Ladies Don't Perspire - They Glow

Since I know that most of the readers of this blog are from the US, where I hear it is colder than a penguin's punani, I won't harp on about the heatwave currently attacking much of Australia. Australia is synonymous for summertime fun, but as the drought arrived early this season, we're all quite terrified that some freak lightning storm or bastard pyromaniac will hit us with a repeat of last year's Black Saturday horror. Tomorrow's set to be an absolute scorcher, so I will be hiding inside and eating cold meat!

The Carnivore's Weekend: In Review

Being Saturday, we didn't get out of bed til well past noon, where the temperature greeted us with full force. The plan? Eat a big breakfast, and then escape to the cinema!


I certainly was satisfied after that feed of cheddar omelet, bacon, and lamb chop, but sadly the film left me wanting a little more...

We decided to try a fancy seafood place on the way home, named Ink. As you know, I'm an avid squid fan, and could happily live on the stuff. I was imagining a gorgeous plateful of fresh squid and other seafood delicacies, and was particularly looking forward to it being served in squid ink! No such luck. The menu was incredibly basic, and priced quite steeply despite the limited atmosphere of the restaurant. I toyed with leaving and picking up some seafood from a supermarket instead, but the beau was starving, so I gave in and ordered a lobster, natural.


As the discerning eye will note, that ain't a lobster. That's just a (freshwater) crayfish, like I can pick up at my local supermarket for $40. How much did this place have the gall to charge me? $120. And they served it with fries. At least they didn't carry on the pretense on the bill, where my meal was labeled as 'Crayfish'. We will not be returning.

On Sunday, we woke fairly early (for us), and set about the business of the day. For me, that was making my breakfast, making a new batch of the beau's grain-free granola (almond, walnuts, coconut, Splenda and egg whites this time - I'm all out of sugar alcohols and stevia), tidying parts of the house in preparation for a party on Thursday, getting some sun with the guinea pigs, making lunch, doing some research online, losing a couple of hours to French & Saunders videos on YouTube, making dinner, drinking loads of water all day, and now blogging. The beau? Play Playstation, eat breakfast, play Playstation, eat dinner, play Playstation. Super. Anyone know how to decimate a PS3 without leaving evidence of tampering? Oh well, he only has about fine more games to finish, and hopefully his mates will run out of games to lend him... They're not making any new games, right? :)

My breakfast: Jonathan's chipollatas! I am officially in love! We stopped it at my old local supermarket (the wonderful Piedimonte's on St. George's Rd, North Fitzroy) to pick up some essentials, and as I was browsing through the fresh meat section, a poster advertising the products of a local butcher caught my eye. I let my gaze drift across the range of gourmet sausages, assuming that they would be packed full of grain flours. But when I looked closer, I noticed that most of the snags were nothing much more than meat and spices! Hallelujah! Spicy chipollatas! Lamb & basil sausages! Delight! I stocked up quickly, safe in the new knowledge that I had access to good quality, primal snags! Best of all, I wouldn't need to go tripping all the way out to Piedimonte's next time, as Jonathan's butcher shop is right near the beau's workplace! The chippies are absolutely delicious, and are anything but lean, so I am looking forward to trying out the lamb & basil!


Aren't they sweet? Little finger-sized gems, and not as spicy as one may imagine - just a nice flavour and a perfect moistness and tenderness in the meat.

I lunched on what is fast becoming my pride and joy - salmon sashimi, made by me! I tried to cut the anything-but-uniform fillet into uniform pieces, and did okay overall. I 'cooked' them very lightly in lemon juice, only leaving them for perhaps one minute. There was a detectable 'cookedness' to the outer edge, but the inside was still raw and delicious. Not dead yet! I washed down the meal with a few spoonfuls of creme fraiche to get my dietary fat intake up.


Finally, although it required the oven to be on for a long period, and the kitchen was already a sweatshop, I stuck with the plan to roast pork for dinner. I have now consolidated my hairdryer experiment - dry the skin of the roast thoroughly with a hot hairdryer before cooking - you don't need to add salt or extra oil this way (the oil would always burn in the pan, even when there was water added, and splash the sides of the oven). An hour later - perfect pork roast? As always, I inherited the beau's portion of crackling, and only had room for a smidge of lean. :)


My shed-the-haunch-and-holiday-paunch mission is going well, and I've knocked off a full kilo in the past two days - most of which will be water loss as I clear out remaining carbs in my gut and use up stored glycogen, of course. However, I have noticed a bit of keto-breath in the evenings, so things are working well! My level of physical activity is much lower now than during the teaching term, although last week I spent three days 'gathering' (wandering around shopping centres for hours - enough to wear out the feet and shoulders and spirit), and one day completing a massively arduous gardening task (6 hours). I have also set a challenge for my beau and myself - push-ups! I want us to do at least ten every day, together if possible. Lately, the memory has been weak, but we remembered yesterday, and are paying for it today! My main goal is to help restore the beau's biceps back to their former glory, since I'm a major arms girl! He doesn't have to use his arms much, so he was holding onto his young adolescent form, I suppose. He's now past the 30 milestone, so his muscles has shriveled a bit, with their bulk being transferred to his gut. He does eat a mostly primal diet, but obviously could use some work to held make up for the garbage he eats during the work days. I'd love to be able to show him off as my Primal Guy, but his hedonism is holding strong... for now...

Further Reading:

There have been some wonderful posts flying about the Webernets lately, and I've been collecting my favourites in earnest. The size of said collection is a little overwhelming, however. Certainly too many to discuss individually! So instead, here's a list of Team Players (posting strong, interesting articles regularly) and a couple of particularly note-worthy posts from a variety of sources.

Team Players:

Dr. A. continues to hit them out of the park, with varied topics ranging from dissections of scientific literature, book reviews, personal accounts and recipes! Some memorable performances of late include: Your Doctor Is A Liar!, Vitamin D & Cancer, Lemon & Lime Gateau, Smug Food Puritans, Carbs, Fibre & Breast Cancer, and the accessible and concise delight which I will be sharing with all of my friends and family, Carb v. Saturated Fat (or as I labeled it in an email to a friend, 'Why eating 'Low-Fat' is pointless). Love your work, Dr. A.!

Dr. T. (what's with all the Dr. X. pseudonyms?) from NephroPal always presents interesting information regarding nutrition and health. I was fascinated by the collection of foods and their origins in the post entitled, shockingly, Origins Of Food. Coconut & Red Wine also gave us a give-to-the-friends breakdown of the effects of coconut oil vs. soybean oil on our health, as well as some technical reasons to booze up occasionally. And to point out the questionable nature of rodent studies re: saturate fat's impact on human health, as well as to look at the real impact of such fats (all positive), came the tongue-in-cheek title, God Bless Evolution.

Dr. John Briffa (lookit, a full name!), in his straight-forward and accessible style, puts forward goals for the layperson to follow to improve overall health. I hear of many peple who vow to lose a certain amount of weight by a certain date (a trend being cashed in on by sites like Lose It Or Lose It... ergh, don't even get me started on how damaging that concept is!...), but it would be much better for them to follow Dr. Briffa's 10 realistic and achievable New Year's goals worth considering. His next post looked at an editorial examining the importance of looking to our nutritional past to improve our future health. Another straight-forward and inoffensive piece that you could gently pass on to your less-than-healthful mates...

Hit Singles:

The Schmaltz lists what he has learned

Dr. Michael R. Eades gives Dr. Oz a swift boot up his ignorant rear-end

Dr. William Davis points it out again - excessive carbohydrates are BAD!

Tom Naughton & Asclepius from Natural Messiah each reviews/discusses Lierre Keith's continuing-to-be-ground-breaking work, The Vegetarian Myth.

Well, I think that's enough! What has excited me most is the increase in posts explaining the importance and harmlessness of saturated fats in the human diet, provided the excessive carbohydrate intake is abolished. It makes it ever-more likely that this decade will see the conclusive disproof of the Lipid Hypothesis, and maybe we'll even see an intelligent return to a diet based on animal protein and vegetables - real food! I do suspect, however, that once people realise that the cheap carbs are bad for them, meat prices will sky-rocket and recognised healthy living will become truly elitist... Maybe permaculture-based animal husbandry will be subsidised? We can dream!