Days 5 & 6 - The 30-Day Paleo Challenge

Happy Cinco De Mayo!!  We're already concluding Day 6 of our 30 Day Paleo Challenge...can't believe we've made it through six days already! 

Day 5 turned out to be a fabulous one.   I got up early (for me!) and hit the road.  I spent five hours (including 2 hours of driving) getting my hair done by my oh-so-talented friend.  Not trying to hide my gray, but I do appreciate getting it blended in a little bit!

Look at this fabulous hair...it looks like Mother Nature painted it, doesn't it?

Doesn't she do a fabulous job?  The gray is still there, but didn't she do a wonderful job blending it in?  She is so worth driving for.



Dutch Oven Chicken, adapted from The Primal Blueprint Cookbook

Didn't hit the gym...I was still so sore from the workout the day before.  Still I made some wonderful Dutch Oven Chicken for dinner...it turned out fabulously. 

All in all, I think Day 6 was a productive and successful Paleo Challenge day.

On to Day 6 - Cinco De Mayo!!  I finally had a good night's sleep and got my point for sleepingWe stayed Paleo all day, until dinner.  Then, like much of the country, we headed out to our local Mexican restaurant and enthusiastically celebrated Mexican Independence Day!  Nope, not a Paleo meal...but that is okay, because I'd planned for a cheat meal and was strict for the day leading up to our meal.  My points for the day won't be good, but this is life, isn't it?

This is what it looked like after I initially blended together the egg, the lemon
juice, the first batch of oil, the salt, and the mustard powder.

Oh, and I made homemade olive oil mayonnaise!  Even better, it turned out well!  I'm so excited...I got the recipe from The Clothes Make the Girl.  Who knew you could make mayonnaise from scratch so easily!

This is after I drizzled in the one cup of oil!  It emulsified properly...woot!

Oh, and if your going to try it yourself, all the recipes talk about how the trick is to "drizzle" the olive oil oh-so-slowly to get the mixture to emulsify properly and I was scared to death that I'd ruin it.  I decided to put the olive oil in a squeeze bottle, so that I couldn't inadvertently pour the oil in tpo fast and ruin my mayonnaise.



The plastic bottle was the key to "drizzling" properly...

 It worked beautifully...

And Day 6 of the 30 Day Paleo Challenge concluded with a double feature:

Where the Boys Are for Buttercup,

followed by Blade Runner for Valiant.

I wonder if I'll convince him to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?...only time will tell.

Tron

Christmas break begins this week.  I don't know about other homeschoolers, but I always find our lives go a little easier if we take Christmas Break (and Spring Break) with our public school brethren.  To start the festivities, I took a break from my kitchen duties and headed into town to spend some fun time with my kids.  Charming had the day off, too,  and even our neighbors (including the dad!) made the trek and joined us at the local AMC theater to see Tron Legacy, Disney's remake of the 80s movie!

Yes, we're geeks!  We've been so excited about Tron and matinee prices sweetened the deal.  (You know that all movies before noon are $5 at the AMC theaters, right?  $5!)

I just have to say that despite the being raked over the coals by the oh-so-prestigious reviewers, Tron was a super fun movie to take your kids to.   Special effects combined with some 80s nostalgia made for a fun transition from the original Tron to this Tron.  Add in a PG rating (no kissing, no questionable language, exciting motorcycle races!) and it is a parent's dream.   (In an effort to demonstrate full transparency, I will say there were a few minutes toward the end where it bogged down a bit, but other than that, it moved right along.)  To put it quite simply:  Boys liked it and girls liked it.  Grown-ups liked it and kids liked it. 

No, it won't solve the ills of the world, but for a couple of hours, you can go have a good time with your kids.  I just don't think you can ask for more! 

(Now, I must head back to my kitchen...gingerbread men await my attention!)

You Are What You Eat? Uh-oh!

When Valiant had his wisdom teeth extracted, we were pretty much housebound for the first few days. We used that time to catch up on some of the documentaries we'd been wanting to watch. Two I thought I'd share with you were Food, Inc. and SuperSize Me. They were both quite good and both available via streaming from Netflix. (You can also get them sent to you via DVD.)
Food, Inc. is basically a movie synopsis of The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. It was a fabulous overview of where our food comes from, how the animals that provide our food are cared for, and what is going into our "processed" foods. At ages 10 and 13, both of my children found the movie quite compelling and thought provoking. Since I've been working towards improving our diets and sourcing our food locally, this movie helped the kids understand my decisions. I highly recommend watching this movie if you have any curiosity about the food industry.

SuperSize Me is pretty well known, but I'd resisted watching it because I'd heard that it specially picked McDonald's to the exclusion of other fast food restaurants and I didn't like that concept. Morgan Spurlock did feature McDonald's in his month-long experiment, but only because it is the most ubiquitous of the fast food chains, not because it is unique in the industry. This movie takes a hard look at just how much processed food has become part of our daily lives and just how much of it our children are eating. Rather than condemning one particular fast food chain, Mr. Spurlock really wants us to take a long, hard look at how much processed food has entered our diets and what it is doing to our overall health. You can watch SuperSize Me for free at hulu.com.

After watching both these movies, I can honestly say that if you'd like a better understanding of the nation's food industry, you won't regret watching them.