Kind of a Paleo day

Sorry, I don't have any pictures for you. I made some beautiful food today, the kind of "cooking ahead" I've wanted to do for weeks but haven't had the time or energy.

So far today, I've made:
Homemade coconut butter
 (doesn't seem to work well with the shredded coconut I have -- could it be too old? or maybe the brand)

Chocolate coconut cups from PaleOMG (I used Trader Joe's 72% Belgian chocolate)

Food for my water kefir -- poor baby kefir grains are looking puny, and I hope I can revive them. Neglected them too long. (Basically filtered water, sugar, and some added minerals)

No-fail Paleo mayo (I nearly doubled the lemon juice because I like a little more "zing")
  This will go nicely with the chicken salad I plan to make for dinner, also making use of the eggs I hard-boiled earlier in the week.

Oh, and for breakfast-lunch (it was such a busy morning I didn't get to eat until after noon), I tried a new recipe for hash browns made with celery root. It's a keeper. How I've missed hash browns! (But white potatoes make my joints hurt.)

If I don't get too tired, I'll whip up a batch of lemon-poppyseed muffins. I made three variations on the recipe last week (the original, lemon-Craisin, and lemon-blueberry), and all were popular amongst my taste-testers. They'll be perfect for breakfast tomorrow.

Paleo update

Still sticking with paleo (I suppose you might call it "primal" as I still use a bit of butter on occasion), with auto-immune tweaks. My joints still hurt, but not as much as they did before I started this. Other benefits: I sleep better, waken refreshed, have more energy than I did, and am never hungry. In fact, I'm having trouble getting enough calories in.

I'm tracking my food and exercise at myfitnesspal.com and sometimes I have trouble reaching the "minimum" of 1200 calories -- MFP warns me when I don't, that I might send my body into starvation mode, where weight loss slows because the body is conserving all it can. I can go hours without eating, and without my blood sugar crashing. It's a far cry from not so long ago, when I felt like I had to eat protein at least every three hours, or get the shakes. (Being off all caffeine may be helping, too.)

Anyhow, if you're interested, here are a few websites to explore:

http://www.marksdailyapple.com

http://whole9life.com/
(This is the home of the Whole30, a kind of 30-day healthy-eating challenge)

http://robbwolf.com/

http://www.thepaleomom.com/
(check out her info about the autoimmune protocol)

http://autoimmune-paleo.com/

Next time, I'll post some of my favorite paleo/primal recipe websites.