Tag Archives: primal

Feeding the paleo habit

Luke eats his taco at the Triangle Farmers MarketMadelineTonight, Andy went through the seed packets I had stashed in a container in the kitchen over the winter.

I’ve been so busy with the baby and work and working out, I haven’t had time to properly get my butt into the garden and plant some seeds.

Thank goodness Andy has my back.

We eat A LOT of vegetables. Every day.  More than we did as vegetarians.  It’s good, but it can be expensive.  I mean, grains are really cheap by comparison.

So we do what we can to save money.  Growing our own is one way — although it’s risky.  You never know what pest or disease can take out your crops.  (Last year our squashes were nearly decimated by the squash vine borer.)

I supplement with trips to the grocery store and farmers markets, because I like to support local farmers.

Every Wednesday, the kids and I make a trek over to The Triangle for the SFC Farmers Market where we pick up our CSA box and our weekly order from Richardson Farms.  Luke nearly always gets a Tacodeli taco (bean, potato, & cheese), and the guy knows him because Luke has been ordering and paying for his own taco for YEARS.

But I digress.  We do all of this because food quality is important to us.  We eat meat, vegetables, some fruit, nuts, seeds and good quality oils.  (Well, except for that taco.)  Vegetables and meat can be expensive (don’t get me started on food subsidies and inequalities — I’ll leave that for Michael Pollen and Mark Bittman.), so I’m a realist, and I’m growing what I can.  I try to keep a blog about my gardening.  You can find it at Austin Earth if you’re interested.

In the meantime, I’m full from a dinner of delicious salmon chowder and salad, and I’m off to bed to rest up before Thursday morning’s WOD.  Primal fuel.  Gotta love it.

Paleo kids: It’s not hard

Luke's bento lunch boxes for TuesdayEver wonder what I feed my 4-year-old?  I thought I would share a photo of the lunch I sent to school with him on Tuesday.

He got a hard-boiled egg, a ham and cheese rollup with mayo and Dijon mustard, carrots, cucumbers, green pepper, sliced apples and oranges.

He and his classmates sit down at set tables everyday, with napkins and silverware and everything.  Convenience and junk foods are not allowed. It makes it easy.  He doesn’t ask for crap like Lunchables  or potato chips and I don’t offer.

I try to vary his lunch every day, but there’s always a protein, a vegetable or two and a fruit.  Sometimes I send leftover roast chicken or hamburger.  Sometimes he gets berries or watermelon.  I always save sweet potatoes, because those are his fav (he’ll get some on Wednesday).  Rarely — and I mean rarely — do I pack a sandwich.

There was a time when I thought it would be impossible — mean, even — to deny my child bread and crackers.

Can you imagine?  Now, after being the primary caregiver for the past 9 months and reading blogs like the Everyday Paleo and Growing Up Paleo and Robb Wolf’s Paleo Solution,  I realize that it’s more detrimental to my kids’ health to continue with the grains.

That’s not to say that I’m so strict that Luke never eats bread and crackers and cake. But I offer alternatives, and slowly, over the course of the last few months, he prefers, and even asks for, my alternatives FIRST.

What’s that Luke?  You’re hungry?  How about an apple with almond butter?  A ham roll up?

And I try really hard not to push too hard, because I don’t want to make food an issue.  That can only backfire in the end.

Does he still love pizza?  Grilled cheese sandwiches?  Sugar?  You bet.  But it’s getting easier to get him to try other things.

And actually enjoy them.

Eat your heart (out)

I’m sure I shocked many of my Facebook friends yesterday when I posted this:

Cindy Brummer You would never believe what I just ate for dinner. I can’t believe it myself. In fact, just a year ago the idea would have given me a heart attack. Pun completely intended.

And then, after a couple of friends guessed, I wrote this:

Cindy Brummer That’s right, Fred. Heart. It was in our freezer — one of the few remaining cuts from the half calf we bought over a year ago. So I found a recipe on MDA and cooked it up. And you know what? It was pretty damn good.

I grossed out a few people.  Heart is not what most people would consider a good meal.  But I ran across this recipe on Mark’s Daily Apple, and since we just happened to have a beef heart in the freezer, I decided to give it a try.

The heart was already halved and most of the valves and connective tissue cut out, so I didn’t have to do much.  Slow-cooking it definitely made it tender.  I really enjoyed it, although, when I stopped to think about what I was eating, I had a little trouble getting it down.  So I just put it out of my mind.  Andy, on the other hand, just couldn’t put it aside, and he ate little of his portion.

I’m no dummy, and I didn’t tell Luke it was anything other than “beef.”  Which isn’t a lie.  And I don’t think I was withholding the truth either, because I rarely tell him where the cuts of meat that we’re eating were taken from the cow.  But that’s because I usually don’t know.  But Luke liked it and ate a bit of what he was served.

Anyway, the beef heart was good.  I loved grossing out my friends.  And I love trying new stuff.  I mean — it’s not like I was eating intestines or something.  We’re talking about a muscle!

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Our paleo potluck

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My I AM Crossfit team gathered on Saturday evening to share some paleo food and some stories.  I was really worried, because so many people had things come up in the week before.  I kept thinking it would be just me and Andy and Luke and a huge pot of chili.

Fortunately, 5 of my teammates were able to make it (out of 12).  Believe me, we trash-talked the rest.  (Just kidding).  No. really, it was a great evening, and the food was amazing.

On the menu:

  • Bacon deviled eggs
  • Bacon-wrapped dates
  • Guacamole and vegetables
  • Apple slaw
  • Chili
  • Shrimp
  • Baked apples with raisins and nuts
  • Berries

(We forgot to serve the roasted cauliflower and pecans)

I didn’t take a lot of photos because I was holding the baby or eating or talking.  But here’s what I got:

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Recipe Alert: Nutty dressing

I am a classicist.

I prefer a simple dressing of olive oil and vinegar, with salt and pepper, on my salads.  I even toss the lettuce in the dressing before I add the rest of my salad ingredients — like the chefs do — just to make sure it gets full coverage.

But sometimes I bore of my go-to salad topping and long for something a bit more exciting.

Recently I had a craving for something creamy on my greens, and I remembered a Rick Bayless salad dressing I made once.  Ah-ha!  That was the ticket!

So with my Mexican Everyday recipe nearby for inspiration, here’s what I made:

Nutty Salad Dressing

1/3 cup olive oil
3 garlic cloves, peeled
handful pecans
handful pumpkin seeds
1 lemon
1/2tsp salt

Toast the nuts and seeds together in a pan over medium heat, stirring frequently to prevent burning.  Toast until the nuts are fragrant and the pumpkin seeds have “popped” from flat into a rounded shape.  Transfer to a bowl and set aside.

Heat the oil in the pan and lightly brown the garlic cloves on each side — about 5 minutes.

Scrape the oil and garlic into a blender jar.  Add about 1/2 of the nuts, salt, and juice from the lemon.  Puree mixture to a smooth consistency.  Add more nuts, oil, and salt as necessary for desired taste.

Serve over salad with remaining nuts.

Enjoy!

The quest for lean

Earlier this week, Andy and I took a walk on the trail with the kids.  As Luke took off at a run in front of us, I turned to Andy with the question no husband wants to answer, even if he knows what the right answer is.  It’s an unfair question, but one that I’ve been thinking about recently.

Me: Do I look good?
Andy: Yes. (To his credit, this answer came without skipping a beat.)
Me: I don’t mean “do I look good for having had a baby 4 months ago?”  I want to just look good.
Andy: I understand.  And yes.

It’s vain of me, I know.  I set out on this challenge — on this post-baby roller coaster, to be honest — with the intention of setting exercise goals: strength, speed.  But in my heart, I want to look good.  Better than I’ve ever looked.  I want to be lean and muscular.  Curvy because that’s the shape of my body, not because I have extra fat hanging around.

I have this dream of looking good in a bikini at the pool this summer, with two kids in tow.

In the meantime, my son is annoyed with me.  We haven’t been out to eat in more than a month.  We haven’t visited Any’s Ice Creams.  We haven’t gone to Hut’s.  We don’t even eat some of the same foods we used to make at home.  It’s become a huge treat for Andy to fry up some apples with cinnamon.  Andy whips cream to put on top.  I eat mine plain.  Andy has made panne cotta with no sugar for me: gelatin, coconut milk and berries.

Luke is not a fan of not adding sugar.  He has noticed — quite vocally — that we haven’t been out to eat in a long time.  He rolls his eyes when I tell him Andy is going to make cheesecake when the challenge is over.   I can see it in his face.  He HATES this challenge.

But, surprisingly, I don’t.  I know I could have anything I want, and no one is going to necessarily slap me on the wrist.  Even some of the coaches allow “treats.”  For me a treat is fruit — and a rare one at that.  I’ve willingly cut out sugar, grains, beans, dairy and many fruit servings.  I feast on meat, vegetables, nuts, seeds and oils.  I wanted to see what would happen if I followed the paleo-way very strictly.  Would I lean out?  How much?  How would I feel?

I feel good, to be honest.  I think my results would be more dramatic if I cut down on portions a bit more, but with breastfeeding, I’m careful not to restrict too much.  But I am leaning out, and I haven’t felt any overwhelming cravings.

I’m halfway through this challenge.  I think I may actually feel sad when it comes to an end.  But I guess, if I reach my goals, the ending will be sweet.  No ice cream required.

Bikini…. you are so mine.

Healthy milk = healthy baby

(This post deals with breastfeeding and human milk, so if that makes you squirm, as it does for some people, consider yourself warned.  I’ll be back to posting WODs next time.)

I rarely, if ever, listen to commercial radio (KUT rules!), but while having my teeth cleaned at the dentist’s office this morning, I caught a bit of the topic du jour: chubby babies.

Now, I’m not sure what sparked the discussion, but I did hear a caller tell the DJs that she has her 5-month-old daughter on a strict diet because she’s ashamed of her baby’s chubby legs — apparently her husband’s overweight, the mom struggles with her own weight and she says she’s not about to start her daughter down that road.

Um… wha?

That little snippet of conversation was enough to stop the hygenist in her tracks.  “What did she say?”

It’s interesting that I heard this on the radio this morning, because I’ve been thinking about my nutritional lifestyle and breastfeeding quite a bit lately. (I’d really rather not pick apart the mom’s comments and go into why I think she’s crazy.  But I’m thinking that the woman formala feeds, rather than breastfeeds.)

I took Mads in for her 2 month check up earlier this week (Yes!  Two months! Can you believe it?!), and to quote her doctor, “She is ABSOLUTELY thriving.”  In fact, she can skip the 3 month check up.  She’s now over 13 pounds and is tall enough for 3-6 month clothes to be a little short.  She’s bright-eyed, sleeps through the night and is all-around wonderfully healthy.

Yes, I know I have been blessed.

It started me thinking about my food and my milk.  It’s hard to determine how much it’s affecting her growth and development.  (Mark’s Daily Apple has an awesome post on primal babies. Check it out! ) Chances are, diet is an important but also only a contributing factor.

I would love to know the breakdown of my milk and compare it to the average.  I may actually have that opportunity.

I have decided to donate milk to the Mother’s Milk Bank.  I did this after Luke was born, and while it requires more careful attention to diet and supplements and more time for pumping and part cleaning, the idea of helping premature babies is amazingly rewarding.

I wish I had started collecting earlier, because the Milk Bank is running dangerously low on milk right now.  It’s possible to help without being a breastfeeding mom.  They take monetary donations, too, so if you’re looking for a charity to help this holiday, please consider donating.

I figure donating is the least I can do for other babies.  Mads is healthy and thriving.  Luke is, too.  I want the same for all babies.

Eat your greens!

There has been a major push at our house lately to add more greens to every meal — even breakfast.

In fact, we’ve been trying all sorts of greens lately, thanks to a plentiful supply from our favorite local farm — Blackland Prairie.  They’ve introduced us to turnip greens and kohlrabi ( which are delicious!).

Breakfast was the last bastion for greens in our house.  Breakfast was already the toughest for me to make that transition away from grains over a year ago. (I used to make oatmeal every day.  What the heck do you eat for breakfast?!)

Prepping veggies isn’t fast  and easy with kids and school and work when you don’t plan ahead. That’s why it’s so important.  Here are my breakfast prep tips:

  1. Wash your greens when they come in the door.  This works really well for the tougher ones like kale.
  2. Chop them up the night before.  We’re usually runnin’ and gunnin’ in the morning.  This is a real time saver, and all but the most delicate vegetables will stand up to a night in the fridge after being chopped.
  3. Make more than enough vegetables at dinner and serve leftovers.  They’re awesome re-heated — especially cauliflower rice and sweet potatoes!

What’s my favorite?  I was just recently turned onto greens (like spinach) served over scrambled eggs and topped with a hot pepper sauce.  The other morning, just such a heavenly creation was accompanied by bacon, Andy’s gluten-free pancakes and berries.  Delish!

Recipe alert: Chili

I grew up in a state where the seasons change more dramatically — more, well… stereotypically — than here in Texas.  Going back to school in September meant sweaters, apple cider and falling leaves.

Well, the leaves are finally starting to fall here in Austin, and I have a craving for all things autumn.  I’ve been cooking a lot of fall/winter comfort foods lately, and pairing them with fresh salads — a reminder that warm season veggies have not yet finished their run this year.

One of the easiest meals I make can be done in a Dutch oven or a slow cooker… it really works well both ways.  Chili is one of those hodge-podge stews that needs only a little imagination, because it can easily integrate anything you have in your refrigerator.

I used The Primal Blueprint Cookbook for inspiration, but this recipe is all mine and Andy’s, and it’s never the same twice.  Here’s how we made it last night:

Chili

Ingredients
2 pounds grass-fed ground beef  or bison (from Austin Farmer’s Market — Andy likes it really meaty)
2-3 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed through garlic press
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 parsnip, peeled and chopped
1 28oz can tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 cups water (you could use broth or stock of your choice)
1/2 cup parsley, chopped
1 tsp dried Italian herbs
salt and pepper to taste
2-3 cups kale, washed, de-stemmed and chopped

Directions
1) Heat oil in Dutch oven over medium-high heat.  Add onions and cook until translucent — about 5 minutes.  Add garlic, carrots and parsnips.  Cook until carrots just begin to lose their hardness.

2) Add meat to pot and brown, stirring well to keep vegetables and meat from sticking.  When red disappears, add tomato paste, herbs and seasonings and stir well.

3) Add tomatoes and water or stock.  Bring pot to a boil, then cover and turn down heat.  Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4) Add kale to pot and cook for another 5-10 minutes.  Salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

Honestly, I don’t do much measuring — I just throw oil and herbs into the pot by feel.  You could change this up in so many ways to suit your own tastes.

We don’t make spicy chili in my house because my kids won’t eat it, but if you like it hot, you could add chili powder and paprika.  Also, consider chopping up some jalapenos to serve on top.

You could substitute ground lamb or turkey for the beef.  What about winter squash or turnips instead of parsnips?  Need to use up some celery?  Add it with the carrots!  Like chard instead of kale?  Go for it!  You don’t even have to add the greens to the pot.  They would go well as a side dish.

The point is, there are so many wonderful variations to chili, there’s no need to add beans at all.

Enjoy!

Delicious primal salad

Avocado-Mango Salad with Bacon and Toasted Pumpkin SeedsIgnore for me, if you will, the ugly pink placemat (a gift), and feast your eyes on a delicious primal meal that I didn’t have to search for on the Internet or find in a specialized cookbook.

Avocado-Mango Salad with Fresh Cheese, Bacon and Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

I found this gem in one of my favorite cookbooks, and it merely required leaving out the fresh cheese (which I didn’t happen to have on hand) to turn into a primal meal.  It does include honey, so it’s not really paleo.  But it goes to show, you don’t need fancy recipes to eat great.

This is from Mexican Everyday by Rick Bayless, one of my favorite chefs.  Yes — the same chef who won Top Chef Masters, has a PBS cooking show and masterminded the White House state dinner when the Mexican president and his wife visited this spring.

Andy and I are rediscovering many of the recipes in this book, because we bought it when we were still eating a meatless diet.  I highly recommend you get it. This is my go-to book for weeknight meals, because I can usually prepare them in under an hour. And Andy loves to make the roasted tomatillo salsa, because it’s a hit at parties.

I thought this salad would be a perfect light summer meal, and I was right.

The dressing really makes this salad, which requires toasting 1/2 cup of hulled pumpkin seeds until they all pop, then cooking 2 cloves of peeled garlic in 1/3 cup of olive oil for 5 minutes.  You combine 1/3 of the seeds, the garlic and oil in a blender with 1/3 cup of fresh lime juice and 1 tbsp of honey.  It made it REALLY creamy.  The recipe also calls for a hot chile to be roasted along with the garlic, but I had to leave it out because of my 3-year-old.

Then you just divide up your lettuce among plates, arrange sliced avocado and mango on top, drizzle it with dressing, then sprinkle with crumbled bacon and the rest of the pumpkin seeds.

Voila!  Perfect for summer, since mangoes are in the markets right now.  And it goes really well with a cold bottle of Topo Chico.  Yum!