DW's primal journal

@BTPost, all I know is I had two 6oz cans of Honey Boy pink salmon, boneless and skinless, each said 6 oz and "about 3 servings" on the can, and each one's contents weighed in around 4.5. I only know this because eating an entire can in one sitting was out of the question so I divided it up into 3 portions... none of which were 2 oz. But I pulled up their website earlier and it shows they make a 14+ oz can, a 7+ ounce can, and a 3.75 oz can... no 6. Both cans were from my old stores, no idea, probably a few years old. Maybe they don't make them any more, who knows? Buying some more this week tho and I intend to check them. If they don't weigh up, I intend to put on my self righteous beyotch face and make a few calls.

 

With snow on the ground and the wind high, I'm limiting my forays outside to feeding rabbits and retrieving dogs determined to stay outside. I should do some exercise, but I'm taking a lazy day instead.

Last night's frittata turned out so good it was all I could do not to go back for seconds. Today I'm glad I didn't, because I've got leftovers for lunch. It wasn't as good cold, but it was still good!

The jumbo sized tub o Kraft mayo is almost used up, and when it's gone I'm going to make some primal approved mayo using macadamia oil if I can find some, extra light olive if I can't.

On the menu this evening, cream cheesy zucchini with grilled lemon pepper asparagus and chicken quarters. I say grilled, we have a pellet grill now so it works more like a wood fired convection oven than my old 55 gallon barrel flame thrower. The chicken quarters went into an orange-lemon-black pepper brine last night, then got another sprinkling of the orange-lemon-pepper seasoning before going onto the grill. The asparagus was tossed in olive oil and dusted with lemon pepper. Video and recipe for cream cheesy zucchini Video: Cream Cheesy Zucchini - Allrecipes.com

 

I know these updates are dull as dirt to read, and judging from my food pr0n pics I'll never be hired as a food photographer, but by posting every day I ensure I won't say screw it and eat an entire box of mac & cheese. Coz there ain't no way I'd be posting THAT particular daily food diary.

In order to make tonight's dinner I needed arrowroot flour, which I've never heard of before let alone seen in a store. Since I had to go to the city to get the next set of Invisalign, I made a stop at this health food store I'd passed a million times but never stopped in. Nice little place, and to my surprise they had a cooler full of grass fed, pastured beef, pork, chicken, even a big friggin turkey. I'm kicking myself now for not seeing how much that turkey cost, but the pound of grass fed ground beef was $12. The pound of ground chuck was 7, so am wondering if the 12 one was ground sirloin or something. I'd about given up on the arrowroot flour when I spied it in a cooler. Apparently you have to keep it fridged or froze.

Breakfast was usual buttered avocado, with the last of the leftover frittata.
Lunch: salmon salad I made up the other day
Dinner: Bacon Apple Smothered Porkchops, courtesy of NomNomPaleo (recipe here), and the last of my mushrooms sauteed in butter and finished off with a bit of gravy off the porkchops. The Mr. got his requisite mashed taters, then grumbled that my shrooms looked good. *sigh*

Somewhere along the line I forgot to post a scale update. According to my tracker on MFP I've dropped 17.2 pounds since March 5. I guess I can't shrug it off as just water weight any more, huh?

Dinner looked prettier before I cooked it. Hrm.

 

I love your up-dates and I really do like your plates. They look breakable though. I have those horrible Wal-mart Corelle ware, amazing stuff (no clue what is in it) it bounces!

Anyways, back on subject.... congratulations!!!!!

 

Moto they ARE breakable. One cracked in half in the microwave, most of the bowls have chips. I have a complete set and they look awesome (or they did) but the truth is we have Chinet and plastic cup friends and fancy dinnerware is a waste. We were looking at replacing them with Corelle, ha!

I didn't do squat today. No walk, no yoga, no dog walk, no nada. Sat on my butt on the computer all day. Got half a chapter written on the book I'm working on, that's about it. According to the step meter on my cell, I took a whopping 2042 steps today (supposed to do 10k a day). Most of that was from going to the kitchen to refill my tea. My allergies have been haywire since the other day when I walked in the wind and dust. I totally can't breathe through my nose so now I'm a mouth breather, which makes me feel dehydrated all the time. I've drunk a gallon and a half today and my mouth is still dry.

Made scrambled eggs this morning with a couple tablespoons of heavy cream in them, plus some paprika, dry mustard, and a little pink salt. Yum! I haven't done scrambled eggs in forever but these turned out great.

Salmon cakes this evening, recipe from Primal Palate. http://www.primalpalate.com/paleo-recipe/salmon-cakes/. I tweaked it a bit, added whole flax seed and chopped green onion to the mix. They turned out great! Mixed mayo and Sriracha sauce together to dip them in, and made a salad from baby spinach, shaved almonds, bacon and a mandarin orange.

 

Since I've been so effin good over the past couple of months I decided to treat myself today. The local junior college has a cosmotology program and a salon where the last semester students do services for vastly reduced rates. I went by today and got a manicure and a pedicure, something I've not paid someone else to do in years because I'm cheap. It was really nice to just lean back and let someone else polish me off for a change. I used to be a salon whore, regular trips for nails, pedicure, facials, waxing, massages, insanely expensive smoothing treatments for my Merida hair. Last few years without my usual paycheck, I haven't been able to justify the expense to myself. The Mr. would have happily slipped me the cash but I don't feel right asking. Luckily the school's training salon is super cheap and though I wouldn't trust a noob anywhere NEAR my hair, I'm thrilled to let them wrangle my fingers and toes.

Breakfast was scrambled eggs with bacon and cheese. Met the Mr. for lunch but I wasn't hungry so I got a diet dr pepper (first one all year) and watched him eat, which he didn't much enjoy heh. Grabbed leftover salmon cakes for a 3 pm lunch. Dinner will be spaghetti and meatballs, my spaghetti being faked by slivered zucchini that definately won't taste like pasta, but I like zuc in my spaghetti so I'm ok with it.

Scale Proclamation: -1.2
Total Weight Loss: -18.4

And it's official. I still need to lose 5 more before I weigh what I did when we first met, but at the moment I'm in the pair of jeans I wore on our first date. They're tight but they're zipped up and I'm sitting down and still breathing. I'm still fat, but I'm down 2 pant sizes.

 

Congrats DW!

 

Spent most of the day outside working on the aquaponics systems. Eliminated the big tank on the older system and reran the plumbing so it feeds off what was the sump. Retrieved all my snails from the big tank and the remaining minnows from the other system and put them all in the sump-turned-fishtank. Relocated the more recent system from the garage to the back yard. We’ll be adding a third bed to it in the next week. Fish truck is due in a few weeks so wanted to have it running again by the time they rolled around. Knees and back and ankles hurt from all the back and forth but nice to get something done in such pretty weather.

Breakfast same as yesterday, skipped lunch, and meatza for dinner. I scored a pound of grass fed beef for this, and included black olives, onions, red sweet pepper, pepperoni, mushrooms, and some organic pizza sauce. Watched a few videos on YT of people making these. No one does it the same. Next time I’ll season the ground beef a LOT more and use twice as much pizza sauce.

Scale Survey Says: -1.6
Total loss: -20

 

That's diet food? Looks so good.

 

Yeah it threw my protein to fat ratio out of whack for the day but I figure one loopy day won't kill me. Tho the drawback seems to be now I'm hungry, my stomach is loudly growling, and it's 10:30 PM. Think I'm going to bed before I eat something.

 

Today we sliced and packed the bacon we had curing all week. I tried a piece of each kind. Maple Bourbon wins hands down, tho my jalapeno maple cure turned out pretty good too. The molasses/black pepper was just meh. Next time I'm going to try mixing up a habanero cure. Then we went to a hockey game, stopping by Hoffbraus for dinner just before the game. Hoffbraus has my beloved cheddar/bacon/jalapeno stuffed quail.

I only wish I'd skipped Starbucks after the game. Even dropping venti to tall and making it "skinny", the carb count tossed me way above my <20g goal. Oh well. One day. Won't kill me.

 

"Is it supposed to get thicker?"

Ignoring his question, my eyes remained fixed on the mason jar of oily slop before me. I was determined to blend it into submission if it took all night. Except it wasn't supposed to take all night, it was supposed to take twenty seconds. Something was clearly wrong.

"Maybe you forgot something."

"I didn't forget anything," I snapped. "I watched the video like five times."

I'd been looking forward to making my own, primal approved mayo since I first saw it online. It looked effortless, and yummy. In the video, the oil and egg and lemon juice and vinegar and assorted spices came together like magic, becoming thick, creamy homemade mayo in less than one minute.

On my counter, however, an entirely different story was playing out.

I started out with the same ingredients the gushing mayo goddess on Youtube did. Walnut oil, salt, dry mustard powder, vinegar, a fresh egg, and lemon juice. I used an immersion blender, just like she did, and mixed it in a pint mason jar, JUST. LIKE. SHE. DID.


I put the ingredients in the jar and let them rest like she told me to.


And then I realized my immersion blender wouldn't fit into a regular mouth jar so I carefully swapped it over to a wide mouth jar.


I mixed just like she said. 20 seconds, then came to the top. All I got was an oily mess. Everywhere. Liquid mayo went slinging all over the counter, the spice rack, my phone, and me. I tried mixing in an additional egg per several commenters' suggestions, but clearly the train had left the station and wasn't coming back.

Back to youtube to find another video, and another, and another. Add vinegar. Don't add vinegar. Egg yolks only, no wait use the whole thing. Done in 30 seconds, take 5 minutes to finish. No one could agree on a single method, but apparently everyone could make it work. Everyone except me. Back and forth from desk to kitchen to try the next person's advice, only to make yet another jar of egg oil. At least they were all in wide mouth jars from the start this time.



"Screw this, I quit," I grumbled, staring at the collection of contradictions on my screen. "I've already wasted an entire bottle of walnut oil and half a bottle of EVOO. AND I've used almost all the eggs I've gathered today. I'll buy frikkin Kraft."

My husband said nothing. He knows me. People have called me many names over the years, but quitter has never been one of them.

I managed to quit for fifteen minutes, then stomped back to the kitchen to try to salvage at least some of the mess. One videoer had said it could be salvaged by putting an egg in a bowl, whisking it, and adding the runny mess in slowly until it was right. I had 3 pints of what appeared to be goose snot and 2 eggs left.

I cracked an egg into a mixing bowl and began whisking. Carefully adding one of the wrecked pints, I held my breath as it finally began to come together and thicken. At last, it worked!



The salvage operation netted me two full pints, one in the fridge and one in the freezer. They're not thick like mayo, more like salad dressing, but since I only use mayo on my salad anyway that's fine by me.

In other news, stayed busy cleaning house nearly all day.

 

I hate my scale. We bought a new one so I wouldn't have to get on and off ten times and average all the numbers, but this one does it as well. Last week it flirted with me, hell it downright talked dirty to me, showed me a number I've not seen in years. Now the bi-polar bitch refuses to so much as wink, instead flashing me digits four and five numbers higher, a different one every minute. It's extremely frustrating, especially when I've not cheated once, not ONCE, and there's no way I've gained four pounds back. Not when I'm running over a 1000 calorie deficit a day. Try as I might I cannot make myself only weigh once a week. The paranoid voice in my head frets that if I do that, I might weigh on one of the scale's PMS days and get a number considerably higher than if we catch it on a good one, and then I'll just have to drink my dinner. Part of me is ready to say Eff It and go make some mac&cheese, but the louder part keeps screaming "Victoria's Secret Gift Card!", which is what I get if I get down to college jeans, so the cheesy pasta will have to wait.

Skipped breakfast the last couple of days. I was hungry but not distractingly so. This week is spring cleaning, deep cleaning the entire house one room a day. The kitchen/laundry room took 6 hours yesterday. Wore myself out pulling appliances, washer and dryer, fridge out, crawling behind them, over them, under them, scraping floor and cabinets and walls. Part of the cleanup involved cleaning the LTS buckets parked in the laundry room. Hundred and fifty pounds of rice gonna last longer than I thought now that I'm not eating any of it, heh.

I am getting to where I don't need to weigh stuff as much now. I know what 50 grams of sweet pepper or an ounce of cheese looks like now. Putting stuff on a scale really drove home how much both of us were overeating. Maybe we didn't eat junk food or sweets all the time, but we were def putting too much on the plates.

Dinner tonight is sausage spinach stuffed portobello mushrooms, recipe pulled from Nom Nom Paleo.
Sausage and Spinach Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms | Award-Winning Paleo Recipes | Nom Nom Paleo

 

I haven't updated in a few days but I've been good for the most part. Sometimes I have trouble making fat the biggest percentage of calories instead of protein. Keeping the carbs down isn't a problem, tho I have to make myself remember to throw in veggies sometimes. I did score a few pieces of sushi when we went out Friday, and I had a Starbucks vanilla frappuccino this morning but other than that everything's stayed primal.

The scale refuses to budge. We are no longer on speaking terms. If she doesn't put out soon, she's going to be relocated to the bottom of the dumpster. In despair, I turned to the back of my closet for comfort, to the old, abandoned dresses and pants that squeezed me out years ago. Fearing they too would be faced with eviction, they eagerly welcomed me in. Some were a bit too clingy but apparently in all the right places according to the Mr. I only hope the scale has seen how easily she can be replaced, and sees fit to adjust her future reactions to me.

The spinach sausage stuffed portobellos and creamy lemon chicken w asparagus recipes I found were SO GOOD! I changed the chicken recipe up a bit, used turkey breast and waaaay more lemon pepper than the 1/2 tsp it called for, and I cooked the sauce down until it was nearly gone. I also used arrowroot flour in place of wheat flour.... must treat that stuff like cornstarch and add it to cold liquid first, never hot, or it gels immediately. Found that out the hard way and had to dump the first batch of sauce. On the portobellos I broiled them a bit longer than the recipe called for, until the outside of the sausage was brown and crispy, and mine didn't fall apart like their's did so maybe that did the trick. They got gobbled up.

In leu of traditional exercise this week, I've been cleaning the house. 6 hours cleaning the kitchen, 4 cleaning the two bathrooms, and the living room was an all day affair that involved moving heavy furniture and swearing at the mountains of dog hair hiding under them. Yesterday was the garage. Today I'm too sore to move.