Whole 30.... ish

Apologies for the very long break. The new little girl in my life has been taking up most of my time in the past three months, and my diet has suffered as a result (though not as much as my blogging.)

But that poor diet inspired me to try out the Whole 30 challenge. I got to day 5 of using coconut milk in my coffee (or having it black if I buy it) and avoiding dairy, potatoes, and alcohol, in addition to the grains and added sugars I've been mostly avoiding for a year.

But then I stepped on the scale and noticed that not only was I losing weight, but I was losing it dangerously fast - despite snacking on high-calorie pemmican whenever I felt hungry.

I know, it sounds like an unusual problem to have, and most people wouldn't consider it a problem. But I'm breastfeeding my daughter, and toxins normally stored in body fat are released into the bloodstream (and, therefore, into my milk supply) when I lose weight. Losing more than two pounds of fat in a week could release more toxins than her tiny body can handle. Since I've also started exercising again (though lightly), any weight I do lose is more likely to be fat than muscle.

So the dairy is back in my diet, at least for a while. I'll continue to be more fastidious regarding other non-paleo 'foods', and dairy should suffice to keep my weight loss within acceptable levels.

I could probably accomplish the same by eating more root vegetables and fruits instead of adding dairy back in. Should any of you be inclined to try the Whole 30, I recommend that option if you experience the same extreme weight loss I did in the first week. For me, though, the high number of calories required to continue feeding my daughter makes milk, cream, butter, and yogurt a more practical solution for now, at least until I can get my life more settled in other areas. I'll be revisiting the Whole 30 challenge again in the near future, though.

A New Favorite Meat

We got ground goat from our meat share this past Saturday. It is safe to say this is now my favorite meat. We cooked it up today with sauteed carrot, onion, and apple, with a little cream cheese and no other seasoning, and it came out awesome. Goat is lean, tender, very mild and a little bit sweet. The apple actually almost overpowered the meat. I'm hoping our farm will start giving us more of that; if not, I might just have to buy it separately.

Speaking of the farm, our winter CSA is working out fairly well. We've gotten a lot of non-paleo stuff, including maple syrup, root beer, and chocolate sauce, but even those are at least local and essentially organic. The veggies, eggs, and cheese have been mostly making up for it. This past week we got a turnip, lots of parsnips, some very large carrots, lots of apples, and even more little red potatoes. Oh and some mescalin mix and a couple tomatoes and some mushrooms and two dozen eggs and some bleu cheese and goat cheese. I'm not as impressed with the winter share as I was with the summer share, but it seems to be working out well. I definitely like not shopping!

We also made jerky again. One large 4lb roast yielded two batches of jerky. In addition, there was enough suet on the roast to render down, so I finally get to try making pemmican! The jerky recipes we used are, unfortunately, not quite paleo, but they're fairly tasty.

Recipe 1, for 2 lbs meat:
1.5 tsp ground ginger, 2 tbsp salt, 1 tsp garlic powder (we used 1 clove minced), 1 tsp onion powder, and 1/2 cup brown sugar. Rub mix on meat pieces. Tweaks for next time: more ginger & garlic, less sugar.

Recipe 2, also for 2 lbs meat:
1 cup whiskey or bourbon, 1 tsp coarse-ground black pepper, 1 tbsp salt, 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/2 cup water, 2 cloves minced garlic, 2 tbsp Worcestershire. This one tastes pretty good as-is, though I think I'll sprinkle pepper on the pieces after draining next time.