New Theme

My hubby is home!  Yay!  It was a long year having him gone overseas, but we survived and are in the process of reintegration.

For anyone who isn't familiar with military life, reintegration is where we get used to living together again.  I've spent the last year doing all the work around the house, being both mom and dad to the kids, doing all the shopping, and making all the basic household decisions.  Now I have to go back to a two-parent family with someone else stepping-in and doing some of the work, telling the kids what to do, even giving input on the meals.  It can be a difficult process.  For us, it seems to be going pretty smoothly with one little hiccup -- my husband has totally changed his diet and wants us to change ours now to match his.  He is now eating Paleo only.

Don't get me wrong, my hubby looks great!  Between his diet and change in workout habits, he looks amazing.  It's obvious the Paleo diet plan has it's merits, but there are drawbacks to eating this way.  A big drawback is no grains -- that means no wheat, flour, corn, rice, etc.  No cereal for the kids in the morning, so now I'm cooking eggs and a meat each morning (or trying to get in that habit.)  No bread -- WHOAH!  No sandwiches for lunch?  I haven't cut that one out completely yet as we haven't run out of our store of bread, but I'll be looking for lunch ideas for the kids soon.  No potatoes, rice, or corn as side dishes at dinner, no hamburger or hot dog buns (no bread, remember?), no pasta, and here's the big one - no milk.  That's a lot of "no's".  But it's not just about the no's, it's about not eating grains and watching the carb intake and sugar intake.  I don't claim to know everything, or even a lot, I'm learning as I go here.  My personal biggest downside of eating Paleo is that one of the BIG ingredients in Paleo cooking is coconut.  Coconut oil, coconut milk, and coconut shavings -- the biggest allergy I have.

Thankfully, there are a bunch of good blogs out there on Paleo cooking with writers who are willing to help out with substitution suggestions in their recipes.  And now we've come to the point of this post.  I'm going to start a new theme here on my blog, our adventures in a Paleo lifestyle - coconut free.  I'll be posting recipes and pictures, even if they fail, with honest opinions from us on each recipe.

So look for some changes to the site over the next few days / weeks.  I'll be doing a redesign to match better with a food theme.  I'll still be posting about the family and anything else that catches my fancy, but mostly I'll post about the Paleo cooking.  I have to say, this is going to be extremely difficult.  For one, I am a BIG baker.  I love to bake and I love to eat what I bake.  So maybe some of the experiments I do will be making desserts Paleo friendly, I don't know.  Let's just see where this adventure takes us.