Harder Than I Thought... and an Announcement!

I suspect I'm going to end up cutting this Paleo experiment short. Not in an "I'm done, forget this, give me a cookie RIGHT NOW!" kind of way. Just perhaps halving it to two weeks, so I finish next Sunday evening. There are obviously plenty of reasons.

First, I feel pretty awful. Well, right now, as I sit on the couch, I feel fine. But when I start exerting, whether it's just walking my dog, or scaling more than one flight of stairs at a time, I feel dragged down immediately. I noticed it right away on my couple of elliptical workouts last week. And then, goodness, this weekend I tried to go for a run. I guess, technically, I succeeded, but whereas a week prior I had run 5.5 miles at a 9:14 pace and felt like I was flying, Saturday I ran 2.7 miles at a 9:20 pace and felt like I was dying. Granted, for part of that run, I had a 25mph headwind - but that means I had a 25mph tailwind for part of it too, and that honestly didn't feel much better. This isn't a real reason for quitting, because I expected this. Most people go through a "Paleo flu" period of a week or a month or so. I had a fairly high-carb diet before, so mine may be worse than average. So I can't really use this. But, you know, just noting. It sucks.

Second, I feel like I've already learned a lot. Through diet analyses, I've seen just how healthy this diet really can be. I've learned some tricks for using low-carb ingredients. I've learned that I should probably treat beans as a carb, and that pita chips and hummus is really just a carb-bomb snack. I've learned that apparently, inexplicably, after years of being a hater, I can now eat a banana straight. Even if I quit, I've already had great success in that I've gained knowledge from the experience.

But here's the kicker:

I hate it.

I hate it so, so much. I have spent pretty much every free waking minute thinking about what I'm going to eat next, or what I'm going to eat May 1. I spend too much time cooking. I spend too much time eating, because I'm hungry all the time. And it's interfering with my life. Like I said, my workouts have been stalled. I found myself crumbling the crust off a quiche and picking fruit out a parfait this weekend. I felt ridiculous. Keith and I have an important celebratory dinner we need to have soon, and waiting 'til May to do it makes it feel an awful lot less celebratory. Oh, hey!

I will now interrupt this blog post to inform you that, as of last night, I was matched to the OSF Saint Francis Dietetic Internship, not only a fantastic program in my hometown, but my first choice!

Steak and green beans with a juicy pear for dessert is not the celebratory dinner I have in mind.

And, anyway, I only made this commitment to myself. I'm only failing myself if I choose to alter it.

But the last argument, the "interfering with my life" bit, that really gets to me. It really rubs me the wrong way. Because you know what else interferes with your life? Food allergies. Going gluten-free for Celiac. Carb counting for diabetes. My clients will have to make these changes in their lives, and it will interfere and make things difficult, and they will not be saying, "Let's see if I can do this for a month!" or, "Yuck, I'm gonna stop this after two weeks." They're stuck with it for the rest of their lives.

I guess, when I think back, part of my reason for embarking on this experiment really was so I would have the experience of having new, challenging, and completely different limitations placed on my diet, so I could have a better grasp of what that challenge really entails. And I do - I have a much better grasp than I did a week ago. But I think halving the challenge cheapens it a little bit.

We'll see. I did stock up on enough Paleo foodstuffs to last way beyond next Sunday. At this point, though, I'm giving myself permission to reevaluate everything after two weeks and see if I want to continue, or possibly modify the challenge. Of course, I'll let you know!

Success! ...and some of that other stuff

First I'll talk a bit about the successes. After a rough first day, when I didn't eat nearly enough for breakfast, didn't bring nearly enough with me for lunch, and was starving (as we've discussed) and grumpy when I got home, I planned a bit better for the second day. I roasted up enough sweet potatoes to last through tomorrow, prepped veggies for the next morning's sauté, and whizzed up three days' worth of a banana-strawberry-almond milk-chia smoothie. I added some chicken sausage to the veggies to boost the staying power of breakfast. At the hospital, the meal special was all items that - in their basic form at least - would comply with my diet: honey mustard chicken, mixed veggies, mashed sweet potatoes. I'm sure there were several ingredients added to some or all of the above that I'd rather not know about, but I'm going to demand flexibility from myself when I'm eating away from home.

When I got home last night, I made myself a most lovely dinner. Would you like to see?

I mean really, isn't that just lovely? So lovely, in fact, that I had the same thing for dinner tonight, and managed to get that photo in with some lovely (!) evening light. This is definitely a dish I'd like to keep in my mental recipe book long after I go diving back into a giant pool of bread and butter on May 1st.

Spaghetti Squash and Tilapia in Tomato-Caper Sauce
Serves 2

• 1 spaghetti squash, 1 1/2 - 2 pounds
• 2 tsp coconut oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 one small onion, sliced
• 1 14oz can diced tomatoes
• 2 tbsp capers
• Salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning to taste (I used Penzey's Tuscan Sunset - it's awesome)
• 2 4-oz tilapia filets
• 1 tbsp good olive oil

Stab the squash (and not yourself) with a knife a few times, place on a plate, and microwave at full power for ten minutes. Leave in the microwave until you need it later.

Sauté the garlic and onions in the coconut oil until softened, then add the tomatoes (with juice), capers, and seasoning. Let cook until reduced to just thicker than you'd like the final sauce to be. Reduce heat to very low (barely a simmer), and nestle filets in the sauce. Cover and cook 10 minutes, then flip and cook ten minutes more.

After squash has rested for at least five minutes, cut in half, remove seeds, and scrape out the flesh of the squash with a spoon or fork. Portion into bowls, and when fish is done, place on top. Increase heat on sauce again, and reduce further. You'll want it thicker than you'd expect - because the squash is so moist, a normal sauce will end up watery on the plate. At the very end of cooking, mix in the olive oil. Spoon sauce over squash and fish.

I'm honestly a bit flabbergasted by how delicious this was, though I think I have to attribute at least some of it to using farmers market tomatoes we canned last summer. Like I said, definitely a keeper. So there you have it, success! Thanks for stopping by!

Oh, yeah. The other stuff. Okay, so obviously my first day was a little rough. Yesterday, I decided to donate blood. For the first time. I do not have a 100% positive track record of post-blood-draw consciousness. It had been a few hours since I'd eaten, and I pretty much felt like I was going to die when they were done. Finally, after about 20 minutes of lying on the blood donation... furniture, I was able to stand up and made my way over to the desperately needed food. Sandwiches. Cookies. Candy bars. Not a thing I was "allowed" to eat. I'd received a voucher for the cafeteria for donating, but I knew there was no way I was making it out of that room upright without food. I sighed and ripped into a packet of fruit snacks. Packed full of carbs (mostly sugar) and not even that good.

I'm in the process of forgiving myself for said transgression. While it'd be awesome for me to make it through this challenge without slipping up, I think the threat of fainting is a sufficient excuse for "seriously, just eat anything." This matches up with my experience of most people eating Paleo. It's great most of the time, but sometimes you honestly just need something, and that pretty much trumps all. Go ahead and let it.

...Paleo?

Ever wondered what the results of a shopping trip might be when you're wandering through the store, starving and a little lightheaded, at the end of your first day attempting a Paleo(ish) diet? Wonder no more:

Yes. For the month of April, I have decided to embark on a Paleo journey. I'll be adhering pretty closely to the basic tenets, except that I'll probably still be eating peanut butter. Basically, my diet will be comprised of meat, seafood, veggies, fruits, nuts & seeds, and oils from fatty foods. I will not be eating grains, legumes, dairy, or added sugar. I will have a few cheat meals: I'll be eating dinner with a friend I haven't seen in months this weekend, and Keith's class is running a Southwest American restaurant on Thursday evenings through the whole month. I won't be an absolute stickler. I'm sure I'll eat some soy sauce here and there.

Why? Plenty of reasons. Curiosity, skepticism. I'm curious to see if I feel different, better - if I maybe feel better in a way I did not know I previously felt bad. As I've mentioned before, though I'm not absolutely opposed to the Paleo diet, I tend to view it with a sidelong glance. I figure a great way to help form an educated opinion is to try it out myself, much like I read the entire Twilight series (yes, all four), so I could be confident in my opinion that the books are terrible (oh, and they are).

I have a lot of anxiety about this. I actually laid in bed for hours last night unable to sleep, on the verge of having a panic attack about what I was going to eat for the next month. I'm not the least bit excited about eating meat every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I'm dreading trying to source all that meat from responsible producers - I already know the fish and chicken I bought today don't come from Sustainable Central. Buying all that meat at all is expensive, let alone trying to get free range grass fed yada yada meat. Just in this one day, I've become more aware than ever of just how cheap the energy from oatmeal is. For all of these reasons, I have no expectations that I will be continuing with Paleo past the experimental month, though I will hopefully learn lessons I can incorporate into my eating habits.


I used NutritionData to figure out just what I ate today. I knew from friends' experiences and from reading a variety of blogs that it's easy to severely undereat when first trying Paleo. Breakfast was a 3-egg veggie scramble with chia and an apple, and some pumpkin seeds. "Lunch" was another apple and some almonds. After the shopping trip, I came home and made tuna salad with apple, carrot, and red pepper in a red wine vinaigrette, and ate some of it on lettuce. I'm actually pretty happy with how the nutrition is coming out so far. The cholesterol looks outrageously high, but my lipids have always been picture perfect, so I'm not particularly concerned about that. I wish I could do a full blood screening before and after the month, to see if there are any changes, but I know my insurance wouldn't cover that, and I'm not sure where else I might go. I was really surprised to look through the more detailed information on NutritionData's
analysis of my day and find nothing of real concern.

It was also interesting to note the immediate sense of comfort in the level of control I had over my choices. I was in a department office today that inexplicably was covered in Sixlets - I swear, they were everywhere - and it was amazing how easy it was to say, "Well, I can't have that." Likewise, the starving grocery trip was a gauntlet of half-price Easter candy, and while I did briefly consider buying some to eat in May, I ultimately came home without any.

So that's my first day trying a new and super faddy diet. Hopefully I'll learn some interesting lessons along the way, and have some delicious recipes and photos to share.

Comfort in a Bowl: Cheesy Rice

The weather is nasty today. Well, as I write this, it's actually wound down quite a bit: the sun is peeking in and out of the clouds, the rain has stopped, the temperature is a whopping 40ºF. On the balance, though, still a nasty day. I left the house this morning (first day back from - ahem - Spring break) to find my car glazed in a (not too thick) layer of ice, and the sky's been blowing bone-chilling drizzle at me about 15mph ever since. When I got home, I knew what I had to do. Mission: Comfort Food.

A nice bowl of cheesy rice really is comfort in a bowl. On top of that, it's simple and incredibly customizable. I can't even bring myself to write this as a recipe. I cooked up my rice, making sure it was a little on the damp side when done, then mixed in a few tablespoons of evaporated milk, and a half cup of finely grated pecorino romano. Since I knew this was going to be my dinner, I also added about 3/4 cup of frozen broccoli, just warmed through and chopped up. This works wonderfully with any grain, any cheese, any vegetable.

The evaporated milk is a deliberate choice, though. Many (most? all?) canned evaporated milks contains an ingredient called dipotassium phosphate, which is used to prevent coagulation in processing/storage/etc. It also makes for really awesome, creamy, smooth cheese sauces. If you've ever made a cheese sauce melting grated cheese into a bechamel, you've probably experienced that those sauces never have quite the mouthfeel of commercial sauces. Evaporated milk is a perfect substitute, and keeps this sauce smooth and creamy, without any melted cheese stickiness. Obviously if you don't have any, you can make this with regular milk instead - it'll be almost as good.

Keep warm, all. Indulge in a little comfort food.

Faux-Thai Stir Fry

I promised a while back to write about my faux-Thai sauce I use for making stir fries. And look, only two months later, I'm really doing it! Stir fry is a go-to meal in this house, especially for me. It's quick and easy, incredibly flavorful, and a great way to incorporate a mountain... a ton... a heap... a slew! of vegetables into dinner. I can't count how many times I've literally eaten a pound of broccoli for dinner, thanks to the joy of stir fry.

Peoria is in the unfortunate situation of being a fairly well populated small city that lacks good Thai food. We have one Thai restaurant, but the service is so atrocious I refuse to go there, which means I'm pretty much in a constant state of Thai-withdrawal. This sauce is my attempt at assuaging the symptoms.

Now, don't get me wrong: this isn't Thai food. Thai sauces are complex and finicky. But this sauce does highlight many of the flavors that make me adore Thai food. The recipe is simple. For each serving of stir fry, mix one tablespoon of sambal (left - garlic chili paste), 1.5 tablespoons of kecap manis (center - sweet soy sauce), and one teaspoon of nam pla (right - fish sauce). This is a great starter recipe, and each ingredient fairly independently controls the heat, sweetness, and saltiness, so you can adjust them as necessary. After you've stir fried your veggies, remove the pan from the heat, and pour the sauce over everything, and mix it up until well incorporated. You can cook it down to a glaze or leave it saucy to be soaked up by rice or quinoa, whatever you might serve it on.

These are all fairly accessible ingredients. I bought this sambal at the regular grocery store, and I've bought fish sauce there as well (though not this brand). Kecap manis is the only one you might need to venture to an international grocery store for, but you definitely should. And don't be afraid of the fish sauce! Yes, it is very stinky, but it's the flavor that really pushes it into Thai territory - without it, you just have a sweet stir fry sauce. Which is fine. But it ain't faux-Thai.

As for the final product, let's just say I've learned my lesson about trying to photograph stir fry.

Food Traditions (Paella)

To trace the history of Keith's and my paella food tradition, look no further than his blog post documenting it five years ago, and ignore if you will the fact that he actually posted that entry on February 14th and not two weeks later like some people we know.

Neither of us has ever been big into Valentine's Day, so I wasn't really expecting anything special when I arrived at his house on the 14th five years ago. On the other hand: what's wrong with a nice day celebrating love? I mean, really, are we that cynical? Since then, making a lovely, challenging meal has been the way we choose to celebrate Valentine's Day. Unfortunately this year, Keith had to teach late that night, so we celebrated on the 15th (thus making this post a mere 13 days late).

Paella is a seriously pain in the butt dish. Particularly if you only make it once, maybe twice a year, it's a pain in the butt. Getting the coveted socarrat - the brick red crust of rice on the bottom of the pan - without overcooking or just plain burning the rice takes some finagling. You're supposed to cook the seafood with the dish, letting it steam as the rice cooks, but Keith has long since taken to steaming it separately to keep it cooked properly. Never mind the fact that this ain't exactly cheap - saffon, scallops? Plus, it's kind of hard to make a paella fit for two, and paella doesn't really reheat very well. (I almost took a friend up on her offer to come by and take a doggie bag.)

But oh my goodness, oh my goodness, is it good. I look forward to it the whole year. As our home fills with the rich scent of saffron, and I watch my husband lovingly work away in the kitchen, it becomes ever so clear why this is one of our food traditions, and though the specific ingredients vary from time to time, I can't imagine a year we won't celebrate Paella Day.

23 Almonds

I was planning on writing another "Food Traditions" post about our paella dinner, but then I was informed that today is National Almond Day, and since I had an almond post swirling around in my head, that seemed like the obvious choice.

Though my current class schedule is less stressful than last semester's, when I sometimes left home at 6:45am and got home around 9pm, I still have to consume a fair amount of my energy away from home, and I don't have ready access to refrigeration or cooking appliances. This means a lot of shelf stable foods, and that tends to get boring fast - not to mention the fact that those easy traveling foods don't often have a good intersection of "nutritionally sound" and "energy dense."

Almonds are a different story, though. Okay, sure, this isn't something I'd want to make a whole meal of, but they're definitely a healthy ingredient. They have a reasonable amount of fat (contrast pecans or macadamias), most of which is unsaturated, alongside Vitamin E and some other mineral goodness. The balance of protein, fats, and carbohydrates (fiber!) gives this tiny snack impressive staying power. Pair this with a piece of fruit and some carrot sticks, and I'm pretty well set for a six hour school day (assuming I eat a good breakfast, which I do!).

Of course, portioning with nuts is incredibly important, because it is so very easy to eat way, way more than a serving. Which is why I was thrilled when I won this little almond tin in my Food Science class for correctly answering a trivia question. I've taken nuts or seeds to school with me for a long time, but I was always just pouring what I "thought" was an ounce in a zip bag and happily munching away. I have no doubt that some days I was eating double (or more!) the proper serving size. Ever since I got this tin, though, I've been refilling it almost every day, happy to be consuming just the right amount of a healthy snack, with a bonus of not having to throw away any more plastic baggies.

Cheers! Enjoy your almonds, guys.