Trying Paleo/Primal Day 2

Breakfast took me a while to get around to making, but eventually I wilted some spinach in butter and then fried in some eggs with chili powder, and topped it off with Old Bay seasoning. yum. The Baby liked the egg part, so I cooked him up some without the spinach.

For a snack at some point I had some smoky almonds, too salty for real Paleo, but already in the house and better than a peanut butter cup, right?

Lunch has been greenbeans and almonds so far, and lemon pepper tilapia is in the oven. cook faster, dammit!

I'm going to have to get better at working ahead for this.

I have leftover steak that had been saved for fajitas, but now is just going to get eaten for dinner.

Tons of energy. Cleaned out my baking cupboard of the flours like Amaranth and Wheat Gluten and other fancy flours that I had been buying to make fancy "healthy" bread. Giving them to a homemade bread loving friend.

I'm keeping the Tapioca Flour and hope to find and buy Almond flour though, because I've seen some decent sounding "pancake" and other "muffin" type recipes that call for those.

Time to go check on my fish!

***a while later***

Arrgh!!  The fish was cooked perfectly. Went outside with it to eat and watch kids play and managed to dump most of it on the ground. Julie the Dog liked it....

Out of Frustration, I ate some Doritos, but surprisingly, not too many.

**after bedtime, back at computer**

Dinner was requested by Sharkboy: Apples, Asparagus and Chicken. I served the apples raw as an appetizer with sunflower butter. He had been expecting baked apples. Oops. Oh well. He didn't like the Sunflower butter either. I hope he likes Almond butter.

Sharkboy has decided he really likes "lunchables" but I've figured out it's not what's IN the box that he likes, he likes the Bento Box system. The apple appetizer was actually apples and carrots and sunflower butter and ranch dressing and glazed walnuts (I'm starting to think that if I ever go Paleo, we'll have to come up with a new name, like, the Sugar-Coated Paleo. Is that possible? If this Paleo experiment does nothing else, it has shown me why Tyler doesn't eat the Lunchables he begs for and I buy occasionally. Of course he doesn't eat what's in it. The contents of the standard Lunchable are disgusting. However, I think I'll be shopping for a good Bento Box, or sending Hubby to find some in Japan in a couple weeks!  Yes, Japan!   His shopping assignment list gets longer and longer every day...I hope he has time to do some shopping...

Workout was supposed to be the second day on the paper Travis gave us at the seminar, but after loading up the kids and the veggie bento snack box in the car and driving to the track, we found a Track Meet in progress. So, we came back home and I switched to a later workout with no running.

I did the warmup, running to the end of my block and back then 5 each of PU, SU, AS, BE

.
forgot to stretch, was doing a little bit, checking on food, PU, SU, feeding kids, AS, cleaning up kids, etc.

So, it was supposed to be 10 rounds for time of
10PU
10SU
10AS

I did 6 rounds of 10, with my pushups being regular floor pushups for 2 rounds, knee girlie pushups for 2 rounds and hands about 6 inches off the ground on a board for 2 rounds. The situps were all with my feet hooked under something, and the 10th round of situps was with feet under 40 lb Sharkboy, which led to the last ten Air Squats being leg extensions on my back giving Sharkboy rides (sort of like airplane rides).

Ooh, and to top off a productive day, Tuesday is supposed to be my bathroom cleaning day, and I actually did it. It often gets put off. How long can I keep up this level of productivity???

Better than Nothing!!!

Trying Paleo

This would be a longer post but well, spring is pretending to have arrived today, so I'm going to get to work outside.

I am going to TRY the Paleo lifestyle this week, as hubby will not be around to complicate things by being resistant to the system. I'm going to blog what I eat.

Yesterday was semi-paleo, as I knew I was going to be pretty motivated after going to a seminar by www.uncommonwellness.com.  I don't totally remember what I ate, but lots of eggs, walnuts, raisins, carrots, and imitation crab (I know, tons of gluten and crap in it) figured into the equation. Plus Jelly Beans. Come on, they are right. there. in. the.kitchen.  I didn't have coffee but am pretty sure I  had herbal tea.  Plus Jelly Beans.

Today so far, I've had Bacon, Eggs (fried in PAM, canola oil...Paleo? I have no idea!) and Mangoes.  I was so lucky to swing by Wal-Mart after the seminar yesterday and find PERFECTLY ripe Mangoes for 33 cents (not sure if per pound or each, whatever....it's cheap).  I should have bought a TON, but only filled up one produce bag.  Good "exotic" produce is so hard to find here in the midwest. It was like a sign from God saying I CAN DO IT (the Paleo thing).  Oh yeah, and Jelly Beans (the bag isn't empty yet!)

Pictures of food coming up soon. Time to figure out lunch (spinach cooked in bacon grease? and....roast beef with veggies?), and get to work on finishing the sandbox project. 

Ideally I'll give CrossFit a try this week too, but I'm sore just from "trying" the workout moves yesterday. I can't imagine what a whole workout is going to do to me. How am I supposed to prepare food if I can't move my arms????


*** A Few Hours Later***

Lunch was leftover Roast Beef and roasted carrots. I left the roasted potatoes in the leftover bucket.

Then I dropped Sharkboy at Preschool, shopped for more materials for the Sandbox project, worked in the yard, rearranging the garden, and suddenly it was time to pick up from Preschool. When we got home, my awesome neighbor came over to help finish building the sandbox. Then, after being more productive than I have been in ages, I tossed the kids a precut bucket of veggies, fruits, and dips, and we went to the HS Track for my first CrossFit workout.

I started with the warmup:
400m run
15 pushups (actually 8)
15 situps
15 Air Squats (more like, 9?)
15 Back Extensions (also known as Swimmers or Supermans)


The Workout
was supposed to be 3 rounds of, but I did 1 round of
Run 100m
50 pushups (more like 25)
Run 100m
50 Situps... Since I don't have the Abmat (yet) I had the kids hold my feet.
Run 100m
50 Air Squats
Run 100 m
50 Back Extensions

I came home and mowed the yard then the poor starving children dragged me inside. After quick but badly needed baths, I made them tuna (with Miracle Whip and sweet relish) sandwiches, which they DEVOURED. Not paleo and not normal dinner, but yummy and most people would consider it healthy. Sharkboy ate 1.5 sandwiches. Lava Girl ate about 3/4. Plus milk. I found more mango while cleaning kitchen (it's not really clean yet, but was trying to make a hole) and we all shared the mango. Mmmmm.
For my dinner, I ate some of the sweet and yummy tuna mixed into spinach wilted with Olive Oil and Lime juice, then tried the tuna salad on some boiled (need to find my steamer) cabbage, and also devoured a sweet potato that I had thrown into the microwave before heading to the track...but then forgot about...

After bedtime, I ate some more Jelly beans.

The first 30 days of Paleo are supposed to  be REALLY LOW SUGAR, but um, I'm a total sugar addict and refuse to go cold turkey. Anyway, I'm just giving it a 7-day trial, right? I even had coffee today, but only half my usual amount, and still used sugar and Half and Half. I've been living on Caffeine, Sugar, and healthy dinners for way too long.

The baby (18 months) was asleep before I could even get a pajama shirt on him after the bath, so I am thinking he likes all the activity, productivity, and lack of caffeine and sugar in his milk. 

Either I'm coming down off those last Jelly Beans or it's actually time for bed. Either way, I've been up for 17 hours. It's time for bed. Good night. Lets see how Paleo goes tomorrow without any bacon in the freezer, a dirty kitchen (hello, spent the whole day outside) and Tuesday is always my busiest day of the week.

I could have sworn I had fish oil pills in the closet from a previous vitamin taking kick, but all I could find was Vitamin E and A and multi vites, so took some of those. Fish Oil will go on the list of junk to buy.

Dinner Waffles

Last night I totally failed to plan or execute dinner, so waffles became the menu, but I wanted to make extra hearty dinner waffles. I started with bisquick, used 2 eggs, substituted a big dump of natural apple sauce for the oil, dumped in a ton of quick cook oatmeal, some chocolate chips, and made my husband's waffles since he isn't a fan of my healthy creations.

Then I added a packet of Green Food, a packet of Jay Robb's vanilla protein shake mix, a bunch of cinnamon (to cover the flavors of the Green Food and fake Vanilla protein), 2 scoops of raisins, and what was left of a bag of sweetened, shredded coconut. Then I put it in the waffle maker like usual, and it made the most awesome waffles!!!  They were substantial, definitely worthy of being dinner. I froze the leftovers, microwaved them this morning, and the kids and I ate them in-hand like cookies.

Here's a pic of them folded and stacked. Why eat normal waffles that are basically just a piece of sugary bread?

Chocolate Orange Muffins

Since some of you have found my blog through the other muffin recipe post, I thought I'd add these. The first time I made them, hubby said they were the best things I had ever made.

Today I made them a bit more healthy.  Rather than using 3 cups of normal white flour, I used 1 cup white flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, and 1 cup graham flour. I also omitted the topping, but put coconut in with the dry ingredients.

I mixed up a bowl of the dry ingredients (including choc chips) and a bowl of the wet ingredients (including chopped oranges) last night.  I even put the cupcake papers in the muffin tins last night and set out the ice cream scooper for ladling the batter. Then this morning I just dumped them together, stirred, portioned and baked.

The recipe's topping is probably the best part. Hubby was kind of sad that it wasn't there. He almost giggled last night when I told him that I was making this kind of muffin, and then this morning when he saw them, there was almost a whimper as he realized there was no topping.

Without further ado, here is the recipe.
Sorry, no pics, without the topping they weren't very pretty.

Belated Earth Day post, Recycled seed starting cups

Happy Belated Earth Day. Sorry, I was obsessed with sewing and cleaning yesterday and failed to blog this.


Many years ago, around 8th grade maybe, I volunteered at a traveling daycamp as a Cadette Girl Scout. One of the camp projects was something like this:

So, I've thought for years that egg shells would be great for starting seeds. As a "square foot gardener" I also wanted to try growing seeds in vermiculite.

Here's how I have started my plants for now:

First, rather than buying those special seed starting mini greenhouses, I used the plastic clam shells that baked goods come in from the grocery store. I filled them with vermiculite and spread seeds around. Then I watered and closed the clam shell, gave it a week or two, depending on the seeds and: 

The  nice thing about these clam shells is that you can divide them with paper, and draw a line over the top of the whole thing with magic marker, and label the sections

While those were growing, I prepared my "planters." This winter I saved a few dozen egg shells. I prepared them by poking holes in the bottoms with a pin:

I did this to a lot of them:

Then I filled them with potting soil and transplanted the seedlings from the vermiculite to the egg shells:

Now, to put them in the ground, I'll just squeeze the shell and put in a hole.

In the picture above, you'll see that some of the eggs are topped off with vermiculite. The eggs are growing tomatoes and I want good roots. Knowing that tomato plants put out roots from the stem if buried, I covered them up as high as I could with vermiculite, and am seeing if it makes a difference in plant growth.

Another thing you can see above is that in the back, there's a cardboard egg carton with more seedlings, but not in shells. This is another experiment, also doing the vermiculite top-off experiment.

Before some science teacher comments that there are too many variables to call it an experiment, well, I know. There's no true control group. Luckily, this isn't a science project, it's a kitchen project for my garden, so I'm ok with it not being done "correctly."

The tomato varieties are Bloody Butcher, Yellow Pear, and some sort of hybrid cherry tomato that's supposed to grow so many it looks like bunches of grapes.