This Week with Our Paleo Family

I’m sorry I didn’t get this out over the weekend, but I had very important things that took precedence this week:

  1. I had an all day date with my husband. Time away we desperately needed.
  2. The Downton Abbey finale was on last night.

As much as I love working on this blog, I do have my priorities. 🙂

Don’t, you just love a happy ending? I won’t spoil anything in case you haven’t yet seen the finale of Downton Abbey, but I will say that it was a good one. It left my heart smiling. I know there are movie and TV making people who think we want lots of drama and cliff-hangers and sad/twisted endings, but we want happy endings. Don’t we? We want closure. We want to be left feeling light, not heavy. Thank you, Julian Fellows for giving us great characters to love and hate for six years and then tying it all up for us in a satisfying package. Now, we can move on with our real lives.

If you’d like your tummy to feel happy and light as well, try out one or all of the new recipes I posted this week.

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Crispy Baked Cod with Sweet Potato Soldiers. Soldiers is just a fancy name for thick, round chunks of potatoes, but it sounds nice, doesn’t it?

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Easy, weeknight frittata. This is a great one to make at the end of the week to clean up all the bits of vegetables and meats left from earlier meals. It’s easy, it’s delicious and it seems fancy, but isn’t lots of work fancy.

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A great side dish for the frittata, or anything really, is the wilted kale salad. Spinach salad with warm bacon dressing is one of my favorites so that was the inspiration for this kale salad. Plus, I know there are some kale haters out there, so I wanted to create something that anyone would enjoy.

I updated the Beef Stroganoff recipe this week. I wanted to see if I could punch up the flavor just a bit, so I added a couple teaspoons of coconut aminos with the broth. It was great before, but this addition made it even tastier. If that’s a recipe you’ve tried or printed out, check back for the updated recipe. There’s just this one slight change.

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We celebrated a birthday in my family this week, which gave me the opportunity to create a paleo cake. I really enjoy cooking, but I think I like baking even more. Perhaps you figured that out with all the Christmas Cookies I posted last December!

This time around, it was carrot cake (totally paleo) with real cream cheese frosting (totally not paleo). The great thing about this cake though was that it was so full of flavor that it would be fantastic without any frosting at all. But no, I’m not going to be posting that recipe…..yet. I’m working on an ebook, working title is Celebrate! There will be paleo and autoimmune-friendly recipes for all the ways we celebrate through the year, including all the basics like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, with extras like birthdays, Cinco de Mayo, Fourth of July, backyard BBQs, and more.

This book is actively in the works and my goal is to have it out before Thanksgiving. Pray for my technical abilities and photography skills!

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Also new this week is the article on my family’s transition to paleo. There’s nothing earth-shattering in there if you’ve been eating this way for a while, but if you know someone who is new to paleo or was just diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and are trying to find their way, I hope this article will be helpful. Please send it along to those you think it might benefit.

Oh, yes, the Whole 30 Day Sugar Detox. I guess I’m charging on ahead, but I seem to have lost some steam. Maybe it’s because I slipped up and started over a couple weeks ago. This exercise seems to be dragging on and on. Nothing major is happening. I don’t have boundless energy, but I don’t feel bad either. I don’t suppose I’ll be recruited as the poster child for either the Whole 30 or 21 Day Sugar Detox anytime soon.

My husband and I just spent a wonderful day at the beach this past weekend and we stopped at this great, local ice cream place. My sweet husband did a great job of not mentioning it and then asking me if I was sure I wanted to stop when I kept bringing it up. Yes, I was sure! I enjoyed every bite without the slightest twinge of guilt.

To me, that’s what this whole thing has been about. I’m finding out that I feel best when I don’t eat much sugar. I’m craving sweets less and less. BUT when it’s a special occasion and the treat is really worthy, I’m going for it.

I hope you get out in the beautiful sunshine and make it a great week! And if you haven’t watched Downton Abbey, what is wrong with you? I’m just kidding. Just remember, it’s never too late to start. The first five seasons are available on Netflix. For those of you (like me) who sometimes have a hard time understanding their British accents, you can rewind and replay to your heart’s content. Around here we joke that I don’t understand English – just American. You have to say “American” with a twangy, Southern accent for that to be funny. 🙂