2014-06-08
in
5 min read
Today was going to be back to a good amount of driving, followed up by some nice time going out to dinner and hanging with friends. With no intention of ditching the Paleo diet, at worst maybe bending it a little, I ended up succumbing to a little non-Paleo indulgence after all.
Being home for breakfast with time to make it for the first time this week I finally got to do eggs and bacon properly. I had eaten eggs and bacon while on the road, but this is bacon from pastured pork from the local farmer and free range organic eggs. Did it taste any different? The bacon sure does. Unlike store bought bacon the size of the cuts, seasoning, marbling and so on change from delivery to delivery. Most of the local farmers we get our bacon from I would take over any store bought any day of the week. It does cost a bit more money though. The eggs hold together a lot better too, especially when you eat them within a few days of delivery. I added a huge handful of frozen spinach to my eggs to get some dark leafy greens in there. Even with two large eggs it was 50/50 spinach and egg.
I knew I would be on the road for most of the day and I didn’t want to have to worry about snacking or trying to find lunch via fast food again. I therefore packed ahead. For the entire rest of the day leading up to dinner I packed, and ate, a pound of cherry tomatoes, four carrots, a handful of pecans, a handful of almonds and half a handful of walnuts. I also brought along three plums to snack on right away. This all kept me pretty much full for the rest of the day. I think a lot of that were the nuts. I don’t know why but with the exceptions of almonds and peanuts I can’t eat too many nuts in a row. If i have a handful of pecans or walnuts I’m really tapped out on the things. That’s a good thing, when I’m trying to not stay ravenous, but it’s a curious thing too.
Dinner was with friends at a local restaurant called Victoria Gastro Pub. We eat there often and the menu changes a lot, minus their handful of staples, so I definitely looked over the menu before hand to make sure there was something I could eat that either was Paleo or could be made Paleo. We started the meal splitting a basket of duck fat fries. If you’ve never had fries, sweet potato or otherwise, fried in duck fat then you are definitely missing out. It adds a lot of richness to the fries that you just don’t get with vegetable oils, but they don’t feel any greasier. At Victoria they also add rosemary to the seasoning, which just amps them up even more. For the entree I big cut of pork loin served over broccolini and roasted potatoes. It was supposed to come with blue cheese on top, which I would have had taken off even if I wasn’t eating Paleo. Throughout the dinner I sipped on a couple glasses of red wine.
After dinner we went back to our place where we all had a good time playing some card games and hanging out. I had an apple cider when we got back but after that I switched to my new go to pseudo-adult beverage, Fre Champagne. I had more than enough alcohol for one night and I didn’t feel like nursing a hang over the next day. At the same time I really was in the mood to drink some bubbly. As I said in my review, I love the concept of this stuff. The more I drink it however the more I can taste the raw grape juice on the palate afterward. What I originally took as a traditional sweetness of a sweet champagne when you don’t have the bite of the alcohol on your tongue I think is just the grape juice overpowering at the end. I’m not complaining about it, I drank a little over a bottle of the stuff over the next several hours, but it is certainly different than my first impression.
One of our friends brought over some birthday Smore’s, since my birthday and my partner’s birthday just passed recently. For the entire evening when everyone was devouring them I wasn’t even tempted to try it. I mean, they looked delicious and I wanted to but I wasn’t fighting the urge to reach for one and try it. That reserve failed right before bed however. While I was putting everything away I saw there was a thin sliver of a square just hanging out by itself. I felt bad not eating something that was made especially for me, not even just a bite. I guess that is some residual Catholic guilt from childhood. Either way, I rationalized to myself why I should have a bite and I did. Actually it was two small bites, a third of a square. I won’t lie, it was delicious. Our friend is a great cook and he balanced the sweet and salty just right. That’s part of the problem. Unlike the pecans, where I would give up after a handful I think I could an entire plate of these things and still crave more. But I stopped at the one partial slice, not feeling as guilty as I should have but not wanting the slip up to become a regular indulgence.