Note: I read and enjoy every single comment. At the moment, though, the blog isn't letting me reply to them. I hope to resolve that soon!
I had an amazing culinary experience yesterday. It probably helped that I didn't eat until 5:30 pm, ensuring that I was good and hungry. I love food to begin with, obviously, but when I'm hungry I really enjoy it.
Anyhow, one of my errands was the grocery store and I bought a lot of fresh produce and found some cheap inexpensive packages of meat. One of those was a $2+ package of raw shrimp. It was a generous single serving.
As I was putting the food away, I boiled water for the shrimp and dumped them in. I then cored and sliced the fresh pineapple I'd purchased. I intended to make a nice green salad, too, but somehow I found myself eating the flesh off the core and rind of the pineapple. I have the handy-dandy utensil that creates a spiral of beautiful slices in about 15 seconds flat, but there would be quite a bit of waste if you threw away the trimmings. Besides, it's more fun (as far as I'm concerned) to gnaw the good stuff off the trimmings, kind of like corn on the cob, than it is to eat the "prime" slices.
Most of the slices went into the fridge for tomorrow because the core, rind and ends gave me a nice portion of fruit. I also ate a few fresh strawberries but that stung after chewing on the pineapple; my lips and tongue were quite sensitive and they let me know right away that the berries were still acidic and not summer-ripe. Note to self: Eat the strawberries first, then the pineapple!
I took the hot shrimp out of the shells and poured some melted butter over them. They made a great counterpoint to the pineapple and strawberries and I had no interest in additional food so the salad fixings are still in the fridge and on the counter.
I'll have to remind myself today to make and eat the salad before I taste the pineapple and/or meat. if I don't, I may just skip salad again. I have no clue why, but I'm a maniac for fresh pineapple right now. I reacted the same way at the recent pot luck and buffet visits (see earlier post, Out of the Shadows, Into the Sun.)
Of course, the very best thing about my feast last night was that it was so delicious it felt somehow naughty, yet it was totally legal under my easygoing paleo approach. I didn't eat until I was actively hungry, I ate food I liked and I skipped the salad because I no longer felt hungry. The only item worthy of possible debate would be the butter and I'm not asking for feedback on that. I use butter on hot shrimp, period. If I had chilled them, they would've gone into my salad with the usual vinegar and EVOO.
Note: I read and enjoy every single comment. At the moment, though, the blog isn't letting me reply to them. I hope to resolve that soon!
Apologies to the majority of humans who eat little or no grapefruit, but this short post is dedicated to my favorite fruit, red/pink grapefruit.
And we start with the question, Why?
Why, for all those 60-some years, did I carefully cut my grapefruit in half, slice around each half just inside the rind and separate the segments by painstakingly cutting on both sides of each membrane?
My current method is SO MUCH EASIER!
Holding my grapefruit with the stem at the top, I slice it into quarters vertically and then slice each quarter into 3 wedges. There's no magic number, but I find a 1/12th wedge the perfect size to put partially into my mouth in order to suck the yummy flesh/membranes off the rind. Edit: I peel the rind away from the pointed corners, put the partially peeled flesh in my mouth and pull off the remaining rind. Just in case you were wondering.
While I like many fruits, there's no nothing I enjoy more, and nothing that seems to stimulate good health, more than a good ripe grapefruit. I know many people take 1 or more prescriptions that force them to avoid grapefruit, but the irony is I really believe my love of grapefruit is one of the reasons this old lady takes no prescriptions.
I've been told I'm a fast healer, but I certainly wasn't as a poor child from the north who rarely saw citrus. When I was 11, we spent a few winter months in Florida and I ate a lifetime's dosage. What happened, you ask? Well, lifelong minor nosebleeds and bleeding gums disappeared never to be heard from again AND in about 4 months I grew 3 inches.
Today, of course, there are hopefully very kids at risk for scurvy but I can attest that my best heath has always been those times when I eat plenty of fruit and vegetables and meat. Hmm, sounds like a food plan, doesn't it?
With all due respect to the "an apple a day" folks, the menu item I'm most eager to dive into each day is my grapefruit.
I've been thinking a lot about my health lately, I guess because I've been feeling so great. I've wondered to what extent my metabolism has actually healed and to what extent my ancestral eating is masking symptoms I might otherwise be having.
And that's where my question to you comes from--are you assuming that no symptoms means no problems? If you're making annual trips to a doctor for a thorough check-up I'd support you in saying that's enough and I'd also support you in taking your own measurements every few months just because you're interested. But my question remains.
I'm usually careful to eat fruit in modest amounts and eat other foods either immediately afterward or with the fruit. I've wondered, though, how my blood pressure and glucose would respond if I splurged by eating a lot of fruit by itself. I've also wondered how I'm handling the yogurt I've started eating most mornings.
If you aren't having check-ups with a physician, which I suspect is more common these days because of financial pressures and high medical/insurance costs, are you taking your own blood pressure and glucose measurements? Or, are you assuming that no symptoms means no problems?
The good news for you is that I'm not going to bore you with a blow-by-blow description of the lengthy experiment I ran this week testing my blood pressure and glucose. I will share a few observations though.
My typical morning coffee--2 mugs over 2 hours with heavy cream and honey--barely registers on the blood glucose meter. I've read that some people have high insulin responses to dairy, but clearly I don't. Also, the home-made yogurt I frequently have for breakfast plus the quantity of fruit I typically add causes only a moderate blood glucose reaction well within the normal range.
During my experiment, I ate fruit as stand-alone meals three times, 2 large meals and one smaller meal of the exact types/quantities of fruit I had added to my yogurt the morning before.
My fasting blood pressure and glucose rates are both very normal on the typical ancestral meals I've been eating. After the large fruit-only meals, my blood glucose had returned to about the fasting rate 2 hours later BUT the readings spiked pretty high at the 30-90 minute marks. The smaller meal of fruit stayed within the normal range throughout but my blood glucose went higher than when I ate the same amount of fruit with yogurt or any of my typical fruit-salad-meat meals.
The bottom line for me is that I was paying very close attention so I noticed some very slight symptoms after eating the large meals of fruit, including minor mood alteration (less calm). If I hadn't been paying attention I don't think I would've noticed anything although I would've been less serene than usual for a few days. I've been known to eat stand-alone meals of sweet fruit from time to time but I probably won't do that any more.
What about you? Are you relying on "no symptoms" or do you know how your meals affect you? Do you eat enough fruit or sweeteners that it matters?
