Curry, Soup and Bacon Fried Sweet Potatos

Breakfast of champions.  2 slices bacon, and half of a large sweet potato cooked in the grease thereof.

It's a simple recipe and a simple breakfast, but delicious.










Speaking of delicious.  I was in a wicked curry mood today, and I had a lot of portabella chunks leftover from last night Bison Burgers.

I added an onion and a can of coconut milk to make a nice "mushroom curry".

Basil is always recommended as well, I used basil and some bay leaf.

And!  Thai Kitchen Green Curry Paste.

This stuff combined with coconut milk are pretty much a curry.  There you have it.

Next:  Veggie Beef Stew:
- 1 lb ground hamburger
- 1 onion
- a few carrots
- some celery
- some green beans.
- vegetable stock (2 of the smaller containers)









Instructions: Cook the onions in a little bit of oil or lard, whatever's handy.

Add in and brown the hamburger.

Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for a long time (until it's ready).

Add salt or "Slap Ya Mama" for some seasoning.





 Also pictured above is some deer, turnips, squash and onions,

Pretty much browned on the stove and cooked in a dutch oven.  Simple stuff, I ate that with some curry paste.

Yum.

Breakfast and Bella-Burgers

How to have breakfast brussel sprouts:

 1. Cook bacon.

Notice that the bacon makes yummy grease to cook other stuff in.

:)








2.  Cook Egg

Think of how nice it is that you have yummy bacon grease.












3.  Cook veggies.

Now all of the grease is gone, but your veggies are good.

How'd that happen?

Add some coffee and you have breakfast.






Portabella burgers are awesome.

For the burgers

- 1 lb ground bison
- 4 portabella mushrooms.
- Some Guacamole
- Tomatoes, lettuce, pickles









For the sweet potatoes

- Cut up some sweet potatoes like fries
- Cook in oven at 375.

Most importantly, do not coat with a thin layer of olive oil.  :(  Next time I am thinking some coconut oil or some form of animal fat might to the trick much better.

New Shoes, Hole punch?

This post will be less involved tonight.  Promise.

There will be a cool review on these "invisible shoes" once my leather punch comes in from Amazon.  These are the "make them yourself" variety of minimalist sandal.

Pretty cool, stoked.  Review coming soon.

In other news, Tomie cooked tonight.  Shrimp, okra and tomatoes and a whack of sweet potato.

Lunch was yesterday's chili.

I also threw down on some 90% dark today.







My energy levels were fine today, no more low-carb flu.  Glad that's over!

1 week down.  Feeling good about January.

Chili Walkthrough

 Low-carb flu seems to be wearing off.  I have shed all of my extra Christmas poundage in just a few days.  Extra padding really can fall off rather quickly after a binge.

Tonight's supper was 2 parts.  Tomie had salmon and broccoli waiting for me when I got home.  Note my own clever touch of Louisiana.  Bam!





Nourished, I started the chili (about a 1.5 hour gig by my watch).

Ingredients (Pictured):

• Ground Axis Deer
• Onion
• Okra
• Tomatoes (2 cans whole, 1 can paste)
• 1 Chili in Adobo
• Seasonings

I also ended up adding 2 squash and some stock.  Chili isn't about having a plan, it's about dismissing our illusions of control and letting go.

Bit of olive oil, brown the onions, and then add the meat.

Wait for the meat to brown (pictured below) and make sure to work most of the big chunks out with your spoon.

Then, I add the stock, tomatoes, and smoosh those up with the spoon.

Traditionally I'd add 1 or 2 beers (which cook into sugars and add sweetness) at this point, but alas, this month that wouldn't fit with my dietary goals.

I chopped the okra while simmering the tomatoes and then, after adding over half the package above, I decided that a bit of diversity was needed, so I hacked in 2 squash.

I hit the gym and let the chili "rest" after about an hour and a half of simmering.

I came home to a very nice bowl.  Not very spicy, actually, and less sweet than I am accustomed too, but nourishing and very good.



Today turned out much better than yesterday and I feel very good about my chances of keeping a decent degree of dietary purity this month.

Next week looks to be a whack of overtime at work, so that might throw a wrench at me, but I'm pretty stoked to see how the month turns out.

Low Down

We are from Brussels!

Despite eating some apples and bananas over the last 3 days, my carb intake has been a bit low compared to Christmas' eat-athon.

From experience, there's usually a spot of the "low carb flu" when you are going ketogenic, and I'm pretty sure I've hit it.  I should be sleeping more.  

I figured the fruit and sweet potato would blunt it, but I'm a bit tired.  

My stomach has been doing well, on the bright side.  

My favorite chocolate in the wide world.

Lunch was an apple, banana, Shepherd's Pie and more of the ubiquitous cabbage and squash.

Tonight I had a lighter supper, bacon cooked to season shallot and Brussel sprouts, more squash and....

88% Endangered Species Extreme Dark Chocolate.

It's my favorite dark chocolate.  It packs a kick and is a bit chalky, but it's got a nice mouth-feel and a couple of rows tends to leave me with a sense of well-being.  This stuff is low-dose heroine.

I am looking forward to making some axis-deer chili with okra and tomatoes soon.  Maybe tomorrow.  

Bit tired tomorrow, going to get some sleep.  Ask me why I got mad at a package of bacon some time.  

Stupid, stupid bacon, disgraced the beautiful pork belly from whence it was carved.  I'm too incensed to blog it!  

Gauciflower, coconut shrimp and sprints.

Killer Quilt!

First things first.  A big thanks to Mrs. Sarah Stocks for making us a killer Dr. Seuss themed baby quilt for our upcoming addition.  Woot!

Today, I got pretty gnarly hungry after eating shephards pie for lunch along with cabbage and turnips.

And, what do we do when we get hungry?

BACON!!!!!

BACON!

Paleo can put you onto some wicked low fat content if you don't take adequate measures.  Four pieces of crispy bacon later, and I was feeling right.

We love bacon grease!

The bacon provides grease for these wonderful little squashes (onions below).

I threw down hard and ate ample animal fat tonight (sorry axis deer, you're too lean).  All you soybean oil and canola oil eatin' peeps need to get the memo.  Bacon grease is where it's at for veggies.  It holds up to heat well (since it's saturated fat) and makes everything taste awesome.

Speaking of saturated fat....





Coconut oil is a great medium for pan frying shrimp.  The rest were boiled, but I felt like playing around.  Tomie and I ate a full pound and a half of shrimp tonight.

To get my fat content up, I added a whack of guac and broc.  You heard it here: It's a marriage made in heaven.

The simple premixed guacamole from our HEB has surprisingly natural ingredients.  To boot, I fail at picking out ripe avocados, so it's a great way to get in some healthy fat calories and keep from getting sabotaged by your own hunger pangs.




I finished tonight with full on zombie-drill 28 Days Later sprints.

5 sets of 20 - 30 seconds full on sprints with a minute of cool-down time between them.  I do these every 7 - 10 days religiously.  It's the one workout I don't miss each week.

It's a simple idea.  Pretend something is chasing you and beat feet.

Sprinting vital, according to Mark Sisson and Tim Ferris as it promotes your GLUT-4 transporters and keeps your food in your muscles and out of your rump.

The spread.  Yum!  (Whack of sweet potato nuked for 5 mins in saran wrap).  

Free free to skip the nerd stuff, but still try to find time to move like something's chasing you.

Success and Failure

Jan-2 was a major dietary and activity success. At 7pm I would have smiled and told you that this day of the 30 day challenge was in the W column. I had 0 grains, no nasty sugars, no legumes, got in a quick workout, played with my daughter (which is play and lift heavy things combined), and was even going to use my brain by finishing up some last minute work stuff...

But before the story of failure, let's talk status, intake and exercise.

Status
Yesterday morning I weighed 161.2 - Just so you know, I'm 5'10. So not bad overall, but there's too much flab and not enough tone, and my energy levels are very low.

Intake

I started my day with bacon and eggs, followed up with a spinach salad with strawberries and walnuts for lunch. Midways between lunch and dinner I managed to get a banana/strawberry/raspberry/blackberry smoothie in, and my wife (who is also doing the 30 day challenge and going Primal this year) made ginger/maple/apple pork chops for dinner. Apologies for the lack of pictures, I'll fix that in the future. Rusty's Shepard's Pie pics make his post look better than mine and I can't have that.

Exercise

Here's my confession... I have been embarrassingly stagnate over the past.... 4 months or so. No sense in placing any blame, it is what it is, and I'm a lazy out of shape slob. That said, I did two sets of 25 crunches and one set of 25 push-ups yesterday. I'll be ramping that up as I start feeling better.

Fail

Ok, I promised a fail - and that would be with Primal Challenge #6 Get Adequate Sleep. It's my weakest category anyway, but mix in a collicky 3 week old, and a large amount of work I needed to finish up before my Belgian team members get into the office at 3am, and the fail becomes epic.

Long boring story short, I managed to pass out in front of my computer at some time after 4am. My wife woke me up around 5:30 and I slept until it was time to wake up for my 7am meeting.

You can imagine how my day is going... I did, however, weigh in at 159.4 this morning and made a breakfast of Almonds and a banana. Lunch will be leftovers from that pork dish and dinner is still up in the air.

More to come - GROK ON!