Today I started my 33 days of Paleo aka “being healthy and getting back on the track!” I did it last year. Main reason being, getting my scalp psoriasis under the control, but what happened was, my psoriasis got worse but my weight dropped and my knees felt like new. I have been struggling with my knees past month, not that I stop myself doing sport and moving around, but getting downstairs at the work is real pain and companied with lots of swearing. I hate it and I really have to do something about it and I definitely don’t want to stop my tennis trainings.

I have already stopped all sugary stuff and alcohol since 19th of March, when lent started, with few exception as we Estonians celebrate our independence day on 24th and this year it included 3 celebrations with free booze and food so I decided to not put too much pressure on myself. 🙂

So from today:

– no sugars (honey is aloud)

– no alcohol

– no bread, pasta, rice, or any other grains

– no milk based products (maybe occasional cream on my 1 cup of coffee / a day)

– no ready meals or anything what includes ingredients I don’t know or are not natural

– no potatoes, beans

– no vegetable oils or groundnut oil ( will have olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil or any nuts oil)

I will eat lots of vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds, meat, fish and seafood, nut and olive oils, herbs and spices.

My healthy month started with this chicken roast and homemade mayonnaise.

For this dish you can use any vegetables you have left over at home or any your favourite ones. I had celeriac, parsnip, carrots, courgette, red onions, swede and lots of garlic. I brushed the roasting pan with olive oil and then placed all the veg on to the pan and mixed them, so they would be covered with bit of a oil. I cut one orange to slices and put it also on to the pan. I placed the medium roasting chicken stuffed with one whole lime, some garlic gloves and herbs ( I have rosemary and sage in my garden), top of the vegetables. All goes to the oven for 1 hour and 40 minutes (depends of the size of the chicken) Gas mark 5. For rest of the family, I made some roast potatoes on the separate tray. The smell was divine, mixture of lime, garlic, rosemary and sage. Children were worried that it will taste lemony and they won’t like it, but they plates were cleared no time. Roast chicken is one meal, which gets finished to the last piece in our house. Children have legs, S has breast, I have wings and breast, cats get all leftover meat, dog gets skin and any soft bones and rest of it goes to making chicken stock. Everyone is happy.

For the mayonnaise I placed 1 fresh egg and salt and pepper and one garlic clove to the jug and whizzed it with blender. Then added slowly 200ml of oil. I used hazelnut oil. Olive oil gives bit too strong taste. I have tried also walnut oil, which was lovely. After 1 minute the mixture should thicken, and you have lovely homemade, no e-s or anything weird mayonnaise. Season with sea salt, pepper and lemon juice. I must say sometimes it bit of a mystery how you get the mayo thickened. Like today – I started as usual but after 3 minutes of vigorous whizzing the mixture was still runny. So I started new egg and beat it with salt and pepper for 1 minute and started to add avocado oil and it thickened almost immediately. I didn’t want to waste my first mixture so I poured it slowly in to the new mayonnaise and it all thickened nicely to the lovely creamy mayonnaise. So I have no idea what was going on. If anyone knows, what might have gone wrong, let me know, It has happened couple of times before, but most of the times I have no problem making beautiful mayonnaise at all.