Are you still doing paleo?

In short - sort of. It has been a really hard few months, for reasons I won't go into, though with a newborn in June, some will be obvious. We are still conscious that the standard American diet sucks and have a fair number if good meals, but with the uncertainty of working around kids and other problems, it has been so difficult to plan. It may be possible to do paleo with spontaneity and creativity on the fly, but not for us, not working on so little sleep. And frankly, take-out is easy, and paleo ingredients mostly don't keep very well. So, we stray a little. Some days a lot. But I hope once things settle down a bit, we can get back to looking after or long-term health, and what we eat is a lot of that.

Respect the mandoline

Everyone warned me, but did I listen? Yeah, I did. I just figured I would be careful and I'd be OK. Wrong.

So anyway, I sliced off the end of my finger with the mandoline. Here's how it happened, and the lessons to be learned. Don't worry, there won't be any pictures, except this one:

It's the *ring* finger - I'm not flipping the bird. Yes, my awesome wife decorated it as a Jayne hat.

I had a big cut of beef, partially thawed, which I intended to cut thin and make jerky. Problem is, I hadn't cut off all the gristle on the edges, and it was a little too solid still, so it wouldn't go through the mandoline easily like it's supposed to.

I thought if I just sliced off that gristle, it would go better, and so I was pressing a little too hard, and... I don't remember if my hand slipped, or the meat, but it doesn't matter. I slipped, and I was looking at a little piece of skin lying on the cutting board and a chunk missing out of my ring finger.

Could have been a lot worse, really. It was a clean cut, small, didn't hit any bone or finger nail. I applied pressure, elevated, wrapped it, and sought medical attention. (In case you're ever in this situation, that's what to do. BTW, no, they can't reattach your missing bits.) I could have cut a lot more, or a lot more deeply. It's going to be fine.

Lessons learned:

1. Everything going through the mandoline should fly through it with ease. If it doesn't, just don't use it! Simple as that. If you're having to apply any real pressure, you have a chance of slipping like I did. It's not worth the risk.
2. Do all your modifications before you put something through the mandoline (before freezing if it's meat). It's just there to make little slices. It's not for detail work.

I think this can still be used safely, just with great caution. One of my friends recommended these cut-resistant gloves. I think I'll get some - could be useful for all kinds of cutting.

Fun with the dehydrator

I tried dehydrating a bunch of things over the weekend: sweet potatoes, apples, and beef. Results were mixed.

First of all, I take back what I said about the mandoline not being good at slicing sweet potatoes. That was because those ones had been sitting in our kitchen for months getting dried out and tough. When I sliced up fresh sweet potatoes, it was no problem.

I seasoned some only with salt, some with salt and cinnamon, and some with salt+cinnamon+cayenne (I like it hot). All got a little olive oil sprayed lightly on top of the spices. They dried up nicely. If I left the skin on, the edges were curled up in a pretty way. But I overdid the salt on all of them, and I didn't really care for the texture on any of them - I guess I'm expecting sweet potato chips like the ones that get fried in oil. Doesn't seem to be a way to make that with a dehydrator. Also, when I left them out for a few hours after drying them, they sucked up some moisture and were basically limp leather. Not too tasty.

They looked pretty good and were crispy... at first.

So, I moved on to apples. I think it's pretty hard to go wrong with apples. I had four different kinds of apples; I think the Granny Smith, Fuji, and Gala came out well, with Braeburn a little lackluster. For these, I threw together a little seasoning including lemon juice, maple syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom. The sliced apples were in this for a few hours while I did other things.

On top I left one row of plain apples for comparison. Two trays below were flavored. Didn't feel a need to peel any of them - good nutrients in those peels!

I also blended up some apples (peeled this time) and some pears with a teaspoon of cinnamon in the food processor so I could dry them into "fruit leather" (somewhat like Fruit Roll-ups, except without adding weird stuff to the fruit).

Pear-apple-cinnamon blend on the mat

Breakfast: I used to hate Brussels Sprouts

For breakfast this morning I figured we needed some more veggies. I cooked up a recent favorite: Brussels Sprouts and Soppressata.

It's even colorful!

And, since we had it, I cut up a luscious mango too.

This took me about 45 minutes without the little one bothering me (she woke up at the end!). Read further for details:

Cold and hungry.

Picture by  James Marvin Phelps 

Not our supposed cave-dwelling forebears, me - for the last few weeks. It's not that paleo is a "diet" that restricts how much food I can eat, leaving me hungry. I just seem to always be hungry. I can't seem to prepare food fast enough to get full for very long. And when I get distracted, I can get really hungry without noticing it.

I'm also cold an awful lot. The weather has been mostly chilly on balance, and my job generally involves sitting down all day. I'm still a hotbox when I'm in motion, but sitting still I find myself reaching for a sweater. When I was about 25, I went through a metabolic shift. I remember it because before, I would go to a dance and come out with a little perspiration, and after, I would soak through two shirts at a dance (literally had to bring multiples). I wonder if that change is reversing now that I'm on paleo. I've never heard anyone talk about either of these things happening, but then, I haven't really read that extensively.

I started paleo mostly to support Sarah, but also because I noticed that I tend to seriously drag in the afternoon. I prefer to have energy, and I noticed that if I ate a proper paleo breakfast (especially) and lunch, the afternoon went a lot better. So I welcomed extending it to the full day.

I would like to lose the belly fat, too. Not that I'm really obese, but I put on some pounds after college and especially with the baby, and it mostly went right to my belly. I was well north of 180 for quite a while. Recently I've been between 170 and 180. I got on the scale this morning, and what do you know? 165 - haven't been there since college. So, I may be hungry for now, but I'm also lighter. I notched my belt one more with ease - may have to get some new pants in a while. Maybe even exercise to have some muscle :)

Wouldn't mind having some of the other benefits people have reported from paleo, like relief from allergies, insomnia, and depression, and better concentration and energy. We'll see about those. My insomnia does often seem better, as long as I practice not letting my mind race after Aria (inevitably) wakes me up in the morning.

Easter eats

Just a few snapshots from the day...

The mandoline in action making zucchini chips.

Laying out the chips on the tray...

... in the dehydrator. One zucchini made more than one tray.

After they've dried out. This was the "super-thin" setting which I think was too thin. Many of the chips stuck to the tray and broke apart when removing.

Aria ate these things like candy. I never would have thought a kid would love vegetables so.

Trying to make zoodles. It's hard to get it to hold the zucchini sideways, and they come out really thin.

Oh yeah, I made ribs, but neglected to take any pictures until we had eaten most of them. Dry rub, roasted with water in the oven for three hours until the bones would pull right out.

Leftovers for tomorrow!

First post - Kitchen gadgets review

First post from Luke here... We bought a bunch of gadgets lately. What can I say, I'm a geek. Also, we really need these!

Clockwise, we have a dehydrator (for fruit/veggie chips, jerky, etc.), a slow cooker (for set-and-forget all-day cooking), and a mandolin (for several variation on slicing things thin and regular, e.g. aforementioned fruit/veggie chips). We've had a chance to try them all out now and make a preliminary report. (The headers are links to the product on Amazon... we love Amazon.)

Nesco/American Harvest FD-80 Square-Shaped Dehydrator

This is about as simple as it gets, without being too simple. Four trays to hold the things we want to dehydrate (we may buy more) and a dial on the top to control the temperature. The first thing we tried was zucchini chips. Slice up the zucchini, lay out, add salt/spices, and plug it in. I put it out in the shed because we didn't really want the house smelling like garlic and onion. The next morning, they were chips. Way too much "flavor" added, but the concept was there. We did it again today with super-thin zucchini slices and light sea salt, and Miss WOC gobbled down nearly a whole large zucchini worth of the chips. We're working on some sweet potato chips now.

Hamilton Beach Set and Forget 6qt Slow Cooker

This comes highly recommended and seems to work just fine. It has a probe you can stick through the lid and have it stop cooking once it reaches the right temperature - pretty cool. Only has high/low/warm for heat settings - I hope that's more accurate than my previous Walmart slow cooker that always cooked too fast. First batch of stew came out fine.

Progressive International HGT-11 Folding Mandoline Slicer

Always wanted a mandoline, and at this price ($20!) and rating, couldn't pass it up. It's not something you'd want to use in a professional kitchen, but it's pretty useful for our purposes. The good: sharp blade and safe operation, stores in a nice small space, can slice several ways including julienne. The bad: the blade isn't really serious enough for something like sweet potatoes which get hung up too easily. The holding piece (which keeps you from risking your fingers) doesn't hold much, so this is really only suitable for small loads. Also, it's not a replacement for the julienne peeler for making zoodles; the julienne settings are too wide or too thin for that purpose. And little bits tend to get stuck at the edges of the blade. Still, a pretty good purchase for the price.