Paleo tweaks

Found a great tweak to my go-to coleslaw recipe. Coleslaw is my favorite way to eat cabbage, although the stir-fry cabbage I made last week was pretty amazing. (This, from someone who had a sort of okay-I'll-eat-it-because-it's-a-vegetable-and-vegetables-are-supposed-to-be-good-for-you attitude.) The coleslaw sauce recipe came out of a gluten-free cookbook, and was so simple to remember: equal parts mayonnaise, sugar, and white vinegar, whisked together. I 'd add a pinch of salt and a little white pepper to that. Creamy coleslaw perfection.

Okay, so how to make this Paleo friendly? Homemade mayo, check. Raw apple cider vinegar, check. Sugar?

I thought about stevia, but didn't really want to go there. My past experience experimenting with the stuff didn't seem too promising for this recipe.

Trying to go completely sugar free... but finally broke down (don't want the cabbage in the fridge to go moldy from sitting there) and tried honey in the recipe today, as in (for a wedge of cabbage, shredded)

1 TBS mayo
1 TBS raw apple cider vinegar
1 TBS raw honey

It made for a flavorful dressing -- didn't even need the salt and pepper. The honey was very strong, and can probably be cut down to a teaspoon or a little more. And of course I'm not eating as much honey as is there in the sauce because when the coleslaw is gone, there's still sauce left on the plate. So while it's not exactly cutting out sugar, it is cutting way down, and substituting raw honey (which has its own health benefits).

You can read on, or ignore the rest, which is mainly medical musing and a little background as to why I'm doing this "Paleo" way of eating, or trying to, anyhow.

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Feeling my way here... I've been in a lot more pain lately, over and above (don't you love redundancy?) what the water kefir has been suppressing...

(Digression: How do I know what the water kefir is suppressing? Because of what happens when I don't drink it, if I didn't get around to harvesting the latest brew and due to our busy schedule, have to run out the door without my morning cuppa.)

Anyhow, have begun trying to eat according to "Paleo autoimmune" guidelines, more than I was when I was just following Paleo guidelines. Something that I hadn't cut out before were the nightshades (specifically tomatoes and peppers -- I can take or leave eggplant), nuts, and eggs. The earlier stuff involved in transitioning to Paleo-style eating as defined by Robb Wolf  and other people I've been "listening to" (as in, reading books and websites), well, that wasn't so hard, considering that our kitchen has been gluten-free for over a year now, and over the past months I've been experimenting with dairy alternatives as well.

As a matter of fact, I had been eating a lot more eggs lately, especially since cutting out GF oatmeal and other GF grains. Eggs are relatively cheap protein, and since we get free-range eggs from friends with chickens they ought to be fairly healthy. However, the increase in joint pain this past week makes me wonder -- am I reacting to the increase in eggs in my diet?

Need to get a handle on this so I can function again. In case I didn't mention it before, I tried the medical route the last time my joints, especially my knees, were this painful. All the doctor wanted to do was throw -- what are they called? NSAIDs? -- drugs at the problem to mask the pain, and then when the damage had progressed far enough do knee replacement surgeries.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad the medical people are out there and available with some sort of "solution." I'd just like to avoid drugs (I looked up the side effects of what he prescribed. Scary.) and surgery if at all possible. I thought that the water kefir would be enough -- it was enough, for months. But something has changed and so I'm changing my attack plan.

If something in my diet is causing the pain, and it's as simple as changing my diet to eliminate the pain (or cut it way down to manageable levels once more), well then, I'd much rather do that than take pills which significantly increase my possibility of stroke and heart attack and I forget what else.

Have been egg-free for only a day -- oops, no I haven't. Mayo has egg in it. Will have to investigate homemade eggless mayo, if such a thing is possible.

Sigh. And yet, it'll be worth it, if it works.