Small Victory

Ron and I take turns walking Pippa in the morning. My days off from walking her are supposed to be my running days.

However, this morning, Pippa refused to go with Ron. She looked at me like this:

Recipe Success: Garlic Cauliflower "Mashed Potatoes"

I dunno. I just feel like
 something's missing.

One big challenge to Paleo eating is coming up with a meal that feels complete, and not like a bunch of groceries. Without a starch, the plate just seems a bit unbalanced to me.

In my search for ideas, I found the awesome website Nom Nom Paleo.  The author is a mom and a nurse, but she must have some sort of deal with the devil that allows her extra hours in the day, because she also blogs and takes gorgeous food porn photos.

Whatever she's doing, it's working.

Last night I tried one of her recipes, for Garlic Cauliflower "Mashed Potatoes", and it was perfect.  It was super-easy to make, cheap, delicious, and sufficiently "starchy" to make a Paleo dinner of chicken sausages and salad (for Ron), or a crab cake, tomato and avocado (for me), feel tied together and satisfying.

I'm baaaack!

Better than my usual commute.

Pop Quiz:

In which location is it most challenging to secure an Internet connection?

A. Lusaka, Zambia
B. Cranberry Lake, New York

OK, these set ups are always a little obvious. But still, it's a little surprising, right?

I spent the last week at my family's vacation place in the Adirondacks, in upper New York State. It's a 10 hour drive from DC, and our cabins are at the far end of the lake. There are no roads, no phones, no electricity, no indoor plumbing- and of course, no Internet. It is fabulous.

For the week at the lake, I didn't worry about Paleo. There is only one week a year when I eat s'mores, and I'm not going to skip them because cavemen were too dumb to figure out marshmallows.

I researched this extensively.

The 2 weeks in Zambia were also less than stellar, diet-wise. I posted about nshima, the staple of Zambian food. It is a tasty, slightly sticky corn pudding that is eaten at every Zambian lunch- and it is definitely not Paleo.

Nor was the delicious South African red wine I drank at dinner pretty much every night, for that matter.

I weighed myself this morning, and the damage was not as bad as it could have been.  I also went for my first run in 3 weeks, and felt pretty good.

And now, it's back on the bandwagon with Paleo. I'll report the findings after the end of this week- I'm hoping the little bump up is a result of these bad boys:

Sadly, totally not worth it.

Ron and I eat fast food exactly twice a year, on the way to and home from Cranberry Lake. This year, we made it a mission to consume these tacos, which have a shell made of Doritos and have given the foodie blogosphere a massive collective orgasm.

And... meh. They were salty, which is my favorite flavor. But, you know, they're still filled with Taco Bell meat (Ron corrected me- "meat").

A quick aside: a friend of ours told us once that she went into Taco Bell and ordered a taco, and the guy said they were out. So she ordered a burrito, and he said they were out of those as well. "How can you be out of tacos and burritos?" she asked. With a totally straight face, he said "Well, the meat hose is clogged."

Huh huh. Meat hose.

Anyway, I won't miss them between now and next August. And we noticed that Dunkin' Donuts was advertising Oreo donuts, so the mad geniuses are already work at next year's hideous/delicious Frankensnack.

Happy Weekend!

I'm in Livingstone for the weekend, going to see Victoria Falls and some rhinos and whatever else we come across.

Internet connection is spotty at best, so just going to post this fabulous video- a recreation of a fairly well known experiment testing kids' ability to balance immediate gratification against long-term reward. They draw all kinds of Big Conclusions from the real study (summarized here), but basically, I'm posting this because it's cute, and it's Friday.

Have a great weekend!

Chiwawa, Kapenta and Nshima, Oh My!

Here is the truth about traveling for work: it is mostly just a lot of work.

I was a bit worried about what I'd write about today, because since arriving my activities have included:

1. Working in my hotel room
2. Working in my hotel dining room
3. Working my hotel bar
4. Working in a training session
5. Working in my Zambia team's office

But there are upsides as well, such as hotel breakfasts. I like them. A lot.

I Fought Airplane Food, and I Won

1st rule of business: Know your customer

You guys, someone should alert the UN about the size of KLM's economy class seats. Someday we will look back on these days in the same way we look at the imprisonment of debtors and the mentally unwell- as a dark period of barbarity before enlightened thought triumphed.

After 24 hours of being kept in a stress position and deprived of sleep, I have arrived in Zambia.

There was plenty that didn't go right with the trip, but one thing that did go right was my snacking.

Me and My Salami Are Outta Here!

Thanks for checking in! I'm somewhere airborne at the moment, trying to avoid being murdered by my seat mate for eating hardboiled eggs and salami in an enclosed space. In the meantime, take a look at this cool infographic from PaleolithicDiet.com:

Source: infographic.paleolithicdiet.com via Rebecca on Pinterest

Paleo Week 2 Review

Sorry. Sometimes cute cat photos just say it best. 

Week 2 was a doozy- a major client report was due, and I am leaving for 3 weeks of travel, so getting prepared to get out of the office was a killer. 

OMG I can't believe I say things like that now. When did I get so old? Pass the Metamucil, would you?

Week 5 Round-Up: Olympic Edition

I just love the Olympics, like the great big jingoistic fool that I am. Not surprisingly, there've been tons of great health and and athletics articles out around the games.

This is my favorite link of the week:

I just love her. (Michelle, call me! I totally love vegetables too! We can hang out!)

And my 2nd favorite, demonstrating how NBC is propagating its homosexual agenda (and thank god for it) (Really NBC? Seacrest? REALLY?)

Source: buzzfeed.com via Rebecca on Pinterest

Breaking (Paleo) Bad

I cooked up something preeeety special last night, guys.

This recipe coulda saved poor Walt so much heartache.

Paleo Is, Like, Superhard, Y'all

Duh, y'all. Dinner with no starch is like
 a short skirt with no panties. At first you're all
like, "Who'll even notice?' and then, like,
EVERYONE TOTALLY DOES.

So, remember 2 days ago when I said Paleo was pretty easy to work into your everyday life? I'd like to reconsider.

Two things:
1) If you don't grocery shop and do most of the cooking on the weekend, you are totally screwed. I intended to make a Paleo granola to eat for breakfast all week, which takes an hour plus to cook.

But I did the grocery shopping on Monday. By the time I got home from work, it was too late to cook. So we ordered Thai (very easy to do Paleo) and didn't cook the granola. Tonight, surprise dinner plans came up and again, no cooking.

I am holding out hope for tomorrow and the granola, but by then, Ron will have had 3 mornings of "Paleo" scones- which are like regular scones, in that they are actually just regular scones that he is calling Paleo.