Primal Valentine’s Day Gifts

This year I may be celebrating Valentine’s Day alone, but that doesn’t mean I still can’t appreciate the holiday!  Here are 3 Primal alternatives to the traditional Valentine’s Day Gifts… for all the sexy cavemen and women in your life 😉

• Chocolate & Roses?  So cliché.  Besides the chocolate is only going to give you a sugar hangover and the roses start to wilt the next day anyways.  But bacon roses  on the other hand… now that’s just awesome.  No further explanation necessary.

photo credit: kaptaink_cg

• Candlelight?  Yeah, that’s romantic.  But you know what’s more romantic than a candle?  A fireplace.  And you know what’s cooler than a fireplace?  A portable one.

photo credit: Acquaefuoco

• Romantic Dinner for Two?  Hell yeah!  But not in a restaurant… those are going to be way too crowded.  So why not learn how to catch, kill, and cook your own dinner at Tim MacWelch’s School of Wilderness Survival? Tim can teach you how to catch your dinner, start a fire, build a shelter for a night, and various other ways to be a badass… and who doesn’t love a badass?

photo credit: Earth Connection

Butter Doesn’t Cause Diabetes, Y’all!

photocredit: http://needsmorebutter.tumblr.com

A couple weeks ago Paula Deen, host of Paula’s Home Cooking on the Food Network, announced that she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2008.  She will now be the spokesperson for Nova Nordisk, a pharmaceutical company that sells healthcare for people suffering from diabetes.

Upon hearing this news, the media has SLAMMED Paula Deen for promoting unhealthy, high-fat recipes while hiding the condition of her illness until she found a way to profit from it.  Here are just a few examples:  

The Huffington Post said, “Deen’s kitchen has a reputation for the fatty, the buttery and the over-the-top… but will her diagnosis change the way she cooks?”

“A stick of butter in her hands is as much a prop or applause-line (and now a cliché) as an ingredient. It’s a building block in an empire built on indulgence,” said Fox News.

And ABC News announced yesterday that despite Paula Deen’s diagnosis she, “hasn’t apparently changed all that much.  TMZ posted a photo of Deen woolfing down a cheeseburger on Monday while on a 7-day Caribbean cruise.”

What I find particularly strange about the media’s focus on Paula Deen’s high-fat food choices is that…

photo credit: http://goodforyou.wordpress.com

Butter and other types of fat don’t cause diabetes.  Sugar Does.  Specifically, having too much glucose in your blood and too little insulin to process it.  Yes, Paula Deen’s recipes are certainly unhealthy.  But it was not the fat in them that gave her diabetes… it was the sugar.

And regardless of your opinion on fat, Paula Deen never promoted her recipes as being healthy.  What’s next?  Are we going to get mad at people for going shopping when they are secretly in debt? The media does not expect somebody who makes a purchase to be a financial expert, so they should not expect somebody who cooks food to be a nutritionist.

I think Paula said it best when she told Oprah, “Honey, I’m your cook, I’m not your doctor!”

Primal Rap Music

At the Rebeultion Concert

Okay, so The Grouch’s music isn’t exactly primal.  It’s not about grass-fed beef and organically-grown veggies.  But it is about being an honorable person who is true to their self, even if that means not following the norms of society… which I think has a lot in common with living the primal lifestyle.  Because after all, embracing your primal-sexy does mean turning your back on conventional wisdom.

I found out about The Grouch last weekend when my roommate Jessie and I went to The Fillmore in Silver Spring.  While we were there to see to the reggae-meets-rock music band Rebelution… I ended up liking their opening act, The Grouch, even better.  We even got to meet him, get his autograph, and take a picture with him 🙂

Here are some of the songs he performed that I especially liked:

Simple Man: Cause life really is about the simple things in life, not material processions.

Digital Dirt: Finally a song expressing why I don’t want a smart phone!  I’m a blogger, so obviously I like the internet, but c’mon – does everybody have to be plugged into it 24/7?

Breath: You can make any day, even a stressful one, the greatest day.  It’s all about your mindset.