Before we get to what we’re eating this week, I thought I’d take a moment to make a prediction. A lot of people are having really amazing results in a variety of areas eating “Paleo,” which essentially means lots of meat and veggies, no grains and little/no sugars other than those naturally occurring in fruits and veggies. There are a lot of pluses to this lifestyle, and the science behind the results is also pretty good. That said, The End of that success is coming, just as it has for most diets that start out so well from Atkins to vegetarian.
Why? Because the thing is, when most of these diets/lifestyles/whatever you want to call them come out, what is most effective about them is that they 1) limit your food choices and 2) get you away from processed foods. Unfortunately, as soon as they catch on, so do manufacturers. Which means that both of those things go away, and more and more people flock to the diet because they can now have anything they want again! Except that it doesn’t work that way.
When I was a vegetarian, it was next to impossible to be a fat vegetarian, because your options were fresh vegetables and grains (and, in my case, eggs and dairy because I was lacto-ovum). Fast forward to today, and you can get vegetarian “meat,” which is so processed and full of crap that almost nothing on the label is recognizable. Today, we have lots of fat, unhealthy vegetarians. Yes, there are also healthy vegetarians who eat whole foods and at one time, that was a default of being vegetarian; but, since it’s caught on, the lifestyle itself no longer takes real thought about health. Anyone can “be a vegetarian,” and just go to the store and replace non-vegetarian crap “food” with vegetarian crap “food.”
This was the same with, say, Atkins. It started out being highly effective because it really limited food choices and took away the vast majority of processed foods. When people have limited food choices, they tend to eat less. This is true of processed foods, as well, and has the added bonus of getting rid of the fat-packing empty calories and weight-gaining chemicals. Once manufacturers caught on, they started producing “Atkin’s Friendly” crap, which consumers snatched up like the world was ending. Which is when the diet began to fail, because two of it’s primary components of success were taken away for most people (especially those who decided to switch to the Atkins lifestyle without bothering to read the book).
Paleo is catching on. Whatever you think of it’s ethics, it’s also very effective for weight loss and maintenance, at least in part for the same reasons vegetarianism and Atkins initially were. Which means that, if it hasn’t happened already, we’re going to soon see “Paleo friendly” processed junk hitting the market, mostly stuff that wouldn’t otherwise be on the diet. I betcha a dollar to a donut that if it’s not already out there, we’ll see Paleo bread mass-marketed within the net 12 months. Yes, there will still be the people who do it right, but there’ll be a whole lot more who do it wrong. Again. Because they want to believe in magic.
So, with that out of my ranting way, here’s this week’s On the Menu:
Dinners
Sunday: Chicken tikka masala over saffron rice. Okay, you have to use local or organic chicken with this, just just do. I admit I used neither, since we had some chicken given to us that wasn’t and it needed to get used. It turned out awful. Well, the sauce was great, but the chicken itself was appalling. Every time this happens, I remember why we don’t eat conventional chicken. Ick.
Monday: Sloppy joes with 3-potato salad and green beans. Mmmm… grass fed beef with homemade sloppy joe sauce. So good! The potato salad was leftover from our weekend picnic with friends, and fresh green beans. You’re going to notice that most of our menu this week is geared to limited cooking, and some batch cooking. It’s just too darn hot to do anything else!
Tuesday (tonight): Sliced, cold London Broil over fresh greens, with steamed cauliflower. We grilled the London Broil on Sunday, so no cooking tonight. The broil came out great–the grass fed makes a huge difference.
Wednesday: Chicken & vegetable kabobs over black rice. The kabobs were also done on Sunday. We’ll just reheat them quickly, and I’ll make the rice outside on the deck with my rice cooker.
Thursday: Falafel with mujadara. The heat is supposed to break, so we’re making homemade falafel and flatbread, as well as mujadara (an lentil-parsley-rice salad). I’ll whip up a tzaziki sauce, and it’ll be served with fresh tomatoes.
Friday: Black bean & banana empanadas. It’s time to make a huge batch of these up again and toss them in the freezer for quick lunches.
Saturday: Leftovers day. Time to clean out the refrigerator!
Breakfasts are kefir, yogurt, fruit, granola, eggs, and homemade toast. Lunches are leftovers and smoothies (I don’t eat much when it’s hot out, so I drink a lot of smoothies).
How are you keeping cool and eating well this week?
