The Case of the Empty Fridge

The trip is over. The journey home was long. I got home groggy.

To an empty fridge.

Sigh.

I tried to stick to my promise, so I grumpily scrounged for the next two days. I had a couple fruits lying around, I bought a salad here and there... until I finally found a moment to get to the grocery store.

Last night I went food shopping at last! Bought a family size pack of chicken, eggs, snow peas, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and kale. Yay!

I was hankering for nuts when I was out shopping. I looked at a bunch of bags of trail mix and mixed nuts, I couldn't buy any! Peanuts. Peanuts everywhere!! I miss peanuts. I enjoy them. But, alas, not allowed. Sneaky legume.

I prepped the chicken and made a stir fry. I even had some peppers left from before the trip. I love peppers. Bless those little guys for their long fridge life :-)

I think I overdid it for the fruit buying. NEVER shop on an empty stomach! I'm a little worried about eating it all before it goes bad! I think I will. ;-)

Boring and short, this update is. But not all of Paleo is glamorous and adventurous. ;-)

Next week, I'm going to bake. Bread. I miss it. Buttered toast, specifically. So I'm going to try to make crumpet-type muffins and see how well they toast :-)

In the meantime, yay fruit smoothies!

True Confessions of a Modern Nomad

Ooooh dear readers. What a ride this week has been!

So. The conference was a whirlwind of amazing feasts and broken Paleo promises. Here's a basic confessional of everything I ate this week....

Monday night (after my last entry):

-- For lunch, I went back to that "Place to get a Great Salad" place, which I learned is called "Leaf". It was amazing! And I did what I promised! I had a proper Paleo meal! Cobb Salad, no cheese, no bread, just olive oil dressing. Go me! Funny thing is I was able to eat the whole salad at once. I was hungry, yes, but I also think the lack of cheese didn't make me feel like it was a heavy meal.

-- For dinner, we went to Perla's on South Congress St. I had grilled Alaskan Fish, white wine, and a crazy amazing cream fruit dessert. I can't tell you how amazing the meal was. This was one of those super fancy menu places. And I didn't feel stuffed. It was perfect. Paleo-wise, there was a wine sauce on the fish, but that was the only rule that I broke for my meal. The dessert was definitely not Paleo, but it was tiny and really artsy and special, so I'm not even going to fuss about it! YUM!

Tuesday:

-- Breakfast: black coffee, apples. Great breakfast! I win!

-- Lunch: Ruh-roh! The conference had a sandwich selection. I went with a roast beef, potato salad and cole slaw on the side. siiiiigh. I even had chips. I don't know what possessed me to have the chips. *hangs head in shame* I felt a bit full, definitely not my best decision. At least it tasted good! :-D

-- Dinner was at La Condesa. We had amazing culinary delights again. Tapas style appetizers. I ate salsa, guacamole, cactus, octopus, beef, and a artisan sherberty fruit dessert. The whole meal was like eating art. This food wasn't cooked, it was designed. No, not Paleo. But not really unhealthy either! :-D

Wednesday:

-- Breakfast: black coffee, dried apple bars. Yay Paleo!

-- Snack at the conference: More dried fruit. Persimmons. Still being Paleo!

-- Lunch: Pasta buffet at the conference. Deeeefinitely not Paleo. (womp womp.) What blew my mind was how I felt after. This was the first pasta I'd had in about 3 weeks, but I didn't load my plate and I didn't feel full. Still, despite not overdoing the amount, I still felt SUPER TIRED. And I do mean tired. Sluggish. I had the 'itis' so bad.

     I drank 2 cups of coffee to try to make it through the day, but I still had the food coma worse than I remember in a long time. On this diet, I actually forgot what food coma feels like. Weird, right??? I was so surprised. I absolutely blame the pasta.

-- Dinner: Ranch 616. Straight up comfort food heaven. Food styles spanning from the Gulf Coast to midland Texas and further south. We ordered an appetizer plate the size of our table, on which we had samples of quail, frog legs, veal, beef, chicken, and a bit of cabbage and mashed potatoes on the side for fun. Yes, I said appetizer. I also tried my first Mexican beer, "Tecate". Me gusto. Me gusto mucho.

     So my meal was a steak on a bed of boiled potatoes in a butter sauce, topped with buttered crab meat with asparagus on the side. Super in line with Paleo! Though I can't be sure it's all Paleo, because I'm not sure what else was in the butter sauce.

     I was so full. What a wonderful feast!

Thursday:

-- Breakfast: black coffee, dried figs and banana chips. Go me!

-- Lunch: A couple friends and I went back to Leaf. I had the tuna fish salad with red wine vinaigrette. I think it's Paleo, because I'm allowed red wine and vinegar, but like the butter sauce, I don't know what else is in their vinaigrette recipe. Everything else was definitely Paleo :-)

-- Dinner: We found a cute coffee/sandwich place called Jo's. The kind of cafe that makes breakfast tacos and dinner plates. I totally went for it. Frito pie with pulled pork and fries, and homemade pecan pie for dessert. Followed by a beer or two. (*cou-THREE-gh*)



Let's be honest here, I wasn't even trying. Mostly because I just had to know what a "Frito Pie" was.

Friday:

-- Breakfast: black coffee and fruit.

-- Lunch: I wasn't really hungry today, I was running errands and didn't feel hungry until later.

-- Dinner: Southern comfort food care of Threadgill's. Cheese grits, collard greens, Salisbury steak and rolls. The Southern Last Supper. I never had collard greens and I only had cheese grits once ever, so I was dying to try. The meal was so rich and flavorful, I couldn't finish it all. Wow.

Saturday:

-- Breakfast: Coffee and an apple.

-- Lunch: Caught up with a friend for one last lunch before going home. We wound up going to Threadgill's again, where I had chicken livers and popcorn shrimp with fries. Again, so delicious and rich, I couldn't eat it all.

-- Dinner: Coffee and another apple. It was a looooong flight home.



What a week! I don't think I was very Paleo, but I did my best in my alone time. I came home to an empty fridge, too, so I'm going to need to food shop tomorrow. Today I spent part of the day with family, and, full disclosure, pizza may or may not have been involved.... sigh. *hangs head*

Okay, okay. Tomorrow's Monday. Monday, the diet starts again!

Texas Paleo

So staying Paleo in Austin is not as impossible as I was afraid it would be! I'm not perfect, but I'm doing really well :-)

The trip here was pretty good. I only had black coffee on the plane. I didn't feel hungry that early in the morning, so sticking to my promise for the morning leg was easy.

I got hungry in Dallas, where my flights connected. I was still determined to keep my promise, so I was already reaching for the dried fruit in my carry-on. But guess what they had in the food court? A smoothie bar! And I don't mean with the fake stuff, I mean straight up fruits and ice in a blender. SQUEE!!

The hardest part was ignoring the myriad of delicious smelling food joints on the way. Taco places, burrito places, pizza places, both big chains and local mom&pop booths... The very hotbed of southern food temptation!

But I'm glad I did. That fruit smoothie was delicious and it held me over for a good few hours.

After I got to my hotel, I took a walk-about town. I thought for sure that I needed to find a grocery store or something in order to keep my food promise, but I ran into the perfect place!

The place is called 'Leaf' and has a sign outside of it that reads "The Place for a Great Salad". Awesome! Of course I went in. And the name was not a lie!

I got a giant bowl of Cobb deliciousness. I sinned a little, because they had a bit of cheese and dressing in the salad, and I have to confess that when the guy asked me if I wanted a slice of bread, I caved. But it was an amazing meal and I had some left for dinner later because the portion was so big. I'd say I did quite well!

True, not 100% Paleo. But a much healthier food choice than I thought I had a chance to find!

I went grocery "hunting" later. I found a CVS. Not exactly a Wholefoods, but I raided the shelves for anything I could eat.

It was a heck of an adventure. I passed by shelves and shelves of snacks and crackers and jerky and trail mix that I used to think were healthy but now I can't even touch. I didn't see a single thing without wheat for three rows straight. And nothing gluten free (though, true, CVS isn't the place to look for that).

I couldn't have any trail mix because of the peanuts. I couldn't have the dried fruit because of the chemicals and preservatives. It's such an eye opening experience to read labels in the store now. You always think "Natural Flavors" sounds a bit sketchy, but when you stick to this diet and have to force yourself to put it back and keep going, it opens your eyes to just how little you can eat.

It limits options, yes, but, for me, it also raises my standards. There's a line in the sand now. Because of my experiment with this diet, I have a new rule: If I can't pronounce it, I probably shouldn't eat it. I think I like this rule.

I finally found a box of raisins. I flipped it over, expecting to read more "polysorbates" and "hydrogenated oil" or "treated with nitrate to retain freshness", when all that greeted me was Ingredients: Raisins. YES! I totally got some and went on my merry.

The next morning I went to see what my hotel's breakfast options were. Pretty much what I expected. Snack bars, muffins, oatmeal packets, granola bars, apples, oranges, coffee, tea, even Sanka. I grabbed a cup of black coffee and two oranges. Pretty super :-)

I went sight-seeing. I got hungry after a few hours, so I sat down to have a snack. I ate a couple packets of raisins on a nice bench just outside the statehouse. I'm not much of a raisin person. I used to think they were very plain. Now I'm surprised to find that they were almost too sweet for me!

I don't know what's happening to my taste buds. But since I don't snack on just anything anymore, fruit seems much sweeter than I ever remember it being. So weird. Very cool. :-)

I tried to go to the same salad place for dinner. I was fully planning to skip the bread and ask them to hold the cheese and the dressing this time. Olive oil and salt make a pretty great dressing. But they were closed! Ah!

I went to the sushi place across the street. It was the healthiest option at hand. Again not Paleo, but better for me than Taco Pizza. :-) I ate a plain salmon roll and an eel avocado roll. They were delicious and filling.

I am torn when it comes to rice and oatmeal. I love them. I love how I feel when I eat them. I feel satisfied, not overloaded. My body feels happy. I don't know how long I plan to try sticking to Paleo, but I don't think rice and oatmeal are evil and I don't think I can give them up forever.

I understand the science behind avoiding wheat, but everything I've read so far proves problems manifesting in people with legitimate allergies, and things that happen when people eat too much wheat. But... everything in excess is bad! You can even drink water until you die! So, is it really a surprise that folks who eat too much wheat are going to get sick?

In a related argument, try reading the bread ingredients when you go to the grocery store next. Behold the wall of text that greets you. Look at all those chemicals!

So now I'm led to ask -- the research that's done on wheat -- are part of the effects reported actually from that OTHER stuff? I think any scientist would be hard pressed to find someone alive now who doesn't have these other chemicals in their system. So I'm not sure I believe that all of their conclusions about long term digestive damage is solely caused by wheat. (For average, non-allergic people like me, I mean.)

People have had food enemies since the onset of global media. In the 80s, people feared butter. Olea and crisco and margerine made names for themselves. Then it was eggs. Then, wait, no, just the egg yokes. Then, sugar. Say hi to Nutrasweet! Then, soy. Then, not soy! Then milk. Cream. Now it's grains and wheat?

So pardon me if I raise an eyebrow. I do think too much is bad, but I definitely need to read more before I can slam down all wheat completely.


Meanwhile, back to Austin, this morning I went for a run and had a nice dried fruit breakfast. Dried bananas and mangoes and black coffee. I feel light and full of energy. I feel very good.

Today is the first day of the conference. Tonight I'm getting together for dinner with some of my coworkers. We're going to a famous local restaurant. I am curious to see what the menu offers :-D

Maybe I'll tell them about my blog and ask if they have Paleo menu options.

Or maybe I won't. Maybe my mouth will be too full of burger ;-D

Texas Anxiety

Yeeeeehaw! Guess who's going to Texas next week!!!

The land of the steer! The Lone Star Steak! I mean, 'State'. Where everything is bigger! Where BBQ and Burgers were perfected!

I am goring for a conference. I'm excited for the trip but I'm anxious about the diet. I want to be good, but I do NOT want to miss out on the cuisine! "Trying the food" is such a huge and enjoyable part of traveling. Plus, I'm going to be dining out with folks, trying to enjoy the local atmosphere to the fullest, and on top of the feeling of sadness I'd get from denying myself that experience, being 'that guy' on a trip is way worse than being 'that guy' at home.

Friends, let's face it. The LAST thing on my to-do list in the Land of Milk and Honey-Mustard is to order the House Salad with the Dressing on the side.

I think I've come up with a fair compromise:

I promise myself that when I'm alone, I will stick to Paleo. I won't splurge on beloved coffee treats or cinnamon buns at breakfast. Well, maybe if it's something local and authentic and I'll never see it again. But on the whole, if I'm alone and I'm hungry, I'm going to stick to the diet. I even packed up some dried fruits/nuts/etc to take with me in case of emergency.

But when I'm out with folks and the POINT of the outing is to try something local and famous and delicious, I am going to live a little and try something new!

I think that's fair. I figure this way, I'll still be 50% Paleo at the worst. I think that's decent :-)

And of course... I'm going to kvetch about everything!

Woohoo, readers! See you in Texas!

Mad Scientist!

Mwahahahaha! It's aliiiiiiiiiiive!!!!!!!!

Or, you know, it was alive before it ended up on my skillet. (Apologies, vegetarian comrades. Poor taste. I mean, you know, the joke, poor taste. Not the steak. The steak was delicious.)

ANYWAY.

This past weekend, I set some time aside for those cooking experiments I promised myself (and you) I'd do. Here's a breakdown of what happened....

---

TORTILLA FAIL

Sadness. So many wasted ingredients. I'm pretty sure tortillas aren't supposed to look like this:

Attempt 1:
Coconut flour, almond meal, water, salt, baking soda
It looked fine on the pan but then crumbled to bits
when I tried to flip it. Cue sad trombone.

Attempt 2:
Coconut flour, salt, egg, water.
I tried to make a firm dough and roll it
out before frying. It held on the pan better,
but was crumbly and hard.

I tried finding a good recipe, but all of them use regular flour or corn meal. I saw one recipe that used guar gum, too. Guar gum would make the dough gooey, but it comes from a bean, so ...

Sigh. Who knew a paleo tortilla would be this elusive??

I will do it. *crosses arms defiantly*

---

PANCAKE WIN!!

Super fluffy, too!!! Here's the recipe I invented. You can sweeten them more or less, according to your taste :-)

This makes about 6-8 pancakes:

4 tbsp coconut flour
3 tbsp almond flour
2 tbsp agave syrup
1.5 tsp baking soda
1/3 stick of melted butter
4 eggs
1 pint raspberries
+ water (added bit by bit)
+ butter (to fry on)

Basically, mix everything. Make the batter syrupy so it's not runny, but a bit firm. Fry on low heat, on melted butter so your pancake doesn't stick.

I didn't add the raspberries until the pancake was on the pan. That way I could stuff them in without having to mash them, and I could have as many as I wanted ;-)

---

MMM... CHIPS...

Seems easy enough to slice something thinly, slap some olive oil and salt on either side, and stuff it into the oven at 350 degrees until brown.

And by "seems", I mean, "is".

These are potato chips.

Potatoes are one of the veggies you have to be sparing with on this diet, but today was the first I'd had a potato in a while. I got two batches from about 3 medium potatoes.

I put olive oil on the pans and on each face, and then sprinkled salt where I wanted it. I even tried rosemary and thyme and other spices :-)

So far, I've also made chips out of sweet potatoes and eggplant (yes, readers! THAT eggplant!). I've had good results all around!

I tried bananas once, too, but the sugar in the fruit made them burn quicker, and the oven didn't dry the fruit. I don't know if chips are possible with sweet fruit. I think fruit chips are made through dehydration. I'll try again on a lower oven setting to see what happens. :-)

---

GUACAMOLE-MOLE-MOLE!

I have few things of in my life I'm proud of as much as I'm proud of Saturday's guacamole. I... NAILED... it!

Recipe:
2 avocados (though, I ate a slice or two while making it)
1 plum tomato
1/3 sweet onion (or not sweet, if you like the tang)
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
salt/spice to taste

Mash up the avocados (I did it with a fork. You can show off and use a blender.) Get the avocado as smooth as you can. Dice the tomato and the onion finely, but don't mash it. Add the vinegar. Or, lime if you have it. (I didn't, but I regret nothing.) Salt/spice to your liking.

It's also another kind of personal victory for me. I finally succeeded at picking avocados that ripened perfectly before I cut them open. *insert sweet dance here*

So, I'm giving myself TWO points for this win!

Plus, the guac went pretty darn well with the chips I made ;-)

---

I am so happy with the food I've made!

This weekend, I also made a cabbage dish which I'll talk about another time, and macaroons that burned and failed, which I'll talk about never again.

I can't wait to see what's next! Among other ideas, I've got apple chips and muffins in my cross hairs. So many experiments to be had! This Paleo diet is far from boring!

MUST EAT ALL THE FOODS!

Unhinge jaw. Insert food. That's me today.

I had like four meals at work. I say 'meals' as if I can count out separate times of eating, which is misleading, since I pretty much just ate non-stop.

I destroyed a crown of broccoli, a pint of raspberries, a banana, an egg, some lettuce, chicken, bacon, and a fruit shake I made. I stopped just long enough to type this. And you know what? I don't know if I'm done!

I heard from my coworkers who'd tried the diet themselves that there would be days when I'd basically eat the contents of a grocery store. I've had days like that, I thought, so I wasn't surprised by the amount of food that just went in me.

What I was surprised by was the genuine ferocity of my appetite. All day, I'd feel really really hungry, eat, and then within two hours feel insanely ravenous again. Picture the Cookie Monster in a Mrs. Fields factory.

I coined a term for days like today. I call them "Rugaru" days.

What the heck is a Rugaru? It's basically a Werewolf-Chupacabra that eats and eats. In some stories, it eats people.

(I first learned about this creature on Supernatural. I do so love that show. Come on, you know you love it, too. ;-) )

Anyway, it's said that especially while in transition to monsterhood, the Rugaru will know insatiable and uncontrollable hunger. That pretty much sums me up today. A nom nom hurricane.

I read that fierce hunger like this can be indicative of a vitamin deficiency. If that was the case, I feel really good that all I had was healthy stuff near me. And I hit all the checkpoints on what's left of the food pyramid, so I think the right vitamins must have made their way into the chasm at some point. Yay, prep! All that planning totally saved me.

The fruit shake was especially satisfying. Deeeeeelicious! I blended bananas, pears, grapefruit and that pineapple I told you about. Absolute perfection! :-D It was the last thing I inhaled, too, and I haven't felt hungry since. Maybe that's what I needed. Some Vitamin Fruit.

So there you go. Day 5. Expect to become a fresh food vacuum cleaner.

I wonder if I'm going to feel the food crazies like that again, or if today's Hunger Games were just part of the initial detox my body is probably going through right now... I have no idea.

We'll see soon enough, I bet :-)

Welcome to being "that guy"!

I hear it all the time, that the first few days of this diet are brutal. I dunno. So far I feel.... fine.

Maybe hearing the rumor so much makes me wonder if I'm under-angry. Maybe the occasional slip-up keeps me feeling normal. I do know that staying on top of kitchen prep has helped a lot. :-)

Yesterday I almost had an angry moment. I was visiting a friend and she was having ice cream. She offered me some, like 4 times. I confess I had a teensy bit. I just couldn't take it! And only one spoon, I swear! Gotta tell ya, though, that spoonful curbed the impulse to kill. But still. Now I feel guilty.

I think part of the "I just started Paleo" anger stems from the feeling of isolation. So many snacks and desserts and meals are so ingrained in our lives, we don't even realize it. It's hard to realize it now and say no to it all. Some things aren't even that bad! Things like cheese or rice. I mean, come on! We're seriously carving out more than half the food pyramid here!

BEFORE

AFTER

When I'm alone, it's not a big deal. But when I find myself out and about, that's when it happens... Someone generously offers me something, that -- let's be honest here -- was MORE than good enough for me last week, and now I have to say no. It stinks! I feel bad, they feel bad, everyone feels bad!

Food outings mean new sadness. No more burritos. No more pizza nights. No more rice pilaf on the side. No more fondue. (Ok, I had fondue, like, once. But still!)

What's worse, I feel myself becoming "that guy".

No one likes "that guy"!

Sigh.

Sigh again.

Sometimes at least, I get to not look like "that guy" even though I'm obviously having "that guy" thoughts. Example: Today there was a meeting at work. The lovely woman running the meeting enjoys baking. She brings in treats for these meetings, which, of course, is many kinds of awesome.

Today she made brownies.

From scratch.

The tin was right in front of me. The brownies hadn't even been cut yet. The smell of fresh delicious chocolaty goodness filled the room. The meeting started, the tray was passed around, and, thankfully, no one said anything when I didn't take one.

I felt happy. A little sorry, yes, but everyone else enjoyed them on my behalf, and I didn't ruffle any feathers. So, yay!

Durnit, now I can't stop thinking about chocolate. Technically the cocoa bean was around in caveman times, right? One thing about being on this diet nowadays is the ability to turn to the Google gods for answers in times of crisis like this... Because YES! I CAN HAZ PALEO BROWNIE!!! Oh, I'm so adding this to the experiment list...

Blessed be the entrepreneurial spirit. Just the prospect of experiments dissolves all anger!

I hereby declare that if I make any cool recipes of my own, I'ma put out a cookbook. I think I'll call it "That Guy's Guide to Treats" :-D