Picture Palooza

I took a lot of pictures of the food today because nothing else exciting was going on at home.  Paul and I spent all day at home with Brayden, but Austin and Peyton got to spend a couple of hours with Grandma and Grandpa Fraser at Dave and Buster's.  They were very bundled up and went straight into an already warmed up car, so the cold hardly affected them.  While they were gone, we cleaned the house a little bit and then decided to just relax. I read a People magazine, and Paul watched The Mummy Returns.  I'm not sure how many people know this, but Peyton's middle name is Evelyn because of Rachel Weisz' character Evie(short for Evelyn) in the movie.  Paul loves all the Mummy movies, so he immediately suggested Evie as the girl name when we found out what we were having.  I didn't like it as a first name but said that we would keep it on the list for middle names. To be honest, I have no room to talk; she is named Peyton because I watched One Tree Hill everyday during Austin's nap when I was pregnant with her .  I fell in love with the character named Peyton and thought the name was unique.  Once we decided on Peyton as her first name, Evelyn really sounded better then any of our other options for a middle name. So, thanks to Paul's love of the Mummy series and my addiction to One Tree Hill, we named her Peyton Evelyn which I actually think is beautiful.  Austin is named after crackers, so really it isn't all that strange for Peyton to be named after TV characters.

Speaking of crackers, let me tell you about my day of eating.

Breakfast: As promised, I ate a real breakfast this morning! Woo hoo!

Paul made the kids cinnamon sugar, vanilla French toast. They went nuts over it!

 Brayden just hung out on his mat  while we ate.

This is my breakfast: 3 scrambled eggs with grass fed butter, a pear, and two pieces of nitrate free bacon.  Oh, and coffee with the forbidden cream.

 

Lunch:  The kids were out and Paul wasn't hungry, so I just made a salad with romaine, black olives, black beans, and the leftover garlic chicken from last night.   I used balsamic dressing.  Confession: we brought home the extra cheese from Qdoba the other day, and because I am glutton for punishment and I can't keep any promises to myself, I heated it up and had like six bite sized Tostitos with a drizzle of cheese on top.  I didn't feel sick, surprisingly, but I still stopped and threw the leftover cheese straight into the trash so I couldn't be tempted again to eat it. 

 

Dinner:  Brayden woke up at 4:30am to eat and when I left his room I remembered that the crockpot was set to turn off at 4:00am, so I went downstairs and reset it for another 10 hours. Then I stumbled back up to bed and, believe it or not, got to sleep until 7:50!!!  The kids slept in...all of them!  It was awesome!  Anyway, by doing that, the bone broth was ready by 2:30 today. When I strained it, I saw that it only yielded 2 cups of broth.  I was less than pleased since the tomato soup recipe called for four cups of broth.  I now realize that I should have measured out four cups of water into the crock pot to begin with, but ,in my defense, I did what the recipe said which was to fill it to just above the bones.  Twenty hours of cooking and I didn't even get what I needed.  I improvised and mixed the bone broth with two cups of canned chicken broth. Grrr.  The soup was extremely easy to make, but did take a little time due to the need to sauté and simmer all the ingredients.  http://www.primalpalate.com/recipe/creamy-tomato-soup/

 

 Before going into the Ninja

 Waiting to be blended

 Out of the blender and back on the stove to heat up

In my bowl. I had three ladles full.

 

Tomato soup verdict: I liked it but thought it could have been a little creamier. It still had a texture to it, and you could taste bits of onion.  It had great flavor though. I can only imagine how wonderful it would have tasted if I would have had enough bone broth. This is all I ate for dinner, and it completely filled me up. I do think some kind of homemade crouton would be fabulous in this soup. I may have to test out some Paleo bread recipes to use as croutons. The kids both had the soup and grilled cheese. Peyton didn't care for it, but Austin really liked it and kept saying, "Mmm. This is homemade.  It is so good.  It tastes homemade."  He must have told Paul it was homemade twenty times while we were at the table.  Paul does not like tomato soup at all, so he had the same salad I had for lunch. 

 

Snacks:  I decided to treat myself with carrot cake(Paleo version) today because the scale read 121.1 pounds today which means another 1.1 pounds lost!  However, I could have sworn the cake was made with almond flour, but no, it's coconut flour which I don't have in the house.  I ran to Jewel and out of all the Bob's Red Mill flours guess which one was totally gone? Yep, you guessed it, the coconut flour. Son of a Bitch. I came home and raided my cookbooks and none of them had any almond flour recipes that appealed to me, so I resorted to pistachio bark instead. Not at all what I wanted, but still really tasty.

I had to make my own double boiler by setting a stainless steel bowl on top of a pot of boiling water.

 After cooling in the freezer

Broken up and ready to eat

http://www.primalpalate.com/recipe/pistachio-bark/

 

I had one piece of bark today, a pack of fruit snacks and half a bag of all natural three ingredient popcorn.  Popcorn is a splurge.  Paleo doesn't really like corn because it is just a vegetable used to fatten people and animals up and has next to no nutritional value. But, even Robb Wolf, who is one of the fore fathers, of Paleo indulges in natural popcorn and corn tortillas every once in a while. The key is to stick to five ingredients or less. I also had one of my juice spritzers today using the sparkling water Paul made for me in our Soda Stream.  Making the sparkling water ourselves is going to be a HUGE money saver! 

 

 

Tomorrow I am going to make pulled pork in the crock pot and homemade barbecue sauce.  I'm pretty excited about it. I love barbecue!  Plus, it might make it feel like summer even though it will be -3 outside.  I may also try a Paleo chocolate chip cookie recipe that a friend from West, who is also trying her hand at Paleo,  posted tonight.  I got so excited when I read the recipe because it calls for ALMOND flour!!!  Plus, she made them today and said they were great!  Overall, a great day of eating, but I think tomorrow will be even better.  Here are a few more pictures. They were taken yesterday morning while Peyton was still sleeping.

My two boys laid in bed together for 20 minutes and snuggled while watching cartoons

 

XOXO