Monday 17 September 2012

Back to Basics Days 11&12 and a Lot of Other Stuff!

The weekends can be hard to eat properly.  There is more time and more temptation all around you.  Fortunately, tonight I'm hosting a paleo Meetup at my place so I'll be too busy to worry about food.

If you haven't already, you HAVE to go to www.Meetup.com and see if there's a local paleo meetup group in your area.  These meetup groups are awesome--they're a great way to meet the other paleo peeps in your area and sometimes these groups have some really great things going on.  Tonight, we're doing a potluck and hosting a Skype chat with Dr Rivkah Roth.  Dr Roth has written several books on the subject of gut bacteria and its connections to both celiac disease and diabetes.  It appears that many, many diseases actually begin in the gut.  I'm stoked!  In the coming weeks, we're having a meetup with Jonathan Randles, host of Big Primal (http://big-primal.com/).  We're taping an episode for his show with a Wing Night theme.  The following day, we're going to be in Oshawa at the Treetop EcoAdventure Park (www.treetopeco-adventurepark.com/)  where they have a brand new aerial adventure course designed similar to military obstacle courses--but in the treetops!  Should be a fun challenge!  I'm yelling because I'm so excited!!  And for the meetup after that, we're meeting again with Big Primal for a hallowe'en/fall harvest inspired potluck that we're still hashing out plans on.  We also are hashing out details, hoping to get a special guest who will be discussing food addiction.  There's so much good stuff coming up, and that's just my own GTA Paleo Meetup group.  Just an FYI--the Paleo Parents have their own meetup group, too, that they host at their house, too.  Wish I lived in their neighborhood--I would love to meet them one day.  For now, all I can do is steal ideas from their meetups.  I stole their hallowe'en idea.  I bet there's going to be some truly awesome paleo-treats at their house for that meetup.  Hopefully we'll all be over our Whole30 month by then, because those treats may be too hard to say no to.

I got my first beef order last night.  The farmer brought it right to my house.  I can't say enough good stuff about this farmer.  I think we'll be seeing a lot of him and his beef in the near future.  My freezer is now stuffed.  So is my neighbor's freezer.  And I have a bison order arriving today, so I don't have a clue where I'm going to put it.  I need to buy a second freezer off Kijiji, I think.  But the price of grass fed and finished meat is so awesome when you buy a half cow/buy straight from the farmer.  The beef cost me $4/lb hanging weight, fully butchered and wrapped.  The bison is $5.50, also the wrapped price.  I bought a free range chicken, too, at $4.50/lb.  I'm pretty happy about this.  Feels pretty good to be buying from local farmers and local markets.  Did you see my last plug for the farmers market in Richmond Hill?  They're everywhere, folks, so get it while its fresh and local because here in Ontario, the peak harvest season is very short before we have to go back to buying imported everything.  Of course, you could always try to preserve all that fresh local stuff so you are still eating local in the middle of the winter.  More on that one in another post, though.

So what will I eat today?  What will my fellow paleo peeps bring to the potluck?  Its such a shame I'm on this Back to Basics thing, because Glen brought some really tasty organic wine to the last meetup and I can't have any this time.  But next time I will!

So my day went like this....

  • coffee--lots of coffee
  • breakfast; fried eggs and back bacon (peameal with the cornmeal removed)
  • lunch; leftover cuban beef and cauli-rice from the day before
  • dinner; (potluck) chicken stew, zucchini salad, olives, fruit salad, paleo chocolate cake (just a taste) and an organic apple cider
Ok, so there were some cheats in there--everything I ate was paleo-appropriate, but not-so-much Back to Basics/Whole30 appropriate.  The paleo chocolate cake did contain something to sweeten it (must have; it was pretty tasty), and the apple cider did contain alcohol.  What can I say?  I'm human.  I broke down in the face of free food and social interaction.  It was a damn good meetup.  Biggest turnout so far.  The skype with Dr Roth was so incredibly informative--have you ever Skyped?  The connection wasn't great, which did make it frustrating, but she had so much information she wanted to share, she was generous with her time.  She talked exhaustively about the duodenum and not just its connection to diabetes and celiac, but also its connection to chronic heartburn/reflux, leaky gut, gluten sensitivity and so much more.  Expect to see a ton of  new science and research supporting this in the next few years.  I think we're going to see an explosion of studies connecting the gut (and duodenum) to just about every health issue out there under the sun.

and day 12

  • coffee--lots of coffee (I know, I know...)
  • breakfast; raspberry clafouti without any sweeteners
  • lunch; leftover ribs, raw carrots, boiled beets
  • dinner; offal-ly good meatballs in tomato sauce on cauli-rice
Do you ever pull something out of the freezer, thaw it, then realize it isn't what you thought it was?  i didn't know I had chicken in my freezer.  I know I still have leftover pork back there somewhere, but there's a half cow in the way and I can't find it just yet.  May have to eat my way to it.  But see how un-colourful fried cauli-rice is without soy sauce??  tasted alright, though.  It started out as the recipe from WellFed, but then I added chili-garlic sauce, ginger, garlic, fish sauce, fermented ketchup and it started to taste like I wanted it to without missing the soy sauce.  Good enough.



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