Inspiration

Our daughter won the zone finals tonight with her speech about Paleo. The judges said she was an 'inspiration' and that it is so important to think carefully about what our children are eating these days.

Some parents came up to us afterwards and said her speech had given them some food for thought and that they would be doing more research at home. Wow, you can't ask for more than that.

She's inspired me too, I've been a bit quiet on the old blog the last month. I'm too busy cooking! It's happy cooking though, we are all so well at the moment and I was just thinking the other day how contented I feel with my life right now. Yes it's busy, yes it can get manic properly feeding 5 of us. Not to mention all the driving to after school activities and making sure we have suitable snacks with us. You should see the size of the handbag I have been carrying around lately!

Happy busy. Developing recipes, and very much enjoying testing them. It's all good. Hoping to be back here soon with some more yummy ideas to share. Until then, I'll leave you with this cool info-graphic I saw tonight.

xx Kate

paleo-

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Izzy won!

Our girl did it, she won the school speech competition and is heading to zone finals in September.

Wow, I can't quite get my head around it. I didn't realise she was the only year 5 kid today. The other 11 finalists were all year 6's!

So, so proud right now. Feeling inspired by my 9 year old to eat better, train harder and love more. Life is good.

Kate =)

She did it!

Hi all,

We found out today that Izzy's made it through to the next round in the School Speech contest. She'll be competing against 11 other kids in her syndicate for a place at the Inter-School finals. There's only 1 spot.

That's a lot of kids and teachers that are going to hear about Paleo. It's not exactly mainstream here in little old New Zealand, so it's very exciting.

Wish her luck! We are very proud.

Kate =)

Eat like a Caveman - Izzy's school speech

Thought you guys might like this ;) Paleo from a 10 year olds perspective. Leave her a comment? She'd love that!


Some crazy things have been happening in my family lately. One day, a few weeks ago, my Dad came home from the gym and told us he wanted to eat like a Caveman. At first we thought he was nuts, but it did sound kind of interesting so we said okay! Today I’m going to tell you why our family has changed the way we eat.

First, we should talk about why my dad even wants to eat like a caveman. It’s pretty simple. He really wants Abs. A six pack of muscle right here (point). I’m serious. I think it’s called a mid-life crisis, or at least that’s what mum calls it.

I think because Dad was training so much he started thinking about food too.  A lot of fitness experts believe that if you don’t put the right food into your body then it won’t matter how hard you train because you’ll never be as strong, fit or healthy as you could be. Food is our fuel, just like Petrol is to Cars.

That’s when Dad started talking to cavemen. Apparently there’s a lot of them out there. Ok, they’re not real cavemen. They don’t actually live in caves, carry clubs or grunt at each other but they do try to eat what a Caveman would have eaten. It’s called the Paleo diet.

Lots of diseases like Obesity and Diabetes didn’t exist in the caveman days. Could Cavemen have been smarter about knowing what foods their bodies could run best on? Human bodies haven’t really changed in a million years but the food we put in them has!

Lets go back in time to when the first people walked the earth. These early humans were Hunter-Gatherers and they had to be strong and fit to survive. They hunted animals for meat and ate whatever vegetables, berries and nuts they could find. There were no Chocolate bars or McDonalds. They didn’t even have bread.
Mum did lots of research and decided it was worth giving Paleo a try. One day I came home from School and the cupboard was empty! When I looked for a snack there was nothing but fruit and nuts! No chips, no biscuits, no lollies! How would I survive? Could you?

I have to admit, it’s not been so bad. We try to eat Paleo about 80% of the time and still have our favourite treats occasionally. Mum makes us delicious breakfasts of eggs, bacon, avocado and tomato. No more Wheat Bix for me! I’ve been full till morning tea and I feel like I have more energy. For lunch, I get nuts and carrot sticks to munch on, some fruit, sometimes home baking, and some protein. At dinner time we have tons of different vegetables and some meat or fish. I like trying new foods, it’s more interesting than eating the same thing all the time.

Now it’s not just Dad but a whole family of little cave people!  We don’t have grains, sugar, or vegetable oils and we are trying not to eat food that has been processed in a factory. By the time it’s gone through all those machines it’s not really food anymore. We try to only eat whole foods that come from New Zealand and haven’t had anything added to them. It’s called clean eating. It’s better for your body and better for the planet too.

So maybe you should try eating like a caveman. If I can do it, so can you!

Brunch/Lunch ideas

When the girls are at School and Cam's at Creche, I get the house to myself. It doesn't happen as often as I'd like but one of my favourite things to do is cook myself up something yummy. There are no interruptions in the kitchen or kids begging puppy-eyed for something off my plate. It doesn't take me 45 minutes to do a 10 minute job. It's just me and I can cook and eat in peace.

So this is what I've been making myself over the last few weeks. Usually I just raid the fridge, get out my Stainless Steel Fry-pan and Coconut oil and cook up whatever leftovers I can find with some eggs and often Bacon. Oh Bacon, how I love thee...

Tomato Eggs Benedict, with Mushrooms, Ham, Spinach and Capsicum Pesto.

Mmm look at that Egg!

Mixed plate, I love eating like this. So do the kids, will often do them something similar for breakfast.

Leftover Red Jacket Potatoes, fried up with Chilli Powder, Mushrooms, Bacon, Eggs and Spinach.

Same as above but with Orange Kumara, Cumin and Herbs and a fried Egg.

Salmon and Caper scramble with Parsley and Pepper.

Leftover Carrot and Parsnip mash fried up with Mushrooms, Bacon, Avocado  and Basil Pesto.

So, what's your favourite lunch? Are you keen to try any of the ideas above?

Kate =)

01/08/2012 update

It's been a busy few weeks in our little paleo house. Our youngest has been sick and I ended up at Starship with him early Saturday morning. He needed some oral steroids for Croup. He seems to be getting better now but having sick kids is stressful enough without adding changes to daily life in the mix as well.

Everyone seems to be more or less embracing the new menu. Isabella (10) is even writing her school speech about it. It's called 'Eat like a Caveman' and it's awesome. I'll share it with you once she's done.
Funny story - she went to a friends house the other day after school and told the mum she didn't think she could eat the afternoon tea because it wasn't paleo. Poor kid. The mum had no idea what she was talking about. I told her not to worry in a situation like that, she can relax the rules when she's out with other people.

I've slipped up a few times. Going to the supermarket when you're hungry is a really bad idea. Sugar is my downfall. Mostly though, I have stayed off the grains and am feeling really good for it. We had a cheat meal a little while ago (Pizza) and less then an hour later I regretted it. Talk about wheat belly. But that's cool, it was just proof that grains and I don't agree. When we cheat again it'll be with something worthwhile like Japanese or a good Curry. I'm not touching Pizza again.

Had a good couple of weeks at the gym now that the kids are back at school. I didn't get to go all holidays. I've been going to more classes including a boot camp style one last week (ouch). I've also done a few extra classes on a Tuesday night taught by my beautiful friend Jo. It's made me realise how much I miss real Yoga. When Jo starts up her new studio, I think I'll end up practically living there.
The club physical Yoga classes are not great but I do love the Pilates and Essentrics. I'm definitely more of a stretchy bendy girl then a get all up in a sweat, build muscle girl. I just don't enjoy working out like that.

Dave on the other hand loves it. He's been killing his workouts at Cross Fit and sticking pretty religiously to his diet. When he puts his mind to something he's invincible. Too bad he's been so cranky lately. Is it the sugar detoxing from his body, or is just an aversion to me? He could do with ingesting some happy be nicer to your wife pills along with his meat and veges.

I've been cooking up a storm lately and have got really good at reading labels. Unfortunately this means it takes me about 2 hours to do the shopping now. Most of the stuff I pick up gets put back down again. If I don't recognise an ingredient or it sounds dodgy in any way, I just don't buy it. Recent purchases have included 100% pure Maple Syrup and Coconut Oil. Love this stuff! We're still eating a ton of veges and I like finding new ways to cook our favourites as well as trying some new varieties. This has made the kids more adventurous too which can't be a bad thing!
Breakfasts got a lot more exciting around here when I got rid of the usual cereals. Most mornings now, I poach or boil the kids an egg and put together a quick plate of avocado and tomato, maybe a bit of ham or bacon. Izzy loves Olives on her plate. Both girls have reported feeling full at school till morning tea and Cameron doesn't seem to want to snack quite so much.

So far, so good. I'll share another recipe next time. I need to take more photos of our food, problem is I've usually scoffed half of it before I remember!

xx Kate

Scallop and Bacon Sauté

If you haven't had Scallops with Bacon before, you are seriously missing out. If you aren't a fan of Seafood, try it with Chicken. Actually, Dave truly believes Bacon makes everything taste better and I am inclined to agree.
Unfortunately Bacon has a pretty bad reputation for being an unhealthily processed meat. It's high in fat and the majority are chemically cured, full of nitrates and sodium, pumped with water, artificial colours and flavours.
This pretty much sucks. We've avoided eating a lot of Bacon and don't eat shaved Ham or feed it to our kids for the reasons listed above.
But I found out recently (thanks to Aunty Linda and Google) about a company here who produce naturally cured Bacon and Ham. It's made the old fashioned way with no chemicals or additives whatsoever. You can buy direct from their factory (and also in supermarkets) so I went down to Wairau and got me some meat! They are called Hendersons and I suggest you check them out. I bought just about a bit of everything and it was all awesome.

Anyway back to the food! Frozen Scallops were on special last week at Pack n Save so I splashed out knowing that one night it would just be Dave and I for dinner and we wouldn't have to share these with the kids.
All I could think about all day was Scallops with Bacon, Scallops with Bacon. I never considered what we would have with it. This food fixation happens fairly regularly. So here's my method five minutes before dinner when I realise we should probably eat some vegetables too. 1. look in the fridge, 2. choose veges, 3.work out how best to cook them. Oh yeah, I'm living on the edge.
First I chopped up some Middle Bacon and pan fried it in some Olive Oil. I removed the Bacon and cooked some Brussel Sprouts, Spinach and crushed Garlic in the Bacon juices. Then I added that to my Bacon plate, threw some butter in the pan, turned up the heat and quickly cooked the scallops. You really don't want to do these babies for more than 2 minutes. Rubbery Scallops ain't great. Toss everything back in the pan for a minute, add some salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice and serve. I had field mushrooms with mine and Dave had Bok Choy. Delicious!

I've just changed the settings so that anyone can leave a comment now. I had no idea it was set so that you had to be a registered user. Boo!
If you try this or have any questions or suggestions let me know.
Kate =)