First time ever I decided to give up something for the lent. There wasn’t any religious reasons, but seem that in England it’s very popular to give up something, so I decided to join in. Even children do it and promise not to eat chocolate or sweets. If lucky, they last few weeks 🙂 I’m really proud of my daughter who managed to give up fruit juice for six weeks, she has been addicted to it since she was baby and unfortunately most juices you get nowadays have added sugar and lots of it. Now I buy only pressed fruit juice, it is more expensive so I don’t get it as often, but it’s so much nicer. As I said rather have real stuff!

I think I was at stage, where I needed some change in my life. I felt tired, always rushing somewhere, no time to myself. Wednesday 5th of March I gave up alcohol, coffee, sweets and everything else containing sugar (I kept fruit), white flour and TV.  It also helped that group of people in FB decided to go through with the detox, so it was interesting to follow people, who were in the same boat.

After few weeks I came across with Paleo diet. I’m very sceptical of all sorts of diets and I’m firm believer of balanced diet and eating real thing, not diet products and low fat rubbish, which are full of sugars and sweeteners. I have been going to WW meetings for the year now and I really like the system, it isn’t really diet but lifestyle. Even I don’t like their products and I don’t agree concentrating low fat menus, but I like their meetings and it helps me keep under the control. Especially, when you know that meeting coming up so you don’t want to be disappointed with the numbers on the scale display.

Anyway reading about Paleo I decided have a go on their 30 day challenge I found on their Estonian webpage http://paleo.ee/2013/01/paleo-30-paeva-valjakutse/ Basically you don’t eat any grains, no milk products, no beans (including soya beans), no sweets and sugars, but you can have organic honey, no processed meat. In English there is really good webpage, which helps you find out which food is Paleo http://eatdrinkpaleo.com.au/.

I truly enjoyed this 4 weeks, I felt so in control and I tried lots of new recipes. I didn’t count how much I ate just had foods which were aloud – lots of fruit and veg, meat, fish and nuts.

My favourites are home made mayonnaise, ice-cream from banana and mango and coconut milk, no oats porridge was absolute divine. I managed Ok with feeding my family – I just had meat and veg, when they had maybe pasta or rice as well.

By end of the week 4 I felt bit sorry that it was over. I’m definitely will try to follow it in the future maybe 70 % of the time. I can’t do it all the time -then all my cookbooks would go to waste and all those lovely food blogs I follow would be bit useless 🙂 What I like about Paleo, was I didn’t’ feel like snacking all the time and I wasn’t hungry at all.

I did get bit addicted to those:

They only include nuts, dried fruit and bit of cocoa and they are LOVELY!!!!

Here is on typical Paleo side dish I had – beetroot with salt and pepper and olive oil, I couldn’t take picture of full plate as it disappears too quickly but look at the colours!

Ad here is the recipe for the no grain porridge, I have to confess I had 2 portions and would’ve have 3rd one – not so good if you try to loose some weight 🙂

Paleo porridge

Handful walnuts

handful pecans

2sp linseed

0.5tsp cinnamon

ground nutmeg

ground ginger

1sp almond butter ( I used ordinary butter)

1 mashed banana

3 eggs

60 ml almond milk ( can be more, it depends how you like your porridge)

to serve: 2tsp pumpkin seeds, goji berries or any other berries, desiccated coconut or anything else you like, I had bit honey.

Put all nuts and seeds to  the food processor and grind ( not too fine).

Beat the eggs and almond milk add mashed banana and butter and blend all together. you can make those two mixes night before as mornings are rush anyway.

Add nuts to egg mixture in the saucepan and heat it slowly, mixing all the time until porridge is how you like it.

Serve with berries, seeds, almond milk and honey. Nammmm!!