DIY Food Adventure Menu: Lunch and Snack

Entering the Third Trimester


So now I am in my 29th week of pregnancy, just starting the third trimester.  I can understand how the second was the best (and third is the one with the hairy chest?  No, thankfully, no!) and now it starts to get a little more challenging to move around and do the things I am used to doing--like tying my shoes and sleeping :)  I am also a bit more tired and breathing hard easily, which often makes me laugh at the gym when 10 reps of even something light makes me pant.

But the little one is moving around like crazy and the movement is so much more interesting just in the last week.  I can see huge softball-sized pushes stretching out my belly and moving across and he taps, or seems to rhythmically softly kick or tap his hands too slow to be a heartbeat and too fast to be hiccups.  At least I think so.  He is still flipping around and squirming and loves to bop around in my belly whenever I am at rest and sometimes even when I am not, which feels really strange.  Imagine the entire contents of your belly flip-flopping while you walk.  There is nothing in the world quite like it...  He is quite the entertainment for me and my husband :)

I've been keeping active, although my gym workouts have been reduced to 3-4 days a week.  I love to take walks on West Cliff (pictured above) with my husband when he gets home from work and try to do something every day.  I definitely believe that diet and exercise are key to a healthy pregnancy.

I am still keeping up with the DIY Food Adventure through my gym: CrossFit Santa Cruz by making my own food for the majority of my meals and I don't plan on stopping.  It has been the best thing for me and my pregnancy.  My diet is the same, but I have been gaining weight pretty well after that initial slow period during the first to mid-second trimesters.  Now I have already gained 30lbs (!), but I am not eating significantly more and I have if anything tightened up my diet to include fewer weekend cheats on desserts.  I know they make me feel so crappy the next day that I have been trying to have some fruit instead, and the figs in season right now are my favorite.  I can't believe I waited so many years to have raw figs!  They are divine!

I've taken to having broth and a banana for breakfast, an egg scramble (with carnitas if I have some) or just eggs with grapes or apples for second breakfast/lunch, and then the lunches/snacks given below.  I make sure to get in some fresh veggies with at least one or more meals and to eat 3-4 meals a day.


Lunch 

One of my go-to lunches is basically pizza without the crust.  I broil heirloom tomato slices topped with cheese (whole milk mozzarella was a favorite, until my store switched over to part-skim :(--now I like the Farmer's cheese) and pepperoni (such as Applegate brand--a lesser of evils in the processed meat world) and then savor that ooey-gooey deliciousness.  I usually serve it alongside sliced bell peppers (I've found that the smaller they are, the sweeter, and the yellow seem to be sweeter than the red) and cucumbers (the smaller the better on these too).

I have also been known to indulge in Grain-free Biscuits from Food Renegade as sandwiches or open-faced sandwiches with Farmers cheese or an omelet.  I have it alongside loads of raw veg. and/or grapes or cinnamon apples cooked or microwaved with grassfed butter.  

As it gets chillier and cooler, wetter weather descends on Santa Cruz, I'll definitely be adding Heirloom Tomato Soup to my lunch repertoire.  

Snack

I often throw together something quick and take it on the road.  A roasted chicken leg and thigh, some home-roasted and salted cashews, and an apple is an easy meal-on-the-go.  This replaces that handy, delicious Perfect Foods bar I so often fell back on in the past.  Sometimes I'll switch this out with a couple hard-boiled eggs or leftover grassfed beef burger and sub carrots for the carb. 

Keeping hydrated is also something to think about, not just while pregnant.  Pregnancy dulled my love of teas, so I am down to water and this time of year, it can be tricky to guzzle enough cold water on cold days.

I used to like a can/bottle of coconut water post-workout as a great thirst-quencher addition to water with the added electrolytes, but I'll get over it.  I am not relying on even those probably minimally-processed, one-ingredient foods anymore.  Instead, I try to drink some lemon water with salty food or add a pinch of salt to lemon water to get electrolytes back.  I absolutely LOVE lemon water, but it does tend to make me thirsty for more--which is a good thing if I am dehydrated and just can't suck down enough plain, cold water.

Oh and while lemon seems acidic, it is actually a base to your body, so it can counteract some of the high acid load of meats and fruit as a base like veggies.  Founder of the Paleo Diet, Dr. Loren Cordain, has a wealth of information about the integral acid-base balance and how that super-acid diet is a recipe for metabolic disorder.  

For more on making your own sports drink for electrolyte replenishment, check out this post by Primal Girl in a Modern World: Easy Sports Drink Recipe (and skip the stevia--you don't need it). 

And a drink-snack:

When out and about on weekends or as a nice relaxing wind-down to the weekday, we make a trip to the local coffee shop Verve, which has become a destination for my husband and I.  Despite my love of their atmosphere, throughout my pregnancy I have had an aversion to coffee (which is fine since I shouldn't have caffeine anyway) and even my old favorite teas.  Instead of being lame and just sipping water there, I recently found a new love: the steamer--steamed organic milk with their homemade whip cream and a splash of sweetener (if any).  This is a fun indulgence for me at the coffee shop, and if you are in the Santa Cruz area and want the best coffee around, you HAVE to stop at Verve Coffee Roasters.  You won't be disappointed :)

Finally, check out your local meat market for some great ideas when you are stuck in a meat rut.  We have El Salchichero that specializes in grass-fed and pasture raised meats.  I absolutely love their chicherones (pork rinds) and have been known to indulge in their creative sausages as a change in the lunch/snack routine.  While not quite homemade, they are still local and use quality ingredients and I always cook the sausages, usually having them with eggs.  Quality meat definitely makes a difference!

DIY Food Adventure: Cook/Prepare Your Own Food

Results Thus Far

This food challenge has been amazing for me.  I am cooking and preparing all of my own food while pregnant and dealing with the stress of moving, trying to find renters for my previous home, stressing over my husband's job and happiness, coaching and editing, etc.

I am not going to lie.  It is NOT easy at times--especially at 8pm at night trying to roast chickens needed for dinner and eating after 9pm after a long day and evening full of loading and unloading the car with stuff from our move and running errands.  Some days the best I can do is grab a brick of cheese and an apple or carrots for a lunch or snack on the go.  But if I am making the majority of my meals in my own kitchen, there is definitely a sense of satisfaction and the bottom-line: I just feel better.

How can I tell?  Well, when I splurge and have something packaged like corn chips or ice cream, take out like a burrito bowl at Chipotle, or something with a little sugar or refined carb at a restaurant, I just feel crappy.  The next day, I am cranky and exhausted.  Part of it is having sugar or too high density carbs before bedtime and that screws up my sleep--I toss and turn and wake up constantly.  And anyone who has been pregnant knows that you are already going to the bathroom multiple times a night and finding comfortable positions is a never-ending battle, so adding the tossing and turning and trouble sleeping just compounds the fallout the next day.  I hate feeling that way.

Realizing what food does to you is empowering.  Although we all stifle our screaming brains sometimes to over-indulge, knowing what that does to you is humbling.  Food is a drug, make no mistake.  For good or for not.

But cooking has made my life SO much better.  I just feel better and perform better in all aspects from computer work and home productivity, to the gym and my workouts and coaching, to just being in a cheerful, upbeat mood.

Change is Hard

But why didn't I cook more before--why has it always felt like a chore?

Some answers are in an article I just read on the subject from the NY Times: Is Junk Food Really Cheaper? by Mark Bittman.  

The core problem is that cooking is defined as work, and fast food is both a pleasure and a crutch. “People really are stressed out with all that they have to do, and they don’t want to cook,” says Julie Guthman, associate professor of community studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of the forthcoming “Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice and the Limits of Capitalism.” “Their reaction is, ‘Let me enjoy what I want to eat, and stop telling me what to do.’ And it’s one of the few things that less well-off people have: they don’t have to cook.”

The gist of the issue is that junk food is NOT cheaper, but since cooking is equated with work and eating out as a privilege we feel we have earned/deserve, it's less desirable to cook than to go out to eat.  It's not about the price--cooking your own food is less expensive than eating even fast food.  At least that is true with standard groceries and might get more stretched when you add in quality ingredients like organic, grass-fed or pastured meats and their dairy products and farmers market sourced organic produce.  For instance, I once burned through $40 buying fruit at a farmers market.  Easy.

Baby Steps to Real Food

But you don't have to go straight from Subway sandwiches, Ritz crackers, Golden Grahams, Fruit Roll-ups, and Ben and Jerry's to home-cooked.  Take it in baby steps:

• Figure out what's in the your food. Start looking at the labels and if you can't pronounce an ingredient or an ingredient doesn't look like a food (meat/dairy product/vegetable/fruit/nut/seed/spice), put it back on the shelf. 

• Cut back on eating food that comes in packages, pre-made, or from restaurants.  

• Try making the simple stuff like roasted chicken (takes literally salt, pepper, and 10min or less of your fussing and an hour of roasting) and cutting your own veggies (or buy a food processor for ease).  

• Buy a slow cooker and make your meals for days at one time.  You're already saving money and getting more for your money--plus, you're already eating healthier because your home-cooked food doesn't need chemical preservatives and you can control everything you put in it. 

• Take it to the next level and start cooking and preparing more of your meals at home.  

• Start with breakfast: eggs, veggies, and fruit takes 15min or less, is cheaper than that box of cereal and milk, and gives you longer lasting fullness and energy than that sugar bomb (yes, that even goes for Grape Nuts, check them on the glycemic index--the more processed, the more it burns through your body like pure sugar).  

• Making your lunch is cheaper than buying it.  Lunch is a great time for leftovers.

 

• And dinners you cook will be more rewarding and taste better than those you can grab on the go.  Plus, if you use a slow cooker or make your meal ahead of time, your end of day prep and cooking is much more manageable. 

• Take a moment to assess the effects of your changes.  How do you feel after eating real food you make yourself?  How do you feel after having packaged, pre-made, or restaurant food?  I'm betting you'll notice a difference!

• Finally, once you've mastered the basic meals, try getting creative and branching out with more complex recipes if you feel like it.  There is nothing wrong with simplicity, but variety is also a good thing :)

Now do you feel like Bill Murray in What About Bob screaming, "I'm sailing!" only yours is "I'm Cooking!"?

Hope you can make these changes in your life too! :)

DIY Food Adventure: Slow Cooker Carnitas with Confetti Slaw

CrossFit Santa Cruz

My CrossFit gym is embarking on a new kind of challenge, simply cooking and preparing your own food called the DIY Food Adventure.

So starting today, I am going to try to cook/prepare all my food--which is certainly going to be a tough one when I am moving this coming weekend.  But trying is an important step--despite that annoying Yoda quote my husband always throws at me: "Do or do not; there is no try."  To me there is a try with the intention of doing--it just doesn't always make it.  And with food, the LAST thing you want to do is beat yourself up over every transgression from your ideal.  Live your life and try your best.  My parents used to never get mad at me if I screwed up a test or grade in school as long as I "tried my best."  And we all know when we have really "tried our best" and when we haven't.  

The Prep

Sunday was the mega grocery shopping trip, spending about $150 at New Leaf, our local, better version of Whole Foods.  That bought us a slew of produce (I missed the farmer's market this weekend) and a 7.43# slab of pork shoulder roast for carnitas.  We also have store-bought eggs that are best for hard-boiling (I've tried the fresh ones and they just aren't as easy to peel or hold together as the shelved varieties with a little more age on them).  Finally, we bought whole chickens to roast for lunches and dinner that night.

Hard-boiling method a la America's Test Kitchen:

• Place 6 store-bought eggs (omega-enriched and as close to farm as you can get them from the store--but trust me, store-bought is better than fresh for hard boiling) in a sauce pot filled with water to cover the eggs and sprinkled prodigiously with kosher salt. 
• Allow the water to come to a boil over high heat.
• When it is rapidly bubbling--meaning large bubbles breaking the surface, rolling-style--turn off the heat and remove the pot from the burner, cover, and let stand for 10 minutes (a little longer if you cook more eggs or a little less if you really lagged on catching that boil--we've all been there and heard the water splattering rather than the boiling bubbles).  
• While the eggs are finishing, get out a big bowl and fill it with ice and water and once your ten minutes are up, add the eggs using tongs (not your hands, silly) and let them cool off in their ice bath like you'd love to do post-WOD.  

Perfect eggs and NO sulfur smell.  Done in less than 30 minutes start to finish.  Store in the fridge.

Here is the Roasted Chicken recipe we used, from Thomas Keller, posted on epicurious: My Favorite Simple Roasted Chicken Recipe.  Although the photo above was taken after an overnight in the fridge, it hopefully still captures a little bit of that brown, crispy goodness from when it was pulled from the oven.  I can't believe how juicy and flavorful the meat is and how that salt really makes it delicious.  It is like a brined bird, but SO much easier.  Better than rotisserie.  And just about as simple as buying pre-made.  Seriously. 

We had some roasted chicken for dinner that night--couldn't resist it fresh and crispy--alongside steamed artichoke hearts dipped them in melted grass-fed butter.  Yum!

I also made a roasted red pepper and baby bok choy stir fry to have more veggies in the house--perhaps for dinner variety or lunches/snacks.  Here is the recipe I used (substituting grapeseed oil for olive oil and yellow bell peppers for red ones): Baby Bok Choy with Yellow Bell Peppers Recipe.

Slow Cooker Carnitas

Don't have time to spend 3-4hrs watching a pot of carnitas?  Here's the answer: slow cook it!  Sweet and as spicy as you want it, this versatile, delicious pulled pork is definitely a staple in this household.

Cooking Time: 6+ hours on Low in the slow cooker, 45 minutes or so on the stovetop to brown

Quantity: Never as much as you would love to have to last forever.

Ingredients:

• pork shoulder/butt--as big as you can handle and as untrimmed of fat as you can get.  I like to get as many meals as possible so 5# is a minimum.
• orange juice or any juice--we've tried a bunch with success (the small ~15oz bottles do well)
• salt
• pepper
• garlic (cloves or powder)
• spices to taste (ex. cumin, cayenne, you name it!)

Method:

First, pour the orange juice into the slow cooker pot and add your salt, pepper, garlic, and spices.  Swirl to dissolve and distribute.  

Then, cut the pork shoulder into fist-sized hunks. DO NOT trim it of its fat--you need it for frying.  Add the hunks to the pot and then toss them in the OJ mixture to coat each one.  Next, mash them down into the juice and set your pot a-cooking: Low for 6 hours or so--we've done less for smaller batches and more for larger ones.  You just want to make sure it is fall-apart tender, but you are going to still cook it more, so it doesn't have to be a 12-hour affair.  

Once it's done with the slow cookin', it's on to stage 2: the fryin'.  Dump the contents of the slow cooker pot into a huge stove-top pot (like a stock pot--NOT non-stick) and heat on the higher side of medium high--like 8 out of 10.  It'll boil away for about 30 minutes or so depending on the quantity of meat and liquid until it starts to stick and that is when the fun begins.  Start your scrapping as soon as it starts a-stickin'.  A strong spatula (read: metal, NOT plastic) works wonders.  Come back often to re-scrape until the liquid is basically completely gone and you feel like it is just going to burn or dry out if you leave it in there much longer.  

Then, if you have a ton of fat in the pot still (this used to happen to us, but hasn't in a long time--probably because the butcher still partially trims off some fat despite my efforts), you can drain the meat before storing and keep that fat for a butter substitute.  If you don't have much liquid, just dump the meat and juices into a storage container.  It'll last for a week in the fridge, but ours never stays around that long :)  

Serve with Confetti Slaw (below), salsas, guacamole or just avocado, on lettuce leaves as tacos, in eggs, or however you want to enjoy that unbelievably delicious porky goodness.

Confetti Slaw

A beautiful symphony of flavors, texture, and crunch!  Basically a play on the Crunchy Slaw I made for my Hearty Paleo-Zone Chili, this slaw is more finely diced for ease of incorporating with the meat and being picked up by utensils.  It is a great way to add some veg without it overpowering the dish.

Prep Time: 15 minutes or less

Quantity: a truckload

Ingredients:

• head of green cabbage
• head of red cabbage
• bunch of cilantro
• 3 or so limes

Method:

Remove damaged outer leaves from the cabbages and any wilted, brown/black cilantro leaves.  Cut the cabbages into hunks and salad spin them to rinse.  Add them back into the salad spinner bowl once you rinse it out (the outer one, not the colander) for storage and assembly of the slaw (yes, it makes that much!).  

In small batches, food process the cabbage into a dice.  This takes patience not to over-stuff the food processor and have to fish out large chunks when you upend it into the bowl.  Not fun.  If you move fast, the multiple batches won't be too annoying.  It beats trying to hand-chop every piece down to a dice.  Believe me, I've tried and made a mess.  

Once the cabbage is done, rinse the cilantro, remove any woodier stem sections, and food process that too.  Add it to the bowl.  

Finally, roll the limes on the counter to release some juices, then cut and juice (it pays to have a citrus juicer).  Add the juice to the bowl and stir it up.  Taste and add more limes if you have them (or lemon juice can substitute).  I would wait to salt it until serving your portion because I have ruined a whole batch with over salting before--I think the citrus can accentuate it.  Add any other flavors you desire.  The Confetti Slaw should add a gorgeous splash of color and a nice lime scented crunch to your dish.  Load it up on the carnitas for a great meal!

Let me know how you like to serve your carnitas and if you've tried my recipe!

What's In the Box?

"Nothing! Absolutely nothing!  Stupid!  You're so stupid!" says the game show host of Weird Al's classic cult film UHF.  And that couldn't be more right about what's in most processed foods--nothing nutritious at least. 

The Zone Diet taught me to look at Protein, Fat, and Carbohydrate content for anything with a label, but it was through the Paleo Diet that I first started looking below those numbers to the sea of ingredients. And boy were my eyes opened!

Now, I cannot buy any product without looking at its label.  And by the recent media storm on fast food, convenience food, and organic food, it looks like I am completely justified.  In case you missed it, here are some jewels: 

• Does Taco Bell's beef meet the minimum requirements set by the USDA to be labeled as "beef"? 

Attorney Dee Miles said the meat mixture contained just 35 percent beef, with the remaining 65 percent containing water, wheat oats, soy lecithin, maltodrextrin, anti-dusting agent and modified corn starch.

Read more at Fox News. 

Their company statement doesn't really do a great job at convincing me all is honky-dory:

Our recipe for seasoned beef includes ingredients you'd find in your home or in the supermarket aisle today:

• 88% USDA-inspected quality beef
• 3-5% water for moisture
• 3-5% spices (including salt, chili pepper, onion powder, tomato powder, sugar, garlic powder, cocoa powder and a proprietary blend of Mexican spices and natural flavors).
• 3-5% oats, starch, sugar, yeast, citric acid, and other ingredients that contribute to the quality of our product.

Do YOU have to use grain-derived additives and sugar to enhance the quality of the taco beef you serve at home? 

• Has your beef been treated with ammonia?

With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald's, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone.
But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment.

And:

Federal officials agreed to the company’s request that the ammonia be classified as a “processing agent” and not an ingredient that would be listed on labels.

Read more at The New York Times.

• Is a Happy Meal a Crime?

WASHINGTON—A mother of two from Sacramento, Calif., says that McDonald’s uses toys as bait to induce her kids to clamor to go to McDonald’s and to develop a preference for nutritionally poor Happy Meals. With the help of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, today the mom, Monet Parham, is filing a class action lawsuit aimed at stopping McDonald’s use of toys to market directly to young children.

And:

“Go after kids,” is how Roy Bergold, who headed McDonald’s advertising for 29 years as chief creative officer, described the company’s strategy in an article in QSR magazine. “Ray Kroc said that if you had $1 to spend on marketing, spend it on kids. Why? Because they can’t get to your restaurant by themselves and they eat a lot.” Bergold also acknowledged in a separate QSR column that “companies have found that kids are a lot more tempted by the toys than the food.” McDonald’s “gets into the parents’ wallets via the kids’ minds,” according to an online presentation by Martin Lindstrom, who advises McDonald’s on branding and “neuromarketing.”

Read more on this class action lawsuit at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

• Has your town outlawed marketing that uses toys to lure children toward unhealthy food choices?  San Francisco has!

Under the law, McDonald's and other restaurants will have until December 2011 to improve their meals' nutrition by adding fruits and vegetables -- if the chains want to keep offering toys, including those promoting the latest films.

Read more at CNN.

• When is a blueberry not a blueberry?  

Apparently when it's advertised in Jiffy Blueberry Muffin Mix, Kellogg's Blueberry Muffin Frosted Mini-Wheats, General Mills' Total Blueberry Pomegranate Cereal, and Target's blueberry muffins. According to a video report from the Consumer Wellness Center, the pictures and names of these products don't tell us the truth about their ingredients. Even when there might be a trace of real fruit, there are sugar, dyes, and soybean oil (sometimes as partially hydrogenated--i.e. transfat) as its bosom buddies. Check out this label for the "blueberries" (i.e. "blueberry flavored crunchlets") it includes:

And the icing on the cake:

• Can you trust your food isn't genetically modified?

Genetically modified alfalfa was created to be resistant to the herbicide Roundup.  As such, it's fields could be saturated with the herbicide without destroying the crop.  What perhaps sounds useful at first glance, is a bit more complicated.  According to the Organic Consumers Association, this genetically modified or genetically engineered crop is

• chemical and energy intensive to farm (i.e. it is NOT sustainable where we grow it in bulk and takes a vast quantity of fossil fuels to produce it)
• a perennial crop whose seeds disperse by wind, making it impossible to contain its genetic pool and not run the risk of contaminating organic alfalfa and crossing with other grasses to create superweeds
• feed for animals, including dairy cows, which makes question the quality of dairy products in the US even more than I already did 
• harmful to life. If it isn't enough that it harms other plants and animals, it also harms us.  Roundup is toxic to farm workers too and those whose homes are rooted downwind of the sprayed fields.  

So, this crop is pretty scary, right? Scarier still is the fact that it was just deregulated by the Agriculture Secretary--meaning it has the green light, which opens the floodgates for genetically engineered superplants to become commonplace.  And unfortunately our loudest, strongest voice against this onslaught turned tail and gave in.  Big Organic including Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm would rather "coexist" with Big Agro instead of fight them anymore.  Here's one news article from Bloomberg BusinessWeek on the decision.

Concerned?  Do something about it and contact President Obama.  Read more at The Cornucopia Institute.

YOUR NEXT STEP


What can you do to protect yourself from eating non-foods you might be deceived into thinking are actually foods?  Here's what:

• READ LABELS!

• If you can't pronounce an ingredient and it has no "otherwise known as" modifier to something you actually recognize, DITCH IT!

• Find foods with FEW ingredients!  If even a label at all!

• Shop the PERIMETER of your supermarket for the freshest and least ingredient-laden foods.  Notice there aren't any ingredient labels on your fruits and vegetables and there shouldn't be anything except meat and fish on meat and fish labels.  

• Buy ORGANIC whenever possible. You don't want or need the chemical load of non-organic food.  Heck, even organic might be in question soon.  Worried about the expense?  Worry more about the health risks you are taking by saving a buck.

• Shop LOCAL. Shop at your farmer's market to find local, seasonal produce.  Support local ranchers raising their animals on pasture.  You can find great sources for these at Eat Wild.

• Buy LOCAL FARM eggs whenever possible and free-range, cage-free, pasture-raised, certified humane, organic, omega-enriched when store-bought. 

• Buy WILD-CAUGHT, SUSTAINABLE fish.  Use the the Seafood Watch guide to guide your choices.

• Buy GRASS-FED, pastured, and organic meat and dairy products.  What's healthiest and happiest for the animals is for you too. 

• Make eating clean your LIFESTYLE and don't beat yourself up over minor faults and slip-ups. If you do want to cheat and splurge and not care what you are eating for a meal or vacation, do it!  You'll probably reap the rewards of feeling crappy for putting in low octane fuel, but your brain might have needed it.  Next time you leave the plantation, you can go forth with knowledge of what makes you feel the "least bad."  For me, I know that is a sugar cheat or the lesser grains of corn and rice because wheat just makes me sleepy, puffy, and irritable in the belly and mind.  Living most of your life on the plan gives you the positive feedback of healthiness, happiness, and improved performance-ness :)

For a laugh, check out this flowchart from Summer Tomato to decipher whether your food is Real Food. 

Food can be a tremendously stressful situation for us at every single meal.  But it doesn't HAVE to be!  Choose REAL FOOD choices as much as possible to do your body and the world some good.  Starting to be more mindful of what you are eating and what your food is made of starts you on the road to taking control of your diet.  Try to nourish yourself, not harm.

Find me and many other paleo bloggers on our weekly Paleo Rodeo hosted by Modern Paleo!