A perfect breakfast

Step 1: Walk to the farmer's market the evening prior and buy some lovely uncured bacon. I got asparagus in my weekly produce box, or I would have also bought some at the market.

Step 2: Cook several slices of bacon to desired crispness. Remove from pan.

Step 3: Wash asparagus well and dry with a tea towel. Break spears in half and fry exuberantly in the bacon fat.

Step 4: Put the asparagus on a plate and salt them (optional). Eat bacon and asparagus with hands.

Step 5: Gloat on the internet. This was delicious. Also, as of yesterday morning, I've lost a grand total of 60 pounds. Hooray for me!

Fish tacos!

A ridiculously yummy and simple weeknight dinner, or easy to make at home and take to work for lunch. Serves two.

1 previously frozen mahi mahi fillet (thawed)
1-2 tsp "tequila lime" spice blend from Whole Foods, or other spice mix of your choice
1 tsp fat of choice (melted coconut oil is ideal)
3-4 small radishes
Handfull cilantro leaves
Half a tiny red onion
Mango salsa (homemade or purchased)
Limes
3 lettuce leaves per person (okay, okay, Better Half ate corn tortillas; she thinks this paleo business is crazy)
Optional: sour cream for serving

Note: this would have been even better with some avocado, but we didn't have any.

Coat fish with spice mix and fat and grill (we use one of those countertop panini-press type grills) for about 4 minutes per side, or until it flakes easily. Wash and chop radishes, cilantro, and onions. Wash and dry lettuce leaves and arrange on plate. Put fish, salsa, and chopped veggies, avocado, and optional sour cream onto each leaf and serve with lime wedges. If you like salt, add a little salt to each taco before serving.

Nutritional breakdown for half of a recipe: 248 calories, 9 grams of fat (includes 1 tbsp sour cream but not avocado), 15 grams carbohydrate, and 20 grams of protein. Easily doubled.

Observations on Dutifully Tracking

Tracking with Daily Plate has been revelatory, in a good way. In switching over to Weight Watchers (it's free through my work, I thought I'd give it a try last fall, I've lost over 20 pounds since joining, but it's never really felt right for me), I lost the ability to see how my macronutrients were breaking down every day. I was still choosing mostly paleo foods (with the addition of some dairy fat), but I wasn't able to see how things were stacking up.

Well, now I can, and two things stood out right away: carbs and protein. I'm actually doing fine on the carbs, which is really heartening. I'm even able to stay on target (under 80g per day) and still have moderate amounts of fruit, and occasional drizzles of honey. This is a good thing. The protein story is not as good. I was really feeling hungry when I was strictly tracking with WW and keeping within my daily points, so I knew something had to be amiss; sure enough, I have not been getting enough protein. Now it's really nice for me to be able to log on and track and see, yeah, I'm still hungry because I'm 10-20 grams short on protein. Let's go have a Tanka bar (by the way, why, why, WHY do these have sugar in the cranberries??? I love these stupid things and I don't have time to go back to making my own pemmican, but it annoys me that they have added sugar; I digress) or some steak or something.

One issue I'm having with all of this is it's been a looonnnng time (and almost 60 pounds :D) since having my body fat tested, so I'm winging it a little on the LBM calculation. Better Half and I have actually been talking about buying a better scale anyway, so I may do some research and see if any of the ones that measure %fat are remotely accurate.

Things are looking up. The scale has already budged down a bit this week, which is awesome, and I'm not seeing as much day-to-day fluctuation as I had been. My calorie percentage breakdown seems to be around 55-60% fat, 15-20% carbs, and 20-25% protein. I did go ahead and have a "cheat" meal last night, enjoyed the hell out of it without going overboard, and am back on track this morning.

I'm settling into a routine

I haven't blogged in a while!

I'm still struggling with sticking with it. I'll go for a week and do just fine, then have some big stupid carbfest meal. Change is hard.

On the other hand, I am really falling into a routine, which is good. Breakfast is boiled eggs (I sprang for one of those countertop egg cooker dealies, and it is AWESOME) with pasture butter, lunch is protein + vegetables (I've been taking the lazy way and eating additive-free rotisserie chicken plus frozen organic vegetables fairly often), I sometimes have a fatty snack in the afternoon (I often just "freebase" the pasture butter), and then dinner is a fancier variant of protein + vegetables. Better Half is liking the dinners, at least, even if I haven't persuaded her to come over to the fat side at lunch or breakfast.

In the past month, I have lost zero pounds, and I know why: I haven't been very serious about it. I haven't been tracking, I've had quite a few "effit" days ("I could make good choices... or... ahh, eff it"). I think the lack of tracking is really killing me. I'm so fed up with the WW tracking system, as they don't show you the macronutrient breakdown. I think I need to go back to using Daily Plate, or maybe switch over to fit tracker. Also, I have not upped my activity level. I'm still doing low intensity daily (walking DogMonster); I really need to add more high intensity workouts. I'm not sure when I'll be able to do that, though, as, through no fault of my own, I pretty seriously bruised my tailbone last week and I'm still in beaucoups pain.

Actually, to be fair, I gained 5 pounds in the week after getting my wisdom teeth out, and I have lost that and a little more; but all that means is I still weigh what I did before the tooth surgery.

I have, however, noticed that my clothes fit differently. My pants are getting looser. So it's possible that I am losing fat / putting on some muscle. This would be a really good thing, I've been really worried that following CW means I'm ditching both fat and muscle, which I'd rather not do. I really need to get my body fat % tested, speaking of.

I still want to do a 30 day challenge, but I'm afraid I have to wait until the school year ends before I start one.

In the next 7 days, I challenge myself to:
-Try tracking on Daily Plate and see how it goes
-See what kind of activity I can handle with the injured butt bone
-Find ways to feel like I'm "splurging" without going off-plan

Beautiful Primal Workout on Saturday

Over the weekend Better Half and I went to a medieval food symposium. It was tucked away in the woods, so I got to get my nature-love on. On Saturday morning, we got in some great outside/exercise time. We walked around, ran around, threw snowballs, and stalked through the woods as quietly as possible. Later, we went on a little hike. Divine!

Running as a fun thing to do is completely novel to me. Even as a kid, I didn't run around much. I was no good at games, so I spent my time doing activities that involved sitting. Lots of sitting. Since losing weight and becoming more active, I've discovered that running is actually a lot of fun. So on Saturday when I came to a big open clearing, I ran around. I was wearing medieval garb at the time, making it extra silly, but it was seriously awesome.

I wish I lived closer to woods. I need more places to play.

The most delicious thing... EVER.

I really, really, REALLY like to make pie. My identity is so completely wrapped up in pie that I named my medieval alter-ego after pie (see my other "blogge" for more on my medieval alter ego). I do not want to give up making pie, and I don't plan to, so as previously promised I have continued my quest to make bacon-pies. Tonight's experiment with the medium was extraordinarily successful:

Sagey Apple-Onion Pie with Bacon Lattice Top

The recipe was dead simple, and the result was unbelievably delicious:

Core and chop 3 apples (I chopped them into approximately 3/4" cubes) and put into a 9" square baking dish. Helpful hint: apple dishes are tastiest with a mix of apple varieties. I had a few to use up from the produce box, so I used a granny smith, a braeburn, and... something yellow with no tag. Chop an onion coarsely and a few sage leaves finely and add to the apples. Mix with hands. Cut 8 strips of bacon in half lengthwise, and weave into a lattice on top of the filling. (Weaving a lattice top is not as hard as it seems -- start in the middle and work out.) Bake at 400°F for 35-45 minutes, until bacon reaches desired crispness.

This would be more fitting in the fall; it would make a great stuffing alternative, I think.

Extra-Lemony Homemade Mayonnaise with Healthy Oils

1 pasture egg yolk
1/2 cup walnut oil
1/4 cup olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon salt (or more, or less)
1/2 teaspoon honey (or more, or less)

Put the yolk, salt, honey, and lemon juice into the bowl of a stand mixer with a whisk attachment. Mix briefly. With the mixer on high, add the oils (I measured them both into a Pyrex container and poured from the spout) a few drops at a time until it starts to look lighter. Switch to a steady but very small stream of oil until you've used all of the oil and you have miraculously ended up with mayonnaise!

I tried to make stick blender mayonnaise and failed. I'm going to stick with using the Kitchen Aid as long as I'm using the expensive oils (which make failure scary).

Nettles!

Nettles ready for the dehydrator

I forgot to post about the nettles! They are epic! I was able to pick lots, I only got stung a little, and they were at the absolute perfect stage.

I blanched some to serve tonight with pasture butter as a side dish for our (scary stuff free) corned beef, and as promised I'm going to dry the rest for tea and trekking.

Does fate have other plans for me?

Better Half and I went out to dinner last night at everyone's favorite big chain / wishes it were upscale but falls short / pseudo-Chinese restaurant for a date. I decided not to sweat it too much but pick the best options I possibly could -- avoiding grains, skipping dessert, and ordering an extra vegetable side dish. I know there were ingredients I don't want in the things I ate, nothing was organic or locally sourced, blah blah blah, but I'm going to let it slide. This journey is going to take time and I'm taking it one step at a time. Right now I'm at changing what I buy at home, going out less frequently, making the best possible choices I can when I do go out, and giving myself one total cheat meal per week (which was on Friday night, when epic fries were eaten).

At the end of the meal, I opened my fortune cookie (although I didn't actually eat it) and the fortune inside was:

"Be good to yourself. Dessert three times per week is OK."

WHAT? WHAT? I laughed so hard. 1) Way to contradict yourself, fortune cookie. Eating crap food is not being good to myself. 2) Way to try to sell more dessert, PF Chang's, you classy bastards. 3) SCREW YOU, FORTUNE COOKIE! I have made a commitment to living better and you undermine me like that? Damn, that's harsh!

Better Half's fortune was that she will get an unexpected inheritance this year, which is basically like saying "Someone you love will die." We decided to write off whole business of listening to cookies.

Nettles!

Better Half and I are taking the dog to the park this morning, and she doesn't know it yet but while we're there I'm going to try to harvest some nettles. Long sleeve shirt, gloves, bag, scissors... this foraging adventure requires gear!

I'm going to cook some as a side dish with our corned beef brisket tonight and dry some as rations for my primitive trek this summer.

Ah yes, the primitive trek: the greatest plan ever conceived! So Viking Food Guy and I are totally going to do a "Viking trek" this August, where we wear historical clothes, eat historical food, and use historical gear on a magical backpacking adventure! What could be more primal???? Even my Iron Age style shoes are basically barefoot shoes: a thin layer of leather between me and the earth. I of course do not do Viking, so I will be Celtic trekking. (Hmm, can I find a source on woad online?) Anyway, how this relates to food is that I've been doing a lot of dehydrating in preparation. I made some oatcakes before taking the plunge into primal, and I dried one to see how long it would keep. Last fall I made salted beef, which I will most likely make again as it seems to lend itself to cooking more than my standard jerky. My mom gave me a bunch of dried food from her garden for Christmas, including carrots and cabbage strips. I've dried turnips (and it turns out that dried turnips are pretty good!), too. Nettles are very nutritious and delicious and people dry them for tea all the time, so I think they would make for great trekking provisions.

We're also planning to fish and forage on our adventure. Seriously, this is going to be the most fun thing EVER. Our respective spouses are coming with us to keep us from dying in the woods and to photodocument the trip.

Yummy dinner and an interesting experiment

I really, really, REALLY like mushrooms. Whenever a package comes in the bi-weekly produce bin, I cook them and eat them right away.

Better Half really, really, REALLY hates mushrooms. She goes mushroom hunting with me, points at them, and yells "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, KILL IT!" She will not eat them. She once proposed that I get separate pans for mushrooms, that none of her food would ever touch. So the mushrooms, when they come, are all for me.

This tends to mean that I get to experiment more with mushrooms than with other food -- if I only have myself to please, I don't really care if I produce something odd.

Tonight I had a delicious lamb shoulder with greens and foraged field mustard florets and mushrooms cooked in butter:



The foraging was great. I took the dog for a walk and we climbed up an embankment after the mustard. I couldn't reach the biggest plant, but I definitely got a good workout hiking up and down the hill. I also picked some miner's lettuce, but decided it was probably dog-peed-on so I ended up tossing it.

While I was cooking dinner, I decided I would do something odd with the rest of the mushrooms. We had some bacon already (alderwood smoked no preservatives no nitrates and so forth), and we got TWO leeks in the box this week meaning last week's leek has no room. Leeks and mushrooms and bacon are always a winning combination. But what to do? Inspired by a memory of a fantastic 18th century British recipe once featured on Two Fat Ladies for a Mitton of Pork, I decided to layer the mushrooms and leeks, sprinkle them with mace, and enclose them, pie-like, in bacon, then bake.

Step one: line tiny deep-dish pie dish with bacon:



Step two: slice mushrooms and leeks and layer them in the dish, sprinkling each layer with a little mace. (Note: I used too much mace. 1/8 tsp is plenty. I shouldn't have eyeballed it.)





Step 3: Top with bacon, tucking in ends of other pieces to make a little parcel:


(Note: You can see that, like an idiot, I put still MORE mace on it at this point. I don't know what my plan was, honestly.)

Step 4: Bake at 400 degrees until bacon is crispy and vegetables are soft, about 30 to 40 minutes:



So, other than HOLY CRAP WHY DID I PUT SO MUCH MACE IN THIS (I really like mace, but I got a little carried away), this was pretty good! It was easy, the flavors blended well... yeah, good stuff! Better Half suggested trying the same technique with apples and onions instead, which just sounds awesome and I can't wait to try it.

A fantastic dinner from a few weeks ago

Awesome salad with seasoned grass-fed beef patty, a photo by laurelfactorial on Flickr.

Seasoned grass-fed beef patty (I added ground up thyme, sage, and garlic, plus salt, formed the beef into patties and cooked them under the broiler) with a salad of romaine lettuce, goat cheese, cherry tomatoes, pasture eggs, and home-made honey mustard dressing (which wasn't strictly primal).

Totally delicious and Better Half loved the salad. She didn't like the meat, which meant I ate two! :D Hee hee!

Why to buy pasture eggs

Why to buy pasture eggs, a photo by laurelfactorial on Flickr.

Look at the color of the yolk! Also, they are unbelievably delicious.

Stumbling toward the light!

I'm desperately trying to get back to eating normal-to-me food after the horrorshow of my post-tooth-removal, but it's been unbelievably hard. Meat is difficult to chew, vegetables get stuck in my tooth-holes something fierce, it's bad news all around. But tonight I did make a very nice dinner, and Better Half liked it too. Behold: coconut curry mahi mahi over cauliflower rice:



We bought some frozen tofu-equivalent (a term we use for meats that are easy to prepare/non-scary/uniform -- Better Half and I were both vegetarians for a long period of time so cooking meat was scary to us for a while) mahi mahi fillets. I thawed one and baked it in a mixture of coconut milk (light, which I know is not really primal but since I've been so carby lately I'm afraid to go back to megafat right away), curry powder, fish sauce, lime juice, and Sriracha hot sauce. All told I think I baked it a little over 30 minutes (Better Half always wants the fish overdone, and I find I kind of lean that way too). About 15 minutes before it was done, I quartered some tomatoes and put them on top.

We got a beautiful head of orange cauliflower, so to go with this I decided to try my hand at cauliflower "rice". I split the head into florets, steamed them, and grated them in the food processor. The color was incredible! I'm afraid now I've spoiled myself for this dish, I don't think I would have enjoyed it even half as much without the wild color.

This was fantastic and I will totally make it again.

I think I'm back

I just made chicken liver pate, now I'm frying up some chicken hearts to spread it on. I'm not sure how I plan to eat the chicken hearts (suck the juices from them?), but the pate is amazing.

I think I must be feeling better.

Argh!

Getting my teeth pulled on Friday has completely thrown a wrench into all of this. I just can't manage real food -- all I've been eating are smoothies, soft processed carbs, yogurt, and milkshakes. I did make myself some nutritious chicken glop (with sort of a medieval feel to it -- chicken cooked in almond milk with pomegranate molasses and spices) and pureed greens, but even that was just too much for me. I'm definitely making choices based on what seems the easiest and I'm also for sure "eating my emotions." This experience has freaked me out more than I thought it would and I'm in pain even with the painkillers (I am trying to take the minimum dose I can manage and I held out on taking narcotic pain medication until late last night). I feel like I'm taking some major steps backwards in my journey toward wellness and non-crazy eating, but I have decided not to beat myself up about it too much. It's kind of like how when we took the dog to puppy class and he would be much more poorly behaved than normal and the trainer pointed out how much better it was for him to be ill behaved in the unique circumstance than every day -- if I can recognize that this extreme circumstance, which will almost certainly never happen again (prior to this I had never even really had a filling), is an anomaly, it doesn't have to mean I've failed or even mean I'm taking steps backward. I am instead going to take it as retreating to regather before making a major leap forward.

Greens soup from last Sunday

IMG_8801 a photo by laurelfactorial on Flickr.

Right out of the PBC (although I used less liquid). It was amazing!

Ridiculously yummy dinner

Beef stir fry with broccoli and and bok choi, based on a recipe in the PBC. Lots and lots of vegetables! Lots and lots of flavor! Very very yummy! Would totally make again.

I also made, on a whim, "primal cake." Here's the recipe:

1/2 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 cup coconut milk
2 eggs
About 1/2 cup of a mix of frozen blueberries and cranberries

Beat all ingredients together in stand mixer. I baked it in a miniature baking pan made for my toaster oven for 20 minutes. The result is remarkably yummy and moist, and surprisingly cake-like. I cut it into very small pieces, about 1" by 2". It would be better with a little bit of cinnamon or maybe ginger, but it's a good start for a simple, healthy baked treat.

Back on track

Breakfast -- bacon, eggs, tomatoes, apple, and frozen concoction of blueberries and coconut milk

Lunch -- not sure if I'll have any

Dinner -- hoping to do beef stir fry with broccoli and bok choy

Exercise: I will walk the dog today, damn it! Maybe a little core work with the ball?

ETA: Successful "hunt" at Whole Paycheck (ugh), acquired grass fed meat for myself and the dog. Also, marrow bones! Will be experimenting with marrow one night this week.

I walked the dog for 20 minutes in the cold and wet before I wussed out. I'll try to run around with him more tonight and do some core work as a break.

I have a ton to do to get ready for work tomorrow, and this week is going to be somewhat hellish as we have conferences two nights so I'll be stuck at work for a good 13 hours on each of those days. This means that dinners this week might be dicey... I suppose I can always get a salad at the barbecue place, or maybe see what options the Mexican restaurant has (fajitas without the tortillas?).

Goal for tomorrow: make a real breakfast (eggs with broccoli rabe is the plan), find time to exercise between the end of school and the start of conferences. Maybe go for a walk in the park?

Why I am changing my eating habits

Baking bread was fun, and the resulting whole-wheat loaf was really yummy (especially with butter and honey!) but now I feel kind of crappy.