It was definitely a challenge learning how to cook Paleo. Pre-paleo our family consumed (not exaggerating) four gallons of milk, two pounds of cheese, about 16 yogurts, 2 cups sour cream, 2 blocks of cream cheese, and a quart of half-and-half every week. We love dairy! It seemed foreign to me to cook sans dairy. We also used to eat lots and lots of pizza, pastas, potatoes, rice, sandwich bread. I mean, come on, we're from the south, and love our home-cooked comfort foods! Cutting that out was hard in the beginning as well. The absolute hardest things was taking my creamer away! I switched to coconut milk and now I'm completely adjusted. But it was a battle in the beginning!
What we ate: eggs, eggs, eggs! Fruits, real nuts, seeds, vegetables, red meat, poultry, seafood, butter (supposed to be butter from grass-fed cows), coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, and sea salt. Brian lost 16 pounds and I dropped 4! The little kids still ate oatmeal and drank milk, though. Arden would have killed me if I took her chocolate milk away! They also got to have something sweet occasionally.
I cannot emphasize how much more energized we felt eating Paleo. The food didn't make us tired and groggy. It gave us energy. Duh, that's what food is supposed to do! It did take a couple of days for our bodies to detox, though. After a week I didn't crave chocolate and breads like I normally do. If you know me, the fact that I went thirty days without chocolate is unbelievable in itself!
Because we ate no processed food, I cooked every meal from scratch. That took a lot of prep time slicing, cutting, chopping. I bought a mandoline slicer to help with that! I also avoided pre-seasoned meats (but not always) and marinaded them myself. I spent A LOT of time in the kitchen. We ate a whole lot of raw fruits and veggies and snacked on nuts A LOT! We ate sooooo much. I felt like I was eating every thirty minutes. I probably ate about 8 fruits, about five cups of raw veggies, and 1 1/2 cups of nuts a day. Our grocery bill was $200 a week. About $125 was fruits and veggies, $40 on nuts, and the rest on meat. Not having the breads to give us the full feeling made us eat constantly. But we lost weight!
Some substitutions I made. Grated cauliflower makes an excellent substitute for rice! I made chicken stir fried "rice" and mexican "rice." Both were a hit! I subbed salad dressing with lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, pickle juice, and sea salt. For spaghetti I julienned zucchini. I subbed yellow squash slices for lasagna. Coconut milk and almond milk for regular milk. Eggs and bananas in a food processor and cooked in coconut oil make a good sub for pancakes. Chia seeds thicken recipes similar to cornstach and gelatin so I was able to make a blackberry jam. I traded peanut butter for almond butter or cashew butter, both of which are very good.
Most of my new recipes were successful, but I did have some fails! My cauliflower/squash pizza crust was my ultimate failure! Haha! Just ask Brian.
Some meals we ate:
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| cabbage, dill/mustard chicken breast, and cinnamon butternut squash. The butternut squash was amazing! |
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| breakfast bake made of plantains, apples, pears, cinnamon. drizzled it with agave nectar. |
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| tilapia, sliced baked sweet potatoes, lemon garlic spinach |
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| turkey sliders on plantain buns with a side of baked zucchini chips |
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| lunch: eggs and cilantro baked in muffin tins on turkey slices with a side of avocado |
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| pork ribs, orange zest beets and bells peppers, broccoli |
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| Jack's face after the beets |
AHH!! I need your self control. And taste buds.
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