Birthday Dinner

Coconut Cake with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting (not quite Paleo)

Hard to believe, but Youngest Son just turned 39 years old, and Beautiful Granddaughter turned 19 years old the day before that.  My Dad has always said "The older you get, the faster time goes." and, as I get older, and my children and grandchildren get older, I would have to agree with him.

I haven't had the opportunity to make Youngest Son a birthday dinner for a number of years as he has been living in Kamloops for the last few years.  Youngest Son and Beautiful Granddaughter are also trying on the Paleo lifestyle for fit so, of course, the dinner has to be (almost) Paleo.

Ground beef, GF Italian Sausage,  sweet potatoes and kale, with an egg.

It has been awhile since I posted because something "weird" has been happening to me after over a year on the Paleo diet and I have been trying to figure out where I m going wrong.  Up until about two months ago I was feeling really good - mentally and physically - and now (long story short), I'm not.  I have very little energy, don't feel like cooking or eating, no bike riding even though the weather has been perfect for bike riding in our part of British Columbia and I was really enjoying the riding.  I continue to follow the Paleo diet for 99% of the time (small amount of maple syrup in my morning coffee) and have finally killed the sugar monster.

Sleepless Nights?

OK - you know the drill - if you aren't interested in what I have to say, scroll down to the bottom for today's dinner recipes.

For years I have suffered from insomnia, averaging 3-6 hours of sleep per night.  I tried everything - sleeping pills, a cool dark room, white noise, mediation, relaxation techniques, but nothing made a difference for any length of time.

After about eight months on the Paleo diet, while still taking sleeping pills, I started noticing a difference in my sleep.  It became easier to fall asleep, but I didn't stay asleep, waking every two hours or so.  On more and more nights I was able to fall back to sleep, waking again about two hours later.

Setting Goals and Making Ribs!

Sunday is cooking day so I made ribs and Paleo Carolina Gold BBQ sauce for dinner tonight.  If you aren't interested what I have been doing and thinking about, you can skip the next part and go to the recipe at the bottom of the post!

I met up with a old long-time friend, Kathy,  for lunch this past week, something we have done for  the past 30+ years. In our younger days,  something we did every year was to set "goals" for ourselves for the next year.  I still have some of the lists - finish my degree (Kathy), get out more (me) and - always - lose weight.  Every single year - lose weight.  Not once did we list "get healthy" as a goal.

Food Prep for the Week Ahead

Whenever I can I like to spend a couple of hours on Sunday preparing food for the week ahead.  It really makes dinner easy when I get home.  Besides all the baking I did on Saturday, I also prepared Nomnom Paleo's latest recipe Spiced Keema (deconstructed samosa filling) as my emergency protein.  Emergency protein is Nomnom Paleo's term for always having some cooked protein on hand so you always have something ready if you are rushed for time. This is quite spicy, but would be great for breakfast with an egg on top, or for dinner with some cauli-rice.

Nomnom Paleo's Spicy Keema - emergency protein.

I prepped a lot of vegetables - Brussels sprouts, cabbage and shredded sweet potato.

Sunday morning breakfast, coconut blueberry pancakes and bacon

Let's talk about food - joke - what else do I talk about!  In Vancouver we have a restaurant called Romer's Burger Bar that I have been to a few times and I was reminded of it on Friday.  They have great burgers made of every type of meat you can think of. (They also have freshly made mini donuts with three dipping sauces, and truffle fries - but we won't talk about them.)  You can order whatever burger you want, with the fixings, in a small head of iceberg lettuce.  I had pastured ground beef in the defrost bowl at home and thought Friday night was a good night for hamburgers, so I stopped at my local vegetable stand to get the iceberg lettuce.  They had iceberg lettuce, but the heads were huge and they didn't look very appetizing, so I picked up some butter lettuce instead and here's the finished dish.

Added mustard, pickle and tomato - juicy but good.

The Importance of sleep

I just got a new phone today - a Samsung S4 - so cool, but I needed to get a case for it so it wouldn't get banged around in my purse, so off to the mall after work.

Paleo Grandad met me there and after getting the case, a nice red one (and a keyboard for my iPad - 20% off, how could I refuse?), we went into White Spot for dinner. As usual when  Paleo Grandad walks into a restaurant, his Paleo switch turns off and he chose a shrimp sandwich on sourdough bread with fries, which he said was "OK" only - I think we should save off-Paleo eating for "OMG delicious" and not just OK.

I try to stick as close to clean eating as I can, because I hate the stomach upsets I get when I don't so I am more motivated.

Back home again, and time to relax and de-stress before our ten o'clock bedtime.  We could have gone for a bike ride, but then I wouldn't have time to blog and that is a great de-stressor for me as well (find something you love to do).

The Paleo lifestyle is not just about the food you eat - though that is a really important one.  The Paleo lifestyle is diet, exercise and sleep.  I figured out a long time ago (as did Paleo Grandad) that that if I was tired you really don't want to be around me.  Heck, I didn't want to be around me.

I began having sleep problems (falling asleep and staying asleep) about 15 years ago and started taking medications to try to correct the problem - sleeping pills, anti-depressants and tranquilizers. Don't ever believe that any of these medications aren't "addictive".  They may not be in the sense that you can be addicted to say heroin, but the dependency these legal drugs create is pretty bad.  After awhile the dosages you are on stop working and you have to take more or switch to another medication with new side effects.  You begin to think that it is impossible to sleep unless you take the pills.