Where a recovering vegetarian finds a happy medium between traditional foods & paleo eating!

Eat From Whence You've Come

I was raised in a heart-healthy house by carb-loading distance runners. Butter was verboten, carbs were king & meat was very limited. I hated any reminder that I was eating an animal & spent most of my childhood as a vegetarian, by choice, supported as such by my parents. I grew up adoring food, taught to bake by my country grandma & taking food classes wherever & whenever I could. When I left home, I convinced my 6'5 trucker hubby that vegetarianism was the way to go. Hippies are veggies whenever possible, natch, so along we went eating our local organic coop bought beans & lentils.

I had 3 babies & spent as much time as possible cooking them gorgeous whole grain, organic, minimal meat meals. Then, when my 8 year cycle of constantly-nursing-or-pregnant-or-both came to an end, I was fat. At 160lbs & a size 12 on my nearly 5'5 frame, I realised I couldn't eat whatever I wanted anymore! What the hell?! Something had to give. I took up running (shudder) again, running 5k a few times a week. 2 years passed with no real change or weightloss. I read & researched food, eating habit, nutrition & philosophy constantly & finally came to an epic discovery.

Fat doesn't make you fat. Butter isn't the devil. Bacon is our friend. Cheese makes life happy. Cardio ain't all it's cracked up to be.

I quit eating 4 slices of my homemade, homeground flour bread without butter. Instead, I learned that eating 1 slice slathered with real butter made me feel better about my life. Decadent snacks of cheeses & fruits kept me full. I quit running & went back to my beloved hiking & snowshoeing. I simply relied on working on our hobby farm for exercise. And I started losing weight!!! 20lbs dropped off of me over the course of about a year- insane. It stayed off, with no effort. I revisited the previously rejected Nourishing Traditions & started sprouting & soaking the smaller amounts of grains/beans we were eating.

Another couple of years into it & I have stalled. Books like Mark Sisson's The Primal Blueprint have inspired me to dig further into our food. I've further minimised our grain consumption, aiming for a few servings a week, while upping our meat quota significantly. The discovery that I don't feel hungry when I quit eating grains was another revolution.

Now, how to make this all work, every day, for families? That's what I'm aiming to accomplish here!! I want to inspire you to make the nutrient dense foods that people historically have eaten. Great ingredients, prepared simply, are a food philosophy, never a fad. My friends have been asking me for a cookbook for years, but this blog will have to do- thank you for joining me :)