Sunday Letters

Health & Fitness, Paleo

Primal Challenge – Day 4

heather

Here are the detes for Day 4.

  • Did 10 pushups, 3 pullups, did the stairs at work 3 times, and JOINED THE GYM!  If I wasn’t such a pussy I would go to the pool tomorrow morning and start swimming.  BUT the pool has a freaking glass wall so that everyone in the lobby can see you.  Also, I’ve never been there before, so what if I do something embarrassing because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do and everyone sees me?  Mortification!  Tim and I will go on Saturday and scope it out together.  Plus it’s supposed to be icy tonight.  I’m sure the roads will be too bad to go to the gym in the morning.  Ya, that’s right.  That’s the ticket.
  • Breakfast
    • 2 cups of coffee with 1/2 teaspoon of coconut oil.
    • Homemade chorizo and a whole avocado.
  • Lunch
    • I met friends for lunch today, so I am better socialized but poorer by $13.  I had an unbreaded pork tenderloin and a side salad with oil and vinegar.  I find when I eat out that it’s hard for me to get full, and my budget suffers immensely.  However, meeting friends, keeping up relationships, etc. is supposed to be really good for your happiness and health.  Quandary.
  • Supper
    • Since we signed up at the Y tonight, we didn’t really have time to cook at home. Instead we picked up Chipotle.  I got a salad with barbacoa, veggies, mild and medium salsa, and guacamole.  It’s all good ingredients, but for some reason it always bloats my stomach.  I wonder why.  Do they cook their meat in rancid canola oil or something?
  • Snacks
    • I was hungry again today!  I ate a bunch of walnuts, mixed nuts (no peanuts), dark chocolate, and some coconut butter.  It seems as if I ate a lot today, but according to MFP, I only ate 1500 calories.  I’m not sure how much stock I put in these measurements.
  • Drinks – all day long lots of herbal tea.
  • Tim and I both have stiff backs today, but my mood was great!
  • Verdict for the day:  Success!
Health & Fitness, Paleo

Primal Challenge – Day 3

heather

Here are the detes for Day 3.

  • Did pushups, pullups, squats, planks, lunges, and bear crawls – which burned all of 16 calories according to MyFitnessPal. Shenanigans, I say.
  • Breakfast
    • 2 cups of coffee with 1/2 teaspoon of coconut oil.
    • Hard boiled egg, 1/2 an avocado, homemade chorizo
  • Lunch
    • I had lunch with my old boss today at Exotic Thai.  I had the Kang Dang Curry, which is delicious as always.  I ate maybe 1/4 cup of white rice with it because sometimes straight coconut milk will upset my stomach.
  • Supper
    • I tried a new recipe tonight:  Hamburgers with Mushrooms Provencale Style.  I undercooked the burgers.  For some reason I have a hard time cooking non-ground meat on the stove. Tim usually grills it for us, but it’s damn winter here.  Overall, this recipe was tasty, but it is not one of my favorites.   It will not get put it into the rotation.
  • Snacks
    • Apple, 2 hardboiled eggs, 1/2 avocado, celery, Kombucha.  I was pretty snacky today!  I think it was because I ate liquids for lunch.  Coconut milk is pretty high fat, so it should have kept me full, but it never does!  Liquids NEVER fill me up.  Besides beer.  Beer fills me up something fierce.
  • Drinks – all day long lots of herbal tea.
  • Still have a little joint pain, but my stomach is getting back to normal, and my mood was better.
  • Verdict for the day:  Success!  Still resisting sweets and alcohol.

We still haven’t joined a gym, and Tim and I are really getting antsy.  The weather is warming up, but I think it’s supposed to be icy now.  Bah!!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Uncategorized

Primal Challenge – Day 2

heather

Here’s the detes for the day.  I started tracking my food on MyFitnessPal, per the recommendation of a friend.  I know it’s not 100% accurate (partially because I estimate the amount of food and partially because you can’t always find exact matches), but it will at least give me an idea of where I am getting most of my calories.  Today I’m at 67% fat, 23% protein, and 10% carbs (it was a heavy bacon day).  I’m at 1719 calories for the day, which I think would be low for me in the summer but is probably pretty accurate for me in the winter time.  I’ll keep using this for a few days and see how it works.

  • Did 30 minutes of yoga.
  • Breakfast
    • 2 cups of coffee with 1/2 teaspoon of coconut oil.
    • Sauteed broccoli, red bell pepper, and kale in bacon fat, 2 pieces of bacon
  • Lunch
    • Salad with mushrooms, sardines, cucumbers, walnuts, red bell pepper, and olive oil and ACV
  • Supper
    • Grilled eggs with chorizo with 1/2 an avocado
    • I think the Fitness tracker probably WAY overestimated the fat & salt in the chorizo, because I used homemade chorizo.
  • Snacks
    • 2 slices of bacon, 2 carrots, handful of walnuts
  • Drinks – all day long lots of herbal tea.
  • No improvement yet in allergies/joint pain.
  • Verdict for the day:  Success!  I resisted 20th anniversary cupcakes, a veiled insinuation that I should go out for drinks after work, and a counter-top full of toffee and peanut butter cups.  So far I haven’t been seriously tempted, but that’s probably more hormonal than anything.  You girls know what I mean.  🙂

Our gym membership lapsed in December.  We really only need a gym Feb – May, so we can train for the triathlon (pool).  We were going to save some cash and sign up next month, but we are already going stir crazy.  I know the primal community is not big on running, but Tim and I miss it.  We can run when it’s 30 outside, but not when it’s 30 below.  We’re going to have to join up somewhere so we can get our bodies moving again.

Life is ramping up to be busy again.  I start a new class at Iowa State on Monday. It’s a programming class, and I have NO programming experience.  I just read the syllabus, and we have a GROUP project.  Bah!!  That’s going to be no fun.  Hopefully I’ll get lucky and group up with a brilliant programmer.

So between projects at work, school, meal planning and cooking, ramping up training for the tri, and crocheting a scarf (which is turning out super cute, btw), I’m going to be one busy Hlo.  But happiness is growth right??  Hlo in June is going to be happy that Hlo in January was miserable.  You are welcome, future self.

Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

Primal Challenge – Day 1

heather

I have a new recipe to tell you about.  I made this tried and true garlic pulled pork recipe on Sunday.  Since we were going to be home almost all day, I cooked it in the oven instead of the crockpot like I normally do.  It turned it sooooo much better – very tender and butter-soft.  To get an even healthier dose of the super food that is garlic, I paired it with Couve a Mineira and a side of avocado.  It was delicious!!  And cheap!  Collard Greens are only 59 cents.  Bonkers.

Anyway, here’s the super exciting food/exercise details of Day 1.

  • Meditated 5 minutes using Mindfulness app.
  • Breakfast
    • 2 cups of coffee with 1/2 teaspoon of coconut oil.
    • 2 eggs with red peppers & kale sauteed in bacon fat, and squash seasoned with s&p and turmeric. Ate 1/2 at home and 1/2 about an hour later at work.
  • Lunch
    • Salad with organic lettuce, albacore tuna, red peppers, walnuts, mushrooms, green onions, and cucumbers, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
    • 2 slices of bacon.
  • Snack
    • Organic apple, 1 piece of celery, 1 carrot.
  • After-work snack.
    • Two pieces of celery with almond butter.
  • Supper
    • Leftover garlic pulled pork.
    • Salad with red peppers, green onions, and cucumbers.
  • Drinks – all day long lots of herbal tea.
  • Exercise – Did 10 pushups, 3 pullups, did 10 flights of stairs at work.
  • No improvement yet in allergies/joint pain.

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to keep a food log.  I have the Evernote Food app, where you can take pics of your food and then make comments on it, but I’m not liking it so far.  It’s too complicated for what I need.  I also don’t like typing my food into my phone and then retyping it here.  I might just resort to a little old school notebook.  We’ll see.  Logging food is pretty tedious, but lots of folks say it really opens your eyes as to what you really eat in a day.  We’ll see!

Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

21 Day Challenge Reboot

heather

It’s January 2014, and you know what that means – resolutions!!  I won’t share all the nitty gritty details, but like most folks, my resolutions revolve around living a healthier, more fulfilling, happier life.  To start the year off on the right foot, I’m doing another 21 Day Challenge.  Why would I do this after being paleo for almost 2 years?  Well, the whole 80/20 thing is a slippery slope, for one thing.  It’s very difficult to be specific about what 80/20 means.  In theory it means eating a cookie maybe once a week, or having a beer here and there.  In practice, however, for me at least it means eating too many sweets, too much gluten, and drinking too many drinks, all under the guise of “20%.”

So I’m doing the 21 Day Challenge again for several reasons.  I want to reboot my system to reduce sugar cravings.  I want to eat clean for 21 days and see if my allergies (which still bother me a little) and skin improve.  Also, in winter I tend to eat just as much as I do in the summer, but my activity level is much, much less (due to days with only 11 hours of daylight and sub-zero temps).  Over the past couple of months I’ve seen the effects of this, not in any weight gain, but in body composition.

With those goals in mind, I’m starting the 21 Day Challenge tomorrow.  To help keep me on track, I will post my food diary and exercise log here on this blog.  To most people I know this will be boring, but for those wondering what a primal lifestyle looks like, it might be helpful.  Plus, selfishly, posting this information publicly will help keep me on the straight and narrow.

With that said, I better sign off, so I can get my solid 8 hours of sleep tonight!

Health & Fitness, Paleo

Vacation Woes

heather

Teem and I just returned from a monster road trip to Phoenix.  All of Tim’s family lives down there, and it was time for us to visit them again.  We looked at plane tickets, and when we added the cost of the tickets to the cost of renting a car, we were looking at an outlay of $1100.  We knew we could drive it for about $400 + 2 hotel rooms, halving the cost of the journey.  Plus, if we drove we could take our ancient chihuahua, Lucent, and our bicycles with us.  So drive we did.  Over the course of 8 days we drove 48 hours.  We drove for a full-time work week.

We drove down on Christmas day.   By the time we arrived at our stopover town of Amarillo, the only restuarants that were open were Denny’s and IHOP.  We strolled into Denny’s at 9PM, expecting to be able to sit down, relax, and recover from our road weariness.  Instead, we walked into a packed entry way, no hostess in site, and all the tables filled with patrons waiting for food.  WHY was everyone in Amarillo eating out at Denny’s at 9PM on Christmas??  We said, to quote my mom, “Nuts to that noise,” and drove over to IHOP.  The situation was only slightly better there.  The hostess was in effect, at least, but she informed us that there would be a 45 minute wait.  We turned around and headed back to the hotel.  In an attempt to not go wholly off the rails whilst on vacation, I had packed road trip snacks – nuts, dark chocolate chips, figs, grapefruit, hard boiled eggs, and oranges.  We had already plowed through a lot of the food, but we made a bastard supper of grapefruit, eggs, and free cookies from the front desk.  By this time of the evening, we were both tired, hungry, irritable, and full of a weird mish mash of food.  Fortunately, our moods were better in the morning, and we made short work of the remaining trip from Amarillo to Tempe.

Once we arrived, we welcomed the sun, the warmth, and the family.  We had a good time over the course of the next few days – biking, running, hiking, playing games, and shopping at all the stores we don’t have here (Whole Foods, Trader Joes, etc.).  We also ate A TON of food.  Since we were on vacation and since I’ve been more lax in my diet lately in general, I pretty much ate whatever I wanted.  The day after we arrived, I had low-gluten pancakes for breakfast and then for supper indulged in bites of fries, bites of home-made pop-tarts, 1/2 a cookie, 1.5 slices of pizza, a sweet digestif, wine, a manhattan, a paleo cookie, etc.  By the time we got on the light-rail train to head home, my stomach was feeling pretty off.  I was also feeling pretty hot.  I have a history of passing out, and I quickly recognized I was in danger.  I moved over to an empty seat, took off my coat and sweater and fought furiously to maintain consciousness.  Tim saw the sweat start to soak through my shirt and watched the blood leave my face and came over to fan me.  Eventually the tunnel vision cleared, and I was able to focus and hear again.  Ugh.  This is what happens when I don’t treat my body correctly.

I ate much better over the course of the next few days.  I still didn’t feel awesome just because when you are with a varied group of people, you want things to be easy as possible, so you make compromises.  Also, it’s hard to poop at other peoples’ houses.  Especially when you don’t get your coffee & coconut oil when you wake up.  🙂

But now we are home.  We are still in leftover vacation mode, but starting on Monday we are doing a clean up.  I’m looking forward to it!!  Our gym membership expired in December.  It’s super expensive to renew it, so we are going gym-less for January, and then we’ll sign up for Feb – May, so that we can train at the pool for the triathlon in June.  So we’ll really need to eat better since we won’t be able to work out like we want.

Today is going to be the nicest day for the next 4-5 days (30 degrees), so we are going to run today.  And then we are going to hibernate until at least next Tuesday.  Over the next few days it’s supposed to get to something like 40 below with the windchill.  UGH.  The only thing keeping me sane is my faux sun-light and the knowledge that every day, even if it’s insanely cold, is going to get longer and longer.  Eventually I will feel sun on my arms and legs again!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

The Perfection of Simplicity

heather

Today was a day for simple, tasty, home-cooked meals.  For breakfast I just scrounged around in the fridge and ended up sauteeing cauliflower, green onions, and garlic in olive oil.  I added some turmeric and salt and pepper.  Once that was done, I fried two over-easy eggs and added that to the top of the veggies.  DEEElicious.

For lunch we had another simple, yet delicious, meal.  My mom gave us a whole flat of homemade canned tomatoes.  When we were kids I remember dumping a jar of tomatoes into a sauce pan, and once they were hot, dousing them with pats of butter and tons of salt and pepper.  I followed that tried and true recipe today, with a few minor exceptions.  I added some basil and garlic powder to the tomatoes.  Tim fried up some grass-fed hamburgers, and when those were done, we chopped them up, poured the soup over them, topped the soup with some grass-fed butter, and wow.  Super tasty, super easy, super perfect Saturday afternoon lunch.  And cheap too!  Especially since the tomatoes were free (thanks, Mom :)).

For supper we hit up Granite City, intending to go to a movie afterwards.  Tim got a salad, and I got chicken wings. He got one drink, and I got two.  Forty bucks later, and we are both slower, poorer, and likely unhealthier.  But we did have fun together, which is definitely worth something.

In January we are going to try to follow a stricter budget.  We want to see if we can afford a slightly bigger house (with a bigger kitchen – yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!), and we also want to save for a trip to some tropical location with oceans and beaches and lots and lots of gorgeous, uplifting, make-me-happy sun.  As a result, we’ll need to watch our food budget much more closely. In my brains I know that eating at home is much healthier, and much cheaper, but in my vane little heart I like to go out, be around people, see and be seen and spend $40 eating sometimes tasty food.  I need to make up my mind where my priorities lie!!  Money, unfortunately, is pretty much a zero-sum game.

Cooking/Recipes, Paleo

Soup Season!

heather

It’s cold here in Iowa, and I just baked a turkey, which means I made bone broth, which means I had 6 cups of stock!  So we made soup!

I had a frustrating day on Tuesday.  You know, one of those days where you are unhappy for no discernable reason.  Life is all grey and bleak, and you can’t imagine ever finding joy in life ever again.  Well this was the day I slated to take off from work early and run all my errands left undone from 5 days of having company at our house.  My first errand was to ship a package back to my brothers.  Whenever they come home, they stock up on all the cheap Iowa stuffs and ship a box back to NYC.  More to the point, I ship the box back.  Well I took the box to UPS, and when they asked me what was in it, I honestly replied, “I’m not sure – clothes, shoes, maybe some whiskey?”  That was the wrong answer.  Evidently no one will ship alcohol for a consumer.  Which meant I had to take the package back home, untape it, remove the whiskey (drink it), tape it back up and ship it.  Not a huge deal but annoying nonetheless.

Next I went to a clothing store to return a gift that we bought for my dad that didn’t fit – another disappointing errand.  Then I got a text from my brother with a picture of the Nesco roaster oven we bought for him.  Amazon shipped the “stadium” version to him (which is a green & yellow monstrosity), instead of the enameled red version I ordered.  Again, annoying.  Then I headed up to Plato’s Closet to try to sell a beautiful Fossil handbag that I never use any more and to try to find some jeans that fit correctly.  I tried on 6 pairs of jeans in the stifling, tiny dressing room (with no 3-way mirrors!!  How can you buy jeans without seeing what your butt looks like??).  None of them worked, of course, and Plato’s declined to buy my bag.

The afternoon started to turn around when I went to Target and discovered that they are restocked with Himalyan Salted Dark Chocolate covered almonds.  They are sinfully delicious.

Finally, I came home.  I opened the back door to reveal a spic and span kitchen and Tim working on making Cauliflower and Roaster Garlic Soup.  Immediately my dark spirits started to lift.  Tim kindly listened to me rant about the little annoyances of the day and assured me that I was justified in my feelings.  And suddenly, I was Happy Heather again.  The soup turned out SUPER tasty.  We cut up leftover brats from the night before and added that to the soup.  We ate it ALL.  That is my only complaint.  This soup is rather a lot of work (and dirties a lot of dishes) for only 1 meal.  Next time we make this, we are going to double the recipe.

That recipe used up 2 cups of stock, so I decided to make more soup last night to use the rest.  I made this recipe for Autumn Soup.  As is my custom, I often don’t fully read a recipe before I start cooking it.  As I started making this one, I realized that not only did I get a green pepper instead of a serrano pepper, but the recipe called for an assortment of sweet spices.  I wasn’t sure I was in the mood for a soup with nutmeg and cinnamon in it.  So I decided to go off the rails and experiment!  Instead of using a serrano pepper, I used 2 green peppers.  I ignored all the spices except for salt and pepper and added 1/2-1 teaspoon each of basil, oregano, and thyme instead.  I also just scooped the cooked squash right into the soup instead of chopping it up.  It mixed into the stock and made it thicker.  Finally, instead of using bacon, I browned some sausage and added that to the soup at the very end.  And guess what – it was delicious!!  Oh!  And I didn’t puree the soup.  We don’t have an immersion blender, and transferring batches of hot soup to the blender is tedious and dangerous.  Plus when we eat pureed soup it seems to take A LOT of it to fill us up.  We are chunky soup people.

So there you go.  Now I better sign off to go prep my beef roast for the slow cooker today. I’m trying Primal Beef Enchiladas again today.  Hopefully I won’t burn it this time.  Wish me luck.  🙂

Cooking/Recipes

Cauliflower and Eggs – Yes, it’s tasty!

heather

I ran across this recipe on Chris Kresser’s blog:  Lebanese Cauliflower Omelet.  I was intrigued by the use of cauliflower with eggs and with cinnamon as a spice.  I made it up for breakfast on Saturday, and it turned out quite tasty!  However, I don’t know if it’s because I added ham or if it’s because I misread the directions and cooked the green onions and parsley IN the omelet, but I had to bake mine for 50 minutes instead of the 15-20 minutes specified in the recipe.

I liked the ingredient combo so much that I did a spin-off this morning.  I mixed up 3 eggs, added cauliflower, coconut milk, cinnamon, and some diced onions and added the whole slew to a hot skillet teaming with olive oil.  I scrambled it until cooked.  It was pretty good; however, the cauliflower got cooked better in the omelet, so we both liked that variation better.

It was a busy weekend, cooking wise.  We are trying a new recipe for turkey this Thanksgiving.  Since our dry-brined roasted chicken is so delicious, we decided to take the same tack with turkey.  We’re following this recipe.  Hopefully it will turn out good!

Hope you had a great weekend!

Cooking/Recipes

The Sleepy Choo

heather

My brothers are coming home over Thanksgiving, so just for fun I made up a menu for them of all my favorite things.  It was actually a really fun little project – one of those things you do where you lose track of time and all of the sudden it’s 8:30 and time to go bed!  Here it is, for your perusal.  Sleepy_Choo_Menu_Nov_2013  If any of you win a bazillion dollars and want to kickstart The Sleepy Choo, hit me up in the comments. 😉

I tried another new recipe tonight:  Lamb Sliders with Ginger Cilantro Aioli.  This recipe had a lot of steps.  You have to make the sliders, slice the sweet potatoes whilst trying not to slice off your fingertips with the mandoline, season them, bake them, and then make homemade mayo.  AND then! chop up  jalapeno, grate ginger, chop cilantro and then add it all to the mayo.

Then when everything is done, you have to stack it all up and eat it up yum.  Yes, it’s a lot of work, but it was a pretty delicious meal.  My only complaint is I now have 3/4th cup of aioli that I have to use up within 3 days.  It IS delicious stuff.   We’re just going to have to put aioli on everything for the next 3 days – eggs, salmon, oatmeal, ham, everything.

If you want some aioli, stop on over!