Muffins!

After much disappointment, i have finally had success with coconut flour in baked goods!  They're not only grain-free, but sugar-free as well, and edible to everyone in the house.  That's the trifecta of impressive around here.

1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
12 eggs
12 Tbsp coconut oil, melted
2 bananas, mashed
3/4 tsp vanilla
2 packages blueberries

Preheat oven to 375 and mix ingredients (it doesn't hurt to let it sit for a few minutes to give the coconut time to soak up some of the liquid.  Bake 20-25 minutes (makes 2 dozen).

That seems like a lot of oil and eggs, i know, but it works.

Photographic evidence!

We Watched FatHead

About the Film

Have you seen the news stories about the obesity epidemic? Did you see Super Size Me? Then guess what? … You’ve been fed a load of bologna.



Comedian (and former health writer) Tom Naughton replies to the blame-McDonald’s crowd by losing weight on a fat-laden fast-food diet while demonstrating that nearly everything we’ve been told about obesity and healthy eating is wrong. Along with some delicious parody of Super Size Me, Naughton serves up plenty of no-bologna facts that will stun most viewers, such as: The obesity “epidemic” has been wildly exaggerated by the CDC. People the government classifies as “overweight” have longer lifespans than people classified as “normal weight.” Having low cholesterol is unhealthy. Lowfat diets can lead to depression and type II diabetes. Saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease — but sugars, starches and processed vegetable oils do.

This movie should be required watching for everyone out there. That is all that there is really to say about it. Okay, I suppose I could talk some more...

Eating Out at Golden Corral Might be Paleo/Primal Friendly, but is not Worth It

This morning, my family decided to go out to eat for breakfast. I have no shame in admitting that this was more than likely due to the bacon my wife cooked the night before, the smell of which still filled the house. Buffet-style bacon, heaping, piled high made my wife and I salivate at the thought. It did not go so well.

The Breakfast

We chose Golden Corral, since their meat selections for dinner are pretty good and in the past, their breakfasts have been equally good. But that was before we went Paleo/Primal and, more importantly, before we became meat snobs.

You Can't Trust Restaurants

Restaurant Foods Contain More Calories Than Restaurants Claim! | Homeschool-Articles.com: Articles by Homeschoolers for Homeschoolers:

"You can’t trust everything you read, especially if it is a nutrition label! In a disheartening study from the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, researchers found that many dietetic frozen food entrees had many more calories than their nutrition labels claimed; on average, the frozen foods, including items from Weight Watchers, Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice, and South Beach, contained 8% more calories than their boxes suggested. They also found many discrepancies between the number of calories in food items at many popular chain restaurants and the number of calories these restaurants claim their food contains. On average, restaurant foods contained 18% more calories than listed."

If you can't trust restaurants about the calories that are in their foods, how can we who eat Paleo/Primal trust them when they say their food is gluten-free or sugar-free?

Education is Missing in the Lunchroom

What follows is an essay I wrote my my English 106 class:


There is no question that schools, public or private, are in place to educate children. For twelve long years, children learn facts about nearly every facet of their lives from history to geography, mathematics to biology, sex to reading and writing comprehension. Children have ample opportunities to become inspired intellectually and artistically. While education is at the core of every school, there is one place where education is sorely absent: The lunchroom.

Can Round-Robin-style of GMing Work?

I proposed the following game idea to my gaming group today:

I think it would be fun for a "round robin" sort of styled game, where each person makes a character.. and a villian. We roll a dice to see who plays the villian, i.e. GM's it, at the end of each "episode". As each villian is jailed or killed, a new one is made, and after some time in game, the jailed ones get thrown back into the mix to see if any breaks out and so on. I think the characters would be a mix of Batman-esque up to Iron Man-esque to fight said villians.

Of course, if someone has a really good plot and they want to run it because it would fit with the end of the previous plot, no need to roll. This way there isn't just one GM, and so that the villians are ran differently.

I would say the swap happened when the villian got carted off to jail or died, and that any background notes, like what various seedy underbelly elements were up to should be handed over to the next gm

So, any thoughts?

Somewhat immediately, one of the members in our group became worried about what would happen if there was a disagreement with how some of the more subjective elements present in nearly every game system. There was a rather long debate over this, with myself believing that while "shit happens", we were all adults and could get past such problems. His contention was that if one player disliked a general consensus to a rule, he/she might try to against the general consensus when his/her turn came up to GM.

While I agree that this could present a problem, I believe that if the GM at that moment can not stand the fact that he is helping everyone play a game, instead of that everyone is just acting as placeholders in HIS story, then he shouldn't be playing.

So I wonder, how many people out there have been involved in a round-robin-style of GMing and how did it work out for you?

Are Ham and Genoa Salami Paleo?

I asked the following on the forums at Marks Daily Apple and did not get many responses, none that could confirm one way or the other, so I am bringing it here to see if anyone out there in blogland has a clue.

Grilling for Flavor

Grilling meat is rather easy. You fire up the grill and lay the meat over it, letting it cook until it is as done as you want it to be. But how do you make that meat taste better?

Some people use rubs, some use marinades, I just sprinkle a mixture of spices while I am cooking it... but that is not the way to get great flavor out of your meat. There are two rules for getting the most flavor out of your meat, and they both take place after your meat has been cooked.

First Rule of Grilling for Flavor