"Life Without Bread"

[Mrs. Peel]

You might want to eat your main meal, so to say, in the morning which is what we do. Evenings are much lighter. You know the old "eat like a king in the morning, like a prince at noon and like a pauper at dinner." Dinner could be just a lettuce salad with bacon bits on it and home-made mayonnaise, my favorite!

Yeah, I'd be more apt to do that if it wasn't for work. I could get a meal ready the night before and nuke it in the morning before work, but I just don't have time to eat before I leave unless I get up even earlier, (nooooooooooo!!!!) and then I'm not hungry at all. I can take it to work and eat it there, but then I have to sit at my desk in one spot for the next eight hours, and I feel like it just lays in my stomach and I want to take a nap. At least in the evening, I can move about after I eat dinner.

I keep experimenting. I recently started doing the sauna on a more regular basis, which seems to be helping me shed a few pounds, at least. :)

 

[Laura]

I keep experimenting. I recently started doing the sauna on a more regular basis, which seems to be helping me shed a few pounds, at least. :)

After Herondancer was here for a visit and mentioned that they do their bacon in the oven, one morning I said "why not?' So, I used a cookie sheet, laid it all out, put it under the broiler for about 8 minutes, turned it over for another 6 minutes, and voila! About 15 slices of bacon in less than 15 minutes, no mess. So, at the very least, you could do that and just stuff yourself with bacon in the morning. Eggs too, if you can handle them.

Alternatively, some nice breakfast sausages, cooked under the broiler the night before, nuked to warm them in the morning. The nice thing about bacon and sausages is you can hold them in a napkin and eat them with your hands.

 

[pete02]

After Herondancer was here for a visit and mentioned that they do their bacon in the oven, one morning I said "why not?' So, I used a cookie sheet, laid it all out, put it under the broiler for about 8 minutes, turned it over for another 6 minutes, and voila! About 15 slices of bacon in less than 15 minutes, no mess. So, at the very least, you could do that and just stuff yourself with bacon in the morning. Eggs too, if you can handle them.

Alternatively, some nice breakfast sausages, cooked under the broiler the night before, nuked to warm them in the morning. The nice thing about bacon and sausages is you can hold them in a napkin and eat them with your hands.

My sister in law turned me onto this way of cooking bacon some time ago. I make my weeks worth of bacon that way and it cuts my time down a lot. I use two cookie sheets and cook a package of bacon in each and it really helps with cleanup that's for sure. My sausage I cook in a toaster oven cause I can just set the timer and don't have to worry about burning it and I can cook it at the same time as my bacon. :)

 

[Muxel]

That, Pete n' Laura, is exactly how I've been doing it ever since I got acquainted with bacon! It's convergent evolution, guys. And I never throw out the disposable cake pan. But I don't flip the bacon over, and I overlap them.

I wanna see where the summer fat doubting goes, because admittedly I've still been washing my bacon.

What was "paleolithic diet?" How cold was it earlier in this last glacial period? It should be obvious that these kinds of questions do not have a single answer, and yet our simplification-prone minds can easily produce fantasy-based generalizations if we don't reign them in.

True, Megan. While Nora goes by what's optimal and not ancestral, she keeps saying "We're creatures of the Ice Age." (Btw maybe 'Paleolithic' should mean after the last reboot when everybody was forced back into hunter-gathering.)

I haven't eaten any of my favorite sea food like shrimp, salmon, etc. in years.

oh... me too... if there's one thing in favor of the aquatic ape theory, it's that the PTB have denied us the sea.

 

[dugdeep]

I was thinking about this last night and trying to imagine myself in the ancestral past when Spring is gersprungin'... what would I be eating? What would all our ancestors be eating in the Spring?

Obviously not meats with a lot of fat on them because all the critters had used up their fat over the winter. In fact, our ancestors would probably be respecting the Spring cycle of birth and only selectively eating leaner meats and fish and possibly some green things like tender shoots of certain plants or roots?

So maybe we evolved to eat that way when the light begins to lengthen?

I don't know exactly what we have available to us today that would fill that purpose, (except for seafood) but maybe veal is one item?

Perhaps IF our ancestors lived for the most part on an Ice Age, they still craved meats and fats from animals but respected their reproductive cycles by eating more seafood during certain parts of the year?

For summer I think I would crave butter, fish, salads and lean meats, but much less fatty pork chops. The other option, is to get thermoadapted to cold temperatures and then the fat craving will continue...

Also, don't forget that our ancestors weren't limiting themselves to the lean parts of the animals. There's fairly conclusive evidence that our Paleo ancestors favoured the fattiest parts of the animals including bone marrow and brain. Those parts aren't subject to becoming leaner in the spring.

In Volek and Phinney's book they talk about North American First Nations peoples eating almost nothing but fat in the summer and winter alike. They'd save up the fat from the winter and continue eating it all through the summer. It was used like a currency, it was considered so valuable.

I guess what I'm saying is I'm not looking to go too low in the fat. I think there's a good chance a high-fat diet can be done year round.

Edit: Here's a blog post by Dr. Kurt Harris I remembered from awhile back where he's arguing with a writer at the Atlantic about how much fat paleolithic hunter-gatherers were eating. The post gets a bit tedious as the arguing back and forth gets kind of repetitive, but there are a lot of good points brought up, particularly about how much fat was eaten in the summer months:

http://www.archevore.com/panu-weblog/2011/4/9/jousting-with-the-atlantic.html

 

[SeekinTruth]

Well, there's good points being made and there's evidence for both somewhat reducing fat as the days get longer and temperatures go up and same fat consumption year round. I guess it's going to take some experimenting like everything else -- and may be an individual thing like everything else. I'm still not reducing fat or portions much yet, but just a bit (I WAS eating HUGE quantities of fat). I don't feel I have to. For those that do, it's fine to at least experiment a little.

For Pete and anyone else using a toaster oven, you may want to cover your food (e.g. with some foil -- like a tarp, not necessarily wrapped in foil -- careful foil doesn't touch the coils) because they use tungsten coils to heat and tend to spray tungsten onto the food, which is toxic. Also, this is probably known already but, mind the temperature when cooking in an oven, especially broiling. If the heat is too high, it's not good for reasons discussed earlier and also will form bezopyrenes (very toxic), whereas heat (while still shouldn't be too high) in a pan or pot, etc. never reaches temperatures of broiling to form benzopyrenes. Just thought I'd mention these caveats.

 

[JGeropoulas]

...
After Herondancer was here for a visit and mentioned that they do their bacon in the oven, one morning I said "why not?' So, I used a cookie sheet, laid it all out, put it under the broiler for about 8 minutes, turned it over for another 6 minutes, and voila! About 15 slices of bacon in less than 15 minutes, no mess. So, at the very least, you could do that and just stuff yourself with bacon in the morning. Eggs too, if you can handle them.

I use a "cookie sheet" pan with a rim and line it with foil so there's nothing even to wash. Then I shape the foil into a funnel, drain the bacon drippings into my storage jar, and wrap the bacon in the foil for storage so not one drop of those precious drippings goes to waste.

 

[Mrs. Peel]

...
After Herondancer was here for a visit and mentioned that they do their bacon in the oven, one morning I said "why not?' So, I used a cookie sheet, laid it all out, put it under the broiler for about 8 minutes, turned it over for another 6 minutes, and voila! About 15 slices of bacon in less than 15 minutes, no mess. So, at the very least, you could do that and just stuff yourself with bacon in the morning. Eggs too, if you can handle them.

I use a "cookie sheet" pan with a rim and line it with foil so there's nothing even to wash. Then I shape the foil into a funnel, drain the bacon drippings into my storage jar, and wrap the bacon in the foil for storage so not one drop of those precious drippings goes to waste.

My husband cooks bacon on a cookie sheet in the oven. But he uses the evil non-stick cookie sheet. Yeah, I warned him about that.... I do mine in the iron skillet, and cook two packages at a time, and put them in little baggies for each day's breakfast. They freeze well too! :)

 

[pete02]

For Pete and anyone else using a toaster oven, you may want to cover your food (e.g. with some foil -- like a tarp, not necessarily wrapped in foil -- careful foil doesn't touch the coils) because they use tungsten coils to heat and tend to spray tungsten onto the food, which is toxic. Also, this is probably known already but, mind the temperature when cooking in an oven, especially broiling. If the heat is too high, it's not good for reasons discussed earlier and also will form bezopyrenes (very toxic), whereas heat (while still shouldn't be too high) in a pan or pot, etc. never reaches temperatures of broiling to form benzopyrenes. Just thought I'd mention these caveats.

Thanks for the info SeekinTruth. I'll definitely give that a try! ;)

I use a "cookie sheet" pan with a rim and line it with foil so there's nothing even to wash. Then I shape the foil into a funnel, drain the bacon drippings into my storage jar, and wrap the bacon in the foil for storage so not one drop of those precious drippings goes to waste.

My husband cooks bacon on a cookie sheet in the oven. But he uses the evil non-stick cookie sheet. Yeah, I warned him about that.... I do mine in the iron skillet, and cook two packages at a time, and put them in little baggies for each day's breakfast. They freeze well too! :)

Yeah I forgot to mention that, I also use foil to line the cookie sheets and drain the excess for later like JGeropoulas.

 

[mcb]

Does "foil" in the above posts refer to aluminum foil? Is there any form of aluminum that is safe for cooking?

 

[beetlemaniac]

That, Pete n' Laura, is exactly how I've been doing it ever since I got acquainted with bacon!

Hi Muxel, you mentioned that you reside in Malaysia in another post. Where do you get you bacon from? The bacon I get is the "Eurodeli" type and it is made from conventional meat. I'm wondering if there's any place that sells organic.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Does "foil" in the above posts refer to aluminum foil? Is there any form of aluminum that is safe for cooking?

Yeah, aluminum foil (and other aluminum cooking utensils) are a problem. You have to weigh the pros and cons and try not to have too much exposure. There used to be tin foil, but I'm not sure if there still is, anyway many metals, plastics, etc. can be quite toxic.

That, Pete n' Laura, is exactly how I've been doing it ever since I got acquainted with bacon!

Hi Muxel, you mentioned that you reside in Malaysia in another post. Where do you get you bacon from? The bacon I get is the "Eurodeli" type and it is made from conventional meat. I'm wondering if there's any place that sells organic.

I think Muxel is originally from Malaysia, but now is studying in North America, but not positive? He may still know about bacon sources in Malaysia though if he ate it over there as well. FWIW.

 

[truth seeker]

I think Muxel is originally from Malaysia, but now is studying in North America, but not positive? He may still know about bacon sources in Malaysia though if he ate it over there as well. FWIW.

Hi SiT,

While I fully appreciate your attempts to be helpful, it seems that lately you've been a bit of a posting spree. While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, in the case of the above post, Muxel (or someone living/familiar in/with malaysia) might be better qualified to answer bm's question. Allowing others to answer also provides learning opportunities for all. I could be off but the quality of some of your recent posts have a slight frantic energy to them. Is everything okay?

 

[SeekinTruth]

Hi, truth seeker. I see your point, definitely in the above example. And yes everything is OK (as far as I can tell, and as far as it can be in this rather crazy world) and thanks for asking. :)

 

[truth seeker]

Hi, truth seeker. I see your point, definitely in the above example. And yes everything is OK (as far as I can tell, and as far as it can be in this rather crazy world) and thanks for asking. :)

Good to hear! Know that you don't have to try so hard to be accepted (if that's what's going on), you're loved just as you are. :)