our paleo* adventure : day 16

Since we’re in the second half of this month-long (or longer?) diet, and I’m continuing to get questions from people about it, I thought I’d offer a quick refresher.  As I mentioned in my first post about our diet this month, I’m calling it a paleo* (with an asterisk) adventure because we’re doing an adapted paleo diet. The strict paleo diet includes only meat, nuts, most fruits/veggies (and excludes dairy as well as many other foods like legumes, grains, sugars, various oils, etc.).  Our family is simply attempting to eliminate grains and sugars from our diet.

If you click on the links within my posts, it takes you to the recipes that I’m using as a starting point for the foods (like the almond-flour chocolate chip cookies) we’re eating, which you will see are mostly sugar-free (I’m using agave nectar instead of sugar, but am also starting to try substituting honey instead of agave in recipes), grain-free (usually made with almond flour), and sometimes dairy-free as well.  Again, if the recipe link DOES include any of the no-no ingredients, I have substituted agave nectar or honey for the sugar, almond flour for the grain flour, unsweetened 100% cocoa for the chocolate, and other non-grain, non-sugar substitutes.  If you have questions about recipes, how we feel on this diet, or anything else – please ask! I might not know all the answers from a strict paleo perspective, but I can certainly answer from our experience!  Okay… on to today…

Breakfast : one egg omelet with parmesan and some of the leftover almond-crusted tilapia from last night, one banana, a small fruit salad (strawberries, pineapple, apple), water, and coffee

Lunch : one meat and cheese roll-up (5 slices ham, 1 slice provolone), 5 big strawberries, about 1 c. snap peas with hummus, water, 3 almond-flour chocolate chip cookies

Snack : one almond-flour chocolate chip cookie

Dinner : one jalapeno polish sausage (no bun of course), fruit salad (strawberries, bananas, kiwi, blueberries, yogurt), lots of snap peas and carrots with hummus, water, 3 almond-flour chocolate chip cookies for dessert.  This was the first dinner in a while that I missed being able to just throw a Tombstone pizza in the oven and be done with it… It was a long day, and that sounded so easy and yummy, but thankfully I didn’t have any pizza in the freezer to tempt me!  So I decided that tomorrow we’re going to make paleo pizza for supper!

Bedtime snack : will probably be a few more almond-flour chocolate chip cookies, and a glass of milk…

Oh, and today was also grocery shopping day!!  I was excited to hear about a 10-for-10 sale on strawberries at Meijer, so Eden and I stopped there first thing this morning… and then I was doubly-excited to see the 10-for-10 was also get the 11th one free AND mix-and-match with avocados!  So I got…

8 pints of strawberries
3 avocados
2 bunches of bananas
fresh cilantro
3 roma tomatoes
green onions
green grapes
3 kiwi
2 bags of broccoli
1 bag baby spinach
2 bags baby carrots
3 plums
1 bag granny smith apples
1 big bag of sliced almonds
honey
2 gallons milk (whole and skim)
yellow mustard
lime juice
2 containers of hummus
1 jar shredded parmesan
1 pkg. sliced provolone
vanilla extract
sour cream
12 cups light generic yogurt
8 cups light activia yogurt
2 pkg. dried apricots
2 bags of frozen chicken breasts
1 pkg. frozen salmon
1 family-size pkg. pork chops
1 family-size pkg. ham lunch meat
18 eggs

Total : about $130