Saturday, 15 September 2012

Back to Basics Days 10 & 11

Is this cheating--including several days at once in one blog?  Nah, I'm just being efficient, right?

I like to think that its a good thing that I've been too busy to think a lot about food.  Because I'm always thinking about food.  Its an obsession.  Saying no to every snack and treat that pops into my mind has made it dead-simple.  Saying no is a learned habit, and I'm improving at it for sure.  This Back to Basics has really simplified food for me this month.  Its funny, if you let yourself have treats, it becomes a slippery slope of what you will and will not allow yourself to try.  If you just say no to everything, well, it becomes really very simple and straightforward.  If the people around you see that you can be swayed, they will always try to sway you.  If they see you aren't going to give in on food issues, they'll eventually only offer you things that fit your plan, or just go away altogether.  Not that you want to make people to go away, per se, but you want people to stop tempting you, right?  Let me just say that all day thursday and friday there were cookies all over my office.  We had an auditor in, and we like to put out a spread for visitors, so all day long I watched him munch on cookies and two-bite brownies while I sat in the meeting room with him.  We laid the cookies out on trays like that for two days and every time I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water I had to fight the cookie-monster war in my head.  Those little red jam-filled ones don't bother me.  It was the x-l double dark chocolate cookies and the two bite brownies.  It was all the willpower I had to avoid one.  Because I know, every time you cheat, you make it easier to cheat again.  And again.  And why, oh why, are there so many business lunches this month?  It is challenging, for sure.  But hey, I have definitely had a lot less snacks due to the busy week.

Day 10

  • 2 mugs coffee
  • breakfast; sweet potato casserole with an egg and coconut milk
  • lunch; giant chicken and steak omelette, mixed salad with italian dressing, bowl of fruit (ate at Eggsmart--that place is perfect for paleo/primal eating with their all-day breakfasts!!)  It was a business lunch, I did the best I could.  
  • dinner; zoodles (from PaleOMG) but I add balsamic vinegar and cooked it on the stove top.

Day 11
  • 2 mugs coffee (duh!)
  • breakfast; sweet potato casserole with an egg and coconut milk (thank god I'm finally out of sweet potato casserole--it was great at first, but who wants to eat the exact same thing EVERY SINGLE DAY for a whole week?  Not me.)
  • lunch; leftover indian chicken on green beans, and a small pear
  • snack; a big cup of pork bone broth (mostly because I was hungry and couldn't fit it into the containers for the freezer, so I figured I'd just drink it.  It was delicious, thank you, and all the pork fat made my lips silky smooth for hours)
  • dinner; crockpot cuban beef thingy from PaleOMG here.  
The cuban beef thingy is delicious.  I know I'm not sellin' it by calling it that, but seriously try it.  Instead of a roast, I found some kind of fat-marbled cut of beef at the store on sale that looked like the meat cut from between beef ribs, so I chopped it into chunks and cooked it long and slow in the crockpot.  I do change her recipe, though, to drain the tomatoes and use a small can of tomato paste in place of the tomato sauce.  I think she made a typo on that one.  The tomato paste makes it thicker.  Its a perfect way to cook any kind of stewing-grade of beef.  And the cuban rice?  Awesome.  Seriously, just rice up some cauliflower and basically fry it up in a pan with some spices and a can of tomato paste.  You know how cauli-rice can get wet?  Tomato paste thickens it back up.  It's perfect every time.  And fast.  And pretty.  Because I used an orange cauliflower I picked up at the local farmers market at 19th Ave and Woodbine in Richmond Hill (that's an FYI for locals to the GTA and a big shout-out to a great market!)

Doesn't it look yummy?  It was.  Trust me.

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