Yesterday was my 27th birthday. I’m not looking forward to getting old anymore, but it was a great day overall.

I had to work, but Amanda and I were able to go out and eat at Colton’s steakhouse in Russellville for lunch. We both had the sirloin tips which were awesome. Colton’s is one of the few places around where we’re able to eat real food that isn’t breaded or covered in some form of questionable sauce.

For dinner Amanda had bought “crawfish” from the butcher and rib-eye steaks.

I always thought crawfish were small, brown or red, freshwater shrimp — but these things she brought home were gigantic.

Basically, what I’m saying is that I have no idea what these are. They were labelled as ‘Fresh Canadian Crawfish,’ but some quick Google Images pictures leads me to believe they are, in fact, lobster based on their size and the size and shape of the claws. Do they have enormously oversized crawfish in Canada? Anyone know?

Preparation was as easy as steaming them in a little water, butter, and a few slices lemons.

They were served up with a rib-eye steak (rare), and a baked potato with butter. (Yes. A potato. In case you weren’t aware… Some guy, who does some TV show, said they were OK to eat again.)

After dinner Amanda whipped out a paleo ice cream cake. Amazing, right?

Cake recipe will be posted once she gives it to me.

Luckily, we have plenty of access to fresh deer — living in the country in Arkansas and all.

So I like to find new things to do with it.

I made a quick marinade for this deer steak. The steak was marinated in fish sauce (you can find it in Thai foods section) and white vinegar. I only used 1 teaspoon of fish sauce and about 2 Tbsp. of white vinegar. It sat in the marinade for about 8 hours. The vinegar helps make the meat less ‘gamey.’

I cooked the steak in a frying pan on the stove at medium heat. It wasn’t a very big steak, and we were splitting it, so as it was cooking I cut it into thinner slices. When it was nearly done, I sprinkled 1 tsp. of onion powder on it.  In total, it cooked approximately 15 minutes.

Honestly, I never used to like deer. And if I didn’t know it was deer before I cleaned the meat, I would have guessed it was beef just from the taste.

The artichoke hearts were quickly fried in a couple of ounces of lemon juice (to taste) and a pinch of sea salt.

This may come as a shock to a few of you (I know it did for me!), but there are a lot of bones in the human foot… And it doesn’t take much to break them.

On the return trip from Thanksgiving I suffered an injury which led to the fracture of a few of my toes on my right foot — arguably my favorite foot. I think that anyone who hasn’t had broken toes would be surprised how frequently you use your toes and how painful they can be once they are broken.

Here’s a couple of photos of the damage, and my foot has been swelling and changing color every day to where a full 1/2 of my foot is some shade of bruised.

Warning, almost graphic: Top, Bottom

It puts a bit of a damper on training since, for most exercises, you must be able to stand to perform. I haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to handle that one.

We finished up our paleo Thanksgiving a few hours ago in the Texas panhandle and we’ll be heading back home shortly.

Here’s a quick shot of a plate minus the salad and desserts.

We had a slow-cooked Turkey, Ham, our Paleo Cranberry Sauce, our Sweet Potato Pie, our Mushroom and Broccoli Casserole, Mashed Potatoes, salads on the side.

And for dessert we had German Chocolate Cake courtesy of Elana’s Pantry and our Mocha Nut Brownie Ice Cream.

It was all fantastic.

If you’ve ever tried to find a cranberry sauce at your supermarket that isn’t loaded with refined sugar you’d know it’s almost impossible. We’ve literally checked dozens of brands at many different stores and there wasn’t a single one that would be acceptable in terms of following a paleo or primal diet.

Last year for Thanksgiving we went without cranberry sauce, but this year we’re making our own homemade version.

Ingredients:

1 Cup Orange Juice
2 Cups Fresh Cranberries
1 1/2 Cups Dates

Preparation:

1. Measure out 2 cups of Cranberries, a cup of Orange Juice, and 1 1/2 cups of Dates.

The source of the of orange juice isn’t really important here; most natural orange juices from your grocer will be 100% juice without added sugar. If you wanted to be a perfectionist you could squeeze the juice yourself at home — but I’m sure you have plenty of other things you need to be doing to get ready for Thanksgiving.

2. Add the Cranberries and the Orange Juice to a sauce pan over medium heat. Stir it gently until…

3. The Cranberries begin to pop and split (this could get a little messy). Keep stirring and the sauce will begin to thicken into a gel.

4. Remove from heat and pour the sauce into a blender of food processor (we used our Ninja) along with the Dates. Blend until smooth and then refrigerate the sauce. The longer the sauce is refrigerated the sweeter it becomes.

5. Serve and enjoy.

We’re still trying out recipes for Thanksgiving and another one that we really enjoyed was this steamed broccoli served with a mushroom and brandy sauce. It would make a great holiday side and it’s really easy to prepare.

Ingredients:

1 Cup Sliced Button Mushrooms
4 Cups Broccoli
1 Can Full Fat Coconut Milk
2 Tbsp. Brandy

Preparation:

1. Combine the Mushrooms, Coconut Milk and Brandy in a sauce pan and simmer on low, stirring occasionally.

2. Allow the mixture to simmer and thicken up.

3. Steam the Broccoli using your preferred method and add to a casserole or similar serving dish.

4. Pour the mushroom sauce over the broccoli and mix well.

5. Serve.

We’re going to be visiting our family in Texas for Thanksgiving again this year and we’re trying out some new recipes for the upcoming trip.

One of the things we tried and really enjoyed was a paleo Sweet Potato Pie.

Ingredients:

2 Large Sweet Potatoes
1/3 C. Honey
1/4 C. Pecans
1 Egg
1 Tsp. Cinnamon
1 Tsp. Agave Nectar
1/2 Tsp. Nutmeg
1/2 Tsp. Sea Salt

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 350* F.

2. We started off by steaming the Sweet Potatoes for 5-10 minutes to soften them up and make them easier to cut. Then we peeled them and cubed them and steamed them another 10 minutes until they were tender.

3. In a blender, add the Sweet Potatoes, Egg, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Ginger, and Sea Salt. Blend until creamy and smooth.

4. Grease the pan with coconut oil and spread sweet potato mixture on the bottom of the pan.

5. Sprinkle chopped Pecans over the top of the pie and drizzle it with Agave Nectar.

6. Bake 30-40 minutes until firm and edges begin to crisp.

We haven’t had traditional ice cream since we’ve been on the paleo diet over a year ago. We’ve often looked at getting an ice cream maker and making some paleo ice cream ourselves but never went through with actually buying one.

Some of them are very expensive and they look complicated and hard to clean. It also seems like one of those things that you would use a couple times and then it would sit, taking up space in your cupboards for years.

For Amanda’s birthday, she received a cool attachment for her kitchen-aid mixer that makes it easy to make your own homemade ice cream.

The attachment is actually a bowl that you freeze and then pour the mixture in to. No need for ice. And it’s fast. You end up with awesome ice cream consistency in about 15 minutes.

A recipe that Amanda came up with and that we’re really enjoying is her Mocha Nut Brownie Ice Cream.

Ingredients:

Mix-In:
1/2 C. Unsalted Cashews
1/2 C. Pitted Dates
2 Tbsp. Cocoa Powder

Ice Cream Mixture:
2 C. Coconut Milk
2 Tbsp. Agave Nectar
1/4 C. Chilled Coffee
1 Tbsp. Vanilla Extract

Preparation:

There are two parts to making this ice cream; making the ice cream mixture itself and then making the nut crumble mix-in.

To prepare the ice cream mixture, combine the Coconut Milk, Agave Nectar, Chilled Coffee, and Vanilla Extract in a blender and mix together well.

We really love our Ninja blender here because it functions both as a blender and as a food processor. You can do both at the same time just by moving the blender top to the other container.

In another container, combine the Cashews, Dates, and Cocoa Powder and set aside.

Set the mixer on low and pour in your ice cream mixture.

Mix well until it starts thickening up.

Once the mix has started thickening up, spoon in the date and nut mixture.

After about 15 minutes you end up with some of the most delicious ice cream you’ve ever had:

It’s ready to eat and you can spoon the rest into small, freezable containers to have on hand as a quick dessert later.

We got another late start today as we spent the afternoon watching the Arkansas Razorback’s football game.

We decided to keep it close to home and go for a walk near our house which is outside of Dover, Arkansas.

This is our first fall on our land that we bought earlier this year and so all the plants and colors as they change with the season are all new to us.

In total, we walked 1.09 miles.

This afternoon we went to Merritt Park in Dardanelle for our 30 Days/30 Miles walk.

We had never been to Merritt park before and it actually turned out to be a pretty nice place to walk.

There were baseball fields, tennis courts, a skate park, and we discovered that there was a very neat walking trail that surrounded a couple of ponds away from the ‘main’ park area which we weren’t expecting.

The walking trail was probably a little more than a half mile long.

In total, we managed to walk 1.06 miles around the park.