Day 13: Recipes and the joy of Paleo

Breakfast
Salty Lemonade. Eventually I will try something else for breakfast, but I love this kick this gives to my morning.

Snack
Yet another Paleo Candy Bar from Paleo Plan.

Lunch
Leftover Chicken and Dumplings.

(photo credit: Pragmatic Paleo)

Dinner

A throw together:

• Chicken breast covered in Old Bay Seasoning
• Layer on bacon
• Layer on sweet potatoes
• Layer on carrots
• Sprinkle with sea salt and cinnamon
• Bake in Corningware on 350 for 35 minutes

Served with grilled spinach.

Food used to consume my life. I thought about it all the time: What am I craving? What can I eat? When can I eat again? Can I have seconds? How big is the portion? Will there be a dessert opportunity? Now, food is a constant state of being sated. Since I started Paleo, my energy doesn't deviate, my stomach never growls. When sometimes forget that I haven't eaten in several hours. I can be too distracted to notice hunger. This is a new experience for me, and an entirely pleasant one. For example, right now, dinner is still cooking. I haven't eaten in almost 8 hours, I am able to identify that I'm hungry, but I'm not scouring the kitchen, I'm not pre-eating.

Fascinated. Thrilled. I love Paleo.

Day 12: Recipes

Breakfast
Salty Lemonade

Snack
Paleo Candy Bars from Paleo Plan

Lunch
Steak salad from Garcia's Mexican Restaurant. I won't lie, resisting the chips and salsa was impossible, and I did eat some chips. The salad I ordered without the shell, no cheese, and no sour cream. I was pleased with my choices, although I regretted those chips later in the day.

Dinner
Grilled green beans (like I said, the chips were not a wise choice)

I will need to investigate alternatives to super-crispy chips. I really miss the hearty crunch of a tortilla chip, but the price I paid for eating them was not worth it.

Not a successful day, but some days are not.

Day 11: Grocery stores and recipes

Breakfast
Salty Lemonade.
Coffee

Lunch
Chipotle salad - lettuce, double steak, medium salsa and pico
Apple juice

Snack
Paleo Candy Bar from Paleo Plan

Dinner
Steak and chicken fajitas. By fajitas I mean thinly sliced meat tossed with onions and bell peppers and spicy seasoning.

At my local grocery store, the produce and the meat department are right next to each other on the east side of the store. I could arrange my shopping trips so that I only have to venture into the rest of the store once a month to buy household items and my collection of roasted nuts. This is a very strange adventure I've embarked on, ya'll.

I was the Kraft Mac 'n Cheese Mom. Yes, it always had mixed veggies and grilled chicken, but I was starch-as-the-staple like so many other single Mom's. I thought there was no way I could find the time to "do Paleo," but as it turns out, Paleo is easy. It's meat and veggies in a pan; it's salads and smoothies; it's apple slices and almond butter; it's Holy Grale Juice and Salty Lemonade.

This whole "Paleo thing" is really awesome.

Day 8: Back on the plan and enjoying it

Breakfast

Jolene's Good Morning Juice
1 bunch green kale
6 carrots
6 apples
1/2 head celery
2 pears

Serves 2.5 people.

Snack
Bacon Wrapped Dates from Paleo Plan.

The perfect blend of salty and sweet, this delightful treat will be a repeat in my house. Easy to make and an epic level of deliciousness. A++ grade in my house!

Lunch
Sweet Tomatoes for lunch today. Easy to stay within the Paleo guidelines when it's an open salad bar. Yes, it was hard to stay away from the other offerings (foccacia and blueberry muffins, two of my favorites), but the salad I made really hit the spot. The disastrous experience with stepping back into grains from the night before was fresh in my mind, so staying away was a little easier than it might have been previously.

Snack
Envy Apple

Dinner
Just Plain Chili from Paleo Plan

This is exactly as advertised: It's chili. I used ground Angus beef and I was very liberal with the spices. I like my chili with kick and this chili is mild. Served over Paleo Cornbread from Kelly at A Girl Worth Saving.

A recipe so nice we tried it twice! We don't have butter in my house (dairy-free, ya'll), but it's good drizzled with raw honey. 

Day Five: Recipes

Breakfast
Salty Lemonade again for breakfast. I cannot tell you how amazing this beverage is for breakfast. I crawl from bed bleary eyed and grumpy. I sit at the breakfast table with my salty lemonade, and by the time I'm done I'm awake, alert, and almost chipper. Incredible. I'm also not hungry for about 2 hours after.

Jolene's Salty Lemonade
16oz warm water
1T lemon or lime juice
1t Sea salt or Himalayan salt

Lunch
I ate out with a co-worker today, so I had to improvise. I got a sweet potato, grilled salmon, and grilled green beans. Are green beans really a bean? You can eat them right off the plant! I called it good enough and it was quite a tasty lunch.

Snack
Almonds and a cup of coffee.

Dinner
Paleo Shepherd's Pie from Neely at Paleo Plan.

There are so many variations on shepherd's pie it's a bit of a craps shoot as to whether you'll get what you're expecting. This shepherd's pie is delightful, robust, well spiced, and quite savory.

Modifications:

• recipe calls for onion salt, but I used onion power and then added Sea salt.
• Herbs d'Provence instead of Italian seasoning. I prefer to add my spices separately so I can tailor to my own palate.

I may never get over the noxious smell of cooking parsnips. How can anything so tasty smell so bad? The mushrooms I used weren't optimal (white beech), so I recommend sticking with something more traditional.

Dessert
Holiday grapes from Whole Foods.

The only grape juicer and sweeter than the Scarlotta, this grape has a very short harvesting period. They are shamefully expensive and worth every penny.
I am coming to understand why people on the Paleo diet don't complain about the Paleo diet.

Day Four: Recipes

Breakfast
Salty Lemonade (16oz warm water, 1t Himalayan salt, 1T lemon juice). It was everything you can imagine it being. It was also more energizing than a cup of coffee and really set me in a positive mind frame for the day.

Snack
Dry roasted almonds

Lunch
I attended an off-site meeting with a catered lunch. As luck would have it, I was able to pilfer a chicken breast and mixed vegetables for lunch. Sure, neither we Paleo-prepared, but it's close enough for me. I avoided the potatoes, gravy, cornbread, and apple pie. If that's not a success, I don't know what is.

Snack
Half a Honeycrisp apple

Dinner
Paleo Chicken Alfredo from Jason at Paleo Plan.

I was wary of this recipe because it's Alfredo with no cheese or cream. I'm an Alfredo snob, a side effect of having my daughter's Dad make the stuff from scratch for me (he trained as a Chef in The Broadmoor, and then hopped through the kitchens in New York). I was prepared to just make myself a smoothie if this didn't pan out.

Let me tell you something: This is the best Chicken Alfredo in existence. I'm serious, I wouldn't change a single thing about this recipe. Now, we did not make it with kelp noodles as the recipe suggested because I have hang-ups about wet seaweed, neither did we have it with spaghetti squash. Instead, I found grain-free dairy-free sweet potato gnocchi. I could serve this meal to non-Paleo people and they would never know. It was amazing.

Day Four of Paleo was successful. That dinner was epic, ya'll, and the recipe will become a repeat offender on this blog.

Day Two: Recipes

Breakfast
Fried Eggs and Sweet Potato Hash from Jason at Paleo Plan

To add extra spice I made this recipe with Aidells Cajun Style Andouille. While the recipe says fried eggs, I found over-easy preferable. The recipe also says it feeds two but I found it feeds three. There is still a very large serving leftover after my daughter and I ate.

Also for breakfast is my favorite beverage: Holy Grale juice. There are recipes all over the Internet for this delightful raw juice. I've played with red kale, green kale, and several varieties of grapes. My favorite, and what I made this morning, is green kale and green grapes. Sweet, refreshing, and more of a pick-me-up than a double shot of espresso.

Lunch
Egg-free, Grain-free Pumpkin Zucchini Muffins from Cat at Paleo Plan

The muffins were not ideal. They over-cooked outside and under-cooked inside. The texture was unexpectedly dense and 1t of all-spice is entirely too much for my palate. The recipe has potential and I'll try it again, but not until I've practiced with Paleo baking a bit more. The addition of walnuts will likely help, as will omission of the frozen fruit.

Also for lunch: an Envy apple.

A few years ago I took a tour of the apple section, purchasing a different type of apple every week. I bought Honeycrisp apples last because I thought the $2.99lb price point ridiculous. Now I consider the price worthwhile. I'm a devout Honeycrisp apple fan, eating one every day of their short season. Envy apples are very much like a Honeycrisp in firmness and sweetness, but Envy apples little less sweet and a little more firm. Possibly a perfect apple.

  

Dinner
We ate at a friend's house tonight. They made a pork and green chili stew. I couldn't have asked for a better dinner, and it aligned nicely (if not perfectly) with Paleo restrictions.

Dessert
Chocolate Chunk [Paleo] Cookies from Gina at Running to the Kitchen.

There was a dough consistency failure in this recipe (trend of the day, apparently), but this time the dough was too soft. The cookies mushed into one solid cookie. Aside from that, these cookies are epic. If I hadn't made them I would never have known they contain no dairy, no sugar, and no gluten.

Substitution replacing the chocolate with unsweetened carob chips worked well. I prefer my chocolate bitter, so I will use unsweetened carob or cocoa chips for my chocolate substitutions in all recipes.

A successful second day of Paleo.