The goings on of our family.
Xander loves to be read to and the other night he brought this book over to Ryan. Put Me in the Zoo by Robert Lopshire is the first book I was able to read all by myself when I was little!
It’s about a leopard who wants to live in the zoo but the zookeepers don’t want him. He tries to convince some children that the zoo is the place he belongs by showing them the wonderful tricks he can do with his spots. I still love the story and am so happy that Xander loves it too!
Here is a photo of our yummy dinner last night. Sauteed spinach and onions, mashed cauliflower, and baked chicken. Wait, where’s the chicken?
Note to self, bone in chicken takes longer to cook. Oh well, so we ate our dinner in courses. It still tasted really good.
We’ve been seriously craving goodies since changing our eating habits to follow the Primal Blueprint. It hasn’t been the bad “I need sweets!” craving that you sometime get, more just “we need a treat” craving. It’s been especially hard for me to not be baking stuff so I’ve been reading lots and lots of web pages looking for grain free baked goods. I found the recipe for Black and White Cake at Elana’s Pantry (a great gluten free baking site) and have been anxiously waiting for my almond flour to be delivered. It arrived late Monday and I went straight into baking mode.
It was a super easy recipe to make, the only hard part was waiting for it to cool! I used all bittersweet chocolate chips so mine isn’t actually black and white but it still is super tasty!
Since we have switched our eating habits to follow the Primal Blueprint our regular standby menus no longer work. They were filled with a lot of pasta dishes or casseroles with grains. At first it was daunting trying to think of meals that don’t have grains or legumes in them but now I am having fun finding new recipes to try. All of these recipes are grain and gluten free.
This weeks meals:
I didn’t do a post for last weeks menu but I did take some photos of what we were eating. Sadly, I did not get a photo of my first ever pot roast, and it turned out so yummy! Last week we had:
Please visit I’m an Organizing Junkie to see what other people have on the menu this week. To learn more about our Primal Blueprint eating check out Mark’s Daily Apple. Thanks for stopping by.
Last Saturday Ryan came into my office area and said something to the effect of “I want to eat like a caveman”. Huh? So he explained that he’d been reading on different websites about Paleo/Primal/Caveman diets and found the ideas intriguing. He’d placed the books on hold at the library but he wanted to switch to eating that way now.
“Okay, what’s a caveman’s diet like?”
“They ate all sorts of meat, vegetables, fruits, seeds, and nuts.”
“No problem”
“They didn’t eat any grains, sugars, processed foods.”
Red alert, Red alert! All hands to battle stations! (insert Star Trek sound clip)
“No bread, no cinnamon rolls, no macaroni and cheese????!!!! You’re joking right?”
“No joke, I think we should try it.”
Long pause while my brain explodes. Ryan backs away into a safe zone while I start reading different web pages. Later, after I had read some of the pages I said something to the effect of “okay, but I’m more interested in the Primal Blueprint than the Paleo stuff.” (Paleo cuts out all dairy too.)
So we agree to work on following the Primal Blueprint’s Laws. We both went ahead and ordered the e-book and started reading (the price for the hardcover was just a few cents cheaper than me getting a copy on the Kindle and Ryan getting a copy for his Nook, plus no wait time!).
At first we were just going to ease into it and still use up all the non-primal food in our pantry. But going no grain is hard and the idea of stringing it out with a pasta dish once a week is killing me, so we’re giving all our non-primal pantry items away.
I had been planning to keep buying some of the processed foods that Xander eats– since he eats such few things— but the more I read the more I wanted him off those foods. We’ll keep the Carnation Breakfast mix for his milk but if I can start getting him to eat some real food I’ll start weaning him off it. I already found a grain free cheese cracker recipe so hopefully I can replace his beloved Goldfish!
This whole dietary switcharoo has been hard on my image of me. I see myself as a baker, I bake bread,I bake goodies. I like to do it, I like to eat it. I’ve been wanting to take a cake decorating class. So the idea of stopping eating grains– not just gluten free here, we’re talking ALL GRAINS– well, it really shook my idea of me.
Then I got to thinking, I really believe that the Standard American Diet (SAD) is unhealthy and that the Primal Blueprint (PB– I swear everytime I read this acronym I see peanut butter! Which is ironic because peanuts are on the no no list) is a healthier way of eating. Instead of focusing on being sad and losing my image of being a “baker” shouldn’t I focus on being happy about eating healthier. And as someone who likes to cook and bake wouldn’t I find the challenge of making yummy meals without the use of grains to be rewarding? Once I started thinking about it that way I started to feel less negative about the things I was giving up (cinnamon rolls!) and more positive about the good meals we would be having. Not just good tasting (hopefully) but now they’ll be good for us too!
So I’m having fun hunting down recipes to try and we’ve had a lot of tasty meat and vegetable filled meals this week.
Up to book four for the Speculative Fiction Challenge! Ascend by Amanda Hocking is the final book in the Trylle Trilogy. I’ve really enjoyed reading this trilogy and the final book wrapped up the story well. I’m disappointed to read on her blog that she isn’t planning on writing more in this world, I’d like to know how the society evolves and what happens with specific characters. Sure hope she changes her mind.
To see what other people have been reading for the challenge visit Floor to Ceiling Books. Thanks for stopping by.
