Figuring that Gip did all the work of finding the right words for me I decided to just send you all to read his.
Arriving At The Big Five Priorities For Simple, Minimalist Living
TTYL,
Linda
ps. My computer refused to post this when I first tried to do it. I just now found out I never retried. Sorry, Gip.
pps. Down 30 pounds now.
It has become a thing to do among the people who eat the primal/paleo/caveman way to make a list of the ten foods you would want to take with you if you knew you had to survive on a deserted island but could only take those ten foods with you. Apparently, this island has unlimited cooking facilities. And seasonings don’t count so I listed them without a number.
salt & pepper and other seasonings like herbs, spices and garlic. Who can live without garlic?
And here’s a sample day’s meals and snacks I could have with those items.
Breakfast: Fry bacon; cook eggs sunny-side up in bacon grease adding salt & pepper. Crumble bacon. Mix bacon into eggs and eat.
Lunch: Season and bake chicken; steam broccoli then top with ghee adding other seasonings as desired.
Dinner: Season then broil steak; microwave canned pumpkin; melt ghee over pumpkin and add seasonings. I like salt & pepper on my pumpkin but cinnamon with nutmeg is also popular.
Snacks: one or two pieces of chocolate; sliced banana topped with dollops of almond butter
Yes; there’s a lot of fat in these meals. You need it to make up the calories you are not getting from breads, pasta, potatoes, rice, and beans.
If I felt the need for a baked treat I could mash a couple of bananas, stir in an egg and a few tablespoons of almond butter and bake it. It comes out like cake. I like to then melt ghee over the top of it to make up for having no frosting. 🙂
If I had one more item on my list it would be canned fish. I can eat tuna or salmon right from the can but it is also good mixed with an egg and seasonings in a 2-cup bowl and microwaved for about 3 minutes to make a fish patty. And the omega 3 oils you get from fish are a good thing.
BTW, it is understood within the primal/paleo community that the beef and ghee would be from grass-fed cows, the bacon would be free of nitrites,  the almond butter would not have sugar in it, and the chicken thighs and eggs would be from free-range chickens. But just eating this way (no grains or beans, and for many no dairy) without doing all that is still better for your body than what most of us were taught to eat as we grew up. IMHO, of course. And that of many other amazingly healthy people.
TTYL,
Linda
Today is blackout day for those of us who care about dissemination of information via the internet. Tune in next week for our regularly scheduled program. If the internet is working then.
You’d think that a woman about to become eligible for Medicare would have learned how to cook by now, wouldn’t you? I present myself as the exception to the rule. Of course, there are a few dishes I can make to keep us from starving but I never really learned how to cook.
Until now. Meet my teacher.
This is so much more than a recipe book. It taught me how to prepare to cook. And it’s ready to teach me how to use spices to enhance the flavor of food. Yes, Dave is learning to eat spices beyond salt, pepper, chili powder, and those that go into his pumpkin pies. 🙂
Lesson one for me was “the cookup.” This is where you spend a block of time preparing foods in advance of the actual meal time to make the final preparations easy. Tuesday, Dave and I spent about an hour and a half in our kitchen preparing food for some time to come. At one point in time it looked like this:
The crockpot is full of vegetables with seasoned beef stew meat and a differently seasoned pork roast all being cooked without further assistance. The broiler pan sitting on the stove is full of bacon we just baked in the oven to a perfect level of crispiness. And the counter is being used to prepare a selection of meatzas
“Meatza?”, you ask. Yes, this is a wonderful way of fulfilling our cravings for pizza in a way that does not include the grains I have mostly eliminated from my life.
There are several recipes out on the internet for making meatza but I like Mel’s method best of what we’ve tried so far. You basically pat a half pound of lean ground beef into a pie plate and bake it 10 to 15 minutes.
Then you move it to a baking sheet, add your favorite pizza toppings,
and bake it another 10 to 15 minutes.
We made four of these at the same time. Dave’s is topped with ham, bacon, and pepperoni. Mine is topped with chicken and mushrooms. We will share the one topped with ham and pineapple. And my VERY experimental one is a bacon, ranch, cheddar burger with grape tomatoes. It turned out very well so will likely be a repeat.
In addition to all those cooked foods we have several containers of chopped meats, fruits, and vegetables ready to be used in salads and/or omelets.
So the rest of the week will be reheating, and/or assembling healthful foods whenever hunger strikes. I’m thrilled!
If you want to learn how to do all this go here, http://www.theclothesmakethegirl.com/wellfed/, and buy this book. Be aware that my meals don’t necessarily look like Mel’s meals. For instance, the cheese on our meatzas; you will find no dairy products in this cookbook. I’m OK with that because what you will find is tasty, real food from around the world made so simple even I can do it.
TTYL,
Linda
ps. In spite of skipping one weekly Weight Watcher’s meeting and not tracking everything I ate during the holidays I lost weight again. Down a total of 28.6 pounds so far and moving right along. All while eating things like meatza; yeah!
pps. No disclaimer needed. I bought my book and Mel doesn’t even know I’m writing this blog. I may send her a link to it, though. 🙂
Today is the start of a new year!
So?
What does that really mean? Are our day to day lives suddenly supposed to be magically different? I grew up in a family of magicians but none of them were able to make our lives magically different just by specifying a day on which it would happen.
If you are unhappy about some part of your life, figure out what change you want to see and what you need to do to make it happen. But, please, don’t make it dependent on a magic day. I know too much about the reality behind magic to buy into that.
TTYL,
Linda
