Paleo.... What?

You may have noticed me mention "Paleo" a couple of times since I've rebooted the blog. Believe me, I've been asked on more than one occasion what that's all about. You may recall I went gluten-free a couple of years back? For us, Paleo has just become a natural progression of that.

So what is Paleo? Instead of me typing out a big long guide to Paleo, below the picture is a link to an excellent article that tells all about it. It also has Lego illustrations, so it is entertaining, and well as informative.

--> Link to: The Beginner's Guide to Paleo.

If you don't want to click over and read that (Though if you are interested, you should, it's great info.) here's a picto-word gram to help you out.

Any clearer, now? For us, since we'd already cut out gluten, it was just a matter of cutting out processed sugars, dairy and legumes. Oh, and Jason cut out Diet Coke, which if you know him at all, you know that is a REALLY big deal.  Looking at the list, it does seem a little overwhelming. But it's totally doable. 

Here are some of the replacement staples in our pantry:

In place of regular flour, we use almond flour, coconut flour, tapioca starch, and arrowroot flour.

In place of refined white and brown sugar, we use maple syrup, honey, and coconut sugar.

Instead of vegetable and canola oils, we use olive oil, coconut oil, ghee, and bacon grease.

That's not so bad, right? Of course there are the beans and peas that we've had to give up, but that has just made us try veggies we don't normally buy to add variety.

The rest of pantry stocking is mostly reading labels and lots of prepping and preparing things yourself. When you start looking at labels, you'd be amazed at some of the junk that is in seemingly healthy foods. 

As for preparing things yourself, I now make all of our mayonnaise and sauces and dressing. Well, except mustard, Paleo-friendly mustard is easy to find.  The rest is just basically a combination of oils, vinegars, herbs, spices and juices. Keep an eye out and I will post our favorite sauce recipes soon!

And last, but definitely not least is the prepping. I'm not going to lie about the prepping. It is totally a pain. Mostly in the back, because there is a ton of standing and chopping stuff. You also have to plan meals so you aren't overbuying and wasting food. Since fresh is the best way to go, it's easy for your produce to go bad before you get a chance to use it. 

 In addition to chopping and prepping stuff, I try to have cook days a couple times a week. Like on Sunday, I cook up enough breakfast food to last a few days, and I try to have meats or other protein available that just need popped in the microwave for a warm up. We've found the worst thing about Paleo is the lack of "convenience" food. When you get hungry on Paleo, you really are hungry, and not just having a case of the munchies. It's "I need food right now" hungry! 

So overall, Paleo is a bit more time consuming than how we used to eat, but it's totally worth it in the end.