Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts, cubed

5 large green olives, diced

4 sundried tomatoes, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbs capers

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

3 tbs olive oil

Directions:

1.  Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat and brown chicken pieces.

2.  Add in spices and veggies and cook for another 10 – 15 minutes.

As I prepare for my long flight to the mainland, I am wondering what kind of foods to bring on the plane.  I will probably bring some nuts and fruit leather.  Maybe I could look into making some homemade jerky.

What do you bring on a trip in order to stay paleo?

Sorry I haven’t updated this week.  I’ve been prepping for a trip to the mainland!  I should be able to update a couple of times before I leave next week, and then hopefully, will be back on schedule.  Thank you for your support!

Food for Thought from Nick.

The realm of human knowledge will probably always be incomplete, but we learn new things about the world every day.  Concerning the degeneration of health, the mantras of “it just happens” or “it’s genetic” seem to rule our consciousness.  Never, it seems, is there a bona fide reason for grandma’s Alzheimer’s, your arthritis, or my crappy vision.  It is that last one that bothers me the most, because doctors have never been able to tell me why I’m myopic (nearsighted).  They are quick to be able to fix it, though, with glasses, contacts, and surgery.  As is so common, we are great at treating disease, but not so great at stopping the onset.

Why, then, does myopia happen?  I never got a clear answer, but as with so many things, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” though some would disagree.  Not being able to see your prey or something trying to kill you isn’t a positive trait. According to research on modern hunter-gatherers, between 0 and 3 percent of them are myopic.  Contrast that with the US and the rest of the industrialized world.

According to the British newspaper the Guardian,

Rates [of myopia] are lower [in Britain] – between 30 and 50% – but ophthalmologists agree that myopia is on the rise. “We can’t be sure of the numbers,” says Winfried Amoaku, consultant ophthalmologist at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, “but the increase in myopia, especially in eastern countries, really is quite rampant.”

Loren Cordain, author of The Paleo Diet seems to have a reason, that nicely correlates with the increasing encroachment of junk food.  Myopia is a result of–you guessed it–consumption of neolithic foods.  The onset of myopia may likely be a consequence of chronically high insulin levels.  Having bad vision isn’t something that would naturally happen evolutionarily.   Chronically high insulin, leads to insulin resistance, which tends to lead to a host of bad effects, like heart disease, acne, and obesity.  One other consequence of hyperinsulinemia is an increase in insulin-like growth factor, which may result in increased growth of the eyes, which leads to myopia.  Check out professor Cordain’s flow chart on page 12 of this link for more information, or check out his paperon the subject.

Like most events, bad vision is multi-causal, so reading and computers most likely have some effect.  It is an interesting hypothesis and I’ll be thinking about it when I have kids of my own.  I’d rather they not be visually impaired, like me!

If there are any ophthalmologists or doctors out there that would like to comment, feel free.

–Nick

Ingredients:

1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined

juice of 1 large orange

1 green onion diced (green and white parts)

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp honey

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

2 tbs olive oil

Directions:

1.  Mix all ingredients except the olive oil and the shrimp in a bowl.

2.  Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat.

3.  Add shrimp and quickly sautee on both sides for about a minute or two.

4.  Add sauce and allow to cook down for about 2 minutes.

My friend Alan was talking about making Sloppy Joes the other day.  He had an abundance of ground turkey and gave me some of it.  I’m not the biggest ground turkey fan, but I thought it would do well in a paleo version of this comfort classic.

These aren’t so sloppy without buns, but Neat Joes just doesn’t have the same ring to it.  If you are feeling nostalgic for the mess, you can always make this a finger food like my toddler does.  Feel free to sing Lunch Lady Land while making these.

Ingredients:

1 red bell pepper, diced

1 small sweet onion, diced

1 large carrot, peeled and diced

2 tbs olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 lb ground beef or turkey

1 tbs tapioca starch

1 15 oz can tomato sauce

1 6 oz can tomato paste

2 tbs honey

2 tbs lemon juice

1 tbs mustard

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp salt

Directions:

1.  In a bowl, combine tomato sauce, tomato paste, lemon juice, honey, and spices.

2.  In  a large skillet, heat olive oil over medium high heat.  Cook onion, carrot, and pepper until soft.  Add garlic and cook another minute.  Remove from pan and set aside.

3.  Brown the ground turkey or beef.  Sprinkle with tapioca starch.

3.  Add veggies back into the pan and then coat with the sauce from the bowl.

4.  Stir and reduce heat to low.  Simmer 10 minutes until thick.

Last week, while my husband was at the regional games in California, he went to visit his buddy at Crossfit Thousand Oaks. He found out that the TO crew are fans of Paleo Mama and put one of the coaches, Dan on the phone with me.  Dan said that they are starting up a paleo breakfast club.  A jock, a brain, a basket case, a princess…oh wait.  Wrong club.  Anyway, to help them start off right, I thought I’d give some egg tips and a recipe!

Tips for scrambled eggs.  Use LOW heat.  (Brown scrambled eggs aren’t right.  Honestly.)  Don’t add anything to the eggs.  No water or anything else for fluffiness.  Use a non-stick pan.  Use a little fat in the pan for flavor.  Use a soft rubber spatula to fluff eggs as you cook them.

Ingredients:

You can use any veggie combo you like.  This is what I happened to have in my fridge today.  This is breakfast for two.

4 asparagus spears

1/2 sweet onion

3 sun-dried tomatoes

3 tbs olive oil

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

4 large eggs

Directions:

1. Hold asparagus so that spear is in one hand and woody stem is in the other.  Gently bend upward until it snaps.  The woody stem bit will have broken off.  Throw it out.  You are left with tender goodness.  Chop this into 1/4 inch pieces.

2.  Dice up half a sweet onion.

3.  Dice up 3 sun-dried tomatoes.

4. Put 2 tbs olive oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat.  Cook veggies until they are soft.  Remove veggies from pan and LOWER heat to medium low.

5.  Add 1 tbs oil to pan.

6.  Using a fork or small whisk beat eggs up to a fluff in a bowl.  Add salt and pepper.

7.  Put eggs in pan.

8.  Using soft rubber spatula, constantly work eggs by pulling spatula along bottom and edges of pan and up.

9.  When eggs are only slightly wet, add veggies back in and cook for another minute or two, fluffing them together.

10.  Serve with breakfast meat of choice! (This is fantastic with steak)

My dear friends Nick and Ellen made a recipe similar to this using duck.  Ellen remarked that sausage would be delicious as well.  After some experimenting and playing around, this is what I came up with.

Ingredients:

1 lb sausage removed from casings

1 tbs fresh sage, chopped OR 1 1/2 tsp dried sage

1 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 small sugar pumpkin or 1 kabocha squash

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 400.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil

2.  In a large skillet, brown sausage, breaking it into chunks with the spatula.  Add in sage, allspice, salt and pepper.  Cool.

3. Cut the top of the squash or pumpkin like you are preparing it to be a jack-o-lantern (angle the knife, so that it creates a little shelf for the top to sit on).

4.  Scoop out the seeds with a spoon and discard or toast later for munching.

5. Sit pumpkin or squash on the baking sheet and fill with contents of the skillet.  Replace the top.

6.  Bake at 400 for about an hour or until the squash is soft and caramelizes.

7.  Allow to cool for 15 minutes.  Gently peel skin and scoop out yumminess inside to serve!

Another guest post by Nick…

I’ve been talking to a lot of people lately and they seem to think red meat causes cancer.Causes. That’s a strong word. Moreover, they’ve been telling me that fat causes cancer. The last I heard, these were two things that most people enjoyed: olive oil, avacados, and steak. What could be wrong those?

I think what has happened is that we in America come from a Puritanical upbringing, which isn’t necessarily bad, whether you are Buddhist or Baptist. It is great for economic matters–the Puritan work ethic is one of the forces cited by Max Weber as the reason for the development of Capitalism.

“Weber cited the writings of Benjamin Franklin, which emphasized frugality, hard work and thrift, but were mostly free of spiritual content. Weber also attributed the success of mass production partly to the Protestant ethic. Only after expensive luxuries were disdained, could individuals accept the uniform products, such as clothes and furniture …“[1]

So it was a sort of asceticism that Weber ascribed to the Protestant work ethic, as it was played out in the writings of Benjamin Franklin, and in our society at large. Americans’ idea of health and fitness is bred in this idea of forgoing pleasure for the greater good.

Fat tastes good. There is no denying this. The chemical structure of lipids is one that feels good in our mouths. The molecules slide smoothly against each other, giving us that creamy taste often tasted in butter, nuts, dark chocolate, and especially a nice steak. Compare that to the sandpaper appeal of a bean. Somehow, people have gotten the idea through false profits like PETA and Dean Ornish that fat is bad and meat is worse. By giving up the pleasures of whole foods and indulging in the bizarre low-fat diets these people propose, they offer us deliverance from diabetes and poor health.

There is no evidence whatsoever to back them up. Period. What matters is what food does to your body. Fat has almost no hormonal response. Sugar and carbohydrate drive insulin and insulin drives fat storage.

We have come to believe that the only way to a healthy weight and health is through the path of spending multiple boring hours per week running or doing “cardio,” whatever that is. The downside is that both our diets and our exercise are necessarily worse. Spending more time exercising more efficiently (not boring, long distance running every day)–by using movements that elicit responses in our bodies that make us stronger and leaner–we actually do become more fit. We experience broad increases in performance over broad time and modal domains. In layman’s speech, that means we can do Fran faster. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather do a 4 minute Fran over a 60 minute run … On the diet side, eating foods that taste good to us, and are good for us, like meats, nuts, fruits, and vegetables (notice the obvious lack of microwave diet foods) our health improves, as does our fitness.
Don’t accept the dogma of low-fat, long distance. Food–as in real food–tastes good, leaves us feeling good, and makes us perform well. Functional fitness makes us stronger, faster, and healthier. Can we not also agree that it is enjoyable? If you still have a penchant for some asceticism, take some of that aggressive energy out on soy, grains, or Krispy Kreme.

-Nick

This mother’s day, why not show mama you care by making her a pie?  I have been making these paleo pies for a while thanks to this recipe.  Here is my modification for a delicious pie to impress your mom!

Ingredients:

Crust:

1 cup macadamia nuts

1 cup walnuts

1 tsp ground cinnamon

8 oz dates

Filling:

2 cups strawberries

8 oz dates

3 cups strawberries cut into bite sized slices

1 cup kiwi cut into bite sized slices

1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut, plus a little more to decorate

2 tbs lemon juice

Directions:

1.  Chop 8 oz of dates into chunks and soak in water for 15 minutes.

2. Put nuts in a food processor and pulse until they grind up into tiny crumb-like pieces.  Don’t just hit the “on” button or they will become nut butter quicker than you’d believe.

3.  Chop dates into chunks and put in food processor along with the cinnamon.

4.  Pulse mixture until it comes together and resembles a graham cracker crust mix.

5.  Press this mixture into a 9 inch pie plate starting at the center and working your way out to the edges.  Use your fingers to press and crimp the edges to be pretty.  (This is for mom, after all)

6.  Stash the crust in the freezer while you prep the filling.

7.  Chop up 2 cups of strawberries and put in a blender.

8.  Drain dates and add to blender with lemon juice.

9.  Puree until smooth.

10.  In a large bowl, combine the bite sized slices of strawberries and kiwi along with the shredded coconut.  Pour puree over the mix and gently combine with a rubber spatula.

11.  Carefully put filling into the crust and spread with spatula to even it out.  Sprinkle some shredded coconut on top.

12.  Chill pie in the fridge for at least an hour.

13.  Impress mama!