Paleo Challenge Day 7 and DIY Almond Butter

Today I have been eating Paleo-foods for 7 days streight (at least about 98% of the time). And I must say, that I feel awesome. Without eating any less than I used to, I lost 2 kilos. That means, that I am half-way there towards my weight-loss goal. I also lost about half of my muffintops, which is even better. With these two motivators (weight and no more muffintops) I am well on my way to making this a lifestyle. For now, my next goal will be completing another week of mainly Paleo-foods.

So what did I have on the menu today? Here it is:

Breakfast

3 Paleo-Pancakes topped with Kiwi, Banana, a drizzle of Honey and Cinnamon

Lunch

Grilled Chicken with Zucchini and Yellow Pepper Stir-Fry

Snack

Apple, 1 piece Paleo-Banana-Cake (see below)

Dinner

Leftover Chicken with Peppers and Mushrooms, Sliced Avocado, 1 Fried Egg

Liquids 

Tea and Water

Family Lunch

Now, today´s lunch with my family turned into a fight over my new diet. I guess I was trying too hard to convince people of my lifestyle change. My mom supports me (she has even tried to join my efforts, although she is someone to be off and on on diets), my older sister doesn´t like that I declared carbs to be the "evil food", my dad still thinks I am crazy and tells me to eat "right". Well, I decided to just reduce talking about my new diet to a minimum. Apparently some people are becoming rather annoyed with this topic. They´ll have to find out about the benefits of the paelo-lifestyle on their own.

Exercise

Today´s first round of exercise (with focus on leg strengthening) was gratiously planned and supervised by my 2 year-old son. In more detail that means, that we went jumping on the trampoline for about an hour. I hope that that promised feeling-more-energized-feeling comes sooner than later because I could really need it.

The second round of exercise was sponsored by our kitchen equipment (I am talking to you mixer!). After experimenting with some Paleo-Cake, I needed something to top the very thin cake with. After much thinking I decided on making my first batch of almond butter. A piece of cake obviously. All of the online instructions were talking about a 10 to 15 minute process. 

So I got the almonds and the mixer, and started a process that was going to turn into quite an exercise.

Everything is still going great. It only took a couple of minutes to get most of the almonds grated.

See the equipment I was working with? That mixer is about 30 years old, the blades don´t work too well anymore (so yes, a new mixer is needed).

A few more minutes later, constantly opening the lid to put the almond stuff back towards the bottom of the mixer, I had this:

Since there was not much change to the consistency, I decided to add just a tad of honey. Maybe that would smoothen things out a bit. And then rounds 100 to 139 started (still constantly having to move the almonds back to the middle).

At least that was already a little better. However, at that point the almond "butter" would take all but one second to be stuck to the walls of the mixer. 

I decided to just stir the blades with a knive and the exercising began. Have you ever made a batch of fresh whipped creme by hand? Now double the effort and you might be able to imagine how my arms felt like.

After another never-ending 10 or 15 minutes I finally decided to help myself and add some oil to the mix. And finally, my almond butter started to look like something.

 

See? Much better. Since my arm-exercising-torture was finally done, I put my almond butter into a small dish. Good that it tastes great.

Some of it will go onto my pancakes tomorrow, some of it I´ll use to try out another pancake recipe, and some of that went right on my paleo-cake with a few slices of banana and cinnamon.

(That was probably not a cake that could compete at a cake-beauty-contest, but it sure was moist and tasty)

 

And I think that this was a decent treat to my 1-hour ordeal trying to create almond butter from scratch.