop.  KIND bars are literally dried fruit (aka sugar) and nuts glued together with honey (aka sugar) and more sugar. The stats aren’t too bad just because the things are tiny, but you’d do much better to have some nuts and real fruit with a little lean protein as your snack.

Bars have dominated the snack market because they’re so darn convenient, but sadly, most of them are crap. They’re calorie-dense and contain a lot of fat, indecent quantities of sugar, and not much protein. A few have better nutrient ratios – Think Thin, Pure Protein, special lines of low-carb bars from the bigger brands – but most of those have sugar alcohols, so they aren’t a perfect solution. If you need a quick and easy snack, just buy some whey protein and make a shake. It’s cheaper and cleaner. (And if you want to know which flavors to buy from my favorite brand, read this one.) 

Related Posts:
Carb College, Lesson One

Carb College, Lesson Two

Carb College, Lesson Three

Packing Lunch: The College Student/Busy Person Edition
Review: Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey Gold Standard Protein Powder 

Almonds make cheese? (review)

This is pretty random, but I thought I would share. As an ultimate nutrition snob, I get excited when I find something new at the store that I can actually eat. Recently, I encountered almond cheese. It was almost fat free, high in protein, low in carbs, and even offered a gram of fiber. I love cheese, and I love almond milk, so how could I not like this? I decided to try the cheddar and buy pepper jack on return trip if it was good. Sadly, I did not go back for jack.

Taste: You can tell it’s trying to taste like cheese, but it really just tastes like what society has come to accept as “cheese flavor.” It’s the same flavor encountered in Easy Mac powder and other excuses for cheese, but much more subtle and with less salt. The taste is about as similar to real cheddar cheese as the taste of a grape Popsicle is to a real grape.

Texture and appearance: They came pretty close, but something still isn’t right. For one thing, if you look closely, there are tiny brown specks and larger white spots mingled in with the orangey-yellow you expect from cheddar cheese. It’s a little soft, but nowhere near as squishy as Velveeta. It holds up to grating… kind of.

Nutritional value: Compared to regular cheddar cheese, this is a lot better for you. It only has 1 gram of fat and 50 calories per ounce, compared to 9 grams of fat and 110 calories per ounce for the real stuff. But wait, don’t they make fat-free cheese that’s actually cheese? Yeah, and it tastes better and doesn’t have any carbs. This product has three grams of carbs per ounce (one of them is fiber, which I’m okay with, but it loses points for the other two).

Overall: A passable substitute for cheese if you can’t/won’t eat dairy products. Otherwise, you’re better off with Kraft’s fat-free shredded cheddar and mozzarella, or something from Cabot’s line of 50-75% reduced fat cheeses. 

Turkey Meatloaf Muffins

Everyone who is anyone in the business of clean food industry has his/her variation on poultry meatloaf. Turkey meatloaf muffins. Miniature chicken loaves. Turkey and chicken combo-loaf. You can’t consider yourself established in the world of healthy recipes until you have one to your name, so this probably should have been one of my first posts. The problem is that I rarely make it the same way twice – it’s a pretty forgiving recipe, so I just use whatever I can find. It's super easy, and it usually ends well. Last time I went home, I made it for my family. My dad is among my hardest critics, but he ate four of the little things and admitted to liking them quite a bit. I quickly wrote down what I had done, because a positive review from that man is gold.

I should also note that this is also the first one of my recipes in which Frank's RedHot makes an appearance. I have no idea why it hasn't come up before. Their slogan is "I put that on everything," but really, I do. I buy Costco quantities. Someone asked me my opinion on cayenne pepper pills, and I suggested just pouring Frank's on everything instead. You get whatever metabolism-boosting benefits cayenne pepper allegedly has, plus the heat makes you eat more slowly and drink more water, and it tastes awesome. Win win win win. 

Per 2-muffin serving (1/6 recipe)

Ingredients

1.25 lbs extra lean ground turkey

1 egg

half of a bell pepper

half of an onion

1/3 cup chunky salsa

¼ cup cilantro

½ tsp cumin

½ tsp chili powder

1 tsp paprika

Frank’s RedHot (as much as you dare)

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Then put the bell pepper, onion, salsa, and cilantro into a food processor and pulse until it all looks kind of like salsa.

Dump everything from the food processor into a large bowl and add all the other ingredients. Combine thoroughly. 

Spray a muffin pan or line it with foil cupcake liners for easy clean-up (the paper ones don't work - I tried). Evenly distribute your meat mixture into the 12 muffin holes.

Bake in the preheated oven until a meat thermometer registers a safe internal temperature of 170 degrees (about 45 minutes). Try to eat a couple before your father scarfs them all himself.