There are recipes in the food section of this blog for those who have changed their diet to follow the SANE eating principles described in the book The Calorie Myth by Jonathan Bailor. These same recipes also follow Paleo eating style for the most part as well. Many of us are trying to make healthy changes to our diet and way of eating. The Calorie Myth and Paleo diet offer alternatives toward that goal.  Before I discovered this book,  and Chris Kresser’s Paleo Cure, I found I had already gravitated toward many similar ideas, due to what my body was telling me agreed with it.  I was already gluten free, and on many days grain-free.  I was already drinking smoothies, if not every day, every second day, and I have always loved vegetables and eaten a wide variety, though probably not the quantity I should have. I realise now, I was not eating enough protein, and I had already reintroduced full fat dairy products into our diet without gaining weight.  I had also discovered that foods that were high in sugar or other sweeteners like Agave, did not always agree with me, and the same true for high fructose fruits.

I made these changes to my eating over a period of several years, and adjusted my cooking accordingly.  In addition to the above, I also found that my tolerance for eating onion or anything cooked or processed using onion or onion powder, leeks, or green onion did not agree with me at all.  So the recipes I have developed use no onion, but occasionally a small amount of cooked garlic.  If eating onion doesn’t bother you then add it back into the savoury recipes.  But my recipes never use onion because I can’t eat it.  I have learned to replace it with other vegetables for texture, and herbs for flavour and I hear no complaints from anyone at my dining table.

My husband is a healthy eater but he does not need (want) to modify his eating from his current one, though he happily eats the things I cook and seldom feels the need to add bread or anything to it. He gets his ‘fix’ of pizza and sandwiches in meals which we don’t eat together. That is fine by me, I don’t wish to be prescriptive about what anyone else should eat. My feeling is, they will find their own way to whatever is best for them… or not, just as I have.

For the first 35 years of learning to cook, I made everything from French breads to Italian pasta, sauces, and Indian, Chinese and Vietnamese dishes–all from scratch.  I’ve learned a lot of methods and how to use ingredients, which I now incorporate into my own recipes.  These days, I don’t like to spend a lot of energy making food, but I still love to eat well.  The recipes you will find here are usually going to be pretty simple, with the biggest time factor involved in the chopping of the ingredients, rather than complex techniques. These everyday recipes will give you great eating pleasure, guaranteed.

*Since posting this nearly two years ago I have modified my diet (yet again) as I found after a year the SANE principles just did not jibe all that well with my lifestyle. I still eat many of the things I became familiar with but have added other things back into my diet, mainly grains. I found the idea of using xylitol as a sweetener as artificial as using too much sugar, though the xylitol is reported to be very healthful for one’s teeth, and sugar is not. I also found that the high protein whey powders recommended in so many recipes did not agree with me, though it took me quite a while to track down the problem.

It seems we all evolve our eating continually and even though mine has gone backward to embrace simpler foods and ways of preparing them, it is not a bad thing!

Buon appetito!

-Ardys

*(SANE = Satiety  (un)-Aggressive  Nutritious  (in)-Efficient ~ Those foods do not include grains, sugars, starchy vegetables, candies, gum, snack bars, supplements, or vitamin pills.)

PS (I live in the middle of Outback Australia and cannot always source ideal ingredients, but I do try for organic and free range whenever possible/practical)