Here's a lunch that we had at home last week. My 4.5 year old has become kind of resistant to cold greens of all kinds, but I'm OK with that, since she still watches me sometimes eat huge salads, and she'll still happily eat spinach or kale as part of a warm dish.
The above lunch demonstrates how you can create two distinct lunches without changing your actual game plan a whole lot. The only material difference is - her lunch has a cut up white potato, while mine has a pile of greens. I had my kitchen shears at the ready for much of the prep, and to each of our bowls I added:
Sliced red and yellow pepper
Sliced carrots
Sliced grassfed steak
Pistachios (mine, for the salad)
Sliced baby zucchini (mine, for the salad)
Homemade avocado ranch, drizzled on my salad, but in the littlest compartment for my daughter to dip her veggies
Have you turned your massive salad into a more tactile kid friendly lunch before? How'd you do it?
The limited time Vitacost.com $10 off any purchase coupon is still available. One way that you can redeem this $10 coupon is to order two 16 oz. jars of Sunbutter - a nut-free paleo-friendly butter, for a total of only $5.82.
Here's how to score a great deal on this sunbutter:
Optional step: In the meantime, head over to ebates.com and search for Vitacost. You'll get 4% cash back on your purchase when you click to Vitacost.com through the ebates vitacost store link.
Search Vitacost for "Sunbutter". Select the 16 oz. jar for $5.41, and add two of the jars to your cart for a total of $10.82.
Your total will be $0.82 + $4.99 shipping + tax (if applicable, depending on your state). The grand total will be at or around $5.81. for both jars, shipped. (Compare - at its very cheapest Sunbutter runs $4.59/jar on Amazon, and that's when you're forced to buy a 6-pack, so this Vitacost transaction is quite a deal on sunbutter.)
This post contains affiliate links to Vitacost Rewards and ebates. Shopping through these links results in Primal Kitchen receiving a referral bonus at no cost to you - thank you for supporting Primal Kitchen! :)
I just learned that Vitacost also has coconut oil - many varieties in fact. There are several that are under $10, which means that you can use the $10 off any Vitacost purchase coupon that I first described in this post, leaving you to pay only the shipping of $4.99.
This includes my brand of choice (which I usually buy from Amazon), Nutiva. On Amazon, a 15 oz. tub of Nutiva is $7.24, but using the $10 coupon on Vitacost will get the same size shipped to you for $4.99 - a price that you'll be hard-pressed to beat. To learn how I ran my Vitacost deal (and to understand how you could do it similarly for any under-$10 coconut oil sold by Vitacost), see this post.
At Vitacost there is currently a $10 coupon available, good on any purchase. The great news is that shipping is fairly cheap at $4.95, so if you need something that's close to $10, you'd get it for about half the price with this coupon.
I redeemed this $10 coupon to get two bottles of Country Life Vitamin D3 Softgels - a 200 ct., which is $5.39. Vitamin D3 supplementation is worth considering, especially if like me, you don't get as much sunshine during the wintertime as you'd like, and the coupon made two bottles ship to my door for just $5.77 - about two and a half bucks cheaper than just one bottle is going for on Amazon right now. Great deal!
Here's how to score a great deal on these Vitamin D3 softgels:
In the meantime, head over to ebates.com and search for Vitacost. You'll get 4% cash back on your purchase when you click to Vitacost.com through the ebates vitacost store link.
Search Vitacost for "Vitamin D3". Select the 200 count of the Country Life Vitamin D3 5000 IU softgels, and add two of the bottles priced $5.39 to your cart for a total of $10.78.
Your total will be $0.78 + $4.99 shipping + tax (if applicable, depending on your state). In my case the grand total was $5.77 for both bottles, shipped. (Just one bottle of the same on Amazon runs $8.29, by comparison!)
For more on Vitamin D3 supplementation check out this thread and related threads on PaleoHacks; it's worth noting that Nephropal's Billy recommends the Country Life brand because they are coconut oil medium chain triglyceride based.
Are you supplementing with Vitamin D this winter - or are there other supplements or health products you'd like to track down on Vitacost with your $10 off any purchase coupon?
This post contains affiliate links to Vitacost Rewards and ebates. Shopping through these links results in Primal Kitchen receiving a referral bonus at no cost to you - thank you for supporting Primal Kitchen! :)
I've had this phrase in my head a while now...I don't know why, but it's been whispered to me (by the Holy Spirit?) many times over. Most memorably, Mary heard it from the angel that God sent, "Be not afraid!", but it appears as a reassuring phrase from God frequently throughout the Bible.
That phrase is stuck to me like a catchy song, and I'm finding it extra soothing, particularly since we're on the brink of the holiday season; it's helping me to mentally cut through the fluff and know that God will sustain us through what matters most.
Yesterday we had Veteran's Day holiday hours at my Crossfit box -- so instead of rising at 5 a.m. as I normally do, I slept in a bit and then left the girls with my husband to head over a midmorning WOD.
There was a heavy lifting workout, and a hero workout. As I understand it, each of the hero workouts are specifically created for and named after a serviceman or servicewoman whose life was lost for the sake of serving our country. Crossfit HQ and the individual boxes are very diligent about honoring servicemembers, and particularly those who have perished while serving their countries. Sadly, I wish that I could say that there weren't as many hero workouts as there are. My heartfelt thanks go out to the veterans - those still here and those we remember - who regularly faced their fears in service to their country. In large part owing to their dedication, we need not be afraid.
Since I had done 4 aerobic-style workouts Monday-Thursday, this time I chose to lift heavy. It's the first heavy lifting workout I've had in a while where I didn't have a partner alternating reps with me, so I kind of soaked up the extra time and solitude to focus on my form, how I really felt during my reps, whether I could do more. I was supposed to do a single squat, as seen below, 7 times:
...I was supposed to end on the 7th rep at or close to my max -- but to keep going until my max if I wasn't there by the 7th rep. Since it was my first weighted back squat session, I had no idea what would be my theoretical max.
I started with 55 lb. (including the 35 lb. bar), adding increments of 5 lb. at a time, and ended the 7th rep at 80 lb. or so. I knew that I wasn't even close to my max by then, so the weight kept coming on.
By about 125 lb. I asked my instructor (who'd been a few steps away overseeing the others doing the hero workout) to come watch me to do a single rep at 125 lb. to make sure that I was keeping up my form despite the climbing weight. My instructor - who herself probably weighs less than 125 lb. - said, "You're strong! You're not even struggling! You can lift more than that."
By my 15th (!) rep I was using the 45 lb. bar (at my instructor's suggestion) squatting a total of 140 lb., which I called my max for the day.
I thought about it: I was back squatting more than I weighed in high school. I was backsquatting 16-year-old me and then some. Were I not so tired from the previous 14 reps, I might have even been able to squat more. My instructor asked for my final number and even threw an exclamation point behind the poundage that she wrote next to my name on the whiteboard.
Even though I was a bit nervous about adding more weight, her encouragement had pushed me through that mental block of 125 lb. to an additional 15 lb. above that. Be not afraid. You can do this!
Would that all of my strength gains were so measurable.
Fall 2011 is apparently setting up to be the fall when I learn a zillion new-to-me traditional food methods. Though I had no real planned-well-in-advance agenda to do this some of these, impromptu tutorials are just falling into my path, sometimes so spontaneously that all I can use to capture the moments is my Droid. Cases in point:
You know it's good bone broth when it stays perfectly
gelled, even when held upside down.
All that collagen, wahoo!
Homemade Bone Broth - from Chicken Feet! I received a HUGE zip bag of chicken feet from my farmer - for FREE. I couldn't believe my luck - there were probably at least 60 feet from recently slaughtered/scalded chickens. Having read A Slim Winter's chicken feet broth post just before this, I knew that I could possibly make some decent broth. After a couple of batches I really got the hang of it, even going so far the second round as to add apple cider vinegar to help extract more nutrients from the bones and cartilage - and I used my kitchen shears to trim off the talons so that more of the bone marrow could be exposed and thus extracted during the simmering. I was rewarded with a super rich broth that was thick and gelatinous when chilled, and comforting all the way down when warmed in a mug. If you find yourself on the receiving end of some inexpensive or free chicken feet, GO for it! You will love the broth that results.
Mad kefir makin' skillz. I met another primal / paleo person IN THE FLESH. First nononline paleo person I've ever met! I was ridiculously excited; we happened to be buying the same creamline whole milk from our farmer when we ran into each other. It turns out that she has a couple of traditional foodie friends as well, one of whom has a way with homemade kefir. We are going to get a kefir making/storage tutorial from said expert later next week. Wahoo! (Meanwhile, this week I found out another superstrong gal at my Crossfit box eats paleo, too...so that makes two in-the-flesh folks I know. Maybe enough momentum for a pot luck at some point! ;-p )
Zee half cow, deconstructed.
Half cow freezin', with plans for tallow renderin'. Our household's first ever local, bulk bought beef purchase came home with us on Monday. We were totally bewildered by the quantity of meat from our order of half a cow. I was giddy because beside the usual offerings of ground beef, roasts, stew meat, and steaks, the butcher had made sure at my request that we received every possible scrap - soup bones, heart, liver, tongue, and (drumroll!) a huge pack of beef fat (note to self, look up tallow rendering, apparently my next on the skillz-to-learn docket...). Normally I avoid beef fat in conventionally raised animals, but the beef AND fat of a carefully raised pastured-only cow is super valuable nutritionally and a wonderfully healthy fuel. I was keen on getting my money's worth and not letting go of any of that offal, bone, and fat nutrition (all of which, according to my farmer, is often left behind by his customers).
Homemade ranch dip. Delicious.
Make it in a jar to make mixing easy!
Mark's Daily Apple's Creamy Ranch Dressing. We had assigned snack duty for my daughter's preschool last week, and the requested items were carrots and celery sticks and ranch dip. I was so glad to find out from Paleo Periodical on Twitter (thanks, Karen!!) that MDA had this dip - after tasting it I realized how much I had missed the flavor of ranch. Balsamic vinegar and olive oil can dress only so many salads, apparently. I'm looking forward to having this recipe in my regular rotation to drizzle on steak salads and scrambled eggs.
What new recipes and traditional food skills are you learning right now?
