Excessive paleo

Yesterday was such an exciting day! Our community had a robbery and a bad dude on the loose which led to the schools being on soft lockdown. As scary as that is, it was so assuring to know that my children are in wonderful, loving hands. I am so grateful for Greenville Christian School and Wesley United Methodist Parents Day Out, the administrators and the teachers. And I have heard from friends some fantastic and moving stories about other teachers in the community at other schools and I just wanted to take a second and just say that I really appreciate all of you who are not only teaching our children but also protecting and loving them. Thank you.

The day continued to be exciting in a not so scary kind of way because it was our first day of actual just paleo and not Whole30. So I took full advantage of all this new food freedom and really overdid it.

I have new neighbors. Yay! But I had kind of slacked on my neighborly duty to welcome them to the neighborhood with a baked good. So this was just the perfect opportunity to try out a paleo desert recipe. So I made FUDGY BROWNIES from PaleoOMG!!! This recipe blew my mind. First of all it is basically just figs, 1/2 cup of chocolate chips, and eggs. There are a few other ingredients but not much. Secondly, I made it all in my food processor. I didn't once dirty up a mixing bowl, except for the small one I used as double broiler to melt the chocolate chips. But Addie cleaned that one by licking it so it is okay to just put it back in the cabinet, right? (I'll let you worry about that one.)

Are you wondering where do you buy dried figs? I bought mine at this sweet little health food store called Sunshine Shoppe. You should check it out. The owner is pretty awesome. She's crazy, but in an awesome kind of way. There's a difference.

While you are picking up your figs you can also grab these dairy, nut and soy free chocolate chips! One stop shopping!

Okay, so you can click the link to get the actually recipe. I didn't have the cool liners Juli was talking about on her blog so I just sprayed a regular brownie pan with some Kelapo coconut oil and mashed that sticky wonderful brownie goo into the bottom. The first batch I cooked the entire 20 minutes and it was good. (Sorry neighbor. That is the one you got, but only because I made the other batch later.) But the second batch I only cooked for 12 minutes and it was seriously the most amazing thing ever. Now that might be because I haven't had any deserty kind of food for 30 days but I don't think so. These were so fudgy and yummy and man I wish we had some left because I would really like one now. But sadly they are all gone. We ate an entire pan of brownies in 1 day! I'm pretty sure I ate 2/3 of the pan by myself. The kids loved these and never once said anything about them tasting different from other brownies. I did notice that they have a little crunch every now and then but not in a bad way. You know, its kind of like when you eat a fig newton. But try this recipe. Even if you aren't paleo I think you would like these. In fact, if you aren't paleo I would love to hear your review on this very sweet treat. By the way, I didn't post of picture of the finished product for two reasons: 1-we ate them all before I could grab my camera. 2-They kind of looked like poop. Really. Some food is pretty, some is not. This one in on the already digested side of ugly.

On our walk home from dropping off the brownies at our sweet neighbors the UPS truck met us and gave me my amazon package filled with my three new cookbooks! I haven't had two seconds to even browse these yet but I will soon and I will post a review on each. But I did take the time to do a little happy dance when I opened the box. It is just so exciting when the delivery is something for me and not a computer or truck part for Levi.

My day kept getting better and better. I was on a role. Brownies, books, and then WINE! I was about two-thirds of the way through my wine when I started to feel kind of yucky. You see 1 cup of dried figs has about 71 grams of sugar and that delectable brownie recipe called for 1 and half cups so we are talking 106 grams of sugar. And I ate only 90 of that, maybe a smidge less. Enter wine...alcohol interferes with glucose and the hormones needed to maintain healthy blood sugar levels. So by 9pm last night I was feeling shaky and gross. It was obvious my blood sugar levels were not stable and my little tummy was NOT happy.

I poured myself a glass of Braggs apple cider vinegar and water and sipped on it a while. It helped but I still felt puny all night long. So once again I had to learn the hard way.

Lesson of the day: Just because it is "paleo approved" does not mean you should eat or drink it, especially lots of it.