Fruit indulgences

The hardest thing for me to give up on Paleo is fruit. As far as I am concerned, world peace has got nothing compared to a steady supply of grapes.  I am currently on a mission to make Paleo easier and more comfortable for me.  Here is how I have integrated fruit.

1. Grape fruit - the red kind - turns out to be absolutely delicious!
2. On apples, I stick to Granny Smith as a low-sugar option. They've always been my favorite anyway.
3. Berries berries berries. Pricey, but well worth it.
4. The most important discovery: fruit is always better with a good doze of fat & protein:
• Apples & nut butter. I make a sandwich of two thin slices of apples with nut butter inside. Yum!
• Whipped cream. Not enough sugar to count and it turns a sin into a win.  :-)
• How about both? Yesterday, it was pear + peanut butter (I didn't have any other kind, *sniff*) + whipped cream. What a delight!
• Yogurt. Everyone knows, it works well with berries, but oh my god peaches!!! Then sprinkle roast coconut on top.  You could almost call that a meal. Or, if dinner fails - a backup option.
• Heavy cream. When I was a little girl, I used to love eating berries in a bowl of milk, as a cereal. It's even better - and way more filling with cream.

So, I've relaxed and I am enjoying it. If I had a good meal, I won't turn my sweet fruit tooth down. A few days ago, a friend sent over a fruit basket filled with all my favorites, including a pineapple! Have you ever had pineapple with whipped cream? "... you should. For this is fun and fun is good!" just as the doctor [Seuss] ordered.

How I have failed at paleo

I have been off paleo for the last two or three weeks as a result of an explicit decision to give up in order to simplify my life.  It did not come as a great surprise that instead of simplifying it, I found myself in a worse slump than I had been in before and at this stage, I am gathering personal strength to get back to what I now believe even stronger, is a better way of eating, functioning and living.

By way of preparing for it, I want to explain what happened as much for myself as for those who may be reading this.

So, what's so hard about Paleo?  For me, it had nothing to do with deprivation.  Really, that's one thing I never experienced.  It was pretty easy to give up sugar, grains & potatoes.  In this sense, Paleo is the best diet in the world: your body adjusts and begins to guide you toward the better choices as long as you are focused on the right way to live and eat.

However, the right way to eat involves, as any Paleo enthusiast will tell you, creating meals out of ingredients as close as possible to their natural form. This means, no bagels, no TV dinners, no canned soups - none of the grocery store conveniences that make meal preparation a ten-minute breeze.  Instead, you have to plan ahead, show in quantity, design meals and never find yourself with an empty refrigerator at meal time. True, with practice, it is possible to develop a rhythm such that actual preparation time is not onerous. Still, no one will argue that cooking paleo is a small commitment.

I am a stay-at-home mom and the hardest part of the job turned out not to be sleepless nights, potty training or tantrums.  It's keeping the house, putting meals on the table and cleaning up after!  Each time the complexity of my life increased, I my eating suffered.  Worse yet, in the absence of good food, I did not have the energy to get organized, shop, cook and get back on top of things...

Going off paleo was thrilling the first few days as bagels & cream cheese were suddenly an available option when I was hungry. A week into it, though, my general well-being began a downward spiral.  I was tired, short of breath, bad-tempered and a general sense of exhaustion of life overcame me. Now, at the end of week two, as I am looking at what I have done, the choice seems clear: get off my ass and make a god-damn meal!  Today, tomorrow, for the rest of the week...

Still, I am aware of the enormity of the task.  Three meals a day every day.  Sure, some will be left-overs, but the discipline required is above anything I have taken on before.

That said, I am coming out of hiding and would like to tell the story of my attempt to organize my life and doing better (or worse), and telling primarily this story over the coming year.

Paleo: a gentle start

My father is turning eighty this year. He has the gammit of the normal maladies that affect old age: heart desease, high blood pressure, weakness in his legs, general tiredness.  Yet, he has an unbeatable sense of life that makes you cherish his presence and want to fight to preserve that life as a value to yourself and all those around.

I watched him deteriorate over the last six months.  Always talking about being tired, giving up major values to avoid extra driving, even his sense of life began to dim. Now, I am a huge fan of Paleo.  Yet, I do not have sufficient knowledge to stand up to all the medical advice he is receiving and ask him to listen to my new theories in the face of serious problems and disease.  One day, though, I had had enough. Hearing my dad simply decline and disintegrate, I remembered a scene in Atlas Shrugged, when Dagny shoots the guard not for resisting her, but for failing to make a decision or pick a side.

"Dad, I said, I have something I'd like to share with you..." And so it began.

The difference in his demeanor was startling after two weeks.  Actually, it was quite funny: "Dad, how are you feeling? Can you tell a difference in your energy?"  "Me? Well, you know me.  I've been full of energy my whole life! I mean, certainly, I might take a nap on occasion, but I am not one to complain."  I laughed with relief... Paleo was working.  He sounded like he was himself again!

Today I would like to share some of the specific advice I gave my dad to help him ease into Paleo without going through some of the difficulties that I first faced. Perhaps, this will be useful to those who would like to win family members over to this side or are contemplating moving forward themselves but can't quite make the leap.  I also found this advice extremely useful during my pregnancy (12 weeks now and feeling like a million bucks!) when things got a bit tougher.


"Dad, Paleo is different. It isn't about what you don't eat as much as it is focused on what you should eat. And what we eat is the whole animal.  Make that the focus. Don't give up your carbs too fast. Your body needs to learn to extract the good long-lasting energy out of fat and protein and it'll take a few weeks. So don't go low-carb. Go high-animal.

"Be sure that each meal is centered about the animal.  Eat that part first - following up with vegetables and other carbs if you do not feel full. Your body might resist this change and will want some short-term energy from carbs to feel like things are going ok.  I still love finishing my meals with yogurt and berries, though it is no longer absolutely necessary.

"Avoid grains. Giving up grains cold turkey is hard. They are known to actually be addictive. So stick to small portions of your favorite bread - with a nice hunk of meat on top, of course! Immediately give up bowls of pasta, rice and other big grainy side dishes with little nutritional value.

"Drop the potatoes.  They are not substantially nutritionally different from candy due to their high glycemic index. I know you love squash and its relatives. Try out sweet potatoes - I grew to love them.  I know my step mom makes yummy califlower that's a nutritional wonder compared to its pale competitors. Continue exploring different vegetables each week. Forage far and wide. Your taste palates will change as you continue Paleo and you will crave nutritious options while things that are bad for you will strike you as yucky.

"Finally, give up sweets to the extent possible. Your body won't miss them. No side-effects there! And enjoy yourself. Paleo is about good yummy food, not sacrifice.  If you sin, no need for a confessional.  Just find a yummy animal to decorate your next meal - and let bygones be bygones."

I love you, dad, and I hope that you decorate this world we live in, putting a smile on the faces of those who meet you for a good long time!

Paleo pregnancy

Or How I almost fell off the wagon

Tired, lightly nauseated, out of breath as a result of movement, a near-constant bad taste in my mouth.  This has been me for the past month. Only I can't really blame the pregnancy too much. Sure at nine weeks I am feeling less than perfect, but I could do a lot better.

Anyway, this was what I decided upon waking up this morning. It's been a ridiculous rollercoaster: I make yummy beefy meatballs and I feel great. The next two meals I find myself simply too lazy to cook and by the end of the day, all I can do is park the kids in front of the TV and lie down. Stupid, right? OK, I won't beat myself up over it too much, but I would like to share my experience and some of the new resolutions.

No, I did not go back to eating pizza. I seriously considered it. About once a week I thought, it's simply too hard to cook meat three meals a day. Our culture is optimized toward quick high-carb grain-based snacks that get us through the day. And when beef jerky lost its appeal a few weeks ago, I am dead in the water.

One factor prevented me from giving up: I feel healthy! Everyone in my house has been deathly sick with a nasty cold the kids brought from school. It's been going for nearly a month. I felt the beginnings of a few symptoms - but I never got all the way to sick. Paleo is supposed to strengthen your immune system by preventing gut flora from penetrating the barriers and entering the blood stream (Mark's Daily Apple has nice light-weight readable article on the subject and googling for leaky gut syndrome will yield much more.) Bottom line, eating *proper* paleo has made me feel ten years younger by giving me energy. I lost that through sloth, but at least I don't go all the way from lazy to sick by going back to grains.

Here is an interesting observation: cravings.  I love fruit. I can live on fruit.  (Well, as it turns out, I can't - it simply does not contain calories and nutrients I need - but in the past I've tried!) And now, with bad taste in my mouth, I crave it. I eat it. It tasted wonderful. Then, it leaves me tasting the remaining bitterness in my mouth and begging for more.  It's a lot like an itch: you know it's there, you can't get away from it - and you know that once you start scratching, it'll get worse. But you do it anyway!

Today, we (you know, the rational me and the pregnant me) have reached a compromise: I can eat fruit as long as it is supplemented with something containing a good dose of fat, to satisfy hunger: cream, (oh boy, peaches and cream!), eggs, avocado. There is a carton full boiled eggs in the fridge and I am ready for the challenge!  It was amazing how much more satisfying a bowl of raspberries with cream was than just straight raspberries, even more so than having them with yogurt!

Second decision: I seriously need to stockpile food and have a wide variety available to choose from. That's how I got started, but then lost track.  Tonight, I am making the family all-time-favorite pork crockpot!  Pork is defrosting as we speak.

I need to figure out how to do better for breakfast.  I cannot start my day with a cup of yogurt. I simply can't last long enough to have the energy to prepare lunch. Some ideas involve looking up breakfast casseroles that can be prepared in advace and heated up with some fresh ingredients. Just thinking about it makes me hungry.  (OK, yes, I am pregnant!)

And finally, make fat an all-important meal ingredient.  Today's lunch: shrimp (kids' favorite), artichoke with melted butter and - bacon. I don't want to cook a big meal - but bacon will get me through to dinner!

Wish me luck.  I think I need some support in the days to come. :-)  One thing that keeps me going: I know that after 2-3 days of three good meals a day, I'll have so much energy, this will all become easy!

Depression and carbs

I want to cry today. My kids drive me crazy. My husband is all kinds of things bad. My mother-in-law's cooking sucks and my Crossfit coach is an ass. Right, none of this is real. I've learned to recognize the depression that invariably follows a high-carb diet.

You are not depressed despite your favorite pasta dishes? If you've never tried it, give Paleo a try for two weeks. I wonder if you look back like I did, and realize what joy and happiness feel like. Having been on Paleo for about four months, I have a reference point: the way I had felt in the year or two previously. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, sad, frustrated and anxious, the first question on my mind is: did I eat right this week? The answer, without exception, has been NO. (Yes, this means, there has not been a single instance when my depression was caused by any factors other than the carbs in my diet!) I've been too busy, too lazy, and eventually, too depressed to take care of eating properly. Today marks the lowest point in a couple of months.  Here is what I am going to do to fix it: I will spend the afternoon cooking!

1. This evening, I have invited my husband to have a cooking date-night, making a Paleo quiche. I hope he accepts.
2. I would like to make a Kitchen Sink Soup that I have loved previously, possibly using the incredibly rich soup stock I prepared and froze a while back. (The fat seriously helps when I am on a carb-depression)
3. Devilled eggs! Haven't made them in years.  Should be a wonderful snack/side for a meal.
4. I will probably run out to Costco to get a ham and bake my holiday ham creation. It's one of the easiest recipes I have and it lasts two weeks in various forms!

That's it for now. I hope to be in better spirits to blog about the results!

Trust your doctor?

Do you usually do what your doctor says? Chances are, if you are seeing a very narrow specialist, you usually listen: who really argues when a heart surgeon suggests you have an open-heart surgery? Or a urologist who suggests a treatment for prostate problems?

However, what do you say when your pediatrician insists on proper disciplinary approaches with your kids? Or recommends a sleep-training regiment that you know you could not live with as a mother? How about dietary advice? My best guess is that the vast majority of people feel that their doctor does know what's best, but find that they fail to live up to the standards necessary to comply. So they go and eat bacon when the doctor insists on brown rice; they have their toddler sleep in their bed because the alternative is too hard emotionally; they know they should punish their kids but continue acting out of intuitive kindness, then hide the fact from the pediatrician.

"Doctors have been saying this for years," said my mother-in-law in a recent conversation about something or another.
"Yes, I know. But I believe they are wrong," was my firm response.
"What reason do you have to say that?"
"Well, there are several. First, it has become obvious to me that the medical profession as a whole is largely incompetent and I have been spot-checking their advice for years. I have been pushed toward a back surgery which didn't help and was only effective in slightly over 50% of patients, as I learned later. I have suffered from constant yeast infections because of a never-ending stream of antibiotics I received to treat bladder infections when the right solution I discovered later was a dramatic increase in fluid consumption. I could go on for hours.  I am not bitter - just learned to be wary of medical advice.
"Second, because I did find a doctor I trust completely. Every answer he gives me contains facts, percentages, references to studies and words like 'proof' and 'evidence'. Yet his most common answer to anything that comes from 'well-established scientific knowledge' is: 'that's just bad science' or 'there is absolutely no proof that this condition even exists or that the treatment makes any difference' or 'this theory came out of an incident in the 70's and has stuck around as truth.'
"Third, because I have recently poked around for what passes as modern science. Research papers that would not be passed by my college professors show up in medical journals and are pumped by the media. Correlations are confused with causality; statistics are abused beyond what is forgivable for inexperienced researches, but suggest willful corruption; key indicators thrown out as irrelevant; experimental controls weak or non-existent.
"Finally, because I learned of and experienced approaches that contradict predominant doctors' recommendations, make more sense and make me feel better!"

When you can trust your doctor in the age of Universal Health Care, corrupt science, bureaucratic insurance policies and a culture that does not believe, ideas matter - you have found a jewel you should nurture and treasure. Me? Oh, I just drive an hour and a half for every prenatal visit and pray that I don't give birth in the car. Similarly, my husband drives across LA to see his cardiologist and I imagine, will continue doing so when our upcoming move will make the trip last over two hours. Thankfully, both of our doctors take phone calls. What would we do without them? Oh, I guess the same thing we did before we found them: be unheard, misdiagnosed, over-medicated and under-treated.

In case you are in Southern California, do look up Dr. Patrick Sutton, an ob/gyn in Pasadena and Dr. Michael Dougherty, a cardiologist in Brea. Do you have a favorite doctor you really trust?

Glucose tolerance test shaky

Every pregnant woman has gone through this: you go to the lab, they pipe you full of this sickly sweet solution, you spend an hour feeling nauseated in the waiting room and they draw blood to see if your body was successfully able to cope with the sugar attack.

I've been hesitant to do this test with my current, third pregnancy. First, I've had very healthy pregnancies. How likely is it, really, that this time around, with a much healthier lifestyle and feeling orders of magnitude better, I am going to suddenly develop gestational diabetes? But that's not the big problem: I guess I can put up with the waiting room. I hate having to the substance I am trying to avoid like the plague to have a healthy lifestyle generally and a healthy pregnancy, specifically, being injected into my body in near-dangerous amounts?

Now I have a whole new reason to mistrust and fear this procedure. Rob Wolff (the well-known paleo fitness advocate) has just published an article on gestational diabetes and glucose tolerance test. The article is rather long, but here is the gist. People like me, have invested a lot into transitioning our bodies from a sugar-burning to a fat-burning system. My body does not encounter sugar very frequently and when it does, it does not count on it as the main source of energy, deprioritizing its metabolism. I do not become sugar-starved or hypoglycemic if I skip meals because my system has a healthy amount of slow-burning high-octane fuel that it takes multiple days to deplete.

Bottom line, if I take the glucose test, I may not do as well as a woman eating twinkies for breakfast, lunch and dinner - training her body to process glucose as fast as humanly possible.  I will grant that eventually, this woman will develop insulin resistance which will turn up in the glucose test and correctly diagnosed as gestational diabetes.

Should I be undergoing the extremely annoying, unhealthy, not to mention long-and-boring procedure just so I can risk being misdiagnosed with the very disease that I avoid when I give up the twinkies?

In my case, the decision is actually easier: I have a wonderful OBGYN who will figure out the right answer if the test comes back positive - I have that much faith in him. However,  I don't even want to imagine the conversation I would be having with a regular doctor:

"You have gestational diabetes!"
"Why do you say so?"
"Your body was not able to process the deathly amount of glucose in the hour provided by the laboratory schedule"
"Oh, that's because it's not used to receiving the deathly amount. Trust me - it won't happen again."
"No, no, this is just a test.  However, you have to eat every 2-3 hours or you may become hypoglycemic and lose consciousness or even die."
"I do not get hypoglycemic. This is because I eat a high-protein high-fat diet that avoids major shifts in blood sugar leading to hypoglycemia."
"Fat is bad for you!  GROWL!"
"I used to think so too. Now I think, large amounts of glucose in a bottle are bad for me as your blood test just showed!"

OK, this dialogue is going to be an endless source of creative amusement for me. Hell, I'll probably do the test. But I am going to talk to my doctor at length about this idea before I sign off my soul there!

Junk food takes its toll

This weekend we went on a wonderful vacation rather modern caveman-style: RV camp & nude resort.  Sounds daring? Well, we decided, it was time to educate our cave babies about proper attitudes toward their bodies. This came on the heels of a neighbor threatening to call the police next time our kids (two and four!) ran out of the house naked. While they are comfortable in and out of their clothing at home, they know to get dressed before leaving the door - but accidents can happen.

After some consideration, I chose not to moon Steve, the neighbor, and made reservations for a long-promised trip to the "naked place" instead. The trip was wonderful with one caveat: food.

I am now six weeks pregnant and up until this point, have felt better than during either one of my other pregnancies: no nausea, not starving, no exhaustion or any of the other unpleasantries associated with being pregnant. This time, though, I failed to plan.  I was all out of beef jerky (never leave home without it!) and burnt the chicken that was intended for lunch.  We stopped at Wiener Schnitzel and I chose to make an exception, ordering my favorite craut dog on a bun.  In the final analysis it wasn't that great and by the time we got to our vacation spot, I felt horrible.  We went to the local restaurant where I was able to order a steak (4oz meat, a mountain of veggies). Not exactly what I needed at the end of a hungry day.  But it was decidedly better than nothing.

The next morning's breakfast was a delight but not a very good day overall.  And, of course, when we got back, I was too lazy to figure out what to defrost to have a real meal.  In the end, I averaged less than one good meal per day for three days running.  Boy, do I feel pregnant. Ready to throw up and all! (Yeah, I do remember feeling something like this with my other pregnancies!)


Today is a fix-it day. Super-yummy yogurt breakfast followed by a baked chicken with artichoke. I hope to get to take some pictures and blog about it. It's nice to be at my cave with Trader Joe's down the street, a nice electrical oven and great internet access! Grok would be so jealous...

Trans fats: not entirely unnatural

Trans fats have received a tremendous amount of bad press and it is well-deserved.  Unlike regular-old fats they clog our system, which is unable to adequately process or eliminate them effectively. They stick around for a very long time in the blood stream, envelope our organs, preventing proper function, are more prone to clogging arteries and cause the obvious problems: obesity, cardiovascular and heart diseases and, even perhaps diabetes. But, of course, I am not telling you anything new, I am sure.

Today I was taken aback to learn that there is such a thing as natural trans fats. Seriously? I had thought trans fats equalled hydrogenated oils - vegetable oils - and as long as you stuck to eating cow & duck, you were safe.


Turns out, I was dead-wrong.  From wikipedia: "A type of trans fat occurs naturally in the milk and body fat of ruminants (such as cattle and sheep) at a level of 2–5% of total fat." Oy.  Now where do I hide? I suppose, I could stick with fish and bird - but I love my iron!

Turns out, this isn't as bad as it sounds.  Continuing with the wikipedia article: "Animal-based fats were once the only trans fats consumed, but by far the largest amount of trans fat consumed today is created by the processed food industry as a side effect of partially hydrogenating unsaturated plant fats (generally vegetable oils). These partially-hydrogenated fats have displaced natural solid fats and liquid oils in many areas, the most notable ones being in the fast food, snack food, fried food, and baked goods industries."

 Furthermore, there are some studies that suggest actual health benefits to natural trans fats:

A university of Alberta study found that a diet with enriched levels of trans vaccenic acid (VA) -- a natural animal fat found in dairy and beef products -- can reduce risk factors associated with heart disease, diabetes and obesity. It turns out, a natural trans fat called trans vaccenic acid, is able to  reduce the production of chylomicrons -- particles of fat and cholesterol that form in the small intestine following a meal and are rapidly processed throughout the body.

Another study suggested that the same trans vaccenic acid may protect us from atherosclerosis.

Furthermore, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), part of the family of naturally occurring trans fats, has well-known health benefits and is marketed as a dietary supplement. Here is a quick look at WebMD:

Conjugated linoleic acid is used for cancer, “hardening of the arteries” (atherosclerosis), obesity, weight loss caused by chronic disease, bodybuilding, and limiting food allergy reactions.

So bottom line is: trans fats are not an invention of the modern food industry. However, as it happens so often in chemistry, things that look alike don't always act alike. Skip your french fries, enjoy the cow, and you'll do fine.

School lunch

I've been having such a hard time figuring out how to balance my comfort with kids' nutrition, peace and harmony at meal times and a fundamentally unhealthy diet other adult members of our family follow. Really, how do I raise healthy kids when bagels, candy, cakes and pasta are considered reasonable staple by those they love?

Little steps, I have decided! My goal for this year is to expand their taste palates to include lots of meat and paleo-friendly carbs over the course of this year, learn to cook and plan for a transition to proper nutrition perhaps starting in the fall of 2011.

My son is starting the new year of pre-school tomorrow.  I need to have a plan for what he will eat for lunch if I have any hope of feeding him what I believe is right.  I have located a list of wonderful ideas at Everyday Paleo.

So here is my tentative meal plan (not all of this can be packed to go to school - but great for after-school snack):

Ingredients	Meal options
Yogurt Whipped Cream Berries Peaches Palm Sugar Cashews Dried blueberries Dried cranberries Carrots, cauliflower, celery Veggie dip Chicken nuggets Cubed meat Cubed cheese Cabbage/lettuce Bell peppers Hot dogs Meatloaf Bananas	Whipped cream & berries Healthy fruity yogurt (frozen?) Berries mix Healthy Trail mix Crunch Veggies with dip Chicken nuggets w/ketchup Chef-style salad O'derves luncheon Meatloaf pieces with ketchup Boiled eggs Nutty muffins

I have purchased little sauce cups of the sort you find in Mexican restaurants and they work great for ketchup and other dips. This is still work in progress, but here you go.  Any other ideas?

[UPDATE] I would like to try these baked sweet potato chips, too!
[ONE MORE THING] Found an interesting snack: almond cucumbers I have to try.

Healthy fruity yogurt

Have you ever looked at the sugar content of any flavored yogurt?  What about kids' yogurt?  And the winner of all - gogurt!  Knowing that parents will be all about the "healthy" association with anything that has yogurt in it - food companies create little sugar addicts by making the health food a nutritionally inferior option to jelly sandwiches.

We have invented our own kid-friendly yogurt!

Ingredients:

High-fat unsweetened yogurt (I buy Greek or Creamline Village brand at Trader Joe's)

Palm sugar (with its low glycemic index and facintating texture, it's a big win)

Sliced peaches or berries

Shredded coconut, sweetened & roasted

This wins high awards as breakfast, snack or desert. It has sufficient calories and nutritional content to be a small meal and it's sweetened to taste, which, not surprisingly requires so much less!

'Poo-less hair

No shampoo? Sounded crazy to me when I first read about the idea at Mark's Daily Apple. Still, some of the commenters called me to action when they said, they could grow longer hair, got rid of dandruff and found their hair healthier than before. I have given up on having long hair years ago, having become frustrated with the spider web-like texture it obtained once it got to my shoulder blades.


I took the plunge and it is finally time to tell my story.

The method:  I wash my hair with plain water in the shower.  At the end, I rinse it with cold water only.  I do not know whether this second step is necessary, but it feels so good afterward! My scalp awake and tingling. Occasionally, I rub a teaspoon or so of baking soda all around and rinse it off to eliminate any potential smells.

Weeks 1-2.  My hair turned super-oily. Though contrary to expectations, I liked it.  Because it was short, it held its shape so much better than before. There seemed to be no dandruff. I was excited!

Weeks 3-4. The oiliness let up slightly. Hair would have looked fabulous if its newly strengthened body did not accentuate the horrible Fantastic Sam's haircut! It was clear, I was on the right track. Even my husband, who was understandably skeptical about the whole adventure, was surprised.

Month 2.  I was disappointed. My hair went back to exactly the way it was! No longer oily, it didn't have the super-body I observed earlier and the dandruff was back! Still, there was no reason to give up yet. Looking back to the poo-less resources, I learned that Apple Cider Vinegar is good for dandruff and purchased a bottle.

Month 3.  Results! There is nothing special about my hair any more. It has a normal amount of moisture, looks healthy and strong, and the dandruff is gone.  I never opened the Apple Cider Vinegar. The nasty dandruff that I have been living with since early childhood, torturing my hair with all kinds of horrid chemicals, always itching, always snowy nevertheless - just disappeared! I love the waves and curls that are now part of my hairdo maintained by the stronger strands of hair.

I am now looking forward to having long hair for the first time since the year 2000. My kids were thrilled to switch away from the irritating shampoo process, too. I think, I see a difference in their hair as well - it just stays looking clean and healthy even when we go several days between washes.  The process is so simple, I recommend it to any parent of a bath-resistant toddler. The clear water doesn't bother or scare them like shampoo did.  And they love rubbing the baking soda - I use it more often on their hair than I do on my own - because they are always asking for it!  After years of hair-washing tears, we have peace at bath time.


So how does it work?

Have you ever changed the frequency with which you wash your hair?  Gone from daily to 2-3 times a week or vice versa?  Note what happens.  On a daily regime your hair becomes oily and demands a wash on the second day.  If you switch to going longer between washes, it protests at first, but overtime adjusts to the new schedule. I guess, it is just that simple. Natural hair oils will act to restore the balance upset by the environment or hair products. Daily shampooing dries the hair out so profoundly, natural oils rush to rescue what is left of the moisture on your poor dried out scalp in a way that it would if you were walking through the desert. By day two, another "desert" treatment, complements of Protein ProV is necessary to combat the overflowing oils. Stop shampooing and the hair slowly learns the new chemical equation - the one evolution had taught it to work with. It will produce more oils when the air is dry, fewer in humid weather and rush to offer special defenses after a chemical attack of a chlorinated pool.  Fresh water serves as a catalyst to start the process and the rest is evolutionary history.  :-)

If you would like to try this, please read through Going poo-less article in Mark's daily apple including all the comments.  It's a good overview of why, how and use-cases.  I wish you the best of luck.  Enjoy your beautiful hair!  And tell me how it goes.  Please!

Nutty banana nut muffins

I wrote a few days ago about good-looking paleo muffins I wanted to try. I was extremely nervous, as always, experimenting with substitution recipes. Will anyone like them? 

The muffins turned out unbelievably delicious.  I enjoy muffins - but these were the next level. They stayed fresher than their flour counterparts and my whole family admitted, they were a wonderful treat.  They are now a permanent part of our family recipe collection.

Here is the recipe I wound up with:

1 1/2 cups almond flour
3/4 cup bananas pureed with a fork
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3 eggs
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Blend eggs separately, breaking the yolk.  Mix together all the ingredients (including the blended eggs) except for the walnuts until smooth. Fold in the nuts.

Spoon batter into 6-12 greased or paper-lined muffin cups (I used muffin paper cups and filled each 1/3 of the way, making 12 perfect muffins). Cook 20-25 minutes at 350 F until the top is golden-brown and a toothpick comes out clean.

These are very soft and cakey muffins. I think that cutting them in half and toasting them is very nice since it gives it little crisp edges.

They were very sweet for my palate - but I have dramatically reduced sugar intake.  Everything tastes sweet to me.  Next time, I'd like to try reducing maple syrup to 1/4 cup and sprinkling palm sugar on top.

My mother-in-law, my 2- and 4- year-olds thought they were delicious, even my husband!  I made half without the nuts for texture-sensitive palates, but in the end, all muffins were gone, nuts and all!

I was surprised that there was no grittiness associated with almond flour. Muffins were soft, fluffy and acted like they were what mother-nature intended.  :-)

We are going to try the pumpkin variation at Halloween time.

Paleo muffins

I've been excited for months to make these good-looking paleo muffins that I found on Caveman Food blog.  Muffins used to be among our favorites: blueberry, orange, even cornbread muffins won a lot of cheers at breakfast.  Will my darling family like these? (I am planning on making the banana nut variation ,not the cranberry pumpkin pictured.  The latter might come at Halloween time!)

For whatever reason, I keep running into trouble: when I have almond flour, I am missing chopped walnuts. When those finally arrive, there are no bananas. Today I thought I was finally ready - no baking powder!

This is it! I am going to find a way to acquire baking powder by lunch time, before we eat the bananas!

UPDATE: I did, and here is the recipe: Nutty Banana Muffins.  This turned out to be the mother of all muffins: soft, flakey, and the best part - they do not go stale for days, unlike their flour-based counterparts.

Are artificial sweeteners the enemy?

There is no question, the word in the street is - stay away from artificial sweeteners.  Kurt Harris, a leading paleo source writes: " Artificial sweeteners, I believe, condition you to crave sweets. I have only personal and anecdotal clinical experience to support this, but it seems reasonable."

Really? That sounded strange to me. This is one of the most studied topic of the last fifty years - it seems so unlikely we wouldn't be able to have a way to measure the sweeteners effect on hunger.  So I went looking.

And here you go:

1. "Aspartame has not been found to increase food intake; indeed, both short-term and long-term studies have shown that consumption of aspartame-sweetened foods or drinks is associated with either no change or a reduction in food intake." [here]
2. "The addition of NNS [non-nutritive sweetener] to diets poses no benefit for weight loss or reduced weight gain without energy restriction. There are long-standing and recent concerns that inclusion of NNS in the diet promotes energy intake and contributes to obesity. Most of the purported mechanisms by which this occurs are not supported by the available evidence, although some warrant further consideration." [here]

As I browsed through the variety of studies, I found out that, predictably, consuming  sugary beverages will temporarily make you feel full.  Non-calorie sweeteners will not do that. However, there is little difference between drinking non-sweetened water and artificially-sweetened water when it comes to hunger. In fact, part of the problem with high fructose corn syrup may be that it does not make you feel full like sugar does.

While the internet at-large is filled with vicious propaganda against artificial sweeteners, I failed to find a medical study that confirmed their truth. My thought is that it is reasonable to assume, based on the strong sentiment against artificial sweeteners, there is plenty of motivation to prove these claims. Lack of evidence suggests just that - lack of existing available evidence in reality.

Dispelling the dogma: saturated fats

"Kate, I can't eat like you do. My cardiologist is going to kill me! I can practically feel my arteries getting clogged up with every bite."

Another discussion about fat is getting started between me and my mother-in-law. I sympathize with her. For 40+ years we've been talking about the dangers of saturated fats and the risk of disagreeing with the dogma carries dire consequences.

"We are extremely good at test-tube science," maintains my husband every time I lash out against the establishment. He is right, of course. We really are! We learn so much each day about how to further optimize treatments, how various micro-nutrients impact our bodies, we even figured out that sugar is bad for you. Go us! Yet, when it comes to fats, I can't buy it.

So, I am finally getting off my butt and figuring out what's wrong with the world of nutritional science and how it got to be that way.

I recently blogged in my personal journal about an article published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in which a real-life modern-time western-scientist says, nah... fats are ok (as I learned from this commentary). We've been retarded for all this time. I got very excited, but found that I could not access a copy of this article without paying. I would happily pay $40 to access a study, but this was just commentary. I figured, i'd rather look for something that has numbers.

I dug just a little further, and - voila - The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition is full of studies that overturn the claim that fats cause heart disease.  Unfortunately, I do not have full access to the majority of what's available there (though I think it's time to get my credit card out), here are some points I pulled out of the abstracts:

• "there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD [coronary heart disease] CVD [cardiovascular disease]" [here]
• "replacement [of saturated fat] with a higher carbohydrate intake, particularly refined carbohydrate, can exacerbate the atherogenic dyslipidemia associated with insulin resistance and obesity that includes increased triglycerides, small LDL particles, and reduced HDL cholesterol. [here]
• Though the same article points out that "Clinical trials that replaced saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat have generally shown a reduction in CVD events".  

Here is how I would summarize findings for today:

There is no significant evidence that saturated fat is bad.  However, you are better off eating polyunsaturated fat (the essential fatty acids).  But whatever you do, don't limit fat and replace it with pasta! Now, that's the one that will clog up your arteries as we speak, mom!  :-)

Stretching going out of vogue?

Get this: Stretching before running does not prevent injury according to a study published at the USA Track & Field website.  However, enthusiasm matters!

The study found a slight increase in "reported" injuries in the non-stretching group. However, "serious" injuries measured by a week or more off practice, did not increase.  Why?

So you are a runner who volunteered to participate. If you were used to stretching, and were randomly assigned to a non-stretching group, you'd be pretty scared, right?  Yeah, so 22% of such people reported an injury to a medical professional.  Only 11% of those who were not used to stretching did.
Bottom line, though it's hard to believe given what we have been hearing since middle school, a warm-up is just that: an increase in your body temperature. Stretching feels good and is a worthwhile exercise in and of itself. However, it is highly optional.





A note of caution: This study used a specific stretch regiment that looks right about what most people do: 10 second hold like this, 20 sec like that, so many reps, so many things.  It does not address yoga-style stretching alternatives and also does not examine long-term effect of stretching (like if you've been doing it for years - are you less likely to be hurt in general? Yeah, probably.)

I love finding these bits and pieces.  Thanks to NY Times article by Tara Pope for bringing this information.

Fructose malabsorption

Fructose malabsorption, formerly named "dietary fructose intolerance," is a digestive disorder in which absorption of fructose is impaired by deficient fructose carriers in the small intestine's enterocytes. This results in an increased concentration of fructose in the entire intestine. - Wikipedia

Turns out, this problem exists in 30-40% of women in central europe. Don't know what that says about americans, but most of us are from somewhere over there, right? Well, that's not the interesting part (wait, is apple juice flowing through the veins uninteresting??)

The amazing thing is that fructose malabsorption appears to lead to depression in women according to an Austrian study. Ironically, men appear to be unaffected - perhaps because of different chemical composition as Emily Deans explains in Evolutionary Psychiatry blog.

I always say that the Paleo diet has changed my life. It gave me energy, emotional stability, thereby making me a better parent, and allowing me to enjoy life. But the truth is, I don't know how it did it. Was I lacking protein on my low-fat high-carb diet? Was iron defficiency a problem? Was my body in a perpetual emotional yo-yo as my sugar swung wildly at each meal and snack? OK, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth - but nevertheless I tend to skip a heart beat every time I see yet another possible correlation between nutrient consumption and emotional state.

Carbohydrates: Food for muscle?

My husband and I got into an argument: is low-carb really healthy? My Paleo exploits have caused him to take an audio course on nutrition, which impressed both of us with its solid grounding. Surprisingly, many conclusions coincide with common wisdom among the Paleo folk, but there are some differences.

 Today I would like to examine the idea that carbohydrates are necessary for proper muscle function. There are two "basic truths" everyone who works out has heard:

1. We need carbohydrates in order to expend energy. All athletes "carb up" for the big marathons and according to mainstream nutritional science, protein can be converted to carbs if needed. However, that's slower and hard on your liver. So if you really want to impress your friends, better start your workout with an oatmeal.
2. Even my Crossfit coach agrees with this one: carbs are great for a post-workout recovery.

I started, as I often do at the old Mark's Daily Apple.  Sure enough,  he doesn't buy it. Have a high-protein snack after your workout and say hello to another great day.  The most interesting thing that came out of that article was a link to a study, which proves that consuming carbohydrates after a workout does not indeed help muscles rebuild.

When I reviewed studies citing this one - I learned that

• Essential amino acid and carbohydrate ingestion before resistance exercise does not enhance postexercise muscle protein synthesis
• Protein coingestion stimulates muscle protein synthesis during resistance-type exercise

OK. Back to beef jerky post-workout. But what about the other end of it? Do we need to consume heavy carbs in order to get out of the chair?

Word of mouth among Crossfit trainers says, no. But thus far I have not been able to find very much evidence. Can you point me in a good direction?

Birth Control Pills - Surprisignly good and yummy

How do birth control pills belong into Cave Kitchen? Well, I am not going to recommend using them in recipes.  However, while my Science page has not been created yet, part of the purpose of this blog is to reconcile recommendations of Paleo lifestyle with mainstream science. 

An aspect of Paleo philosophy that I find so appealing is that it does not reject modern developments for being modern. It is not about going back to traditions, but rather, it uses history book along with modern science to estimate the most optimal lifestyle given our current knowledge.

So... birth control pills: good for sex at the office, bad for health, right? Wrong! Actually, birth control has been prescribed for a long time for young women (even preteen girls) to treat various conditions from high blood pressure to endometriosis.  Recently, I was alerted to a rather interesting history lesson into the development of the pill It also talks about the harm and benefits of the pill, the research into making it even better and describes some interesting habits of the primitive cultures when it comes to menstruating women.

On that note, I'd like to digress, just for a second. PERIODS. There - now I said it. Your mother had them, your girlfriend's got them and your daughter's going to have them. Can we please lift the taboo and teach our boys & girls that there is nothing to be embarrassed about? My 4-year-old can give you a lecture on menstruation, reproduction and will successfully identify articles of feminine hygiene (well, because he keeps getting into my cabinets!) I really hope our culture is moving in that general direction and most girls don't have to live through the embarrassment I remember...

OK, back to the topic. Turns out:
a) The Pill protects you from ovarian cancer. Mainstream cancer researchers agree.
b) The Pill does increase the risk of breast cancer. Pregnancy (agreed) & menopause (Resounding yes!) all reduce it.

Basically, the idea is, ovulation is a hard on a woman's body. Doing it over and over again will eventually result in wear and tear leading to cancer. Being pregnant for much of your life or (if you must insist) using the birth control pill (which suppresses ovulation) makes things better, EXCEPT that the pill causes hormone fluctuations which, while protecting the ovaries, creates a problem with the breasts. But now that we are thinking about it, we can work on correcting.

So.. evolutionarily women are supposed to have lots and lots of babies and live for a long time to take care of them (and perhaps help them take care of their babies), but no similar evolutionary mechanism exists to protect women who do not reproduce. Their body is more likely to fail. So for us, the over-educated busy career women of the modern times, the best hope for survival is the ironically natural ovulation-suppressing pill and the hope for producing an even better pill that keeps us safe.

Butter is not a grease

I experimented with the Primal Cookbook's egg muffins recipe.  Basically, you make an omelet (skip the water), pour it into muffin cups and call it breakfast.  Neat idea, yeah?

The Primal Cookbook advocates using butter as a grease. I was a little surprised, but went for it.  Sigh... The muffins stuck to the pan and we wound up eating muffin tops!  They were pretty good, but lesson almost learned.

I tried butter again when cooking chicken legs.  (Usually, I prefer coconut oil, but I am out!) So, I put a little olive oil in, remembering my earlier muffin experience, and added butter. The chicken was yummy, but it lost its skin to the pan, sticking to it mercilessly. The pan was a mess and the chicken, nearly skinless. Still, my kids and I both delight in chicken drumstick and lunch was a complete success.

Have you guys had any luck using butter as a grease? What am I doing wrong?

Food Network thumbs up!

I finally discovered  the Food Network site, which is a surprisingly valuable resource as many recipes have a heavy emphasis on Fast and High Fat. They are not afraid of publishing recipes that include bacon, cheese, cream, and don't seem to be nearly as fond of carbs as the general culture. And I failed to find a much by way of recipes that rely on grains as a signfiicant ingredient.

Today I am experimenting with Old-Time Beef Stew - compliments of Paula Deen . That one can be prepared as-is and be 98% paleo friendly.  It does use some cornstarch, but even Mark Sisson agrees (click & search for cornstarch) that a tiny bit of it won't mess you up. (Soon I'll be experimenting with Arrowroot Powder & Tapioca Flour, which are both thickeners & starches.  Can't wait till they get here.)

Generally, I like to choose recipes that don't rely on flour & other grain/legume-based ingredients, but use them sparingly to achieve a particular cooking transformation (e.g. making broth into thick gravy) and experiment with substitutions later. This allows for cleaner evaluation of the base recipe.

Kitchen Sink Soup

I got this from MarksDailyApple and it was quite amazing with that savory flavor that's almost spicy, but not quite. A 5 star success.

Ingredients:
The basics:
5 cups stock or broth
1 15 oz can tomatoes, chopped (I used two fresh tomatoes)
1 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves of garlic
1 medium onion
1 tbsp sweet paprika
3 tsp turmeric (I used dry mustard)
½ tsp cinnamon
2 bay leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
“Kitchen Sink” items: Feel free to include as many of the following items as you deem fit:

* I used celery, bell pepper & chicken breast.

2 stalks celery, chopped
1 medium bell pepper
1-2 cups of chard, spinach or another leafy green vegetable
1 cup of pumpkin
4 cups of meat, chopped into bite-size pieces – leftover turkey, chicken, steak, pork tenderloin or ham works best here

In a large soup pot, put oil, onion, and celery (if using). Cook on low heat for 5 minutes to soften. Turn up heat, and add garlic and any other vegetables (except the greens) that you plan to use. Cook for one minute, add spices. Stir and cook about one more minute. Add tomatoes, stock, and meat, if using and allow to simmer 10-15 minutes (we don’t count this as active work since it’s not very hands-on!). Adjust seasonings to taste. This recipe will make about 9 cups of soup, depending on what you add in.

My non-Paleo husband enjoyed it as did my four-year-old.

Paleo Rodeo

Here is this week's collection of Paleo bloggers' favorites:  Paleo Rodeo #18.

My favorite find here is PaleoEats.  Truthfully, it's the most beautiful cooking blog I have ever seen! One of my problems has always been predicting what the recipe will turn out like. The scores of stepwise cooking pictures that accompany each are truly a godsend for a clumsy cook like me!

High Protein is key

After a stellar beginning with Paleo, I've had a dramatic slump over the last two weeks. Cooking Paleo requires a lot of thought and planning (simply because it requires real cooking - no bowl of pasta to rush to the rescue!)  I found myself eating less and less, using yogurt as a meal more and more often, until I slid all the way back into pre-Paleo lethargy.

For the last three days, things have been on the rise. I have made a wonderful observation/conjecture. It goes like this:

• Carbs provide immediate energy, enabling you to wake up and do far more than your base energy level allows for.  Perhaps, this is the reason atheletes love to carb up.
• Protein is the high-octane fuel. It builds up resources that can be used for long-lasting no-crash base energy. Yet, it's hard to get at and none of it is available immediately.
• If my base energy level drops, two things happen
•  I begin seriously slowing down
• One meal does not restore me to health - sometimes it takes more than a day of high protein meals to attain it!

So, bottom line, you gotta maintain the higher energy level or pay the price.

I've been eating well for three days now and I am back to my Paleo high!  This morning was fun. I made a salmon-cheese-tomato salad, which can be improved on by adding avocados, different kinds of cheese and, perhaps eggs and even other kinds of meat. But it was yummy and I felt good.

Lunch had chicken drumsticks and bell peppers.  Easy, low-key, and tastes great.

Blogging about a part of me

Back in 2000 when I created my first livejournal post, I thought of blogging as a sort of online diary. Over the years I watched people badmouth their husbands, whine about their employees, share publicly sexual exploits and realized that I did not wish my life to become a laundry list of routine and uninteresting status updates. I wanted to be someone interesting, engaged intellectually, respected and worth following.

Today I realize that I've gone to the other extreme. I think of my blogs as collection of thoroughly prepared articles and have a problem publishing as each individual post takes several copies, lots of thinking and most never see the light of day.

A friend recently wrote about checking her premises with respect to her health, and focused on the problem with being a perfectionist.I would never, in a million years, would have called myself a perfectionist prior to this writing. However, it gave me pause.  I realized that there is only one kind of perfection (really, one kind of engagement!) that I truly value: intellectual. Having a bad idea is far worse than wearing your underwear inside out.

I am now engaged in the second most difficult task of my life: focused nutrition, which falls just behind parenting. When I say hard, I mean hard for me. Sure, some people might find breastfeeding or differential calculus to be a challenge. Me - cooking and cleaning up after myself! I created this blog in the hopes of that it will help me clarify my thinking. And what did it have to be? A collection of expert-like essays from the start.

Now that I think about it, it sort of makes me laugh. I am writing about my vast successes and sharing "wisdom" with one hand, while crying for help at the OEvolution list with the other.


Perhaps today, I will try a different, more humble approach for blogging. Still no sexual exploits, husband bashing or job whining.  Well, OK.  Just this once.

• Sexual exploits: Trying to get pregnant. Primary difficulty: conception requires far more energy than it used to.
• Husband bashing: He is a god damn picky eater. Boy, is this making my Paleo adventure more difficult!
• Job whining: My boss leaves me alone until the project is completed. I work from home and it gives me an intellectual break from the daily routine. I've had it worse.

Now that this is out of my system - I would like to dedicate this blog to the story of making Paleo work for me, coping with cooking for the family, monitoring my health, energy and other symptoms and sharing the ups and downs. And to my readers (both of you!) thanks for stopping by. Leave me a comment. Comments make me tingle all over!

Icing, skip the cake

It always surprises me how kids can eat that sickly-sweet icing that comes on birthday cake. Mine take it to a whole new level: they eat the icing and hand me back the cake. When I came up with a paleo-licious way of enjoying desert, I told them,

"That's it, guys, desert: Icing, no cake!"  Needless to say, it was a win.

Ingredients:

• Berries of any kind. My kids' favorite: strawberries.
• Whipped cream

You get the idea. Who said, desert is out with Paleo?

The amazing thing about whipped cream is, it's a nearly-unlimited-sinfully-delicious-feel-good-about-it food.  It requires so little sugar to taste sweet that you will usually see "Sugar: 0g" on the label.  Do shop around as most whipped cream these days is low-fat. The costco version is amazingly tasty, full fat and very lightly sweetened.

Pork Medallions in Wine sauce

It was time for lunch. I knew because I was ready to faint from hunger and would have happily done so, had it not been Lily's nap time and me knowing that I'd regret not tending to it now. A bottle of goat's milk prepared, sitting at her side, I started thinking about lunch.


The problem with Paleo cooking is, meat just takes a lot of thinking ahead! It just cooks and cooks and cooks. I needed lunch right now, damned! While I could still handle hot pans without exposing myself and others to danger.  There was a giant 7-lb sleeve of pork I bought at costco, a portion of which had been defrosted in the fridge (I cut meat into portions prior to freezing it and each night make sure something is defrosting for the next couple of days to choose from.) What to do?... Then I felt the beginnings of an inspiration...


Ingredients:

• 2-3 lb of boneless pork meat. If you are using pork chops, make sure, they are thinly sliced
• 2 tbs olive oil
• A cup of coconut flour
• 1 onion, sliced thin
• A few cloves of garlic, 5 gives it flavor without making you think, Italian mama
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 3/4 cup chicken broth
• 4 tbsp butter

The cooking:
The key to this recipe is, do not overcook the pork!  The process below looks long. Don't panick. Your total time should be under 20 minutes. I list ingredient amounts below so you don't need to keep looking back and forth. Here it goes.

1. Cut pork into medallion-size slices, an inch or so across. Keep them at about 1/4 in thick.
2. Pour some olive oil in the pan at high heat. Add 2 tbsp butter.
3. Throw a cup of flour into a bowl, along with your medallions. Once the oil heats up, lay the floured pork neatly. Pork loves high heat. I learned this from my dad, who took 5 minutes to make his famous pork chops! By the time you lay the last of them, it's probably time to start flipping the early ones - as soon as they begin to brown.  Total cooking time: 4-5 minutes.
4. Slide the pork off the plate onto a platter.
5. Reduce heat to medium-high. Add some more olive oil; once heated, throw in onions. Cook another 4 minutes. Add garlic for just 1 minute more.
6. Pour 1/2 cup wine, 1/2 cup vinegar, 3/4 cup chicken broth. Cook five minutes more, letting some of the liquid cook off.
7. Here is a tricky bit: throw the pork back in. You really want to warm it up in this yummy juicy winy sauce you've got.  BUT before it gets too comfortable (after 1 minute), fish it back out. It's ok if the onions go with it.
8. NOW Add another 2-3 tbs butter and melt it in the sauce. This will give the whole thing an amazing rich flavor. Want something fun? If you are in the habit of saving bacon fat, get that in, too!
9. Pour the sauce over the medallions. Serve!

I simply served mine with a garden salad. The sauce is so light in flavor, it can stand on its own. The upside of a salad - no more cooking!

My kids liked it. My kids' playdate liked it. My husband liked it. Even I liked it!  This is a great dish to double or triple as it'll save so well and will stand up to microwaving.

Culinary puzzle

My husband is still skeptical about paleo. Our taste preferences couldn't have been more different to begin with - and throwing grains out of the equation was just about the last straw. Still, I wanted to be able to connect with him, even where fundamental disagreements were in the way.

He's got a mathematical bend, so I figured I'd try his sensitive spot:

Culinary puzzle
OK, so you are told to make a grain-free bean-free salad.
So far you've got cubed cheese & ham. Keep adding ingredients till it's yummy!

It worked! Before long we had a beautiful salad put together, so tasty, I wouldn't change a thing!

Ingredients:

• 1-2 Tomatoes, diced
• 1-2 cups of finely shredded lettuce (I am not a big lettuce person, so I don't like a lot of greens in my salads!)
• 1 cup of leftover meat (or lunch meat) of your choice (mine was baked ham, still trying to get through it!)
• 1 cup of sharp cheddar cheese, small cubes
• 1 bell pepper, diced
• Optionally: add diced boiled egg and crumple crisp bacon while serving (don't put bacon in the salad bowl as it'll become soggy in storage)
  
  Dressing:
• 3 tbs Olive oil
• 1 tbs lemon or lime juice
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp dry mustard
• 1 tsp salt

Jeff's requests:

1. Lettuce has to be shredded fine to really soak in the dressing.
2. No soggy bacon
3. Italian dressing should be tangy, not sweet (note: no sugar in my dressing!)

Yum! the only problem - not enough.  :-)  Once husband Jeff got started on it, he couldn't put it down.  I was especially happy with the dressing. Spicy is always a problem with young kids around - I am forever looking for that hint of something that will delight adult palates while getting by the little ones.  Big success!

Beautiful holiday ham for a busy mom

The best secret my mother-in-law has passed to me is baking ham. Whenever I serve my creation, people take in a sharp breath and ask me if I made it myself.  "Well, it started with a little pig name Pete..." no one wants to hear the rest.

The truth is, it's the easiest recipe I have in my repertoire. Before Paleo, I kept it handy for pretending I knew how to cook when we had company.

Ingredients: Ham.

Yeah, really!  One problem, though. Grocery stores frequently fail to carry ham during the off-season.  I found out, Costco has them all year round, cheap and beautiful! While you are there, I recommend picking up a stack of "catering" pans - think, foil roasting pans. Really, you don't want to have to clean the pan after a good meal, do you?

Fill the pan with 3 in or so of water. Put the ham face down in it. Sprinkle some love & joy. (That's not a special spice, it has to come from the inside!) Set your oven to 350F, timer to 2 1/2 - 3 hours and take your kids to the park.

When you come back, you'll have a delicious dinner ready for you. I would skip any kind of a glaze - all that sugar! (If you want a sugary treat, pour a little maple syrup over the ham.) It tastes great as-is, with some veggies on the side.

And for the rest of the week, you have a beautiful option for omelets, o'derves, snacks and just about anything else. Oh, and don't forget to save the drippings to add to your ham bone for a delicious soup.  (Coming soon!)

O'derves for lunch get high praise

One of the difficulties of cooking Paleo for a newbie is, well, there is a lot of cooking! You start out with raw ingredients and 4 pans, 3 pots & 7 dirty bowls later, you have a meal. Seriously? Three meals a day? Yes, mom, I know, that's how you had to do it too. But I was very quickly overwhelmed.

Then I discovered "sliced bread" of Paleo! You know, those cute little things at corporate events and weddings that one just cannot resist? Really, how much does it truly matter what's in it when it's on this dainty little toothpick? One can pick it up, play with it, eat it - it's equally good for gray hair in tuxedos & bottomless toddlers running around the house.

Ingredients: cold meat, raw veggies, cheese.

Here are a few options I've created that got the most "orders" from the crowd:

• A slice of hot dog & a bell pepper square on a toothpick
• Ham and cheese melt: three squares: baked ham, cheddar cheese, baked ham. Toasted for 5 minutes. Yum!
• Alternating circular slices: hot dog, string cheese, hot dog... Looks as much fun as it tastes!
• Ham, avocado, bell pepper, ham

You get the idea. I had to make them again and again! I seriously needed a break from heavy cooking today. It was a blast!

Amazing children-friendly ribs

Alex (4yrs) and Lily (almost 2) are officially fed up with my paleo cooking experiments.  Recently, Alex announced, "I can't stand my life any more!" A little prying uncovered that the horrid fish I concocted for lunch was his undoing.

Today I was determined to make them happy. Ribs were to save the day! My goal was two-fold:

• Ribs that are tender enough, toughness isn't an obstacle for the kids
• No spicy sauce!

It's bad enough, I am changing their diet right as their palates are becoming established, I don't want them to have to deal with extra problems, if they can be avoided.

Guest what! It worked!!! I am the happiest cave mommy ever. They cleared their plates and asked for more. Oh, and it was quite easy. Total dealing with it time, including setting the table, couldn't have been more than 20-25 minutes.

And here are my secrets.

1. Fall off the bone ribs . The key to this recipezaar recipe is that it is cooked slowly in the oven rather than on the grill. This is particularly convenient for a busy morning out - we left and had them cooking for 2 1/2 hours - and they were ready and perfect as we got home.
2. Home-made BBQ sauce. This one I am so proud of - it's all me in the midst of a morning rush, with some creativity sprinkled on top (all ingredient measure approximate, to taste):

• 1 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup mustard (Alex's eyes popped out when he found out the hated mustard was there - after he consumed a plateful!)
• 1 tbs worceshire
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1tsp vinegar
• 1-2 tbs coconut sugar (aren't you proud of me? One could use brown sugar instead)
• a few drops of "liquid smoke"

That's it. I never cooked the sauce (except on the ribs) and offered remainder as a dip.  It's made mostly of ketchup, right? Alex was saying, "Lily, you have to try this ketchup! It's amazing!"