Smoky Roasted Turnips

Day 9 of The 21 Day Sugar Detox, and I finally have my boyfriend back!! No more grumpy, irritable, negative Bill. Happy sunshine Bill is back! You have no idea how happy this makes me. He has been so great through this whole detox, and is finally starting to really feel the benefits. We both are feeling really great, and although there still is that quiet voice in the back of both of our heads saying “you know you want some dark chocolate…”(or in my case, dried mango slices and figs -Bill) the majority of our cravings have diminished, and our bodies just feel good.

So now our eating is back to being super clean, we are finally back to working out regularly too (it only took about five months to get there after turning Make it Paleo in…), and of course the last thing we are STILL working on is the sleep. We are still sleeping in a pitch black room, and we do get enough sleep, we just are still working on getting to bed earlier. We will get there… I hope…

Yesterday was a crazy day for us. We were up way too late, and slept in way too late which threw our entire day off. We hate waking up any later than 8 am. The entire day felt like we were scrambling to get things done: blog post, mailing books, grocery shopping, emails, and feeding ourselves! I think I ate a small bite of food at 2 pm and that was all I had all day before dinner. We pulled it together though. We even got in a KILLER workout in our basement gym before dinner, and made two detox friendly recipes to post this week. We were also able to wind things down about an hour after dinner, and work on a jigsaw puzzle (that Bill’s mom loaned to us) before we Skyped with my sister who is teaching English in the Dominican Republic this year. We still got to bed late, but hey… nobody is perfect.

One of the items on our dinner menu last night was roasted turnips. Turnips are a great option for those whom really miss potatoes. You can roast them, mash them, or even throw them into a crock pot with a stew. They have a mild flavor, and look a lot like potatoes when cooked. For this recipe we decided to use the flavor of bacon to really enhance these turnips. We roasted them in bacon fat, seasoned them with smoky flavors, and garnished them with some amazing oven baked bacon.

Ingredients:

4 turnips, ends removed and chopped into bite size pieces
2 tablespoons bacon grease, melted
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon garlic powder
Salt and pepper to taste
1 strip of thick cut bacon, cooked and chopped to garnish

Process:

Preheat oven to bake at 425.
Place turnips into an oven safe baking dish.
Toss with melted bacon grease.
Sprinkle with smoked paprika, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Toss to evenly coat.
Bake uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring every so often to ensure even cooking.
After 30 minutes turn heat down to 350, move turnips to a lower rack, and place bacon in the oven to bake**
Remove turnips after bacon has baked for about 10-15 minutes, however check to ensure that the turnips are not burning.
Once bacon is crisp (about 25-30 minutes), removed, chop and place on the turnips.

**To Bake Bacon:

Place a roasting rack over a jelly roll sheet, and lay the bacon on the rack (you can use a cooling rack if you don’t have a roasting rack). Bake the bacon for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees. With this method, you can easily gather the bacon grease from the baking sheet to save for future use.