Making it Paleo: Lamb and Butternut Squash Stew

At The Whale Wins in Seattle

I don't know about you, but my favorite thing to do when flying on an airplane is to pick up magazines at Hudson News and read them on the flight. Of course, the only magazines I buy are the food magazines with an occasional Women's Health or Shape thrown in there. One time on a flight to Seattle, a Seattle restaurant named The Whale Wins happened to be reviewed in the magazine I was reading. First thing I did when I got to Seattle? Got in an Uber and headed to the restaurant to check it out. I had a cheese plate (pre-paleo or even caring about health days), zucchini soup and the most delicious zucchini bread that has ever been known to mankind, all while sitting at the counter with the chefs as they prepared Tartare for dinner to be served later that night. It was one of the most random and delicious things I have ever done.

The greatest zucchini bread
known to man. 

The problem with picking up magazines is that I don't throw them away. First of all they are way too expensive to just be throwing away and secondly, I am always sure that I am going to go back and make every recipe, try every workout and buy every outfit. You know as well as I do, that the only thing that comes from this is a stockpile of magazines laying around. When you add in a decision to eat Paleo, 90% of the recipes aren't even applicable any more.

After hearing about this book from several sources, I listened to the audio-book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo. Now, in my opinion, this woman is a complete whack job and a narcissist to boot - the whole book is basically her bragging about her having made a career out of having OCD. However, she is also right and as you listen or read her book you will want to clean out and sort everything in your life. One of the first things I went to tidy was my magazine stockpile, mostly because it was easy. I tore out recipes that were Paleo or Paleo-ish that I might actually make and threw the magazines away. I also faced the fact that I was never going to turn to page 68 of the March 2014 Shape to do the 20 minute workout - those got tossed too. This was back in June and just this week did I actually pull out a recipe and make it. To encourage myself to work through them, I am going to somewhat regularly (hopefully) write a "Making it Paleo" post, taking non-paleo recipes from your favorite magazines and making them Paleo-friendly. 

What cooking actually
looks like

The winner recipe for this first post was Cooking Light's Lamb and Butternut Squash Stew from the October 2014 magazine. Why'd it win? 1. I love lamb 2. Stew freezes well and I am currently stockpiling my freezer with meals for when work starts and kitchen play-time ends and 3. I happened to have the perfect amount of butternut squash already cubed and in my freezer. This is also a great recipe if you are on the fence about lamb and want to dip a toe in the water. The "gamey" taste of lamb is reduced because it is actually 1/2 ground beef and 1/2 lamb. Reason #295 I love my local butcher Ottomanelli's - they ground my lamb and beef mixed together fresh on the spot. 

While not a Paleo recipe, it comes pretty dang close. The suggested cauliflower side dish is 100% Paleo-friendly, but honestly a bit underwhelming; zesting lemons is too much of a pain for the lack of impact made on the dish. I think I might be a cauliflower snob (see post entitled "My Best Day in Nashville"). The only changes I made to the stew recipe were:

• Subbing arrowroot flour/starch for the all-purpose flour
• Using beef bone broth that I had made previously and frozen in place of the beef stock. You can use either and be Paleo, but if you use bone broth then you get to have all your Paleo "feels" about the benefits of collagen and such. 
• More salt. Not to make it Paleo and not because I am a sodium fiend, but because Cooking Light recipes always need more salt.
• Since my butternut squash had been frozen then thawed, I added it to the mixture at the end with the browned meat rather than with the onions and garlic because it was already soft. 

Further, if you are following a Paleo diet, you will not get enough protein out of this meal if you call it a 6 serving dish. This is at most a 4 serving dish, I ate one, saved one for leftovers and froze two servings individually in these containers with these labels.  

There was a whole other recipe (did someone say cheesecake?) I was going to share with this post, but I realized most of you are probably tired of reading by now, so I will save it for another day (sooner rather than later I promise!).