We’re not meant to have 6 packs ladies

I have a couple of drafts just waiting for me to add the corresponding pictures but I’ve had a busy past week and am struggling to find the time to post them. I promise soon because there is definitely a delicious roast beef recipe coming up! I just wanted to take a second to post a link to Ancestralize Me! because the article she wrote yesterday really stuck with me.

I’m not doing this to lose weight. I’m not trying to jump on the latest fad diet to get a 6 pack and no touche. I’m doing this because I saw something was wrong with my health that could probably be helped with diet…and it has helped. I have a post in draft talking about my Pizza cheat day and how I know this is the right path for me.

I am also losing weight, and I have been posting pictures on Cavewoman Tweetery showing my weight lose over this time. It’s not the main objective but I figured it was something to hold me accountable. I could stand to lose a few pounds so it’s not a big deal, I want to have a healthy body and I do have a general slender frame so I think that it’s good for me to watch this as well.

One of my “health” issues is a bad back, and while working with my chiropractor we’ve decided a lot of it can be helped by increased core strength, so I’m working on this – not to define my muscles, but increase my stability (I’m always “out” completely opposite of what I was “out” the week before. A more stable core will help this and thus the pain). Once gain, I’m not doing these core exercises to lose weight – I saw something in my heath that needed addressing and am addressing it. Keeping an eye on my shape will help me stay aware of this as well but not a priority.  Lets face it, most women aren’t “lean” and THAT’S OKAY. I would love to tone up and feel comfortable in my skin but none of what I’m doing is to get into super lean rock hard shape. It’s not normal for a female and after  read this blog post I felt really good about not being there.

Read it!

http://ancestralizeme.com/2012/03/27/paleo-women-are-phat/

I hope it makes you feel good about yourself too 🙂

Special Thank You to kdot

If you’ve been to my site before you may have noticed that I updated my header. I want to give a special thank you to kdot for creating this for me. She is such a talented artist and I thought a shout out was well deserved. You can see more of her artwork HERE on her blog.

Thanks kdot!

Roast beef with balsamic jus

Tags

balsamic, Beef, paleo, roast

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Cavemans birthday is next weekend and like my parents came over for dinner, his did as well. It’s too bad we can’t get them over at the same time but I guess that’s parents for you. Caveman wanted steak both nights but I thought that was silly especially since there is 6 of us today. I decided roast would be a better choice and it helped there was one in the freezer…too bad I forgot to thaw it. In the morning I realized this and ran to the store to buy one. I also needed corn since he wanted corn on the cob. I wouldn’t be eating it but there was no reason to exclude it for that reason. Plus his father is über picky and extremely set in his ways and my veggie medley would not do well with him. I grabbed potatoes too for the same reason.

I got everything prepped in the morning. My cavemom in law told my mom earlier that week that I didn’t trust her took cook for me now that I was on paleo and that was the reason we had to have dinner at my house. I was a bit furious about it actually and being female I ran wild making sure everything was going to be perfect and way better than any dinner she’s made as if to prove that it’s not that I didn’t trust her but just that I like my cooking better. Not to make this post a venting point but I’m never comfortable at their place and they always have a way of making me feel so terrible that I usually end the night hiding in another room until its time to go. Caveman doesn’t see this, he doesn’t get it, but his brother does and he often comes over and we chat so I don’t look totally anti social. I guess it’s just one of those classic mother/daughter in law relationships where the mother in law (who to be completely honest may not even realize she’s doing it) does her best to prove everything out of my mouth wrong and if it’s not wrong show that she knows more about it then me. So often undermined and left feeling my worst I don’t enjoy going over there and have been slowly trying to avoid it sending caveman by himself. Although the main reason I insisted I do dinner this time was because I wanted to do something nice for my husband, I suppose the underlying reason for wanting to do it was so that I had a little more comfort and something to focus on when this encounter happened. Needless to say I knew she told caveman she would call me to come help (because she obviously didn’t trust me to do it on my own) and I wanted everything prepped and ready to go so it was easy for me to say “no thank you everything is already good to go”.

And everything was ready, I got the beef seared, the pan deglazed and the veggies prepped before noon. The beef was in the slow cooker with just enough time since it was perfect when I pulled it out by the time caveman got off work. The inlaws came early and I had a good 45 minutes of entertaining them by myself but that was okay because everything was prepped 😛 Here’s the pictures:

first I made a spicy mix to coat the beef in

should have had a bigger bowl!

the onion went into the bottom of the slow cooker

and when the beef was totally coated

I seared it in a pan

giving it a nice browned look

then into the slow cooker where I covered it with diced tomatoes (the recipe called for tomato sauce and I used diced tomatoes and a little tomato paste)

I added my liquids to deglaze the pan

and poured it on top of the beef then into the slow cooker

here’s my prepped veggies ready to go when caveman got home

more prepping lol

classic veggie medley

final product. so delicious.

Everyone loves breakfast for dinner

Tags

bacon, breakfast, Eggs, paleo

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Do you ever have those days when you have a meal planned and you just don’t want it? The pasta sauce has been sitting in the fridge for several days and caveman and I just can’t bring ourselves to want it. Me because I’m having pasta cravings and the spaghetti squash just isn’t going to cut it (so I’m turned off of the idea) and caveman says that dinners have been so good lately, pasta kind of reminds him of our mediocre lazy days where we throw some preggo on noodles and devour. Plus he ha a craving for grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. So we both looked at the sauce in the fridge and agreed to ignore my schedule tonight. He cooked his dinner and I decided what I wanted to do. After talking about breakfasts in the last post I opted for breakfast for dinner because sometimes its just one of those nights. Plus I had avocados in the fridge for Fridays dinner which I knew wasn’t going to happen because we had a dinner date with a friend. No use in wasting my delicious avocados.

I had my classic scrambled eggs with bacon mixed up with salsa and avocado. In retrospect I wish I made guacamole instead of just slicing the avocado and throwing it in but it was what it was. I guess I was feeling lazy and I threw some spices into the cooking eggs to make up for what I would normally add to my guac (cilantro, garlic etc). The eggs were okay but the salsa and avocados were so cold from the fridge that me meal got cold fast. I’ve been trying to slow down my eating so I can tell when I’m full quicker so this didn’t help. I ate it all but I wasn’t excited about it. I also threw out half the avocado, I didn’t need the whole thing and forgot about my avocado saver (best shower gift ever) until it was all sliced up and too late. You live you learn.

The whole meal could have been improved and usually is better when I have it for breakfast but at least I didn’t turn tonight into a cheat day. Plus it looks pretty cool 🙂 it reminds me of a sushi roll I had once called the tex mex roll which was extremely original and delicious. A California roll with salsa, who’d have thought!

Yum Yum Bacon

eggs cooked in the bacon grease

scramble them up

sliced up avocado

eggs on top

now the bacon

and salsa to top it off

Breakfasts and lunches

Tags

bacon, deli meat, Eggs, guacamole, salsa, snacks

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Today we were going to have pasta, and by pasta I mean caveman has pasta and I have spaghetti squash. However that shepards pie was still there and needed to go so alas it was leftovers again. Caveman added salsa and cheese to his in attempt to enjoy it a bit more, and he scooped off the cauliflower and put it in my bowl. It was good, I still like it and he seemed happy with his mods but that doesn’t make for anything interesting here so I’m going to talk about my other paleo meals.

Breakfast has always been hard for me, I’ve always been a ‘snooze button presser’ and breakfast skipper but when I started paying more attention to my eating habits I knew it had to include some breaky. But what can I make that’s quick before work? I have a long commute so it has to be easy and/or portable. Eggs seemed like a good choice but I still didnt want to cook in the morning so how could I do this?

I ended up with egg salad at first and I still love it. I make it Sunday night and portion it for my five work days. It’s not your average egg salad with tons of mayo, I mince onions and celery and mix it with salt and pepper and mashed hard boiled eggs. I also add bacon sometimes, fry it up nice and crispy and break it up into thick fresh bacon bits for a little extra flavour.

This week I didn’t have my celery or onions because caveman offered to go shopping for me on Monday instead of me going while he’s at work on Sunday and I really appreciated the help so I went with plain hard boiled eggs. I’m still struggling with my hard boiled eggs because I hard barely ever get them to that perfect, easy to peel end product. There are a couple of links that I’ve gone to in search of this and sometimes the directions work and sometimes I’m frustrated by how much egg white gets stuck to the shell and wasted. I have an egg genie that is supposed to steam the eggs to the perfect finish but it wasn’t perfect all the time and I haven’t tried recently. I should probably pull it out and see how it does again since its been awhile. If you have any tips I’d love to hear so definitely comment below.

Lunch. Mmm. What used to be a frustrating meal for me because none of the standard lunch foods appeal to me. I hate sandwiches, weird I know. I was the little girl in elementary school with the smelly back pack because the sandwiches my mom would pack me for lunch would collect over time and go moldy. I knew I shouldn’t waste food, I just didnt want them and couldn’t bring myself to eat them. Even when I tried it was a couple of bites before it was thrown away. I was in trouble whenever my parents found the moldy collection of neglected sandwiches but never did they try to find something I would eat so it continued until they stopped making me lunch and I was forced to fend for myself.

It’s weird, I love bread and I love deli meat, I just couldn’t bring myself to eat them together after they sat getting gross and soggy in my bag for 4 hours. Bleh. Paleo however found my solution, cut out the bread! Simple! Now I know that I’m supposed to find nitrate free deli meat, but …as with a few other things, I’m just not there yet. I want to succeed with this and starting off by hunting for difficult ingredients isn’t going to help that. When I get the hang of this a bit better I’ll search for more grass fed nitrate free options but until then it’s baby steps.

So from that tangent I bring you, the wrapped in lettuce deli meat. Brilliant idea and delicious. I was doing just deli meat rolls but miss Stephanie said she loves it with just lettuce and bam! I saw the light. Sooo most lunches are either leftovers, or a combination of a small handful of nuts. A fruit (been loving pears or cutie oranges). Some veggies (a hand ful of baby carrots or celery) and my lettuce wrapped meat. Mmm Mmm Mmm.

And within that staple meal, there is still a million options since there are so many fruits and veggies and nuts and meat types to choose from. Why was lunch ever hard before???

Butter Chicken

Tags

Butter chicken, cauliflower rice, chard, paleo

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Saturday’s shepard’s pie was large and I learned yesterday that caveman was lying when he said he’d love to have it again. Sweet guy, didn’t want to hurt my feelings. His severe hatred for cauliflower came through and it’s out of the recipe index. It’s okay though, there is lots of other recipes out there.

Tuesday are normally his soccer days but with spring break here the school he plays at was closed so he took over my tv for the hockey game and made bacon sandwiches for dinner. To be fair I told him he could and he offered to let me watch my pvr’d gcb on the intermissions (and it took over the end of the first and most of the second period) so I think we ha a good compromise. I had leftovers as planned.

Garlic Ginger Pork Chops

Tags

garlic, ginger, pork

Monday, March 19, 2011

Tonight’s dinner was super simple. So simple that I forgot to take pictures every step of the way. Whoops. Basically you marinate the pork, throw it on the grill, wilt your spinach and then eat. Bam! We added carrots and mushrooms to our veggies because I’ve been enjoying a medley (as you can tell) and of course caveman had to have his mashed potatoes.

Organization Win

Tags

excel, organization, recipe box, recipe sorter, recipes

Tonight we’re just having leftovers, nothing too fancy but since there was a lot of Shepard’s Pie we have to eat it right. So instead of posting a recipe and some pictures today, I want to talk to you about organization. It sounds boring, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get off a little on something that is anal retentively organized which is why when the lovely Miss Stephanie told me about this recipe sheet she had seen I knew I had to make one just like it!

The annoying thing about trying all these new Paleo recipes is…where do I save the recipes that I like so I don’t lose them? I can book mark them but that’s going to get cluttered really fast. I can write them down and put them in my recipe box which is fine and dandy but writing them out is annoying and it’s not easy to see what recipes are there. I feel like recipe boxes used to be awesome (hence why I bought one) but in today’s day and age we can do better.

Paleo Shepard’s Pie

Tags

comfort food, ground beef, paleo, shepards pie

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Tonight’s dinner was sent to me by the lovely Miss Stephanie who saw the recipe and thought of me. I was really excited to try it because caveman loves Shepard’s Pie and it gave me the chance to find something for him. Plus it’s St. Patty’s day so in the spirit of the Irish I made their comfort food.

Chili

Tags

chili, ground beef, paleo

Friday, March 16, 2012

Last night we went out for dinner with a friend for his birthday. We went to cactus club and I had chicken fajitas with no beans, no sour cream or cheese, and lettuce wraps instead of tortilla shells. I was very happy with my dinner. I also had a vodka martini which I know isn’t allowed but hey, it was his birthday and I had a busy day at work.

Tonight I made chili. I got off work a little bit early so I was home well before Caveman. I chopped up all my veggies and had everything 90% done by the time he got home which was nice because I got to listen to music and prep (off in my own little world) and he didn’t have to chop veggies which is normally his job 🙂