A Sample from Crisco

I keep up with a series of money-saving blogs, and frequently sign up for freebies via the deals announced by these blogs. As a way to track my freebies' origins (and the origins of any spam/junk mail that unintentionally results), I usually sign up for a freebie using the name Valued*nameofgiveaway* Customer. But of course, these freebies and samples often take weeks, even months to arrive. So you can imagine my surprise when I opened my mailbox and found a packet addressed to:

Valuedfreecrisco Customer

Crisco!? I went primal in June; how could it have been that I had signed up for Crisco? Then it all came clear:



Who's da widdle boddle of owive oil?



Seriously, though: I have a terminal weakness for miniaturized versions of things, and this teensy weensy sample of extra virgin olive oil is perfect for me to stow in my diaper bag or purse - like the times when I'm stuck in a restaurant like Panera and a naked Greek salad is the only primal offering. Mix the olive oil with a to-go packet of tamari and BAM! A little spontaneous creation of sugar-free salad dressing to add some satiety factor. Just wish that I could get about 100 of these sample-sized oil bottles, in various types - avocado oil, macadamia oil, etc.

Menu Plan - Labor Day Edition

Like many on the Twittersphere under hash tag #SPC2010 (as in: September Primal Challenge!), I experimented with some intermittent fasting last week a couple of times by skipping breakfast. (Just me; the rest of my family ate breakfast!) It is shocking to realize how steady your tummy can be if you're not OD'ing on sugar or carbs all the time - both fasts, I was able to keep myself busy without that distracting, violent urge to locate a Fiber One bar stat - the urge that enslaved my days in my life before Grok. When your body is used to burning ingested fat for fuel, making the switch to burning stored body fat while fasting is hardly a blip on the radar.

I have read on many blogs that folks experience the best metabolic boost when they work out just at the end of a fast - and then fasting an hour or two more. So if I have an early dinner and wait until midday the next day to eat - while getting in a morning workout - I'm supposedly maxing the effects of the fast. Hope to test this out a bit more in the future.

ALSO - this week marks the start of packing lunches for preschool! More coverage to come.

Tuesday:
Workout - Workout of the Week - though I may switch this with Wednesday's workout if needed
Breakfast - Eggs scrambled with butter, add honeydew melon (on sale this week at Giant) for the girls
Lunch - Leftover crock pot ribs from Monday, baby carrots
Dinner - Leftover browned ground beef with salsa and organic sour cream over salad

Wednesday:
Workout - Tabata sprints
Breakfast - Whole milk yoghurt / blueberry smoothies, add bananas for the girls
Lunch - Veggie omelettes
Dinner - Masala chicken thighs, salads

Thursday:
Workout - Rest/play day
Breakfast - Mashed boiled eggs, add bananas for the girls
Lunch - Guacamole curried chicken salad on greens (recipe to come, hopefully)
Dinner - Snow crab clusters, with butter for dipping, and a salad

Friday:
Workout - Kettlebellin'
Breakfast - Apple slices with almond butter, cottage cheese
Lunch - Out with relatives
Dinner - Crock pot ribs with family, salads

Planned preschool lunch ideas:
Lunch #1: Guacamole curried chicken salad, baby carrots, apple, nuts (if permitted by the preschool), and maybe a little piece of dark chocolate. :)
Lunch #2: Hard boiled eggs, cubed honeydew melon and strawberries, cottage cheese, summer squash sticks with yoghurt dip.

Basic Butter-Glazed Shrimp

I have a sister-in-law in the Midwest who is a kitchen wonder - recipes inspired by her cooking certain to appear again and again on this blog. In the beginning of June (life before Grok, as it were), when she and her family were visiting, she introduced my husband's side of the family to the concept of buying, peeling, then butterflying fresh shrimp, glazing with a basic butter marinade, and then grilling to perfection.

It was one of those meals when even the most talkative in the crowd fell silent as we savored every bite. And though I've mentioned this before in my 4th of July post, I thought that the shrimp recipe merited a little extra post of its own, because it is so easy and so fast!

Basic Butter-Glazed Shrimp
Serves 3, conservatively, or 2 generously

Ingredients
1 lb. raw fresh or thawed shrimp, peeled, butterflied, tails removed (This process actually takes only about 10 minutes per pound)
1 stick butter (I prefer to use salted Kerrygold)
Drizzle honey (totally optional - but my sister-in-law had it in her original recipe so I include it here)
A few cranks of freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tablespoon garlic powder

Directions
Mix all ingredients. If grilling, skewer about 4-5 to a skewer, turned continuously on the grill, over a piece of foil if desired. (This is great also with pineapple on the skewers.) Do not overcook - once they are all pink and just a bit browned from the grill (see pic below), serve hot!

You can also sautee at high heat for about 5 minutes - but you must watch carefully and stir constantly. Take the pan off of the heat as soon as the grey is gone and the shrimp are all pink, lest you overcook and make them tough.

Here are the shrimp already peeled and tails gone, soaking up that butter. I'm about to butterfly them.

This is me butterflying a shrimp - just run a serrated knife along the "spine" to open it up a bit. This gives you more surface area for that delicious butter glaze to cover. ;)

Sauteed (last night's meal):

Grilled (though these had not been butterflied):

Serving suggestion with pineapple and asparagus
(great meal for nonprimal company):

Fast Breakfast

This morning I weighed a pound less than yesterday! I'm not really shooting for a pound's loss every day - probably too fast for my liking. But, I will always take weight loss over weight gain, provided that it's fat (and not muscle) that I'm losing.

Yesterday and today I had the most decadent breakfast: four fried eggs (runny yolks, rock on!), and an 8 oz. cup that was half-milk, half-cream. I shake a little nutmeg on top of the drink, and it's like sipping an eggnog milkshake.

This breakfast at 7:30 kept me going without snacks until 12:30 p.m. yesterday. Some of you may say, "So what?" but for me, that's practically a first stab at intermittent fasting. ;)

You see, before primal eating, my blood sugar had me feeling crazy-hungry all. the. time. I call it stabby-hungry, too, because you had better watch out if you were going to get in the way of me and my breakfast. I'd wake up in the morning feeling like I'd been hit by a bus, and ravenous. After a carby breakfast, I'd be snacking throughout the morning - Fiber One bars were like crack cocaine to me, because they just activated some sort of om nom nom switch, and hey, they have fiber, so they were good for me, right? (Wrong: turns out their 10 g of sugar per bar was making my blood sugar go berserk.)

But now, fueled by fat and protein, I feel sated, for hours at a time. Quite the revolutionary state of being for me. Maybe some day I'll get in the zone of intermittent fasting for real - as in skipping 1, 2, or 3 meals without feeling any blood sugar crashes. But for now, I'll take the not-feeling-compelled-to-eat all morning - and the weight loss, too, thank you very much.