Salt Block Surf and Turf

I had a little meltdown yesterday about how overwhelmed I was with this new diet (plus just the other stresses of my daily life) so mom came to the rescue and planned an amazing and fun dinner for all of us. She had been wanting to try out her new salt block for a few weekends now, and this was the perfect day to try.

The secret to cooking on the salt block is to get it nice and hot, but to heat it up slowly. We slowly raised the temp of our oven until the block reached 500 degrees. And then it was ready to cook on! If your block isn't hot enough the food takes up more salt and can get over salty. We put our block on top of a bunch of towels in the middle of our kitchen table and we all gathered around and just cooked right in front of us.

We had thin strips of steak, scallops, and ahi tuna. All of these things cook really fast, and can get overcooked pretty quickly in a skillet, which is why they work great on the salt block. We just very lightly seasoned everything, without salt of course. The scallops just got olive oil and pepper, the steak got a rub of  finely ground coffee, pepper, and ground juniper berry. 

Everything was so amazing!

We paired this with a salad with homemade Ceasar dressing (recipe on previous post) and then strawberry crisp for dessert (recipe in the next post).

Shoutout to my mom for planning this wonderful, fun, and diet friendly dinner!

Welcome to me!

I've been adjusting to a gluten-free lifestyle for almost a year now as a way to cope with my migraines and it has been working beautifully on that regard! In the last 4 months though I have been having major issues with my stomach. Pain after eating certain meals (I haven't been able to figure out what those are yet, hence the rest of my story)... Nausea... Abdominal cramping... Just all sorts of no fun things... My gastroenterologist says that I basically have IBS but of the stomach instead of the bowel.  So earlier this week he told me that I need to try the low-FODMAP diet. I'm already entirely gluten-free, so at least 1/2 the battle is already won, but going without onions and garlic and milk?!? I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my life!! Thankfully I like to cook, so I won't starve, but it is going to be a bit of a challenge.  The internet was my best resource when I had to go gluten-free, but I was a little underwhelmed with the amount of information about the low-FODMAP particularly compared to all the information out there about gluten-free. So... I figure while I am trying to work my way through the next 2 months of only low FODMAPs I'll post what I'm cooking and hopefully help someone else in the process!