Barbecue Sauce! ...And Expanded Social Media Presence

Happy Mid-Week!!

I'm so glad to see you all back here this week for another installment of ThePaleoVeg. This is another post that I actually started writing and intended to post on Tuesday, but time got away from me so I had to finish it today. Hence, please forgive any anachronisms.

I've continued receiving some great feedback from readers old and new about the content and layout of the blog, as well as some responses to my challenge for submission of dishes for me to attempt to paleo-veganize. I hope you're following me on Twitter (if not, find me @ThePaleoVeg right now and click "Follow"). I have, however, noticed a trend that more and more of my blog traffic is being directed from one particular source. I'd been considering expanding to this platform for a while now, so this week I decided to make the jump. You now have yet another way to keep up with everything that's going on during the week between blog posts: ThePaleoVeg is now officially <drum roll> on Facebook!

Head over to facebook.com/ThePaleoVeg and click "Like" to stay up to date on juicy tidbits of information, leave comments, ask questions, share your own recipes and food photos, figure out where I'm going to be eating/running/etc. (considering possibly doing some meet-ups in the future), and whatever other musings and news stories that pop into my head on a daily basis. The blog itself and Twitter have been great ways to share my adventure, but Facebook seemed to be the next logical step in expanding the reach of my content to a wider array of people...and let's be real, most of us are on Facebook for way more time each day than we'd care to admit.

I consulted with my friend Sarah, who founded the What I Vegan blog and is also active on Twitter and Facebook, and I asked her if it was difficult to juggle all of the various platforms and keep content unique. She said she enjoyed having the Facebook page to be able to share much of the content that she wouldn't necessarily put into her blog posts, which I can definitely understand. I've linked to her pages before, but here are the various ways you can find her content to read, like, and follow:

Blog: http://whativegan.wordpress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WhatIVegan
Twitter: https://twitter.com/what_i_vegan

Any other bloggers out there who've been able to boost their traffic and content via an expanded social media presence?

As for what I've been up to since we last met, I've been neck deep in rehearsals for Les Misérables at Encore Theatrical Company (and loving every minute of it), and I also enjoyed a WONDERFUL 4th of July holiday! I spent the evening at my friend Frannie's house (where I also spent part of Memorial Day weekend), and y'all...there was SO much incredible food there! All of it was vegan, but there were even some great paleo options for me to have as well! I gorged myself on gazpacho salad, killed spinach (it's a Southern thing), garlicky mushrooms, and a rocking paleo-vegan potato soup (recall that I am of the potato-eating paleo-ers). We had a great night celebrating the freedoms we enjoy with wonderful friends and capped it off with sparklers and fireworks.

My sparkler, framed by the actual Johnson City fireworks

Naturally, I had to wear my red, white, and blue

Because of the aforementioned rehearsals, I've not really had much time to cook, so I've been living mostly off of hazelnut butter, mixed nuts, the last of my tomato soup from last week's blog, and grabbing salads here and there. Monday on my lunch break, though, I was struck with a wild hair (hare?) to make barbecue sauce. Bear in mind that I only have an hour for lunch, so it would have to be quick, and I also needed something to eat it with...ya know, cause most folks use their lunch breaks to actually eat. I did a quick search for paleo barbecue sauces online to get some ideas, but as you can imagine, there are about as many different styles and recipes for barbecue sauce as there are fish in the ocean. Given the region I grew up in, this should have come as no surprise. So, I just decided to do my own thing with flavors I thought would go well together. The result was a sweet, slightly tangy sauce with a spicy kick that melds the things I love most about both northeast Tennessee (sweet, smokey, tomato based) and Carolina style sauces (mustard or vinegar based).

I started with a base of tomato paste (one 6 oz can), then filled the can back up halfway with balsamic vinegar (about 3 oz). To fill the remainder of the can I used (approximately): 
1 and 1/2 tablespoons of maple syrup (the real stuff please)
1 tbsp of dijon mustard
1 tbsp of juice from a jar of pickled jalapeños
1 tbsp of sriracha
2 tsp of coconut aminos

The liquid components of my sauce

I put all of this in a small sauce pan along with the tomato paste, then began to add the spices. As far as these go, add as much or as little as you like, depending on your personal preference, and feel free to experiment with flavors:
Kosher salt
Garlic salt (or garlic powder. If using garlic salt, adjust your kosher salt accordingly)
Freshly ground black pepper
Chili powder
Cumin

The spices for my sauce (garlic salt far right, kosher salt front and center)

This isn't something that needs to cook for hours on end. Just place it over low to medium-low heat for about 15 to 20 minutes to cook a bit of the raw vinegar flavor of the balsamic out and to let all of the flavors come together. You'll want to stir it every few minutes or so since the natural sugars in the tomato paste and maple syrup will begin to caramelize a bit (this is a good thing), but you don't want it to get clumpy and burn. If you do notice that your sauce starts to thicken and tighten up a bit too much, just throw in a small splash of something like vegetable stock or water to thin it back down a bit. I placed this on the back burner to keep an eye on it, then started preparing something for it to go on.

Tangy goodness in a bowl

Last weekend at The Fresh Market I picked up some awesome looking portobello mushroom caps. I'd thought of maybe using them as burgers for July 4th, but that wound up not happening. I decided to use one of these as the vehicle for my sauce.

Two of my gorgeous portobello caps

When working with any kind of mushroom that's not already been washed, take a dry or slightly damp towel and just wipe away any excess dirt that you see. Don't run your mushrooms under water to clean them! For the same reason that mushrooms are able to absorb so much flavor, they'll also absorb a lot of water and will be soggy when you cook them. For larger mushrooms like portobellos, you'll also want to cut away any tough woody stems, and perhaps even use a spoon to scrape away the gills on the underside of the cap as they can sometimes have a less than pleasing texture to some people. Once my mushroom was cleaned, I chopped it into roughly bite-sized pieces then tossed them in a pre-heated pan with a bit of minced garlic, some crushed red pepper flakes, and just enough grape seed oil to get things sizzling a bit. The smell of mushrooms sauteeing with garlic is one of my absolute favorite kitchen aromas!

By this time, my sauce was doing quite nicely, so I transferred it to a bowl for storage, but I didn't wash out the sauce pot it had been cooking in. Instead, I tossed my mushroom bites in to mingle with the sauce that had clung to the sides of the pot and added a couple tablespoons of sauce from my bowl so they could really get coated thoroughly. Once they were happily married together, it was time to serve. I didn't really make enough to warrant dirtying a whole plate, so I opted for the next logical vessel: a martini glass...that's normal, right? These would work great as an appetizer, side dish, or as a quick little snack/light lunch.

I don't always eat my lunch from a martini glass...though maybe I should?

Close-up of the barbecue mushroom magic

For Tuesday's lunch, I decided to take it a step further. I cleaned and prepped another of the portobello caps as before, only this time I left it whole. I then cooked it on both sides in a bit of garlic, oil, and chili flakes, adding a bit of salt and pepper, then sat it aside on a plate.

Freshly sauteed and seasoned portobello cap

In the same pan, with a tiny bit more oil, I placed some chopped canned artichoke hearts (about 6 or 7 pieces), allowed those to heat through a bit, then threw in a small palmful (roughly 1/3 c) of chopped walnuts. Then I put in a couple of spoonfuls of my barbecue sauce, and finally tossed in about 2 tablespoons of my raw shelled hemp seeds.

Artichoke hearts before slicing/chopping

Artichokes cooking with chopped walnuts

After the addition of the barbecue sauce and hemp seeds

Once again, if the sauce starts to thicken too much or burn, throw in a little water or vegetables stock. When this mixture was heated through, I heaped it on top of my portobello to create a lovely...well, I'm not sure what you'd call it. But it was rich and tangy and spicy and satisfying and full of protein and, most importantly, delicious!

I still have no idea what to call this, but golly it tasted good!

That about wraps things up for this week. Remember, find my Facebook page, give it a Like, and tell your friends to do the same! Until next time...

Much love to you all,

Jon