Paleo and primal

[Daughteroughter]

I have been reading about paleo and primal diets has anyone tried them?

Which is sad really. Good food shouldn't be the preserve of the rich/better off.

Thanks, Raw, good ideas that I also follow, apart from bulk buying meat, at least not large scale. I don't have a chest freezer and I am reluctant to get one as it will mean higher electricity bills, which is already high enough as we both work from home and cook so much ;)

Put my new slow cooker on last night with bones for bone broth, it did smell a bit in the morning, but not as much as in our ceramic casserole dish on the hob. I got a 6,5 L slow cooker, so nice to have a decent size!

Oh, and I roasted butternut squash seeds as snow recommended, they were lovely although they did get a bit overdone. Kids loved them, they do taste like pop corn!

6.5ltr is the way to go! I have 2 slow cookers but there are 6 of us when the eldest are home from uni.

I usually do bulk cooking in the slow cookers and I suppose that will save a little bit on electric too.

Things like paleo chilli or sausage meat hash freezes well, or can be used as a main meal then leftovers for breakfast for a couple of days. Both work really well as breakfast with or without a fried egg on top!

What is sausage meat hash? Sounds interesting.

Just had a yummy lunch. Left over roasted peppers and mushrooms, haloumi, can of tuna, spinach, cucumber, tomato and a teaspoon of mayo.

Sounds yummy, nappy.the last few packs of halloumi I looked at were not grain free, which brand did you buy?

I had a leftover chicken and bacon salad and I am so stuffed as we had pancake for breakfast! Will have to have light dinner ;)

I love haloumi - must check the packets in the fridge for ingredients though.

No food yet, as it's a fasting day. Dinner will be lamb shawarma, roast butternut squash, red onion, tahini and za'atar and a tomato and cucumber salad. Really looking forward to it.

Jalapeno Sausage hash- chrissy Gowers recipe from "paleo slow cooking", which I heartily recommend!

Serves 4, I double up on the amounts- fills a 6.5ltr slow cooker.

3 med sweet potatoes, dice/shred

A Bell pepper, an onion and a chilli pepper (jalapeño) all diced

2pack gluten free high meat sausage (recipe gives an American brand of chicken and sage), marks and Spenser outdoor pork (95%meat) ones work well but have some non gluten grains in. Remove skins and quarter. I add sage, a good handful. Actually I usually add a couple of tomatoes, diced too.

Mix in the slow cooker, cook on low for about 8 hours, top with avacado as a garnish when you serve.

It works with pork or chicken mince, but add salt. The texture is not quite as good though as the mince is a bit courser than sausage.

It was the Cypriot Haloumi from Asda. It says it is made from cow's, ewe's and goat's milk and has mint as an added ingredient.

Thanks, Raw, might very well try that out as I have some minced pork. DH won't eat sausages even if they are gluten free as they often contain chick pea or rice flour, he's a real purist.

Thanks, nappy, I don't have an Asda near me, but will check other brands as well.

Now eggs and cholesterol:
I have had a lot of eggs this week. Do you worry about the amount of eggs you eat? Every now and again there will be a warning in the media about limiting your egg intake, usually because of cholesterol content. I am not worried about cholesterol myself as I think it it a bit of a myth. My mum has semi high cholesterol and she hardly ever eats eggs or saturated fat and it is very puzzling why her cholesterol is high. My mother in law takes statins for high cholesterol and me and dh are trying to get her to stop taking it as we had successfully got her on to a diet with less grains and more fat fish. I found a couple of articles that all lead to The International Network of Cholesterol Sceptics: www.thincs.org/ . Obviously it is always possible to find scientific research that shows what you want to believe, but I do believe that cholesterol is in the same group as the fat scare and the whole grain myths.

We are having pork belly tonight. Fancy it with a fried egg and grilled tomatoes but don't know what else.

That sausage hash sounds good.

Can anyone help me with a sensible recipe for sangria? All the regular ones on the internet seem to involve lots of fizzy drinks and sugar. I've searched for paleo sangria and that brought up recipes that suggested adding cupfuls of coconut sugar.

Surely with all the fruit added, it doesn't need extra sugar? Would red wine, fruit and soda water work?

I would just make the sangria to taste, adjust sweetness by adding fruit juice.

Dinner tonight is braised eggs with lamb, tahini and sumac served with roasted aubergine, fried onion and lemon. Yum!

I use:

2 bottles of red red wine
250ml sparkling water
2 oranges
2 lemons
2 limes
1 nectarine, pitted and thinly sliced
1 peach, pitted and thinly sliced
1/2 red apple, cored and chopped into small pieces
1/2 green apple, cored and chopped into small pieces
brandy or whiskey
cointreau or grand marnier
1 stick cinnamon
1/2 vanilla pod
6 cloves

Hello

After my horrendous month and a total inability to think about food I think I'm back. It got worse as y back totally gave up and I had 2 lovely paramedics scrape me off the floor with some gas & air
I'm struggling to eat enough but I will get there
Today's food
Brunch (overslept) 3 scrambled eggs in butter
Post workout - protein shake with almond milk
Tea - chilli with a tiny sprinkle of cheese and sweet potato
Snack - juice of strawberries, cucumber, lime, apple, celery, spinach and some FF Greek yog

I'm going to name change back and come back under my usual name. I terminated my pregnancy a week ago and still feeling v low, tired and crying everyday which isn't helping

Sorry you've had such a hard time [Flowers]

Oh sorry my flower attempt is total failure, sentiment is genuine tho

Look after yourself worried

What do people do for thickening sauces/gravies etc? My favourite soup has corn flour as a fairly key ingredient and I don't really want to give it up. I had left over bolo genes on a sweet potato with some cheese for breakfast yesterday. It kept me full really well although didn't stop me craving the sweet treats!

Bolo genes? Bolognese!

Misscph,

Yy the cholesterol is the same old bollocks.

www.dietdoctor.com/science

Don't know how to link properly off my phone, but lots of interesting stuff about fat (including cholesterol) and how high carbohydrate/grain diets screw up insulin response/sensitivity which has a knock on effect on everything else... Leading to SyndromeX/metabolic syndrome (basically all of the so called "diseases of civilisation").

Marksdailyapple, Robb Wolf (paleo Solution blog), wheat Belly blog all have similar info.

Basically - eating cholesterol does not give you high cholesterol. Eating lots of grain carbs and the wrong kinds of fat (ie processed ones including veg oils) change the ratio of "good" and "bad cholesterol. Which is really bad for health even if the total cholesterol number may drop a little.

Marzipan, not cornflour as its a grain (maize). Sometimes, Arrowroot, but usually nothing!

For things like chilli or mince type recipes I will spoon out the liquid near the end of cooking, put in a frypan and reduce it down, then add back to the meat, this thickens the sauce a little, and adds flavour but really you just a adapt to NOT having lots of thick sauces on everything after a while. You have "juices" instead!

For a luxury touch, say with Sunday roast, I reduce the juices then stir in double cream, spoon a little bit on each serving of meat, it's very rich, a garnish to the meat really.

Sauces can add a lot of sugar/carb without you really noticing... Which can contribute to hunger and carb craving later in the day (especially if you ate just starting this woe and your body has not yet adjusted to the new reality !

So tomato based sauces for example- may have huge amounts of sugar in them if you buy ready made (some may be 25%carb, or higher!) whereas a carton of passata (ingredients, tomato, salt) is about 5g carb per 100g- a huge difference. But even then, good idea to use less sauce than you would have before.

This woe is not necessarily about being "low carb" (although it is very carb carb compared with the standard diet {which has crazily high amounts of carb!}), but for weight loss, you do want to watch carbs carefully.

The easiest "rule" to keep in mind is "eat things with 5g or less of carbohydrate per 100g. Anything higher than that, ie sweet potato, be very careful with your amounts... I would have one small, or half a larger, sweet potato per serving , it seems odd at first, not to have a big pile of stodgy stuff, but your tastes do adjust pretty fast, honestly!

Really sorry to hear that you are having such a hard time, worried. It sounds like you are coping very well under the circumstances and your food looks perfect. If you at all can manage it, try making some bone broth, it will soothe you and is really healthy.

nappy, your sangria recipe looks great, and I don't even like sangria!

Ra, thanks for confirming that cholesterol is a myth! I have also been thinking that medical companies must make a fortune from statins ... And I read all the blogs you mention, great stuff.

Marzipan, I do exactly like Raw, I use arrowroot but often I don't bother. You could also try potato flour. I have bought Bisto in the past, there is a version in a glass jar that is Paleo friendly. When I was growing up, my parents would never thicken sauces or gravies with any kind of flour, they would always use heavy cream or full fat creme fraiche (they just didn't like the taste of sauces/gravies thickened with any kind of flour), so I never knew anything else until I started working as a kitchen temp in my 20s ;)

Does anyone else feel the need for some Paleo treats for the weekend? I am making these:

First whizz
100 g raisins
100 g dried dates
100 g dried figs
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (not sweetened, I use Green & Blacks)
40 g ground flax seed
in a food processor (careful, it's a heavy task! Start with pulse function)
The add
Juice of half an orange
2 tablespoons coconut oil
and whizz again.
Sprinkle a layer of dessicated coconut in a bread tin and press the mixture down on that, sprinkle another layer of dessicated coconut on top and press down. Let set in fridge for 1 hour, turn out and cut into small bars. Very high in natural sugar, beware! Taste like Naked bars. Can be varied with the dried fruit and cocoa can be replaced with cinnamon.

Misscph, you have hit the nail on the head with that comment!

Yy the profit motive as more to do with dietary advice than most people realise.

Just look at all the drugs needed to treat syndrome X conditions. - off the top of my head, blood pressure medications, diabetes (type2) medications, thyroid medications, gout medications, heart and vascular medications...

And the autoimmune medications ( ok, not quite syndrome X but related to grain consumption, which is a big part of the problem)... Again, diabetes (type1), thyroid, and just about any other condition you can think of with an autoimmune component.

Drug companies are not going to spend millions of dollars to prove that eating a natural, ancestral "clean" diet will prevent, reverse or improve these conditions in most people!

They spend millions to show their drug will control these conditions to a reasonably tolerable level, with not too many awful side effects.