The Moss Garden

Saturday, February 25, 2012

I lasted one month

I tried to keep up with Project 2012, I really did. But even as of week 3 I started getting a day behind, then two... then I'd try and find enough things to take photos of in one day to try and catch up, and it kind of stopped being fun and started being more of another chore.

But it was a lot of fun at the beginning, and I did enjoy posting my week in photos here on my blog. So what I think I might do is just have more posts like that, just not necessarily on a weekly schedule and not necessarily a photo a day.

I'm a little disappointed in that I feel like I started something and didn't finish it, which isn't really like me - on the other hand, I am swamped with school and most days I don't have the energy to do the little tasks that I actually want to do - keep up with my Etsy shop, blog, etc. And the sad fact is that most days for me are monotonously the same, and because we're not really allowed to take photos at school, the challenge of finding photo-worthy things in my boring daily life proved too much of a creative obstacle for me.

Maybe next year, or maybe once I've graduated. Who knows? :)

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Paleo cinnamon walnut crackers

The hardest part for me about eating paleo (or slow-carb, whatever) is the snacks. And I loooooove snacks... I'd be grazing all day if I could. But I'm not a huge veggie fan (so carrot sticks don't get a ton of points from me) and all the things I'd rather snack on (chocolate chip cookies, egg bread, Goldfish, popcorn, chocolate peanut butter squares, banana bread, sheet cake... etc) are full of sugar and carbs. Even things like dried fruit which is sort of better is still quite sugary. I eat some cheese and yogurt, but of course I can't stand the low-fat varieties and insist on eating 10% Greek yogurt and ridiculously high-fat cheeses.

We tried this recipe from Mark Sisson's Paleo Blueprint cookbook today, and I'm really impressed. These walnut crackers still have a lot of calories, but I really only needed one to feel quite full for a while, and with only a bit of honey, the sugar content is pretty low. I don't want to copy the recipe here since it's from his book, but you can either check it out on his site or Google 'paleo crackers'... I'm sure something similar will come up. Plus, this recipe is also pretty customizable... I'd like to try out different nuts and spices next time.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

If cavemen ate sushi

I've mentioned a few times that Davis and I have been more-or-less on the paleo diet since September. Well, I call it paleo, but we don't strictly follow the paleo rules... I think we more closely follow Tim Ferriss' slow-carb diet, which was where Davis originally read about it anyway.

The gist of it is that sugar is bad for you. Well, that's kind of obvious, right? But what isn't always as obvious is that things like bread, rice, and potatoes - starches - are just long chains of glucose molecules that are pretty easily broken down to individual glucose monomers in our bodies. So when you digest that kind of food in your stomach, it basically just gets turned into sugar and you might as well be eating a piece of cake (...sort of). And while foods like vegetables also have sugars in them, their high fiber content slows down your body's absorption of the sugar, as well as having lots of good vitamins and other beneficial molecules in them. The end result? Eat what a caveman would eat. So lots of vegetables, meats, nuts, and fruits... and no grains, cheeses, fermented foods, etc!

This is where I diverge from paleo. Technically, Homo neanderthalis probably ate potatoes or some kind of tubers, but they're pretty darn starchy, so we don't eat a lot of white potatoes (some sweet potatoes). And we do drink wine semi-regularly, and I'm addicted to cheese, and we also use soy sauce and eat yogurt and things like that. Mostly we just try to avoid bread, rice, pasta, and potatoes.

I'm not a nutritionist, a dietitian, or a food chemist, so please don't take anything I say as dietary gospel. If this kind of thing interests you, I recommend reading The Four-Hour Body and then taking a look at some of the many studies that are referenced within, and talk to a professional and do a little experiment then make your own decision!

In spite of not having bought a loaf of bread or a package of spaghetti in 5 months, my biggest dietary indiscretion is sushi. Wonderful, yummy sushi, filled with all that white, white, white glutinous rice. So I was kicking myself for not thinking of it sooner when I came across this on Pinterest - why not just take the rice out of the sushi??

I think it was a success.

The fun part was trying to think of what to put inside the rolls. I ended up with three different kind of fish: raw wild Fraser River sockeye salmon, smoked rainbow trout, and sustainably harvested tuna mixed with Japanese mayo and Sriracha. I also added mango, avocado, and cucumber to all the rolls.

(That's another reason eating store-bought sushi makes me feel so guilty, besides the rice... I rarely, rarely eat seafood anymore including fish, because I think we as a species are just ransacking and looting the oceans and leaving nothing behind. I'm even dubious of 'sustainable' fisheries, because I really think all fish stocks just need for us to back off for a few years. Making my own sushi lets me at least choose the most environmentally friendly fishes to eat, so I don't feel so destructive just to indulge my sushi love! Read more about this here.)

Next time I might try a few other kinds of seafood, and maybe add some tempura sweet potatoes or tamago if I have enough time to prepare it in advance. The possibilities are exciting!