How do you do it?

I get asked this question -- not because I'm awesome -- but because I've taken a serious stab at changing my family's diet and we've stuck with it for the long haul. I'm not always {read: ever} perfect but I try to keep my goals and practices fairly consistent.

Now.

I get asked this question not by my large internet fan base. Because it doesn't exist. I get asked this by people in my cube at work, girlfriends at church, long distant facebook friends...people who are just trying to figure out to MAKE IT HAPPEN. That's the biggest thing.

You know how when you lay in bed at night you can solve all the world's problems {or at least your own}? You craft the most eloquent responses and dream up the best DIY projects.

Then you wake up.

Yep. I'm right there with you. My paleo story began on November 29, 2011. Cold turkey. I had been experiencing daily morning headaches, achy joints, and digestion woes. I assumed my headaches were caffeine related but as I phased out artificial sweeteners, I realized I was addicted to the sweeteners. My pre-paleo research led me to articles about inflammatory foods. My husband has chronic back problems and we both had knee pain (we thought from years of sports and running) so I started out researching anti-inflammatory foods. I woke up on November 29, 2011 with a debilitating headache and decided that was IT. ENOUGH. We cut out grains, processed foods, and refined sugars immediately.

Ok, this is supposed to be about how we do the paleo-thing with our family. Not my paleo conversion. But they are related so now you know what caused me/us to make the switch.

How do we do it? You should also know a little bit about our family landscape. At the time of our switch our kids were 4yo and 1yo. Thankfully they were used to real food -- they were used to eating veggies and fruit and home cooked meals. We were not in the habit of eating fast food or ordering take-out. If you are, that's a habit you have to change. Don't worry, we had plenty of other bad habits to work on. We are emo-eaters. Happy? Sad? Excited? Bored? Let's eat! We also have TERRIBLE late night eating habits. My husband works till 10pm on weeknights and 8pm on weekends so we end up chowing down too late at night. So, these are some of the things we deal with regularly. I say all this to let you know that we are REGULAR people. My kitchen is average sized, my fridge is totally gimp (broken light, taped-on door shelves, off-track veggie drawers...), and our budget is meager. You can probably relate to something in this paragraph.

Well, now that I've told you how we screw up and the obstacles we face, let me tell you how we try to get the paleo-thing right. The real-deal paleo bloggers {whom I love/stalk} have bright, airy kitchens and large, cavernous sinks. They live next door to organic farmers and butchers. They always set the table before a meal instead of grabbing whatever flat, clean object they can find for their dinner. Well, not really. But when they stage their GORGEOUS photos for blogs and books, it can seem that way.

When I am browsing paleo cookbooks or blogs I never notice a 3yo boy licking the immersion blender after making mayonnaise or swirling his fingers in the quarts of bone broth before the lids get screwed tight. Not that either of those things happened in my kitchen this morning...

Well. If you somehow found your way here...don't worry. My photography sucks. I've never staged a photo in my life. The lighting in my house is terrible. And ground meat {a main protein staple} doesn't photograph well when the previously mentioned factors are present.

I'll also tell you, though -- without those perfectly perfected perfectionist paleo blogs I WOULD BE LOST. I have serious crushes on Michelle Tam, Diane Sanfillipo, STACY TOTH OHMYWORDILOVEHER, Haley Staley, Danielle Walker...I could go on but those gals are my ...oh! and Liz Wolfe... main crushes.

I can't offer you a weekly meal plan or a schedule or a grocery strategy that is any different that the bloggers above have already offered.

My main advice is KEEP IT SIMPLE. 


1. You only have in your house what you buy at the grocery store.
2. Plan and cook ahead.
3. Be consistent.

Here's a week-in-the-life type of thing.
Saturday and Sunday: Thaw meat, hard boil eggs, make a new recipe because I have extra time, grocery shop, make tuna salad or mini-burgers {or something like that for lunches}, make bacon {why not?}, prepare thawed meat into ready-to-go meals {leave uncooked}
Monday -- Thursday: Eat prepared food. Make a few quick meals with fish or pull previously frozen/prepped meals like meatballs or meatloaf. Leftover = lunches.
Friday: Try a new recipe because we are not on the school-night/bath/bed-time crunch.

We mostly eat chicken thighs, ground meat, pork roasts, beef cubes, and white fish. Lots of veggies and salads. AVOCADOS. Eggs. Eggs. Eggs. Some nuts. Fruit. The kids eat organic/full-fat dairy, rice, and potatoes in moderation.

Here is what my Saturday morning looked like today. This, folks, is the glamorous side of paleo living.

First, I made some Maple Breakfast Sausages from Food for Humans by Michelle Tam. Noms. I also cooked up some spicy sausage to add to some butternut squash soup I made and froze a few weeks ago. 

Meanwhile, my sink was full of sippy cups and my counter was littered with various cups, thermal lunch totes, and tisses {every surface in my house contains a box of tissues}. And across the room my dining room table is the scene of seed sprouting, little girl hair-doing, kindergarten reading books, yesterday's mail, and all the other papers we don't know where to put.

 Meat thawing.

All while sipping coffee in my pilled, fleece lined legging, my husband's high school cross country sweatshirt, and crocs. Bring it. 

This is my version of paleo. It's always a work in progress, as is all of life, but we are healthier and better for it.

What's for lunch?

People are always making comments about my lunch at work.  Some of these comments are rooted in jealousy.  I mean *seriously* my lunches usually look pretty darn tasty.  Sometimes the comments are born out of misunderstanding.  Take the following conversation into consideration:

Co-worker:  What do you have for lunch Trisha?  Probably a big salad!
Me (smiling):  I have my big salad and some sweet potato and steak.
Co-worker (as she pulls her McD lunch out of its bag):  Wow, that’s a heavy lunch.  

Here’s what I didn’t say: Ha! I am sure my real/whole/balanced lunch will really weigh me down. Let me know how that McD lunch works out for you.  

In all seriousness, though, people are often curious about what I eat for lunch. No bread??? That means no sandwiches!!! No crackers or pretzels or chips or soda or granola bars or Special K bars or…???? How do you do it??? It’s actually fairly simple. Dinner = Lunch. I would say that 90% of the time, I eat leftovers for lunch. Rarely do I create something altogether new for lunch or use convenience lunch foods. I also usually make what Michelle of Nom Nom Paleo calls "emergency protein" which is ground beef or turkey with whatever veggies are in the fridge and seasoned however I feel like it. I occasionally take lunch meat or tuna salad but usually I pack up last night's dinner!  

Here’s a glimpse into what I take to work for lunch. Paleo focuses on plants and protein. That’s how I build my meals. If I get hungry, I eat more plants and protein. And I drink lots of water. It doesn’t have to be fancy-gourmet-artisan-exotic-ethnic-whatever-fare. Just real. Hopefully you can be inspired!  

  

Be a Prepper

Going paleo has taught me a lot about being prepared.  Not in a hoarder/prepper/conspiracy-theory kind of way.

More like in a if-I-don't-I-won't-survive-the-week-and-I'll-eat-crap-when-things-head-south kind of way.

So in true paleo-it-forward fashion here are a few things I've learned and how it looks for me.  Remember --> you don't have to do things my way.  Just find a method/madness that works for you and go with it.  

1.  Prep ahead. If you have your whole, real foods ready to go for breakfast/lunch/dinner, you are more likely to eat them for breakfast/lunch/dinner.  Freezer meals.  That's right -->  make it, freeze it....days go by....thaw, cook, EAT!  This is my biggest lifesaver in terms of staying on track with eating paleo. 

2.  Don't keep CRAP in your cupboards.  Sometimes I bemoan the fact that there's no junk food.  Then I am glad because if it *was* there I *would* eat it.

3.  Think about what you DO have, not what you DON'T have.  You get to have all the plants, proteins, good fats, and nuts/seeds {in moderation} that you want!  Plus water, coffee, tea, and throw in a little dark chocolate here and there...what more could you want?!?!?!?

4.  Snacks are what you make of them.  We snack on leftovers, raw veggies, fruit, homemade trail mix {read: whatever is in the cupboards...sometimes just raisins and almonds but, hey, let's get fancy and call it trail mix}, anytime cookies {a Paleo Parents recipe from Eat Like a Dinosaur}, bacon, veggies -- oh, wait, I already said that.  People are so keen on "breakfast for dinner" like they are the first ones who thought of it.  Well, not to be a jerk, but it's been done before by EVERYONE.  So, take the same idea of eating-something-at-the-wrong-time and apply it to snacks!  How about "leftovers for snacks" or "whole fruit/veg for snacks" or "real food for snacks?"  


Now for a few examples:

This was early in September.  In one day I made 7 dinners and froze them.  This is A LOT for me.  Go me!
I made 2 steak meals, 3 beef cube meals, and 2 chicken thigh meals.  I think we still have one steak meal frozen and the last beef cube meal is thawing for tomorrow.  

Another weekend I was slightly less ambitious but still made some good stuff to fuel us during the week.  Please bear in mind than ground meat NEVER photographs well.  Try not to gag.  First I made 2lbs of taco meat for taco bowls, salads, lunches, breakfasts, or whatever.  I also made spaghetti sauce {which we are using some of on our spaghetti squash tonight!} and I baked off one of the frozen chicken dinners from the last freezer meal prep.

Today I am feeling sort of under the weather.  Sad.  I mixed up a giant meatloaf -- you can find the recipe here.  I also made some red cabbage from Practical Paleo and I have a pork roast and korma curry beef cubes thawing. Remember what I said about ground meat...

Two things to note:
*I use Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfillippo for many of my go-to recipes.  They are easy, don't have weird ingredients, and always taste good. 
*I am a Wildtree rep so I use a lot of my fave Wildtree seasonings for paleo eating. 

Paleo mayonnaise...or just real-actual-truthfully-true-made-from-food-not-chemicals mayonnaise.

This mayo isn't really paleo per se.  It's just homemade.  Real food.  Which semi-by-default makes it paleo.  The point, whether it's paleo or not, is that it is made with whole foods, we determined our ingredients, and used our (and by that I mean my husband's) own manperson-power to make it.

Eggs.  Oil.  S&P.  A squirt (sorry, I had to say squirt) of dijon mustard.  Boom...or actually...Blend.  MAYO!  

This was a first-go for us at making mayonnaise! It's one of those things that we'd like to stop buying at the grocery store because there are A TON of additives and junky stuff in most store-bought mayo.  Bummer.  I have a running list of things I want to start making myself (or have my cave-man make...as demonstrated below!).  Maybe sometime I'll share it with you.  If you're lucky.  Or if I ever get around to it...

Thankfully there are quite a few places on the inter-webs to learn how to make your own mayonnaise!  I started here with Michelle from Nom Nom Paleo (btw: I wish I could look as cute as her in pig-tails) and ended up using the recipe from The Clothes Make the Girl.  

I'm not going to lie.  We weren't in love with our homegrown mayo AT FIRST.  After a few ham-lettuce-tomato-mayo-roll-ups and some tuna salad -- we are sold!  The recipe and directions were spot on, we just want to play with the flavor a bit.  Possibly a different type of oil?  I'll keep you posted.  Because I know you are on the edge of your seat.