Recipe - Ground Bison over Green Beans

I tried a new recipe from, you guessed it, the Paleo Solution.  It was yummy so I wanted to share it with  you all.

1 lb Ground Meat (I used Bison)
1 lb Green Beans
1 Jar Marinara Sauce
Olive Oil
Seasoning

Fry Bison in Olive Oil on medium in a frying pan.  Add seasoning to your liking. Add Marinara Sauce.  Serve over fresh green beans.  This made enough for 3-4 meals depending on how hungry you are.  The spice I used was a chophouse seasoning from Simply Organic.  It is a combination of garlic, sea salt, black pepper, dill seed, coriander, and chili peppers.

Chicken or the Egg?

Got this in an email from my aunt Lorrie and thought it was funny considering my new revelations.

Week Four

Time for another biosig.  I gained 4 pounds, 4 solid pounds, of muscle!  AMAZING!  To gain that much muscle in such a short time is crazy.  My body has to be so happy.  It is finally able to rebuild after I workout.  Many colleagues have commented throughout these weeks that I seem to have more energy and my skin looks better.  One even told me I seemed happier.  Go figure.  You do the math.  However you want to phrase it, it’s working.  “You should write a blog about this” I heard from multiple people.  So, I’m writing this blog.

Something that I find funny is that there are so many things I don’t know about purchasing meat.  Thank God for the butchers at Whole Foods.  FYI, they are very knowledgeable. For example, went to buy some ground Bison as I was told it was tasty and lean.  I had no idea of how much to buy.  I had no idea what a pound looked like.  When trying to tell the butcher how much I wanted he was looking at me like I was from outer space.  I had to explain that I just started eating meat a month ago and boom, a wealth of information about Bison came out of his mouth.     

Week Three

I posted on Facebook that after 20 years of vegetarianism I was eating meat.  Now that it’s on Facebook it must be for real!  Many responses followed.  One in particular I had to comment back on.  An old friend from college commented that when she told her daughter who is a vegetarian that I was eating meat, her daughter’s response was that it was a tragedy.  My comment back was that the real tragedy was not giving your body the nutrients it truly needs.  She then added ‘will you email or call her because she will not listen to me and she is not growing and developing'.  Understand that this child is only 11.  I called my friend and told her to read Robb Wolf’s book and that I could visit and we could talk with her together.  This led me to a lot of thinking. 

I became a vegetarian at the age of 20.  Development into an adult had already happened.  This child was preventing the natural physical development of her body.  Why?  The decision to stop eating meat evolved out of my feelings of guilt for eating something that had been alive.  I believe animals have souls and that hasn’t changed. But animals eat animals.  There are animals that would eat me.  Of course, I stay away from them unless looking at them in a zoo.  The longer I pondered this, the more I connected this decision with self worth issues.  Had I not felt worthy of taking life to live?  It is a question I still struggle with.  But, I do know that we are supposed to eat meat.  We are a part of nature no matter how superior we think we are.

There is something in the book The Paleo Solution that I have made my new grace.

1. It has to have a face.
2. It has to have a soul.
3. You have to kill it and bring the essence of the animal inside you.
4. Really!

I think when I read this it was really the turning point in my thinking.  Bringing the essence of the animal inside you is respectful of that animal’s life.  While we may need to kill them we can respect their life and soul while they are alive.  This is why I purchase my meat at Whole Foods where they sell cage free, grass feed, etc. meat.

Week Two

This was the first week I cooked any flesh.  Stopped at Whole Foods and picked up a stuffed chicken breast and 4 plain chicken breasts.  Cooked the stuffed chicken breast and could not believe how good it tasted.  The other 4 I baked in the oven with Italian Dressing and used those for my lunch the next week.  This week my trainer wanted to do a biosig, which entails measuring my fat and calculating my body composition. This would be the baseline so we could track the changes in my body taking place due to my new diet.  We took photos too.

Week One

The first week, I pretty much just added chicken to whatever I was eating for lunch.  But on the Friday of that first week, I went out for a steak!  A friend of 18 years was with me and she actually took out her iPhone and took pictures.  I guess she thought she needed evidence.  It was lent and the waiter was going on and on about the fish specials for lent.  I responded “I’m eating meat for lent”.  Now that I think about it, after not eating meat for 20 years, I think I have lent covered for the rest of my life.  Another thing I noticed was that after years of having trouble sleeping and waking up on average 3 times in the middle of the night, now I was not only sleeping through the night but falling asleep much faster. AMAZING

Day One

I bought an Ostrim stick at the gym, this is a beef and ostrich meat stick (very low in fat).  Zach, the owner had to virtually hold my hand through just purchasing this piece of carnage. I had planned to reintroduce meat to my body over a weekend as I was leery of what might happen to my digestive system after not have eaten meat in 20 years.  I took my stick home, ate half of it, and was so full that I couldn’t eat any more.  In addition, my mind was clearer, I felt more energetic, and more peaceful, content in a way.  After all that anxiety, the exact opposite happened.  Instead of my body rejecting this dead animal, it was having a party.

Introduction

There is a Buddhist saying that goes something like ‘when the student is ready the teacher will appear’.   A book by the title The Paleo Solution, the Original Human Diet appeared just as I was ready to become a carnivore after twenty years of vegetarianism.  Robb Wolf, the author and a fellow recovering vegetarian, uses anthropology, science, nutrition, etc to explain why humans are suppose to eat a Paleo Diet.  I had never thought anyone would be able to convince me to eat meat again.  Robb Wolf did. 

Throughout this voyage into meat eating I have not only changed in how I think about eating meat but my body has changed for the better.  Psychologically I have gone through so much in the past month that many friends suggested I start writing down everything I am processing hence; the creation of this blog.

I will also be tracking my food and workouts so I have a full log of how my training and diet work together.  As of the first month I have gained 4 pounds of muscle.  The training center I work out at monitors clients fat percentage and body composition so I will report updates on these results as well.