Tag Archives: Paleo

MS rears its ugly head again

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Back in 2014 when I was dealing with SIBO and my feet started going numb we were a bit worried about MS and my doctor sent me off to a neurologist to see what was going on.   At that time it turned out I had neuropathy probably caused by the antibiotics.   In 2015 we found I had myelin antibodies from the autoimmune panel from Cyrex and so I had to go in for another neurological check and an MRI.  That MRI came back clean in the spring of 2015 and so I sort of figured I was out of the woods on this one.

Fast forward to last fall.  I started having frequent burning sensations in the front of my left leg and assumed it was due to the bad discs in my neck which were found in the MRI.  I went to a chiro and did my usual routine on the discs but the burning pain didn’t really go away and slowly got more frequent to where it was a daily occurrence.  My new naturopath looked at my MRI and thought I had not only bad discs but also a thickening of the ligament that runs along the spinal cord.  So, back to the neurologist for me with hopes that this was a structural issue that could be handled by surgery.

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Pheasant Thai Coconut Soup

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While I usually pluck birds and roast them whole there are times when I either have one a bit shot up or too many birds to process that way in which case I breast them and take the  hindquarters (along with the heart, liver and gizzard for Lira.)   We use the breasts in place of chicken breasts in recipes and usually slow cook the the hindquarters in a creole, cacciatore or some other similar dish.   This last week I have had a bad cold and was in the mood for a Thai Tom Kha Gai soup so decided to try and make one from pheasant.   I merged together a few recipes I found on the web and came up with something delicious and  cleared out my sinuses.   The recipe is totally Paleo, Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free.

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Pheasant Creole

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While I’m busy prepping for the upcoming hunting season I’m also busy trying to clear out the freezers in hopes of re-filling them soon.  I had a few pheasants left from last winter and decided to try something new with them after doing some variation on smoked pheasant for the last several.   We had some Shrimp Creole a few weeks ago and are inundated with tomatoes from the garden at the moment so that inspired me to make Pheasant Creole last night and it was awesome plus I did it in the slow cooker so it didn’t heat the house up too much on a hot day.

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Smoke roasted venison

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This weekend we had a dinner party and I decided to make use of the last big leg roast from my buck but had no idea how I was going to cook it.   I ended up combining about 3 recipes to get the final result which was awesome so I thought I’d better document it for future use.

I started where I always start, Hank Shaw‘s Buck, Buck, Moose which has been my goto cookbook since last October, everything we’ve made from there has been fantastic.   Following his Roast Leg of Venison recipe he has a side-bar on Smoke-Roasting a Leg of Venison which is what I wanted to do.  Hank gives 3 options to deal with this in a smoker:

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More Portland Paleo

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IMG_0691Another trip to Portland and another restaurant to try out, we love eating in Portland.   I have done two posts already about this city – Portland Paleo and Portland Paleo II from last year’s trips.   We headed to Portland last weekend to go look at a dog and decided to try something new.  Originally I was going to just head to Brooklyn House but felt it was better to explore.  Tasty & Sons had been recommended to us by a friend and their menu had potential but it was one the other side of the river so I found Tasty & Alder which is just a block away from our hotel in the Pearl District and looked to be very Paleo friendly.

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Getting fit again after SIBO

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NP9A2836-X3In one of my recent posts I talked a bit about exercise in relation to the Primary Foods concept and a bit about how I slowly got back in shape as I healed up from SIBO.  I thought this topic deserved a bit more discussion since it is an important part of my life and I know many people who are currently struggling with how to get back in shape after being ill for a year or longer.

Before SIBO I was in the best shape of my life.  I had come off a solid year with a  personal trainer, I had run several trail marathons and an ultra marathon and was pretty much doing  13+ mile trail run every Saturday.   When I got sick all that fitness went out the door. I lost a lot of weight, down a total of 35-40 lbs and with that weight went a lot of muscle mass.   With Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV)( coursing through my system I was exhausted and seriously unable to get up and do much of anything so all my cardio conditioning went out the door too.   After a year of this I went from being in great shape to being in the worst shape I’d probably been in for most of my adult life.

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My stand-up desk experiment

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IMG_0105With the disc issues in my neck I began noticing that sitting was the worst thing I could do.  If I was on the move all day then my leg rarely started burning but if I sat down for more than about 45 minutes the burn would come on and once it came on it rarely went away for the rest of the day.  The most time I would spend sitting was at the computer which is where my worst bad habits of leaning forward and slouching come into play.  So I decided to change up my workstation a month ago and bought a stand-up desk unit.   With my old school 27″ iMac I was rather limited by weight as to what would work but the Ergotron Single HD unit would hold my system.   I opted for the one with the extra shelf so I’d have room for my collection of input devices since I’ve gotten oddly used to using a pen tablet, touch pad and mouse.

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Going a bit outside Paleo

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Jasmine_1Ever since I started my serious attempt to gain weight I had added back in some white jasmine rice as a carb source to try and put on some pounds, especially as my running mileage is increasing.   I really hated the thought of eating white rice but jasmine has the lowest fermentation potential and gets absorbed quickly in the upper part of the small intestine.  Still, it never sat well with me since I always felt brown rice was much healthier option.   There are plusses and minuses on both sides of this and many Paleo followers won’t even go there at all just totally avoiding grains.    The argument for white jasmine rice is that it has no anti-nutrients at all since the bran has been stripped away but what you are left with is a pretty high glycemic carb source.    The best case for white rice in Paleo I’ve found is at Paleo Leap.  They argue for white jasmine rice and against brown rice since it does contain anti-nutrients.

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What I do when everything is flooding

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The weather has gone to hell rapidly this fall and today we are on the third big storm and flood of the last few weeks, kind of crazy.   Not much fishing opportunities around here at the moment so what is a fisherman to do?  Well, over the last month I’ve managed to get in some great fishing off Catalina Island in SoCal and several good hunts to gather food as well as fly tying material.

Cooke Canyon Pheasant Hunting

IMG_9353In mid-October Chris and I went over to Cooke Canyon to go on the first bird hunting trip of the season.  We had pretty much perfect conditions, sunny and calm in Ellensburg with short-sleeve weather.  We started the morning doing a bit of trap shooting and I SUCKED to say the least, I think I hit 3 clays in about 30 shots, not a good percentage.  Chris, on the other hand, was spot on hitting about 95% accuracy so between the two of us we stood a chance.   We hit the field and did indeed find birds and get some, we ended up with five of the seven birds that day, not bad for a first trip out of the year.  I vowed to hit the trap field.

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Paleo OC

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We just got back from our bi-annual trip to Orange County.  This time, as usual, we mostly prepared our own foods but we did make it out to a couple of restaurants.   OC isn’t nearly as Paleo as Portland but there are options out there and still quite a bit to explore on our next visit.

Provisions

Paleo section at Whole Foods

Paleo section at Whole Foods

Finding Paleo groceries is pretty easy, the Whole Foods in Newport Beach is better stocked in Paleo goods than any of the ones in Seattle and the Laguna Beach location is also good though smaller.  They have most products by Paleo Chef, Julian Bakery and others plus locally made grass-fed Paleo jerky.    Add to that a complete seafood and meat department where we got wild salmon, organic chicken, bison steaks and grass fed ground beef.   Of course we also stocked up on organic fruits and vegetables.  The only thing missing was guar-gum free coconut milk.  I made up for that by making my own from Nutiva Coconut Manna and a blender.    I was excited to see the Julian Bakery Coconut Flakes, I’d been craving cereal lately and most Paleo cereals have almonds or almond flour which is one of my few allergies.  The Coconut Flakes are nothing but coconut so are OK for me and were great with strawberries and coconut milk.

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