Whole Foods & Cook Day

This morning got off to a rocky start. I made my way through a six day work week primed for my Sunday off with a list of things to do. On top of my list was attempting to run a new personal record this morning (I was aiming for 15k). Even though it was grey and rainy outside, I laced up and went for it. And it. was. pouring. I made it about 4km and realized I could barely see where I was going, and I was worried that my phone, shoes, and nike+ fuelband would be destroyed so I headed home, defeated. Oh well. I also had a list of recipes I wanted to make for my cook day and a trip to Whole Foods on the list, so I powered on. 

As I biked up to Whole Foods, the sun came out. Oh well. I've been once before, but found it expensive and overwhelming. It's still expensive and overwhelming, but there's a lot of amazing stuff there to choose from. I came away with some baba ghanouj, and a little snack - some dried persimmons (so good!) and a pack of "nud" chai flavoured energy crisps. I was glad to see the only ingredients are organic banana, coconut, sesame seeds, chai spices, and vanilla. They were quite tasty, though they mostly just tasted like banana. 

Afterward, I hit up the bulk store for some spices, then the butcher for some (local, grass fed) stewing beef and an impulse buy of ground duck. Then I went to the grocery store for produce and made it home with all of this on my bike. 

 Here's what I made: (from Well Fed/The Clothes Make the Girl)

Velvety Butternut Squash
...and the Ras Al-Hanout to go with it
Cinnamon Beef Stew (Greek Beef Stew)
Jicama Home Fries (recipe from the book, not posted online)
Duck Burgers (recipe below) (also, not pictured)

Before and after pic of the squash. I'm excited to see how it tastes. The spice blend smells amazing, and since I've been on a sweet potato-coconut milk-cinnamon bender lately, this should be a good variation.

Here's an unfortunately blurry picture of all the herbs and spices added to the stew. It smells amazing and I'm looking forward to tasting the cinnamon in there. 

Here's the Jicama Home Fries, which smell amazing. The only variation I made was to cook the jicama in some of the duck fat leftover from my burgers. (Since the recipe is in the book, but not online, I'm going to leave it there. The book is really, really worth it).

Now the burgers. I was at the butcher waiting for my beef to be cut up for the stew and I saw in the case that they had citrus duck burgers. I asked for an ingredient list and was sad to see that there were breadcrumbs, but the butcher let me keep the list so I could recreate the burgers on my own with some ground duck. I bought the duck but didn't have many of the ingredients on hand, so I winged it and used a half teaspoon each of smoked paprika, cumin, and coriander along with an egg, salt, and pepper.  I think I'll head back and try the ones there once my whole30 is done.

Well, that's it for now. Once again, I've spent the day in the kitchen and have been left with very little appetite. I'm feeling sleepy and although the sun streaming through the window is tempting me to get outside, I'm back at work tomorrow and can feel a summer cold coming on, so I'm going to stay put and self-medicate with food.