I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve been going totally off the rails since Saturday. One hour and 56 minutes of straight exercise does NOT create a caloric deficit equal to beer + ribs + pizza + Chubby Hubby + jalapeno poppers/onion rings/fried mushrooms + nachos + several (and I do mean several) chocolate coconut bars.
Anyway, today is a new day, and I look forward to putting this backslide behind me and getting rid of my volleyball tummy. I made some bone broth yesterday, and I have some sprouted almonds roasting in the oven. We ordered another hog, which is going to the butcher today. We’ve learned some lessons from our prior experiences. We are getting a lot more ground pork instead of smoked hams, for one. We’ve also requested the bones (for bone broth), and we’re not getting any sausage since we don’t know what exactly they put in that (msg??). It’s easy enough to turn ground pork into sausage with the addition of a few spices.
My brother’s girlfriend just sent us a new book that will come in super handy too –Good Meat. It has a ton of helpful information on how to have the pig butchered, as well as recipes on how to cook the pastured pork. Plus, it’s just a beautiful book, at least if you are into food pictures. 🙂
Before going on the bad-food binge, I did make a great primal recipe: Better Than Fried Chicken with Coconut Aminos Dipping Sauce. This was a very easy recipe to make, and the results were super delicious! The skin was crispy, and the flavor was sweet, almost teriyaki-like. I still have not found a place to buy coconut aminos locally though, and on Amazon, the shipping (it’s not available through a prime seller) is more than the aminos! Since I don’t have aminos, I used tamari instead. It has soy in it though. 🙁 The result was still delicious, if not 100% paleo. We couldn’t eat all of it, so we put the leftovers in the fridge. The skin lost its crispness (as disclosed in the recipe), but the chicken flavor was awesome cold.
In the midst of binge week, I also tried a non-paleo recipe: Perfect Summer Basil Burger. We have SEVEN basil plants growing, 4 different varieties. I pulled leaves from each of them to make the Perfect Basil Sauce. We also used fresh mozzarella instead of shredded. To make the recipe slightly healthier, we used olive oil instead of vegetable oil, and we skipped the grated parm. I also made homemade mayo with olive oil. The results were DELICIOUS!! I LOVE that basil sauce. Next time to make it more primal-friendly I will use greek yogurt instead of sour cream, but I think that’s the only change I would make.
And that’s my update. It’s Friday. I am off work. We’re planning on a nice, long bike ride on a sunny day. Life is good. Have a fabulous weekend!!
