The Paleo Parents: 3 Phase Paleo eBook Review

So two of my favorite paleo authors and bloggers, The Paleo Parents, have just released a new eBook. 3 Phase Paleo: Transition Your Family in 3 Easy Steps is a great beginners guide to the Paleo lifestyle PLUS a collection of many favorite recipes from their previous cookbooks and website. I am beyond excited that they provided me with a copy of this eBook for my review here!

Matt and Stacy (and their 3 boys) have experienced an incredible health transformation since they adopted the Paleo lifestyle. A myriad of health problems for their family of 5 have all but disappeared, they have lost a ton of weight (200 lbs between the two parents!) and have given their oldest boys the most valuable gift: self control and healthy relationships with food.

I've always enjoyed the easy style in which Matt and Stacy write. They write as though they are talking with friends - making it easy to take advice from them and learn from their experiences. I follow these two on all sorts of social media and enjoy just about everything they post! I even stood in line at their Beyond Bacon book release party to meet them and have them sign my copy of their book!

This eBook is broken into three phases to make it easier to transition to this new way of life (not a diet, not an eating plan, but really and truly, a new way to live).

In the first phase - swap - we learn how to add more veggies into our diet and swap processed, chemically laden food for gluten-free and processed sugar free options. A shopping list, a going out guide and even a list of eat this instead of that swap list make this book different. It includes the theories of why - but focuses on the practicality of how to make it happen.

The second phase - remove - walks us through eliminating dairy, grains, legumes and processed seed oils. We learn about the Paleo Parents favorite products, what their pantry looks like and how it makes easy to prepare healthy and hearty meals.

Finally, the third phase is healing. We learn about the whole Paleo lifestyle (sleep, movement, sunlight and stress management) and the addition of nutrient dense foods.

Then over 75 easy to prepare recipes! Everything from main dishes, snacks and treats, veggies and sides and more. The recipes are not full of fancy ingredients, usually things you will find in your well-stocked Paleo pantry. And they are very approachable - ingredient list, easy directions, and even the boys make appearances in the recipe photos!

Each recipe is tagged with a small numbered circle to help readers choose recipes based on which phase of the transition to Paleo they have mastered.

The book is a full cover, 110 page fully-interactive eBook. I usually struggle with the decision to buy a cookbook in an eBook format - there is just something about marking pages and turning through when meal planning and seeing the notes and stains on pages. However, this book is so interactive - linked to many products, blog posts linked into the pages, referring to additional Paleo resources (both online and in print) plus all the ways to stay in touch with the Paleo Parents. There is no way to include all the interactive parts in a print book.

For the cost of $22.95 the book will be in a fully-printable 110 page, full color 8.5 x 11 format. If you would like to have a paper copy (say in a binder?) you will be able to easily print this. Stacy and Matt also include tips and tricks for easiest viewing on common devices (iOS, Android and Kindle).

If you are looking for a place to start in the transition to living the Paleo Lifestyle, this is it!

Download it today!

 

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21 Day Sugar Detox: Days 6 and 7

If there was a theme to this weekend, it would be wining without wine! 

Two groups of dear friends went wining both on Saturday and Sunday.  We visited multiple wineries and I drank nothing but water.  I packed my snacks and made my meals.  It was a great weekend, and I'm very proud of my choices.  Lots of enjoying the company, drinking lots of water and vegetable and nut snacks.

Again I eat most meals from what I had prepared earlier in the week - plus an omelette or skillet meal here and there.

The Coconut Lime Mug Cake was absolutely incredible.  Easily the best dessert I've had in a long time - with no sweetener added.  It has the best texture!  

 

21 Day Sugar Detox - Day 5

Day 5 was delicious - and my headaches are gone.  I am still cooking for each meal - today though, I ate three meals that were prepared on Day 4 or earlier in the week.  I had N'Oatmeal with a half banana and sliced almonds for breakfast, banola and coffee for a snack, chili, carrots and almonds for lunch.  All of these were prepared ahead of time.  :)    Dinner was a stuffed vegetable bell pepper and bacon basil cauliflower rice.

Stuffed vegetable bell peppers (makes 4)

4 bell peppers
1/2 lb of ground beef
1 small zuchinni
1/2 pint of canned tomatoes
1 small (6 oz) can of tomato paste
spices to taste (I used a bit of chili powder, oregano and chili pepper flakes)

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Brown the ground beef in a skillet.  Discard any extra grease.
3. Cut the tops off the bell peppers.  Remove the core from the pepper "bowls" and discard the cores and seeds. Place the three pepper "bowls" into a baking dish or pan. 
4. Remove the stems from the tops and chop up the remaining pepper flesh from the tops.  Add the chopped peppers to the ground beef pan and soften just a little.
5. Grate the zuchinni and squeeze the grated vegetable in a paper towel to remove excess water.
6. In a bowl, mix your spices, canned tomatoes, tomato paste, ground beef, grated zuchinni and chopped peppers.  
7. Stuff into the peppers and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes.  

21 Day Sugar Detox - Day 4

I felt a lot better today, compared to yesterday.  No headache, just a little fatigue.  I can't wait for the big burst of energy that comes after the sugar clears my system.  :)

Today was also the first time I ate out at a restaurant since I started the detox.  I've found it easier (when I am beginning at least) to stay on track when I am cooking and controlling my own decisions, rather than getting sucked into a bite or two of this... or that.... or a drink.  I chose to go out with one friend at a restaurant that had lots of healthy choices (and that I was SURE would accommodate my requests).  It was easier than I thought!  

Breakfast - The meatloaf I made was so delicious I had the leftover for breakfast with some green beans.  Just as good the second day!   Definitely making this again.

Lunch and snack - I had celery with almond butter and lettuce wraps with chili.  Plus some carrots and almonds.

 

And for dinner I had a big bowl of Pho from my favorite Pho restaurant with a dear friend.  They make it for me without noodles and instead add in steamed vegetables.  It's delicious.   This time though, I left out both of the sauces.  I just didn't know what kind of sweetener they use (They are in refilled squeeze bottles so no labels) so I just ate it with the sprouts, jalapenos and basil.  It was the perfect dinner on a cold night.

I really was craving something different - I've been soo happy with the recipes from the book that I've tried and I found a couple that looked good.  Banola (a granola substitute) and N'Oatmeal (sort of a pudding or oatmeal consistency).  There were two ingredients I didn't have for these recipes: Vanilla Beans and Chia Seeds.  I knew Target had both - so off I went.  Sold out of vanilla beans....three stores later I had my vanilla beans.  And I was headed home to cook!  So good!

Luckily a couple of great Paleo bloggers are sharing recipes from 21 Day Sugar Detox and 21 Day Sugar Detox Cookbook, so you can try these recipes before you buy the books!

 Banola (from the 21 Day Sugar Detox) from Passion for Paleo

And the Banana Vanilla Bean N'Oatmeal (from the 21 Day Sugar Detox Cookbook) from Paleo Parents. 

21 Day Sugar Detox: Day 3

Well, it was back to work today.  I was feeling lethargic and a bit headachey, but I honestly don't know if that's the sugar cravings leaving me or if I'm just off the couch and back to work!

The good news is I had a 2 hour delay so I had plenty of time to prepare a yummy breakfast and a delicious lunch.

Breakfast was 1.5 strips of bacon, 2 fried eggs and bell pepper, green beans and sliced brussels sprouts.

I was well prepared for lunch as well.   Chili lettuce wraps, carrots, celery and almond butter and almonds.

However, one of our colleagues who likes to go out to get lunch, offered to get lunch for my co-worker and I.  Luckily he was running out to Subway - so I ordered a Chicken Chopped Salad with lots of veggies and no dressing.   And I snacked on my celery, carrots and almond butter through the work day.

I also had an extra cup of coffee this mid-day to push me through the headache and the hump of getting over Wednesday and day 3!

Dinner was incredible.  I made a modified version of the mini-mexi meatloaves from 21 Day Sugar Detox.  I didn't have any cilantro or some of the other spices it called for, but it was delicious with cayenne pepper and chili powder and bell peppers in there.  I also used the other 1/2 lb of pork-beef mixture left over from my meatza yesterday.  I made two of them out of this 1/2 lb of meat and ate one for dinner.

Served with sauteed green beans. (blanched them for about a minute or two in boiling water, then sauteed in coconut oil).  and 2 leftover savory herb drop biscuits.

I'm not sure what is going on - but as much as I'm enjoying my food and really savoring my meals, I am not staying full.  I'm not sure if I need to add more protein or fat, but I need to figure this out.  I'm munchy.   :)

For a non-sweet treat (and to add some more fat) last night I had 2 Lemon Vanilla Meltaways, also from the 21dsd book.

All in all it was a pretty good day - aside from the headache and the fact that I only had about 4-5 waters, I feel pretty good about the choices I made!

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21 Day Sugar Detox: Day 2

Today was the coldest day on record at nearby Dulles Airport - we got down to 1 degree and high winds, so a very negative windchill (between 10-20 degrees below!) This meant school was cancelled and I was home...

I scrambled two eggs, two strips of bacon, a bell pepper and a few Brussels sprouts with black coffee. Yum! I had to head out to an appointment at 8 ....and it was a balmy 4 degrees at that point.

Lunch was amazing - since I was home in a cold house, I decided to cook a few recipes from the 21 Day Sugar Detox book. It would give me something to do, some delicious food and provide a little extra heat in the house.

I made the Meatza - seriously good! I made a half batch, and only cooked one of them. I plan to use the other half of the meat recipe to make into a meatloaf another night this week. You can see it in the oven on the top right. It's a pork and beef patty, pressed out nice and thin that serves as the crust. I topped it with bell pepper rings, zima tomatoes and olives.

I also made a half batch of the Savory Herb Drop Biscuits. I didn't have fresh herbs but instead I used dried rosemary. They are a little dry, but nice for a biscuit.

And for my third recipe - I made Chili-Cocoa Cauliflower. I don't understand how this is so good! It has chili powder, cocoa powder, cinnamon, salt and pepper, plus coconut oil on cauliflower. SOOO good! I made a 1/4 of a head of this and enjoyed it all!

Lunch was absolutely amazing. It took quite a while to create this amazing meal, but it was so worth it! I ate around 2pm....and I wasn't really very hungry when it came to dinner time.

So for dinner, I just heated up a mug of the chili I cooked on Sunday.

For something sweet tonight I had a half a grapefruit, broiled just a bit to warm it up. Perfect!

I didn't drink enough water today - but I did control my snacking!

 

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Almond Milk! A mess and a half...

I made my first batch of almond milk yesterday. It was a mess!! But really delicious. I will try again for sure...but not for a while. :)

First - soak 1 cup of almonds in the fridge. I put them in a glass measuring cup and covered them with water. Soak overnight. They will swell and get a little softer and the water will start to look cloudy over night.

 

Drain the water from your soaked almonds. Add the almonds and 2 cups of water to your blender (I tried this in the food processor first and it was a disaster. For some reason the water went everywhere. So do this in your blender). Run your blender on high for a few seconds to start to break them up, then run on medium for a minute or two. You'll see the water turn into milk right before your eyes!

Now it's time to strain it - this is where the mess came in. I didn't have cheesecloth so I decided to strain through the fine metal strainer I have. Press as much of the liquid out that you can.

And enjoy your milk! I think if I had cheesecloth I could have squeezed a bit more out of the almond mush. As it was, I got about a pint of delicious milk from the 1 cup of almonds.

And I had this dish full of almond "mush" leftover. I spread it on a cookie sheet and dried it in the oven at 175 for a couple of hours. I'll use this as almond meal in recipes (today I used it in the 21 Day Sugar Detox Meatza recipe).

I bought some cheese cloth today and I will figure out how to make this a less crazy process with (hopefully) less mess tomorrow!

 

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