In the land of Firsts.

It's Wednesday, I have a paper due by 5:00 this afternoon, obviously this is the ample time to blog :)
 It's been a great week so far, consisting of a simple menu. A menu we conjured up Sunday night, in the car, on the way back from Auburn. Whole foods is on our way home and gas is expensive (remember it's a 45 min. drive one way for us) I just wish we had thought about that earlier, so I could have been a little more prepared. We spent the weekend in the woods, talking to turkey. Sadly, the turkey did not find our calling attractive enough to find us (in all reality, the south Alabama hunting was just really bad, turkeys aren't fans of fog & it was really foggy) Anyway, it was our first weekend away from our Paleo friendly kitchen and we had to get creative. Auburn has a grocery store called Earth Fare, which we had high hopes for, high hopes that were quickly muddled. In the past, Earth Fare served breakfast, lunch and dinner (much like whole foods) which was perfect for us, or so we thought. Apparently, they no longer serve breakfast and the meat we bought for lunch was tougher than the cheapest, driest meat you could buy at Wally World. It was such a disappointment.
After set back one, we decided we could do breakfast at a local deli where we could get batter free omelets (if you ever order an omelet, make sure to ask if they add any kind of batter to them. Pancake batter is added to most eggs to make them light, fluffy and look bigger) They had the perfect Paleo type (not everything was organic, but it was the better choice) options.  We both ordered a meat omelet, no cheese, no sour cream and add bacon. All was well, until we got our food and realized it was sopping in cheese (wonderful, delicious, pepper-jack cheese at that). Our waitress was awesome and took them back to fix it. The kitchen in this deli is an open air type, so we could hear everything. The cooks proceeded to loudly say "what do you mean, no cheese? These are omelets. Omelets have cheese, who are these people?" Wow.... Our wonderful waitress fired back with, "who cares how you normally make them, they don't want cheese, I wrote down no cheese, so you are going to make a new one, with NO cheese."  (I think this is how you get your food spit in) We eventually got our cheese free meal and I apologized to the girl a million more times (Not sure why, we didn't do anything wrong.) I guess she knew we heard everything and told us, the meal was on the house due to all the hassle.  As we sat there, eating our free, cheese free eggs, we realized this is going to happen again. We are too busy, and travel too much to realistically eat every meal at home. We have eaten at a steakhouse or two, where we got the funny looks when we asked them not to bring the bread, hold the cheese and croutons on the salad (with the oil and vinegar dressing) and ask for no butter on anything. But the deli was our first time having to deal with going against the American norm.  We made it through the first ordeal and nobody ended up disgruntled, but we also learned to be aware of what we eat when we are not the ones making it, be prepared for frustrations and stand your ground. You are a paying customer and if you want no batter and no cheese, you should get no batter and no cheese, regardless of your reasonings for asking for it that way. But while on the eating out topic, it is possible to make smart Paleo type decisions while away from home. Did you know that Moe's (tex-mex, not the BBQ) uses all grass fed meat and organic veggies? Yep, they do! And when you order a Moe's salad they even ask shell, or no shell? You can get a lettuce bowl filled with meats and mexican type toppings and stick to stricter Paleo in there! It can be done!
 After our little cheese debacle, I wanted to know more about why I needed to avoid dairy. There is so much literature out there on why dairy (more specific, lactose) is bad to consume after 2 years old. More people than not have a lactose sensitivity, even if it's not life altering. Think about it though, ever been bloated, gassy, cramped, constipated or nauseous after a meal? Did it have dairy? I would be willing to bet yes. We are the only mammals that drink other mammals milk. Digest that for a second. (animals eat other animals, but they do not drink their milk)
Dairy also causes a high insulin spike, has a high carb count and includes anything the cow was fed or injected with (hormones and antibiotics) If you want to read more into the anti dairy realm, here are two websites I found.
This is my Favorite, easiest to understand article. (click the link)

This website titled NotMilk.com has way too many articles to read them all, and you can't believe everything you read online, but it can get you thinking. I like to see references and studies done to back up the reports and some of these articles have some credible sources. For this website Click Here

In the Martin house, we drink Almond milk (or as many call it "almond juice") I also really enjoy the chocolate flavor when I'm craving something sweet. We started out with the original, but I just bought the unsweetened one as we are trying to eliminate sugar. Drinking your calories is not ideal but, once again, this is the better alternative.

As far as a recipe with this post, we had wonderful kabobs Monday night. We used wild caught shrimp, (Whole foods had it on sale last friday!) peppers, tomatoes, red onion and zucchini. Threw it all on a stick (after soaking them in water) and grilled them to perfection. Easy, peasy! Speaking of shrimp though, am I the only one who just cannot eat them unless they are de-veined? Perry did not believe me when I told him what that little "vein" really was, but after googling it and finding words like "poop chute" "hershey track" and "doody vein" we took the time to de-vein our shrimp before we cooked them! :)

 If you have a quick minuet, give This article a read. It has nothing to do with today's post, but I found it this morning and could not agree more. Paleo women are PHAT!

Enjoy the rest of the week & remember....
You may not really be what you eat, but what you eat can really affect what you are.