Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Day Twelve: Pinterest Enhances My Paleo Journey

Do you remember life before the internet revolution? Remember when you had to consult the Encyclopedia Brittanica instead of Google? Remember when you actually called or wrote to find out  what was going on in friends' lives instead of stalking them on Facebook? How about actually holding a physical book with pages instead of flipping thru the virtual pages of your Nook, Kindle, or other e-book type device? Oh, or back when people wrote in real, hard-bound journals rather than blogging?!
I know, it feels like that was f-o-r-e-v-e-r ago. I, honestly, think that I wouldn't notice much of a difference in my life if I couldn't access Facebook ever again. Yes, I'd miss "keeping up" with my friends, but I could revert back to letter writing and phone calls, if necessary. I would not be any less of a person if I never wrote another blog entry and the world would certainly not miss my half-hearted attempts at wit. I prefer to read REAL books over the computerized ones. Don't get me wrong, I read magazines and books on my iPad, but I prefer the feel of turning physical pages and the smell of ink on paper that one can only embrace when reading a book. Could I live without Google? Yes. Would life be more "difficult?" Possibly. Would more time be consumed? For sure. But, I have the skill of consulting a librarian, periodical indexes, and card catalogs, so I'm confident that I could do it. But, could I live without Pinterest? Let's not even think about that one, okay?

In the event that someone in the world has no idea what Pinterest is, it's essentially a virtual pin board or favorites list. If you find something in the vast expanse of the internet that you want to hold on to for later, for whatever reason (recipe you'd like to try, color scheme for painting your bathroom, ideas for your wedding in 26 years, etc.), you "pin" it and the site holds those "pins" in your account and makes them available for your friends to see, as well. It's a lot of sharing the same pins over and over, though. I seriously think I have seen the post for the Jolly Rancher lollipops 1,000 times. And if you want to know how to make your hair wavy only by using a flat iron, I'm confident that almost every girl ages 17-24 has posted this one to their account. Well, I jumped on the bandwagon for one of these "most popular" posts and found it to be completely worth all of the re-pins that show up on my home page. You might be familiar with the post, if you are on Pinterest. It boasts that it is "the best shrimp you'll ever taste!" The one that I pinned doesn't even go to a real blog or anything. It's simply a picture with the recipe in the caption of the pin. Four simple ingredients: butter, lemon, shrimp, and italian dressing dry mix. The instructions read, "Melt a stick of butter in the pan. Slice one lemon and layer it on top of the butter. Put down fresh shrimp, then sprinkle one pack of dried italian seasoning. Put in the oven and bake at 350 for 15 min."  Here is the picture from Pinterest:


Before I started on my Whole30, I made them just as the "recipe"/caption says. They actually were really great! I don't know that they are the "best shrimp" I've ever eaten, but they were good enough to make again. Only thing is, I'm doing the Whole30 now and butter is not allowed (unless it's clarified butter or ghee, neither of which I have time to mess with right now). So, I made them with coconut oil instead. AND I made my own no-sugar added Italian Dressing Mix using a recipe I found here (I simply omitted the sugar and significantly decreased the amount of salt). Know what?! I think I liked 'em even better with the coconut oil/homemade dressing mix. Oh, and by the way, I used peeled shrimp for this recipe. The ones in the picture clearly still have the shell intact.

I ate mine on top of bagged salad from the grocery store, but I served the hubby his on a bed of buttered egg noodles. Gosh! His looked sooooo tasty! I REALLY wanted those noodles. But, I was good! I stuck with my salad and enjoyed it.



If you eat seafood, specifically shrimp (I know, they're the cockroaches of the sea. But, we like them. And we don't eat them every day!), then I would recommend you try these with your fat of choice (butter, coconut oil, lard, etc.). And if you'd like to decrease the sodium and sugar in your dressing mix, try the homemade recipe and use 1 1/2 tablespoons of the dry mix to sprinkle over your shrimp before baking. They're too easy to pass up!


Breakfast

     Eggs with spinach
     Banana
     Roasted pumpkin seeds

Lunch
     I missed lunch. There was too much going on at that time. I need to get better at being more purposeful in eating at least 3 meals a day.

Dinner
     Shrimp
     Salad
     Steamed asparagus

Snack
     Gala apple with cashew butter

3 comments:

  1. Wow, those shrimp look great (your version). I have the coconut oil and everything! Also, your first paragraph reminds me of a time before the internet, when you wanted the lyrics to a song, you had to listen to it, stop, rewind, and listen again until you thought you had the right words. There are still songs that I sing the wrong words to because I was never able to understand the right words!

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    1. The worst part about that whole process of lyric discovery, in my opinion, was waiting for the radio station to play the song so that you could record it. What trials we faced before everything was available on demand. Haha.

      Just one tip, if you are going to make the homemade dressing mix, I would suggest omitting the 2 tablespoons of salt all together. I only used 3/4 of a tablespoon and I used garlic powder instead of garlic salt and it was still too salty.

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  2. Oh, and I used 4ish tablespoons of solid coconut oil... About the equivalent of half a stick of butter.

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I'd love to hear your thoughts!