Category: Glimpses of Life

Here we are two weeks into this diet, trialled because our son – the cook, decided to offer to do all the work for us.  So far, I’ve lost 4.5 pounds and my blood pressure (which normally runs high) has become normal.

Today is an “easy” food day. I had leftovers from yesterday’s breakfast spanish style casserole.

I added an over easy egg and an avocado.

It was quite filling and the avocado was nice and ripe.

For lunch today, I had a fruit smoothie that I made in a blender. I used one very ripe banana, about a 1/3 cup of frozen strawberries that I had in the freezer, a handful of fresh blueberries and about a half cup of coconut milk.  After drinking that up, I had a handfull of unsalted sunflower seeds.

Dinner was spaghetti!!!!! I’m just teasing you. (she smiles)

Today was vegetarian day so we had zucchini spaghetti with fresh marinara sauce and eggplant dippers. I can’t say that this tasted anything like spaghetti but it was good and filling. That’s what really counts, eh?

Onward!

I woke up this morning and put the already-made spanish style casserole in the oven after cracking three eggs over it. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it because it had green peppers in it but I was mistaken. It tasted great!

After 20 or so minutes of cooking in a 450° oven it was ready for eating.  Yummm!

For lunch, I had leftover Jamaican Pepper Pot stew with a slice of bread (sorry I don’t have the recipe for this gluten free bread). These were very good leftovers.

Dinner included sauteed chicken with spinach, a Martha Stewart recipe.

This diet really can be very simple to follow although not having dairy (except for the eggs) makes it kind’ve tough for some people.

Interestingly enough, my blood pressure is normal. I’m guessing that part of the reason is that I don’t have hardly any sugar or salt in my diet. Yes?

Today was my turn to make pancakes. The recipe was one for pumpkin pancakes made with coconut flour. They came out a tad thick so I should have added a little more coconut milk to thin them out. Other than that, they were okay along with a slice of turkey bacon and fruit.

Since I ate breakfast kind’ve late, I just had 3 tangerines for lunch along with some grape juice.

Dinner was delicious! We had zucchini fritters with tahini sauce and a green bean casserole. Quite delicious!

We’ll probably do “paleo” for the rest of this week and then we’ll be taking a week off before getting on it again.

So far, my blood pressure continues to stay low. Very interesting …

I can’t believe it’s been almost a week since I haven’t had any bread, pasta, rice, milk, sugar or cheese. It seems quite incredible to me. I’m not sure I would have had the inclination or desire to try this diet if it weren’t for my son.

So here we are on day eleven. Woohoo! I was supposed to make french toast with banana bread but when I awoke I had a desire for fried eggs so instead, I had banana bread (paleo-style) with 2 fried eggs and 2 slices of turkey bacon.

The banana bread was quite good and would have worked well as french toast.

For lunch, I had chicken salad that had apples in it. So sorry — no picture because (again) the recipe was made for my husband’s lunch during the week and I forgot to take one before I had a quick bowl.

Side note:  After having almost finished the bowl of chicken salad, I started experiencing wheezing. In the past, I get tingling in my mouth when I eat fresh fruit like apples (mainly because of the pesticides on it). I didn’t expect to have this reaction though as I had had a slice for breakfast that my husband gave me. I did have to use my asthma inhaler in order to get rid of the wheezing. (Even if I clean the apple really well or peel it, I still have this reaction with some apples.)

Dinner included onion burgers (served with no bread or bread crumbs), pico de gallo, guacamole sauce, garlic aioli sauce and caramelized onions.

Mmmmmmm …… very good and filling. The hamburger was too big though (but that doesn’t mean it didn’t get eaten). (she smiles)

Scones — today was cherry scone day. They were made with almond flour and tasted really good. I had them with a glass of almond milk. That was it for breakfast (believe it or not).

For lunch, I had Mexican Spanish Rice. Well, no, not really as rice is not allowed on this diet. (she laughs)  This recipe was made with minced cauliflower to mimic rice. I don’t have a picture of this recipe because it was actually made for my husband’s lunch and there just happened to be leftovers in the refrigerator. I was surprised that it tasted pretty good.  Afterwards I had a bowl of fresh fruit.

Dinner included Jamaican Beef Pepper Pot (stew) which was really really really good, Spinach Bhagi (looked like a big wet blob of spinach but tasted good also) and Puerto Rican Tostones (fried green plantains).

My son made a sauce for the plantains — very simple: 1/4 cup virgen olive oil, minced garlic, salt and pepper, all mixed together.

On occasion, I’ll have a glass of mango (my favorite) smoothie with no added sugar or tea with a tad of honey.

Blood pressure is still low on this diet. Interesting …

Today was kind’ve a ho-hum day. I woke up and started a wee bit of laundry then put two eggs in a pot to boil. I’ve always liked soft boiled eggs but have never been able to perfect the timing on them (they usually come out too hard or too soft).

I also attempted to eat a bowl of fruit but after a few bites remembered that I don’t like cold fruit. So, I left the bowl on the table for later enjoyment.

After running a few errands, I came home and finished the bowl of fruit. I also had some pistachio nuts, a mango smoothie and a lemon poppyseed muffin. That was my lunch. Later in the day I had an orange.

I wasn’t feeling very hungry until about 5:00. Then the stomach started rumbling and water didn’t seem to fill my appetite. But I had to wait until 6:00 before dinner was ready.

Tonight we had tuna cakes with wasabi tartar sauce, red cabbage and garlic grilled vegetables.

And it was absolutely delicious. I was a little hesitant about eating so much cabbage as I thought I might get sick of them after a little while but I actually went back for seconds.

The tuna patty was very filling and there were two patties for each person. So, guess whose belly was overfilled?

Now, having said that, I still left a little room to try the paleolithic brownies. They are flourless and I have to say they don’t compare with the really moist fudge brownies that I remember from so long ago (maybe a month).  Ahhh, she laughs. But in a pinch, these will do and we still have more time to experiment on how to make them a tad bit moister. (Have you noticed I say “tad” a lot? Hmmm … not sure where I picked that up from.)

This diet doesn’t seem to be hard if you don’t want it to be. It can be as simple as baking or grilling chicken with steamed vegetables. But it’s always nice to try to be a bit more creative, eh?

Four .  Hmmmm …. wanna guess at the significance of that number? No, it’s not the temperature (although in Minnesota you might’ve been right).

It’s …. ready for it? It’s the number of pounds I’ve lost in one week on this diet. My intent was not to lose weight but to try a diet that our son happens to be trialling out. But, I’ll take the four pound loss!  Congratulations to me!!

Breakfast today was leftover food from brunch on Day 5 (the turkey hash and sweet potato fries).

For lunch, I had the rest of the leftovers above (seriously! there was enough for both meals). If you ask me if having leftovers is becoming boring, I’d have to say “it depends.” It really does depend on what the leftover is.

Dinner was really good today. We had pan seared salmon with kalamata olives and salsa cruda, grainy mustard mashed yams and steamed broccoli.

The salsa on the salmon was amazing! Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s because the olives are salty. And the salmon was great too. The mashed yams were okay. They tasted a bit grainy but I’m not sure why.

It’s hard to believe we’re into our second week of trialling a paleolithic diet.

I slept like a baby last night even though there was no heat in the house. The furnace repair folk left us 3 small heaters that I didn’t think would heat much of anything, but a small bedroom was really nice and toasty.

I didn’t feel very hungry for some reason so I had a lemon poppyseed muffin with a bowl of fruit salad.

Sounds kind’ve boring, huh?

By around 10 a.m. I started to get a little hungry so I had 1.5 deviled eggs, unsalted sunflower seeds and a mandarin orange.

By 6 p.m. I was really a hungered! I was happy that we had quite a good selection for dinner. An interesting selection too … baked french fry parsnips, cauliflower “tabouli,” and chicken nuggets.

I have to say, the french fry parsnips and the “mac” nuggets were absolutely delicious! The cauliflower tabouli … well, it was okay but I wouldn’t have it on a regular basis.

Later in the evening I had some pistachio nuts and a mango juice mix. So far, so good on this diet.

Woke up this morning to a very nippy house. The furnace was not working. Sigh, sigh and sigh …

After returning from a doctor’s appointment, I looked in the refrigerator so I could have some leftovers for brunch (10:30 a.m. is considered brunch for me).

Sure enough, there was some leftover chicken from Day 2. I also ate the last of the pumpkin and apple muffins.

Since I had to wait for the furnace repairman to arrive, I decided that dinner was going to be “out.” Hmm .. so where to go?

Looking online, we found that the Outback Steakhouse has a gluten free menu and although we had other dietary requirements, we decided to try them.

After we were seated, I requested the gluten free menu and was handed one. The waitress, Laura, was very nice. From our food to the drinks, she was very helpful and made sure that our request did not have butter or any dairy. Quite a nice experience.

I decided to have my “usual” which is the Sirloin Steak and a baked sweet potato (with no added butter or brown sugar) and a side salad. The salad had a balsamic vinaigrette on the side and no cheese or croutons.. Apparently they make the salads from scratch so you can request whatever you like to be excluded. The steak and potato looks plain but was filling nonetheless.

Kudos to the staff here for being efficient and accommodating. No “strange” looks either for being a tad bit different from the rest of the crowd.

My son had a hamburger (minus the bun) and they put the dressings on the side (which was good because ketchup is not allowed on this diet). So here’s what a paleolithically served hamburger would look like.

Later in the evening, I had a few pistachio nuts and some tea then headed to bed.

I sure am glad we bought an electric mattress pad or we would have been quite cold with no heat. As it was, I slept all through the night.

We had brunch today instead of breakfast. It was quite hearty and delicious! The meal could be laid out separately on a plate or layered. I chose to separate my meal items which consisted of baked sweet potato fries, turkey hash, guacamole and pico de gallo.

Here’s another view of the same meal but layered …

We had a vegetarian paleolithic dinner that included broccoli with sweet potato bhaji (delicious!), roasted cauliflower Indian style (so-so) and rutabaga masala which tasted bitter. This was my first time tasting rutabaga and I’m not sure that I like it.

I really did enjoy the sweet potato bhaji — but then I just about enjoy anything with sweet potatoes or yams.

Overall, a good hearty day’s worth of eating. I also had some juice (no added sugar) and later some tea with a tad bit of honey throughout the day.

And of course, water — lots of water!