Thursday, April 28, 2011

Paleo / Primal Shortcuts: Knowing Your Strengths, While Learning from Others

When I first dove into the primal lifestyle last June, I put lots of pressure on myself to tackle the whole spectrum of paleo eating styles right away: acquiring lots of high quality fats, baking paleo goodies, sourcing higher quality foods, and so on. I guess that I thought that it was an all-or-nothing venture! But soon I learned that it was folly to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

For me, going from zero to sixty like that was exhausting - I wasn't managing very well. Then it dawned on me: There's a whole community of likeminded folks on the Internet just overflowing with solid nutritional information and recipes.

Why would I try to become a paleo baking expert overnight? I sure wasn't a baking expert before jumping into primal life, so I knew that I could end up burning up a lot of time and somewhat more expensive specialty ingredients (coconut flour, nut butters, etc.) in a quest to perfect a baked creation of my own.

Meanwhile, there were so many great blogs with scrumptious primal / paleo-friendly baked goods that my family and guests could enjoy, that it suddenly made sense to get a feel for primal / paleo baking by making some of these recipes for a while, first. To throw just a few examples out there (and there are so many more!):

This my slice of Bill's Chiffon Pumpkin Pie, via
The Food Lovers' Primal Palate,
which I chose to contribute to our family's
feast last Thanksgiving. Yum!

Deciding to try these recipes has been lots of fun - and guess what? While baking these recipes has taught me lots about the natures of different ingredients and their combinations, letting others' wisdom and experience "write" a delicious dessert menu has freed me up to spend more of my time and resources experimenting in areas where I'm more comfortable - sauces and reductions, roasts, grilling marinades, soups, smoothies, ice cream, etc. I call this a win-win!

Have you decided to "apprentice" yourself by trying out recipes or tutorials from other wise and experienced real-food folks? What sites and writers have you enjoyed and sought to help learn more about areas where you're not so experienced or comfortable?

4 comments:

  1. Definitely! I have done nothing but try new recipes from a variety of places like the Food Lovers Primal Palate, Nom Nom Paleo and EverydayPaleo. I have a huge collection of recipes from before, but wasn't inspired by them--the last thing I wanted to do was try to make an old favorite paleo-friendly, so I decided to start from scratch and try new ideas. It's worked great and one of these days I might start tweaking my old standby's, but for now I am having fun trying a new recipe almost every night!

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  2. Thanks for the links! I am just getting into paleo (to try to cure my digestive issues!), and I am trying to find some good blogs to get some meal ideas from. I love your blog and the lunchbox posts. I pack my lunch for work, so you give me some great ideas! :) My paleo 30-day challenge starts May 1st, although I've been eating 95% paleo for the past 3 days. Feels great! Hopefully all of my digestive troubles are fixed after these 30 days. (fingers crossed)

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  3. thanks so much for featuring my crackers and tart!
    love to follow YOUR blog, by the way. not only for its content, but for networking and discovering new primal bloggers and experiences! we need more like us to keep us all inspired and thinking primal!
    peace,
    liz

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  4. Omg, it's like you were reading my mind with this post! I felt the same way, and started to get a bit overwhelmed with making everything from scratch and trying to eliminate as much sugar and grain from our diets as possible. I just had to take a breather and do what I can without driving myself or anyone else crazy with perfecting our choice of food. Glad to know I'm not alone. Thanks for the link love!

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