Happy (almost) Valentine’s Day, everyone!  I’ll admit, the hubby and and I are not huge fans of this particular holiday, but it turns out that we’ve got a lot of love to celebrate this year.  We’ve been married now for just over a year, and we’re super, super excited to be expecting a new baby together later summer!

Being pregnant (for the first time!) has thrown me for a little bit of a loop when it comes to how I eat… I’ll admit I’ve been indulging in some old favorites, and although they were a nice treat for a while, they reminded me how my old way of eating kinda made me feel like ick most of the time. 😉  So, I’m kicking off my 2nd trimester back on the wagon, and it really does feel great.  My goal is to CrossFit throughout the pregnancy, and I need the right kind of fuel for both me and the baby to be at our best, in workouts and out.

Any fellow Paleo mamas out there? Would love to hear how you’ve done it and what resources you’ve found!

PS – Still trying to sort out a fun little treat for Valentine’s Day (that doesn’t involve boxes of sugary sweets)? Check back tomorrow for some super simple dark-chocolate-covered strawberries!

It’s not often that my professional and personal lives so totally interconnect, but in the case of bacon, there is a clear cross-over. I work in the IT industry (for the awesome IT software company Spiceworks – check out this video about zombies and, yes, bacon), and I work every day with IT pros all over the world. What brings them all together? Bacon. Yep, IT guys love bacon just about as much as we CrossFitting Paleo nuts do.  And why shouldn’t they? Bacon is quite simply one of the tastiest treats out there, and I snarf down every little scrap when the opportunity arises.

Now, I really do love bacon, but it would seem that there are some folks out there who REALLY love bacon, and they’ve got the merchandise to prove it. I recently purchased a variety of bacon-related items as prizes for our software conference a few weeks ago – I had no idea how much bacon-related paraphernalia was out there.  It’s a little scary. And a little awesome. Check out what I snagged… Not gonna lie, it would take a braver woman than me to try out the bacon-flavored toothpaste.

Bacon-Scented Soap Plus, the bar of soap looks like a huge slab of bacon. Lather up!

Bacon Flavored Mints  Hmm, not sure my vegetarian hubby would be super pleased if I started popping these.

Follow the jump for more awesome bacon-ness.

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Well, hello everyone!  Forget me?  I know it’s been ages since I posted. Apologies!  Life’s been a little on the crazy side for the past month – we’ve either been traveling or had house guests every weekend, and I just completed our annual big conference at my day job – an enormous amount of work, but a great success!  I’ll admit, when I’m in crazy-busy mode, I revert to my fall-back staple recipes and pretty much end up eating the same thing every day (roasted turkey and chicken, cast-iron steaks, LOTS of salad, etc.), so my culinary exploits have suffered just a bit.

My beautiful new spice management solution.

Now that I have a little time to breathe again, I’m back in the kitchen and back on the blog. It feels good to be back! 😉  I’ve spent the last few days cataloging more than 100 recipes that I want to try/adapt/Paleo-itize, so you’ll be seeing lots of fun stuff to come!  I’m thinking maybe some special Thanksgiving-inspired posts are in the near future.

As part of my “get back on the wagon” efforts, I spent the last few days organizing/cleaning out my kitchen. My favorite project? Tackling the MESS that was my spice drawer. There were spices in there that must have been 10 years old (ugh)… A bunch were my husband’s before we moved in together (more than three years ago). Plus, all these crazy, unusable spices were taking up a ton of valuable space in our not-so-large kitchen.

So… I went to the Container Store. I love that store and will be spending more time there over the coming weeks as I organize like a fiend. This time around, I found these awesome magnetic spice canisters that I can stick to the side of my fridge! Plus, I got to use my handy-dandy label maker, so it was a win all around. Love it! Easy to see what I have, everything’s at arm’s reach, perfect. More on the way for this week – have a fabulous day and stay tuned!

Or, How I Killed and Cooked My Own Dinner.

Our seriously intimidating 2.5 pound live lobster.

I am a carnivore.  I love meat… grilled, cured, raw, stir-fried, dried, whatever. I’m a huge fan of all pork products, from bacon to jamon to pork belly to chops. Seafood? Yep. Poultry? Yep. I love it all, and I’ve eaten loads of it over the years, giving little to no thought about where that yummy meat was coming from.  As long as it tasted good, I wasn’t bothered.  Don’t get me wrong, I love animals and my dog, Piggy, is basically a full member of the family. That said, I’ve always been able to disassociate my love for animals with my love for eating them. I do truly believe that there is a natural order of things and that our bodies crave animal proteins to function at our very best.

Anyhoo, after years of guilt-free animal consumption, this meat-loving gal met the man of her dreams, and he turned out to be… (gasp!) a vegetarian. Who’d have thought I’d end up marrying my food opposite? Early on, P.J. and I found that we could happily co-exist – a carnivore and a vegetarian living in peace, albeit mostly on pasta at the time. Lately, as a result of P.J.’s influence and my transition to Paleo, I’ve been giving the origins of my food a lot more thought. I’ve been exposed to a whole new way of looking at meat – responsible, sustainable farming practices and cruelty-free animal husbandry. We visit the Austin Farmers Market every Saturday to stock up on grass-fed beef and pork, fresh eggs from happy pastured chickens, and loads of locally grown veggies.  When we eat out, we find ourselves gravitating to boutique restaurants serving locally grown and raised fare. It’s been a gradual evolution, and an important one.

On our recent trip to Martha’s Vineyard, while I was snarfing down a silly amount of lobster over three days, it occurred to me that I’d never actually killed my dinner myself. Ever. I can’t even recall cooking a lake fish that I caught as a child (this is probably mostly due to the fact that I was an AWFUL fisherman… fisherwoman?).  With such easy access to beautifully butchered and prepared meats, I’ve found it to be so easy to insulate myself from the realities of eating animal meat. It occurred to me on this trip that I should, at least once, do the deed myself… I needed to kill and eat my dinner. Myself. I see it really as an act of respect for the animals we consume… if I’m not “man” enough to kill the thing I’m eating, well then maybe I shouldn’t be eating it.  Now, I’m not advocating regular at-home butchery for everyone, but I think there’s something important and elemental about respecting our meat enough to be the one to kill it.

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