Paleo diet?

[Susan]

I can imagine eating out is not so much trouble because you can order whatever you like. I think my usual order - some kind of salad with some kind of meat - is already quite paleo. Still, if you want to go strictly gluten free you never know if the maybe used flour or anything like that...

The bigger problem I guess would be family and friends. You don't want to be disrespectful and eat what they offer... this is a big problem for me anyways, glutenfree would make it even more of an issue. On the other hand... it would be an obvious reason not to be able to eat cakes


I'm often astonished what cooks - at home or in restaurants - make out of simple dishes. Sometimes you don't quite get what you expect. Vegetables get drenched in sauce or salad comes with strange dressings... my mum regularly asks "And what do we do with the vegetables" (will we cover them in breadcrumbs? will we drench them in oil? could we add flavour enhancer? )

[GLC1968]

The friends thing can be a little difficult at first. We actually had plans to dine with some friends we don't see that often during our super strict Whole30. They are kind of 'foodies' (I hate that term, but it really applies to them!) so we knew they would go all out for us. I stressed about it for a week wondering how we were going to handle it and then I decided that it would be easier to have them to our place. So I explained our special diet needs and asked if we could do the cooking and they agreed! Dinner was fun, somewhat fancy, delicious and totally Whole30 compliant.

These same friends asked us a lot of questions about our meal choices and when they led a kayaking trip a month later, purposely chose a meal that was mostly compliant to our diet for us. In fact, the other couple that went also did the same thing (ie, asked our needs when planning their meal), so really, it wasn't nearly as difficult as I expected it to be.

It would be tough if someone made a lasagna dinner with cheesy garlic bread on the side, but typically, if you let friends know ahead of time what you are avoiding, most things people put on the table are ok. And really, regular people don't hide gluten, soy or seed oils in their dishes, so it's usually not too difficult for them to just avoid serving pasta dishes on the night you'll be a guest.

I will say that for the first month or two we were paleo, I avoided a lot of invitations because I felt like a burden. Once I got a better hang of eating this way, it was easier to ask and easier to deal with on my end. Even my mom was willing to accomodate me and she's VERY anti anything that limits bread and/or wine from her diet.

[solobiker]

I have not run into too many problems with going out to eat because for the most part we really don't do it all that often...maybe 1x/month. Lately my trouble has been that our refrigerator has not been working great. About 2 weeks ago the freezer was working and the refirgerator stopped..it was sitting at 65 degrees. After 2 days we were able to get a repairman out to fix it and when he got here it was working. He could not find anything wrong so we had him change the timer out. Well come this Saturday the same darn thing happened again. I had to try to put lots of food in a cooler and I go to get some of my chicken that I had cooked and it is sitting in a pool of water from the melted ice. But I am holding strong despite not having a fridge to use for close to a week if you count both times it went out. We did get another one but they delivered the wrong one. Sigh....