I finally went back to Iowa to visit the family and was pretty worried about the food situation.   In advance I had ordered some staples on Amazon and had them shipped out – ghee, coconut oil, matcha, coconut milk, … and I figured that the fall-back plan was to drive to Iowa City to visit the Whole Foods there and load up on meats.   Boy was I in for a pleasant surprise.

The local Hy-Vee grocery chain has a huge Health Food section complete with a dietician on staff and a notebook full of their Gluten-Free products.  That section had things like Julian’s Paleo Bread, GT’s Kombucha, local farm-raised eggs, Bubbies kraut & pickles, uncured bacon, good dark chocolate and a host of GF products I’d never go near anyway.   Still, impressive, almost as good as PCC.  A huge organic produce section rounded this out, no problems getting good broccoli, chard, berries, bananas, avocados and sweet potatoes.

Then there was the meat department.  In the “standard” meat area was a whole section of Strauss 100% grass-fed beef and lamb along with some veal.   In another section was good organic, pastured chicken.  The best though was in the special freezers off to the side, here one could find local grass-fed beef in ground or steaks as well as local, grass-fed bison in ground, sausages, steaks and roasts.

The downtown Farmer’s Market was another surprise, there I found Argicultured Foods which does homemade kraut, kimchee and kombucha which you can get on tap and fill your own bottle with.  They even advertised as GAPS and Paleo Friendly.

Needless to say I ate well.   I had bacon, veggies and eggs for breakfast along with my usual Bulletproof tea and a berry/banana smoothie made with coconut milk.   For lunches and dinner we ate well – burgers,  Crackling Chicken, roast chicken, huge bison t-bone steaks and some salmon salad I made one day.

One night I wanted to go out with a friend from high school and college and so I began looking on Yelp for Paleo friendly places.  There I lucked out again, finding Riverbottom Chop House in Pt. Byron, IL.  This place hooked me when I found they cooked their potatoes (I know, they aren’t really Paleo or AIP but in a pinch I’ll eat them) in duck fat.  We headed there one evening and it was amazing, one of the better places I’ve eaten and you can sit and watch the sun set over the Mississippi River.   I had the beet salad and just had the goat cheese left out and got balsamic and olive oil instead of their dressing, it was great.  For dinner I had their specialty, an 8 oz. smoked prime filet that comes with the duck fat potatoes and asparagus.  It was unbelievably good, the filet was cooked perfectly and the veggies were awesome.  The staff was great, they had a decent wine list and the location hard to beat for the Quad Cities area.  I’d go back in a heartbeat.

The only food snafu I ran into was on the way home when my flight got delayed by several hours after I got to O’Hare just on time to make my 3:00 departure.  I searched the area of the terminal I was in for decent food but found none.  Luckily I had packed along a Paleo Meals To Go Beef Stew, some Epic bars and a few bananas.  I went to Starbucks and ordered a tea plus an extra 12 oz of hot water and rehydrated the meal and had a feast for lunch.  Reminder – always travel with some dehydrated meals from here on out.   I still have some sardines, Epic bars, a banana and a few cookies and chocolate for the flight home.

All in all I was shocked, it was almost as easy to get good food in the QCs as it is in Seattle and the restaurant I found was close to some of the places in Portland that I love.   Now I know that it is easier to eat in the midwest than I thought it would be thanks to Hy-Vee which seems to be a pretty enlightened grocery chain.