It's been awhile. I have a part-one entry with no part two, a million
Inventor entries to catch up on, a ton of research to do, weekend work and a new job to find.
I started this weblog at
Melanie's suggestion, to have someplace not to write but to talk about the process of writing, and lately I've been wanting to post about things without spamming my poor Livejournal friends, who have had to put up with a number of posts lately on jobs, diet and the occasional bird. I'm not particularly keen on anyone I know actually finding this weblog -- I'm much too good at self-censorship, and knowing that I have an audience of friends and acquaintances actually reading
The Inventor would probably be enough to make me throw in the towel on the project altogether. (For the record, I love it. I love writing it, and losing it would be a personal tragedy.) For that reason, I'm going to buckle down here and try to avoid posting anything too personal until it's all done and over with, and start using a pseudonym.
Anyway, about a month ago, I started on the
paleo diet. It's basically a diet of nothing but meat, fruits and vegetables, meant to approximate what our "wild" ancestors ate before the advent of agriculture. It consists of the foods that humans evolved eating. My doctor actually recommended it to me in 2008 and I sort of half-heartedly tried it, but without any real support, and I quickly fell off the wagon. Giving up grains and dairy is really, really difficult. I tried it again in February and it's week four or five or something like that, and now I'm happily eating just meat, fruits and vegetables. My acne is gone, my digestive problems are gone, I feel a million times better and I'm slowly but steadily dropping fat and building muscle. I eat vegetables now and I
like them. This diet is fantastic.
I say that not to evangelize but to give you a background on the sort of resources I want to share here. One of the most difficult things for me has been eating out. I go to Boston Market when I'm at work sometimes, because it's the only place I can get straight meat; Jamba Juice is even out of the question because its employees don't seem to understand the words "dairy-free". But you guys, grains are everywhere, from the citric acid in your canned tomatoes (made from corn, not citrus) to the vinegar on your damn salad. It really sucks because I like Chevy's and I like sushi and there are suddenly a whole bunch of things that are off-limits to me because I can't be sure that what I'm eating is okay, and I can't trust the employees to be able to look at a list of ingredients and know, for example, that corn is a grain.

I took this picture earlier today, with the intent of sharing my success at getting a paleo-friendly meal outside of my home. It's an absolutely fantastic example of a paleo meal -- most of the calories come from fat and protein, and though you can't really see it, there is a significant amount of vegetable matter in the salad. My friend made this for me at his restaurant, after I came in today citing new dietary requirements. It's a hamburger patty with avocado and bacon on top, and a salad of mixed greens with smoked salmon, avocado, raw asparagus, cucumber, tomato and a bunch of other mixed vegetables I've forgotten. The dressing is lemon juice and olive oil. I just about died and went to heaven right there at the bar.
And I got it at a restaurant.
The restaurant in question, by the way, is
Nona's Kitchen, at 5450 Cabrillo Highway in Pacifica. It's something of a local hot-spot, and I highly, highly recommend it for those who live in the area..