The Low Down

The human body is a metabolic marvel comprised of dozens of little systems connecting to create one complex system. Food is the fuel, the input, for the systems. Our metabolic machinery evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to function optimally on select fuels. These fuels were the original, Primal foods of the human organism. Over these hundreds of thousands of years our Big Game Hunting, small prey capturing, scavenging, foraging, gathering, opportunistic ancestors accumulated experience and wisdom about nourishing themselves. The learned to preserve and predigest foods to maximize the quality of their metabolic fuel. Eventually they learned to cook foods without destroying the important nourishing properties of the food, and then they learned to heal the human body with food. Only recently in the human evolutionary experience, have we abandoned all these hundreds of thousands of years of accumulated epicurean genius. Now we fuel our marvelous, complex metabolic machinery with crap invented to create profits for agribusiness. We have become dumb eaters. As we regain our eating intelligence it doesn't make sense to move back to the savannah and put out our fires or climb into our cave and pretend there is a glacier next door. It makes sense to fuel our bodies with all the primal human foodstuffs, prepared and preserved with accumulated ancestral wisdom and served up for the undeniable desires of the human taste buds. Primal, paleolithic food choices, handled according to ancient food ways resulting in outrageously good food.
PRIMAL. SMART. DELECTABLE.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Bored eating the same old thing?



It seems that lots of people find themselves stuck in a rut when they start eating Paleo. I think there are a bunch of reasons for this. The first one is that many people want any old excuse to go back to eating the same cereal/bagels/toast they were eating for the previous twenty years (although they never complained about having to eat the same thing every day then?!?!). Another reason is that many people think that breakfast is supposed to look a certain way. For example, when I tell people I eat stew for breakfast they think that is CRAZY because stew is for dinner not for breakfast. Why?? There is no good reason for that at all. In fact we should eat our most nourishing food earlier in the day. Another reason people feel stuck in a rut with their food is because we are so ADHD and overstimulated that we no longer notice and appreciate subtle differences in flavors and textures. Let's talk asparagus. During asparagus season I like to have it a few times per week, but it is different every time. Sometimes I grill it and then drizzle it with olive oil. Other times I make a little Hollaindaise sauce for it. Sometimes I steam it and serve it with garlic butter. Once in awhile I steam it with matchsticked carrots and make a little chili/miso sauce for it. The photo shows lightly steamed asparagus sprinkled with truffle salt. The truffle salt was a beautiful gift. It tastes nothing like regular salt, and asparagus with truffle salt tastes nothing like asparagus with olive oil and lime juice. Allow yourself the opportunity to see your food in all its wide range of beauty. Develop an appreciation for the more refined and subtle nuances of your food. My Dad had a stock answer for my sisters and me when we whined about being bored, "Only boring people get bored." Hmmm, I won't go so far as to accuse you of being boring if you are complaining about being bored with your food, but my father would.

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