Paleo Week

Grocery time!

Silly girl hammin' it up, wearing a lollipop-themed outfit from grandma,
watching me cook Paleo. She's so ironic...

We've been working on our diet (i.e. the whole "organic groceries" New Year's resolution that I'm proud to say we're still sticking to), and since the Paleo diet has been gaining so much momentum, Ryan and I decided to give it a try for a week.

A lot of our friends and acquaintances have adopted the Paleo diet and love it. For those of you unfamiliar with it, basically the diet consists of veggies, healthy meat, fruit, healthy oils and spices and anything a caveman would be able to eat. (Funny, right?) On the no-no list? Grains, dairy, processed foods, etc. Every school of eating that exists and claims to be "healthy" really has similar ideas to this diet: Eat the good things, avoid the junk. Easy enough, right? And since we're already on board with the eating organic aspect of this diet, it seemed like a natural jump.

So, like any sane modern day woman, I turned to Pinterest for inspiration. I ran across the blog "Once a Month Mom," which I've seen  in the past but largely ignored. However, a post for a Paleo 10-meal mini menu that you prepare and freeze in advance caught my eye, and when I saw that it included a grocery list, quantity-adjustable recipes, and no-fail instructions, I figured it was a sign. I'm a terrible cook (mostly because I like boring food, so recipes with more than a couple ingredients are wasted on me), but with a dummy-proof plan in my hand, how could I fail?

I failed.

Okay, so maybe I didn't fail per se, but since I only needed to cook for two people, I couldn't bring myself to buy "0.08 sprigs of thyme" or a jar of chipotle seasoning to use only "0.0047 tsp." So I skipped a couple of ingredients...so sue me! (Turns out that ingredients in a recipe aren't "optional"...who knew?) And, of course, I didn't think to read the recipes ahead of time, relying on a "one step at a time" philosophy, which landed me with energy muffins instead of energy bars ("batter" does NOT need to be blended apparently) and beef stew with no celery or onions. Plus, two of the recipes required a grill, and btw ours was out of propane all of a sudden. Oh, well. After FIVE HOURS of straight cooking, I opted to ditch the last two recipes and call it a day. Eight out of ten sounded pretty decent to me, and now we're enjoying the fruits of my labor...

And it isn't so bad. We're just finished Day Two, and so far we've had the aforementioned energy muffins, lime-marinated chicken, beef stew, and hawaiian skewers. After dinner tonight we both confessed that we'd like to cheat already (I miss cheese, glorious cheese!), but we're in it for the duration. We opted for the 85/15 philosophy to allow us to have dinners out with friends this weekend, and the chance to cheat makes it easier for us to stick with it. Although we're only doing seven days, we're open to going longer if we see any benefits (in weight, energy, strength, etc.).

So wish us luck. Five days left and counting...