I’ve always been a bit of a cheater when it comes to potluck style dinner parties. The “family secret” was stopping at the grocery store to pick something up, swapping containers, and calling it homemade. This tactic was a direct result of two things: fear of bringing over a flop and lack of time (i.e. procrastination). Enter Carla to the rescue. Her Bacon Wrapped, Almond Stuffed Prunes are TO DIE FOR!!! To. Die. For.

1. Heat the oven to 450°F.
2. Stuff the prunes with the almonds.
3. Cut the bacon in half and wrap a piece around each date.
4. Set on a baking sheet and broil* about 10 minutes, turning once, until the bacon is crisp.
5. Serve…or risk eating them all yourself (and then being very regular…you’ve been warned)

This is so easy I can preheat while prepping. Throw into the broiler while showering. Turn over with hair in towel, drying. Get dressed, do make-up. Take out of oven. Dry hair. Put in container. Step into shoes, throw the dog a biscuit and head to the party.

Guess what Team TLSP is getting as an appetizer at our dinner this Friday…

*Hint: A broiler is a grill turned upside down. So, feel free to grill these if you either A) don’t have a working broiler, or B) simply prefer the grill. Thanks to Melicious for that tip!

Atlantic Monthly writer Corby Kummer shopped for ingredients from both Wal-Mart and Whole Foods in order for Austin’s FINO (who, btw, often but not always have local, free range meat) to create a four-course dinner. They made two versions of each dish, one with Wal Mart ingredients and one with ingredients purchased at Whole Foods. The blind tasting with 16 invited guests utilized dishes on the FINO menu prepared by chef Jason Donoho.

I’ve long shopped at Wal-Mart: my mom took us there as kids to get cheap toys, as summer camp counselors, it was our lone diversion on nights off. I haven’t spent much time there recently, but when I have stopped in for something, I’ve noticed that their food sections appear to be getting better and better. And according to Kummer’s research and taste-test, they actually are. Now, I still love Whole Foods, but the more healthy food available to more people (read: cheaper), the better off we all are.

On a congruent note, check out this poorly-made video from yours truly on how to find paleo and free-range foods at Randall’s, the neighborhood grocery store known less for its cheapness (though their Remarkable Deals are) and more for its convenience:

Three Thoughts on Meetings, Travel, & Dining out:

1) The Meeting: Try to be the one who has final say over the menu for your meeting. It isn’t a huge task and it allows you to ensure that you can actually eat something. I had a whole room of physician volunteers and co-workers eating paleo without them even realizing it! Ok, so there were the obligatory cookies, dessert bars, sodas, and bread rolls, BUT most people stuck with water and avoided the desserts and rolls all by themselves. It was beautiful! And, the pecan crusted chicken & thinly cut beef were both huge hits! I’m got people to eat healthier & they loved it!

2) Travel: Specifically air travel. Just spend the extra money on the overpriced almond mix. Maybe there’s a wilted salad out there you can eat but it’s just easier to throw the nuts in your carry-on. I splurged on the one that had dark chocolate in it. Lots of people are smarter & more prepared than me & they get (or make) Paleo Kits when they know they’ll be travelling.

Paleo goodness!

3) Dining out: A steakhouse is always an easy choice. Meat…veg…done! However, I really enjoy ethnic cuisine. Fortunately for me, so do a lot of my friends and this is how I was introduced to Vietnamese food for the first time this past week. We got a hot pot of seafood goodness. This baby was loaded with shrimp, scallops, oysters, greens, and a delicious coconut-y broth. HEAVEN!!! Neither Dickie nor I had ever gotten a hot pot before and we were totally clueless as to what to do. Confused? Ask your server! Ours was super excited that we were being adventurous and helped us with every step aside from actually eating the yummy goodness. Beyond the soup we got there were pages upon pages of paleo offerings. So, the next time you’re wondering where to eat or lamenting that you no longer have rice with your Thai curry or Chinese stirfry suggest to your dining companions that you try your local Vietnamese restaurant. Bonus – you’re opening up your world & your palate, therefore you are becoming a more well-rounded & interesting person!

Three free-range chickens, all in a row

As the new year continues to march forward I’ve had to think quite a bit about my personal goals, as well as, the TLSP goals. Unfortunately, unlike my fellow TLSP-ers, I’m not much of a cook. I’m able to follow their delicious recipes and, when all is said and done, feed myself. However, I’m not much of a risk-taker in the kitchen. I’m a novice, you see. I’m the kind of woman you buys the food item at the store, transfers it to a different container, then brings it to the potluck and calls it a family recipe. I have a hand mixer, a coffee maker, and a toaster. The toaster belonged to my parents and is from the early 80′s. Clearly, a domestic goddess I am not.

Perhaps some of you out there are in the same boat as me? A little domestically disabled, a little afraid of chopping off a fingertip every time you pick up a knife, and also looking to stay within a reasonable food budget. Maybe some of your paleo-newbies are some reformed take-out/delivery junkies? I’ve been there, too. In 2010 I’m going to be building my little kitchen, trying new recipes, and sticking to a reasonable budget while eating predominantly free-range/grass-fed/wild protein, and organic and/or locally grown produce.  I’ll be doing it all as simply as possible as I’ve no room, time, or funding for anything else. Feel free to post your Paleo Budget tips in the comments or in the forum!

As I start to get into gear for writing some posts on Paleo on a Budget, I found a couple of great finds this weekend that I wanted to share. More to come in the future!

First find: Whole Foods had free-range whole chickens on sale this week at $.99/pound. I got three chickens for under $3.50 each! That is Budget Paleo, my friends. Use one this week and freeze the others.

Second find: Sprouts’ North Austin location is now open! It was a madhouse in there this Saturday but they had some fantastic deals. If you are allowing for red wine in your paleo/primal life then you’ll want to hit them up for their 3 bottles for $10 deal. My wine rack is now full for less than the cost of 3 regularly priced bottles. What’s the other bonus of shopping Sprouts? All of their meat is grass-fed. All of it! Go get some!

Bluebonnet 100% Natural Whey Protein Isolate Powder has two things in it: whey and vanilla flavor.  Now the vanilla flavor is not broken down, so there could very well be junk in there, but from the surface, it looks solid.  And it tastes good to boot!  I got mine at Whole Foods, but their website has a store locator, so if you can’t find it, check the site.

So what do I do with this stuff?  Right now, it goes into my new post-workout recovery meal.  Here’s the mix:

• Mashed sweet potatoes
• Coconut milk
• A few scoops of Bluebonnet 100% Natural Whey
• Some crushed pecans
• Cinnamon

There are no proportions on this (sorry if you feel empty because of that , but basically everything is to taste.  And it tastes good, just the right amount of sweetness from the vanilla without the extra junk that most protein powders have in them.

No, not Paleo. Well, not technically. He recommends a diet he named after himself (or his wife): the Hauser Diet. What does it involve?

General Hauser Diet Principles for healing:
• Consume whole, unprocessed foods, such as fresh meat and produce.
• Learn how to cook from scratch!
• Eliminate fast foods, frozen, processed or pre-made canned/boxed food products.
• Consume multiple servings of deeply colored vegetables every day!
• Fruit is NOT equal to vegetables. For Lions and Otters it is too high in sugar.
• Consume “good” fats such as olive oil, nuts/nut butter, avocado, fish oil.
• Eliminate “bad” fats such as margarine, fried foods, shortening/ trans fats.
• Eliminate sweets and excessive sugar, including beverages like soda, diet soda, and alcohol.
• Stay hydrated with purified water. Drink before you start to feel thirsty.

The whole Lion  & Otter thing is basically a marketing tool to help people understand or identify what their protein/carb/fat ratios should be for optimal health. Another Crossfit-approved diet, called The Zone, is all about protein/carb/fat ratios.

Why is any of this worth mentioning? Because no matter what you call it or what portions you eat it in, eating lean protein, veggies, some fruit, nuts & seeds is the best diet for your overall health and improved quality of life.

Start your the next decade out right. Clean your kitchens of all those poisons and get yourself to the grocery store to stock up on the good stuff. You’ll eat what you have. Make sure it’s Paleo-friendly!

But perhaps it was some sort of divine intervention, as 1/2 of Team TLSP ventured to Seguin, Texas for raw milk adventures and ended up finding kindred spirits.

Video footage forthcoming of the entire trip, but it started with a gaggle of giggly girls half-afraid MooJesus! was a cult (would we come back named MooLyssa, MooLisa, MooVeronica?). As we bump-bump-bumped down a dirt road past the first set of EverythingJesus! gates with giant iron crosses and then past a second, matching, gate, we joked that the road to Heaven sure is bumpy. Then we were inside, and signs pointed us to MooJesus! Nervously we got out and went inside a small house.

Inside, we were excitedly greeted by Pastor Gina, who as the matriarch of a multiple-generation family must be older than she looks. She was bringing in fresh lettuce from the garden. Sheldon, her sweet son close to our ages, brought us price lists for ordering the dairy products, and said he’d start us on dinner. Grandma was around too. The whole family was joyful, light of spirit.

It was a wonderful thing to experience, the radiant, shiny, unadulterated happiness that emanates from people who are truly content.

Sheldon spent much time talking with us, but not before he brought us these:

Whey-to-go drinks made of fresh pineapple, ginger, and whey. AWESOME!

While we perused the products (do I want whey? what is whey? I want buttermilk. What do I use buttermilk for? How much milk are you getting?), Sheldon began to urge us to eat more butter. Sheldon, we argued, we love butter! We eat Paleo, so we’re all about good fats. Naturally, this hurtled us into a nutrition conversation the likes of which few enjoy, but we simply ate (erm) up. Sheldon was well versed in Weston A. Price, handing us pamphlets, and also giving us book recommendations. We captured some of his opinions on film, but he got shy with the camera out.

He brought us bread and butter:

Easily my favorite part of the meal. The bread is of sprouted wheat, sprouted and ground right in their kitchen. The butter was rich, creamy, salty, sweet, light–in other words, amazing. The sprouted grain bread sent us off into a discussion about sprouted grains, what it does for your body, and if it’s Paleo or not. Sheldon launched into a long metaphor about mechanics, overalls, and tuxedos: the grain is like a mechanic wearing a tuxedo with overalls over it to cover the tux while he does the dirty work. But when you take off the overalls, a beautiful tuxedo is revealed. His main point was this: “Make sure you get the overall off, you want that tuxedo on your plate.”

Why yes, yes I do want a tuxedo on my plate.

A fresh salad with pomegranate balsamic dressing. Delish!

Gina brought us out dinner, a sprouted grain veggie patty served on a portabella mushroom cap with a side of ground beef and a dollop of avocado (for good fat).

Gotta love a place that serves ground beef as a side just because they want you to taste the happy cow. Pastor Gina says, “That’s fresh meat. I could tell you the name of the cow … nah, that’s too personal.” The beef was good, but the sprouted grain patty was really good. Of course, by now we’re totally stuffed because we’ve devoured whey drinks, yogurt (not pictured), bread, butter, and salad, but it was too good to listen to our bellies: we cleaned our plates. (Dinner: $20)

And then we waited while they prepared our orders. While we came for raw milk, I left with the milk, buttermilk (what DO I do with it?), whey, yogurt, butter, bread, sprouted grain flour, 5 pounds of ground beef, 2 pounds of brisket, and 1 1/2 pounds of tenderloin. And sans $154. But happy to be in with raw dairy for the next couple of weeks! My other team members ordered more meat, and a few other things–cheese, cream. Overall, we left with three GIANT boxes of loot.

As for our fears of being converted to EverythingJesus! religion? Completely unfounded. We prayed before dinner. Pastor Gina mentioned once, in all earnest excitement, that she thanks God for bringing us (three beautiful girls, thanks Pastor Gina!) to the ranch.

Pastor Gina told us a story about a group of underprivileged kids that came out to the ranch. She had all these educational activities planned but when she saw how excited they were just to be outside, she scrapped it all and just let them run around the ranch. Their supervisors were nervous, but Gina said they can’t hurt themselves, let them enjoy the land and explore on their own.

At its base, Gina’s actions are that of a generous parent, full of respect and trust for her children. But ultimately her actions are also a huge metaphor for religion, and I’d imagine the way she runs her church: bring the parishioners to (Moo)Jesus, and let them enjoy the land and explore on their own.

Bottom line: they won’t try to convert you, they’ll serve you an awesome meal, and you’ll walk away with 14 pounds of beef you didn’t know you needed, plus 3 gallons of milk products. Obviously a total win.

Insider tips:

1. Call Pastor Gina at (830)491-8557 to let her know you’re coming.
2. Order your goodies ahead by calling or emailing using their grocery list.
3. It’s about an hour and a half away. Enjoy a leisurely dinner. Plan accordingly.

MooJesus! at EverythingJesus! Ranch
12061 FM 466
Seguin, TX 78155

mmm... sweet potatoes

So we’ve been doing this Paleo diet thing, and mixing with CrossFit, and if you’ve been reading this blog, you’ve seen some reports of feeling a little weaker at first.  There are a number of factors that dictate how bad you feel during/after a workout, especially when you’re drastically changing the way you eat.  One of the ways to help this is to make sure you’re recovering.  So today, I’m going to talk about the post-workout meal.  First of all, I’m not Robb Wolf or Mark Sisson.  So one thing you could do is just skip my summarization of the whole thing and go straight to the source.

Robb’s post on post-workout nutrition

Mark’s post on post-workout fasting

The post-workout meal is important for everyone, regardless of whether you’re an athlete or just trying to lean out.  There are several strategies to this, and you’ve got to pick one that works best for you.

In general:

• Try to stick to lower carb post-workout meals, but you need to scale the carb intake to the intensity of the workout.  So if your workout was a super high metcon workout, then get more carbs than you normally would.  Check out this blog post from OPT on one recommendation for matching the post-workout meal with your body fat measurement.
• If you’ve got a high activity level… like you’re training for an event or you’re a multisport athlete and you train more than once a day, it’s probably best to make sure you get some carbs post-workout, especially on days where the workout was particularly intense, or you’re doing more than one.  It’s hard to say this is a “high carb” meal, but this meal in particular can be used to deliver protein and carbs to refuel your muscles with a blunted insulin response, if done basically immediately after your workout. Folks on the Zone who have trouble consuming enough carbs throughout the day can use this strategy effectively with a higher carb food, like sweet potatoes.
• Another option is to simply not eat.  Mark Sisson has a post about fasting for a couple hours post-workout to maximize gene expression.

This post is a huge simplification of what to do with your meal post-workout; it’s meant to be taken as a series of guidelines.  What works for you is going to be different and may very well end up being a combination of things.

Lemon Merengue Pie from Living Paleo

The team got together for dinner at my place tonight.  The menu:

• Pecan-crusted chicken breast: sub out the salt in Emeril’s essence, and use almond meal instead of bread crumbs for the crust.
• Collard greens with bacon (see Veronica’s post)
• Paleo lemon merengue pie: make the crust with almond meal, cinnamon, organic vegetable shortening, and some vanilla extract (although it didn’t get crispy, so I need to figure out a new crust)

As usual, dinner was awesome (I’m a little slanted, because I made the chicken and the pie, although thanks go out to Andy for beating the shit out of the egg whites)!

Everyone is doing very well with their diets… and intend to keep going, even after some pretty bad cheating over the weekend.  Personally, I’m starting to make gains on my workouts again, which is a great feeling.

The TLSP support structure is awesome, and it’s only getting better, as we get more people at dinner and more time to get creative on what we’re eating.

Food should be enjoyed, and eating paleo allows you to really take an interest in your food and have fun with it!

I’m scared! Big bad dairy, grains, soy! Eeep!

After that really hard week in LA, I’ve settled into it–it’s been much easier to eat Paleo this trip, in part because I can cook for myself on these two tiny burners.

Nonetheless, after listening to recounts of Lisa’s birthday eating and Eric’s 24-Diner-marathon, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ll eat “when this is over.”  I’ve already said I’ll get Yogurt Spot as soon as I get back to Austin, but what do I want here?

1) A homemade chocolate chip cookie. I don’t want shortening, oils, and preservatives. If I’m gonna have it, I want high quality: butter, eggs, sugar–unprocessed if nothing else. Cookie looks that perfect? Not what I want. Give me lumps on jagged edges!

Another thing about the splurging thing is the sharing. Celebrating with desserts, having something as a treat, enjoying it with friends. If it’s just me, I don’t need to sneak a treat (love this HILARIOUS post from Crystal … who hasn’t been there?).

Moral of the story? My mountain man is bringing me a cookie from the restaurant he’s working at tonight. He swears they make ‘em there. I’m honestly terrified.

2) A cold microbrew. Tonight. But just one or two, I really liked cutting down on the wild nights.

3) Gluten-free pizza. Not until Sunday. Although I’ve really gotten used to making Paleo Pizza and I really enjoy that …

But here’s why “when this thing is over” was in quotes. This thing isn’t over. Mountain Man congratulated me last night and said, “It’s over! You did it!”

I looked at him puzzled and said, “It’s not OVER. It might be less strict and I MIGHT add back in dairy, but it’s definitely not over.” He looked disappointed. I get it, it’s hard when someone you’re with all the time has different eating habits (reason #4,987,435 why TLSP and TLSP dinners are SO important), even if you’re the one without the “restrictions.”

But I feel good. I feel like I am FINALLY leaning out after 9 months of CrossFitting (which is supposed to work quickly, right?) and I don’t want that to go away. As Kate Moss once infamously said, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels …” with some modifications (isn’t that all we do over here?) that statement is pretty true.

Nothing processed tastes as good as lean & strong feels? That’s not quite right, but you get my point.

Will be getting a body comp when I get back to town, we’ll see if the numbers say anything …