Sunday Summary and #ROW80 Progress Report

1. It’s been a long and kind of stressful week, y’all, so I don’t have much to say for this progress report.  A close friend had a personal crisis.  My university got put on lock down because of an alleged active shooter (who was neither a shooter nor active at all, and was entirely unarmed, as it turned out).  In general, I manage to normally do a pretty good job of keeping one foot in whatever story I’m writing, but this week just wholly pulled me out of fiction and put me solidly into the real world.
2. I finally got back to writing on Friday, doing a read through of the anthology novella and moving forward, for once, without an ounce of the usual page fright that haunts me when I’ve been away from the WIP.  I’ve knocked out a couple of scenes and am preparing to dive into the next one.  It’s hubby’s weekend to work, so I’ve had evenings to write, on top of the hours he’s sleeping during the day.  I’m hoping to finish today’s scene before hubs wakes up, so that tonight I can play with some plotting for one of the two novels that I’ll be starting once this is finished.
3. As I’m finally being forced to concede that I can no longer eat the amount of carbs/sugar I used to (despite the switch to gluten free with hubby), I’ve been exploring paleo.  I don’t have any interest in going whole hog.  While I recognize it’s a very healthy way to eat, it does not in any way, shape, or form fit in with having a social life of any kind in the Deep South (or, likely, anywhere else for that matter).  I’m more interested in slowly easing in, adding 3-4 paleo style dinners a week to gradually get used to this style of eating.  Gradual works for us.  We eat a lot less bread, pasta, baked goods, etc. (even the gluten free kind) than we did before hubby’s gluten intolerance came up 5 years ago. And in the year and a half I’ve been dairy free because of MY allergy, I’ve gradually shifted to a whole lot fewer meals centered around dairy-based (or now dairy alternative) ingredients than I used to.  Hubs and I talked about it the other night and agreed to give it a try, experimenting and seeing what we like.  The whole nature of paleo means that it’s gluten and dairy free, so I ordered a couple of new cookbooks to try, in hopes that I could come up with some additional meals to add into the rotation.  Eventually, I’ll get comfortable enough with the ingredients and principles to start creating my own recipes.
4. Down South Paleo.  I nabbed this because, well, I’m Southern and I figured that Southern-style dishes would be more likely to fly in this household.  As I started flipping through yesterday, I was putting a sticky tab on practically every other page.  Jennifer Robins is mistress of the Predominantly Paleo food blog, and I really dig her philosophy of allowing yourself a treat here and there.  It’s a lot more realistic than the hard core stuff, to my mind.  I was ecstatic to see a mashed potato alternative that isn’t cauliflower.  I’ve balked at a LOT of paleo recipes because they are deluded enough to think cauliflower is an acceptable substitute for…a lot of things it is not remotely a substitute for.  It doesn’t ever taste like anything but cauliflower.  And when you don’t LIKE cauliflower, that’s a problem.  I already have a ton of the ingredients she uses, and I’m hitting up my Asian market today to search out some others.  I really can’t wait to dive in.
5. Well Fed.  This is one of the highest rated paleo cookbooks on Amazon.  And the subtitle–Paleo for people who like to eat…yeah ,that’s me.  A whole lot of this one seems to be about method–the kind of prep you can do in advance to make eating Paleo more manageable.  There’s a ton of info in here on meal components and a zillion ways they can be combined.  In particular, she talks about what she calls a “hot plate”, which is basically a formula for combining different meats, veggies, and healthy fats with a myriad of spice palettes to get a fast and easy meal.  Perfect for weeknight dinners.  So I’m excited to try out some of those.  From what I can tell with a skim through, this one seems a lot more compatible with the idea of Whole 30, so if you’re into that program, this looks like a very good option.
6. With all that in mind, I’ve got a lot of food prep I’m doing today, which is not at all unusual for a Sunday.  I just finished roasting 2 pints of grape tomatoes, sliced up bell peppers into strips for eating with guac, and I’ve got a whole pile of other stuff to make.  Going to roast up some butternut squash and carrots for an easy midweek side, and brown up some ground turkey and ground pork for use in a few other dishes.  And I need to spiralize a pile of zucchini for my lunches.  None of which actually has anything to do with dinner for tonight.
7. Somewhere in there I need to get my third day of weight lifting in.  The Day 3 routine doesn’t use anything I don’t already have at home, equipment-wise, so it’s easy to save for the weekend.  But I’m not so much in the routine of actually workout OUT on the weekend, so I have to be diligent not to get caught up in other stuff.  Either way, I feel like I’m making some good changes in habits now that I’m back to a real gym.  It’ll be a while yet before I see any noticeable results, but I FEEL better, which is a step in the right direction for Operation G.I.T.

Original article: Sunday Summary and #ROW80 Progress Report

©2015 Kait Nolan’s Pots and Plots. All Rights Reserved.

The post Sunday Summary and #ROW80 Progress Report appeared first on Kait Nolan’s Pots and Plots.

This steel magnolia is the poster child for successfully Doing All the Things, smart phone in one hand, sword in the other. Author of action-packed PR/UF for adults and teens. You can catch up with her at Pots and Plots, her blog, Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.