Lemony-Tahini Kale Salad

It it H-O-T in St. Louis. It's been H-O-T for the past week, and will continue to be H-O-T for the next week. I want to live in my sports bra and gym shorts. In fact, I want to live in my refrigerator.

How to ruin (your taste buds for store-bought) mayonnaise forever

I was never been a big mayo-eater growing up, preferring to dress my sandwiches with creamy peppercorn salad dressing (I was weird). In fact, it wouldn’t be far from the truth to say I actively disliked mayo both in texture and taste. It just seemed so unnatural. I recognized the ingredients, understood the gist of its creation, and yet how could something yellow and something transparent form that opaque, white-ish goop.

Let me tell you, I have witnessed magic. And it was delicious. 

Primal Meat-up!

Yesterday, I went to my very first Primal Meetup in St. Louis! We spent some time running, chasing, and being chased (capture the flag, definitely a blast from my past). We threw some light things (frisbee!) and some heavier things (giant-ass hammer!). I got my twenty minutes of sun (and then some), which is rare enough on a weekday. And then we ate some delicious, delicious primal/paleo food (head cheese!). I think this may be the first time I left a BBQ where I ate to my heart’s content and didn’t get sick afterwards.

All work and no play makes Chelsea something something

It’s definitely been one of those weeks at school. For the past few days, I’ve been running experiments for 15+ hours in the lab and crawling into bed immediately upon returning home, only to roll out a few short hours later and head into the lab to start again. As a result, I’ve been falling prey to overeating and eating the wrong things; the free cookies at coffee break, several cups of trail mix over the course of a few hours while sitting in my office in an exhausted stupor. And over the past few days I’ve managed to squeeze in just one meager workout, which I’m pretty sure I sleep-walked (is that the right tense? Or is it slept-walked?) through because I can’t seem to remember a thing.

An ode to pizza

I was missing pizza long before I went primal. As an East coast transplant to St. Louis, I knew I shouldn’t expect anything on par with the New York-style hybrids that dotted our New Jersey coastline. What I didn’t expect was the profusion of bizarre crust + sauce + cheese chimeras masquerading as pizza all throughout the city. Some are more palatable than others, but none have been able to fill the very specific (wide, thin, triangular) hole in my heart.

Carbs and comfort food

When I finally made the switch to primal (and even now as I vacillate somewhat between strictly primal and more lenient versions thereof), it wasn't a huge change. I was never much of a white bread/white rice-eater and, armed with (mis)information about the benefits of whole grains, I had already switched from regular pasta to brown rice pasta and whole wheat bread to brown rice tortillas. I felt healthier, but still found that I tended to binge on carbs. That may have been the first indicator that something was up; if you can eat 2+ servings of pasta or oatmeal without feeling remotely full, then something is up.

Salutations and Strata

Ah, the first blog post.

Well, the first for this blog at least. All throughout my vast and complicated relationship with what I fondly  refer to as the interwebs I have left behind a string of blogs, never to be read again (well, technically never to be read at all). But as always, this time will be different. So welcome, hypothetical reader, to my newly refurbished corner of the internets. Here there be dragons!