Misc

The Domestic Man’s Great Giveaway of 2011

To celebrate my first year of Paleo/Gluten-Free eating, I’ve decided to do a giveaway. In the giveaway you’ll find some staples of our family’s diet – coconut oil, coconut milk, and Thai curry pastes. I’m also including a copy of the Easy Paleo: 21 Practical Ways to Simplify Your Paleo Life e-Book, graciously donated by Jennie at Easy Paleo.

In addition to getting real stuff, I’m also giving away something a little more personal: I’ll create a recipe especially for you, and post it on this site. My only stipulation is that it has to be a dish that’s traditional in nature (as in something that has existed for a while, no made-up meals like “turkey asparagus surprise”). Other than that, I have no limitations on what you choose – it can be from wherever in the world you want, as difficult as you can imagine, and tailored to whatever dietary restrictions you may have. If you don’t have any restrictions in particular, it will be made with the same guidelines I use to cook every day – meaning that it will be made with natural ingredients and without grains (except white rice) or legumes. Give me about a month to research and test your dish before I publish it.

Here’s the loot:

1. A copy of Easy Paleo: 21 Practical Ways to Simplify Your Paleo Life e-Book ($5 value)
2. One 16oz container of Whole Foods expeller pressed virgin coconut oil ($10 value)
3. Three 4oz Maesri curry pastes (green, red, and panang)* ($9 value)
4. One 14oz can of Orchids coconut milk ($2 value)
5. A personalized recipe created at your request (priceless)

* Note that the curry pastes have sugar listed in their ingredients (although it’s pretty far down in the list). If you are completely avoiding sugar altogether, let me know and I’ll send a second container of coconut oil instead.

Here’s how to enter the giveaway:

1. “Like” The Domestic Man facebook page and leave a comment letting me know you did it.
2. Follow me on Twitter and leave a comment letting me know you did it.
3. Subscribe to this site’s RSS feed and leave a comment letting me know you did it.
4. Tweet about this giveaway and leave a comment letting me know you did it.
5. Share this giveaway on Facebook and leave a comment letting me know you did it.

Your options for entering the giveaway are stackable, so you could potentially enter five times. You don’t need to leave five comments, just let me know everything you did in one comment. The giveaway ends midnight Sunday, December 18th, and I will select a winner using a random number generator sometime thereafter. Good luck!

Update: Congratulations to brunson71799 who is the big winner of The Domestic Man’s Great Giveaway of 2011! Thanks to everyone who participated.

Check out my Amazon.com Store

It’s probably pretty hard to track all of the food-related recommendations I make on my site, so I set up an Amazon.com store that you can use to easily peruse my favorite cookware, gadgets, ingredients, and cookbooks. I’ll be updating it as time goes on, so be sure to check back often – I made a handy little link to the store on the right-hand side of the site.

Keep in mind that while I totally recommend all of the products in my store, you may find better prices for many of the items locally (especially the food items). The cookware, gadgets, and books are priced pretty competitively though.

Good luck and happy shopping!

Paleo at Six Months: 10 Lessons Learned


image courtesy of Hanna-Barbera/Warner Bros.

Note: this was written in May 2011. Check out my one year recap post here, as well as my three-year recap post here.

So right now I’m hovering around the 6-month mark on my modified Paleo diet (which = “Paleo + some dairy + white rice”), and I thought that I should share a few musings and pointers.

Since starting the diet, I’ve lost a few things (besides fifteen unwanted pounds). Namely, I’ve lost post-meal tiredness, midday tiredness, and stomach issues (read: gas). For better or worse, I’ve also lost my taste for beer and most wines, mostly because they make me tired and give me headaches. I’ve gained a ton of energy, a much more pleasant and positive mood, and lately I’ve been able to exercise for the first time in over six years.

Here are some pointers that I wish I had known six months ago.

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A Quick Word About Nutrition, Dietary Restrictions, and Culinary Tenets

You’ve probably noticed by now that I place certain banners underneath each recipe – “gluten free, paleo-friendly, perfect health diet-friendly, contains dairy” – and I thought I should explain them a little better.

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Birthday Loot

My wife bought the fermentation jar you see above for my birthday today, and I am pretty stoked. I’ve been wanting to make my own pickles, sauerkraut and kimchee for a while now so this is perfect. It’s under $10 and available here. I’m looking forward to finding the most natural and healthy pickling methods around, so if you have any suggestions please send them my way.

She also got me Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol 1. I think it’ll give me insight into some hearty, full-fat French culinary methods that I can use as a baseline in the future. I’ve found that my cooking instincts have eerily fallen in line with French culinary style, so this may really push me to refining my taste.

USDA Guidelines, Parents Magazine, and You


image courtesy of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Society

I usually find most conventional nutritional advice to be somewhat amusing, considering that a lot of it is driven by financial interest and not health. I’m not an expert by any stretch, but even with my limited knowledge I can see through most nutritional campaigns. What’s upsetting is that some of it can be potentially dangerous since most people don’t spend much time researching nutrition on their own and rely on easy-to-read columns and the like. I stumbled upon this article on Parents magazine entitled 10 Things You Need to Know About the New USDA Guidelines and found it so repulsive that I had to comment each of its assumptions.

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Chicken Livers


image courtesy of Nourishing our Children

While planning a yakitori night for sometime in the future I ran across this picture. Yikes!

Double Down is a Triple No

I decided to look into KFC’s Grilled Double Down as a potential emergency meal. It sounds legit – bacon and cheese and sauce sandwiched between two grilled chicken breasts. I figured the sauce would have some banned ingredients (and it does – wheat, soy and corn), but I was disappointed to find that KFC’s grilled chicken contains all three of those Paleo-forbidden foods.

I decided to check out other “grilled chicken” options and this is what I found:

Burger King: modified corn starch, partially hydrogenated soybean oil
McDonalds: corn gluten, soy, wheat gluten proteins, partially hydrogenated cottonseed/soybean oils
Wendy’s: modified corn starch
Arby’s: corn flour, corn syrup solids
A&W: soybean oil
Chik-fil-A: soybean oil, palm kernel oil, soy lecithin
Chipotle: doesn’t say, although it mentions it contains soy
Hardee’s: soy, wheat, high fructose corn syrup
Jack in the Box: wheat, soy
Sonic: soy, wheat gluten
Taco Bell: modified corn starch, corn syrup solids, soy

So there you have it. Not one grilled chicken choice at any of these fast food restaurants is Paleo-friendly. I’m going to stick with Wendy’s Double Cheeseburgers when I’m in a crunch.

Oliver’s First Joke

My son learned his first joke the other day while watching Yo Gabba Gabba. He’s being coached by my wife behind the camera, but it’s still funny nonetheless.

Oliver’s Second Winter

My son turns two next month, and I compiled some footage over the past few months to chronicle this fun time in his life. I hope that someday I can show it to his girlfriends and totally embarrass him. All video is taken with the same camera I use to take my pictures for this site, a Canon T1i with a 50mm lens.