Paleo Jabber: Typical eats, Sauerkraut, Paleo Bread, Gummy and Lost Art of Play

Paleo is not just a diet, it is a lifestyle.  It is reconnecting with the root of our nature. Paleo lifestyle does not just mean eating a lot of meat, fat and vegetables.  It also means respect our bodies, get enough sleep, and listen to our primitive needs to play, move around, and sweat.

But let’s talk food first.

What my paleo eats look like

I got people asking me my typical eats look like, if I don’t eat grains? So I list what I eat over a few days.  I also include meals that I eat out or our at a bar, so you get the whole picture, not just the perfect paleo day.

day 1 (normal weekdays) 

- breakfast: 2 eggs, 2 bacon strips, some pearl tomatoes, with 1 zucchini

-snack: some dried mangoes from TJ

-lunch: Quinoa salad with grilled chicken and baby spinach  (eat out)

-dinner: 2 eggs green onion thai omelette with grass-fed beef curry and some cucumbers

-dessert: a glass of wine with some Brie

day 2 (Friday)

-breakfast: no breakfast because I got up late and was going to have lunch with some friends.

-snack: Walnuts, a plumcot (a cross between plum and apricot. They are only available in this season, and I just discovered them a few weeks ago. They are my favorite fruit now!)

-lunch:  Thai spicy basil stir fry with pork, pepper, yellow squash, etc with rice.

-dinner: 1 pint of Strongbowl (sub this instead of beer because it has low gluten, but high sugar. I do drink beer usually.) and snack some bar appetizers–1 bbq chicken wing, some house potato fries with curry sauce, dressed baked potatoes, fried fish with tartar sauce.

day 3 (Sunday)

-breakfast: no breakfast, before morning yoga practice

-snack: coconut water

-lunch: rib-eye steak with mashed fennel cauliflower, radishes and tomatoes glazed in balsamic vinegar with some honey

-snack: 3 mochi, 2 trader-joe’s macarons  and 1 plumcot (I have got the munchies today–  lady hormonal munchies ;p)

-dinner: swiss chard stir-fry with minced pork, dried shrimps, onion, and hemp seeds.

Homemade Sauerkraut

Besides eating  a lot of vegetables, one way to keep our digestive system healthy is to have probiotic food, be it yogurt, kefir, kombucha, or sauerkraut. All kinds of fermented goodies.

I love drinking Kombucha, but that can become expensive. I tried brewing it a few times at home. I drank one of the batch and I was Okay. Well, two of the later batches got some small colony of molds on them. I got scared, and might give up on making my own Kombucha.

Purple cabbage with carrot and raisins sauerkraut

So this time I try Sauerkraut.  You can get sauerkraut, but it’s hard to find raw sauerkraut. I was lucky to find one at a local farmer market, but it was quite expensive. So I decided to make my own raw sauerkraut, because really  1 cabbage is like a few dollars and all you need is containers and salt with some water, and time to ferment.

I got recipe from balanced-bites for this recipe and some information from here to make them in mason jars, if you don’t own a big jar.

Ingredients: 

1 head of cabbage

1 tbs of salt

water (to submerge cabbage)

(for this purple sauerkraut, I added 1 carrot, shredded and a handful of golden raisins)

“Instructions:”

Basically, you shredded a head of cabbage, and use about 1 tbs of salt pouring that over the shredded cabbage and work it until cabbage yields water out. Then mix the cabbage with some spices, or other ingredients as you like, and put the mixture in a sanitized jar. Pour water to cover cabbage about 2″ under water and find a plate or a glass to put pressure on the cabbage. Leave to ferment for two weeks. Check back regularly to make sure all the cabbage is submerged under water. There will be white films, or mold on the surface. They are harmless. Remove white mold if you see any.  The key is to have cabbage submerged under water at all time, then it is safe.

Fermenting stuff can be intimidating, at least for me.  I was hesitant to eat them because white films on the surface during the fermentation process scare me.  But I had mine a few times already and I am OK so far.  :)

Recipes

Sometimes, you can’t help feeling deprived eating paleo. But don’t despair, before the invention of processed food and additives, people did have treats too. There are always paleo alternatives. Two of my favorites finds this past weeks was

• Sour star gummy recipe. The recipe is very simple (5 mins prep) , and very few ingredients. Just gelatin, acid juice and (optional) sweetener
• Paleo bread. I particularly love this recipe because it’s very simple. Just coconut flour, eggs (lots of them), butter and baking powder.

The Lost Art of Play

Here is a video of Mark Sisson talking about the importance of playing

“Play is purposeless, all consuming and fun”

The video is quite long, so I summarize what I like from the video here. The first thing that catches my attention is that play is “all consuming.” That is the same as being in the moment. I remember when I was younger, I played a lot– running around, climbing trees, or bullying my brother (oops! sorry, bro). Back then I  can learn so much, so quickly. (Well, I was also a kid and had such a beginner mind). But anyway, I think I was happier back then, because I did not ‘think’ so much, but engaged in the moment more.

Second important point of playing is to give us opportunities to experiment with what we do. Playing is like real life simulation that we can learn how to interact with other people.  We can develop emotional intelligence from playing, and  get to experiment with our creativity to see if the idea works.