The Allure of Crock Pots

I recently received an email from a reader:

Mark,

First of all, I have enjoyed getting to know more about the Primal Blueprint and I have found it to be very useful. Perhaps you have addressed this before, but do you have any primal recipes for crock pots? I am on the go quite a bit and would love to have a few healthy options.

Thanks and keep up the great work!

John

Great suggestion. Slow cooking is more relevant than ever, with free time evaporating and the need for easy Primal fare made with minimal effort only increasing. When the novelty wears off and the prospect of coming up with home cooked Primal meals every day begins to loom, I think a lot of people will turn to the crock pot.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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The Low-Carb Wonders of Jicama

Jicama is that white, crispy tuberous root that the fruit cart guys always douse in chile power and lime and serve on a stick. The naturally-occurring oligofructose inulin lends it a slightly sweet flavor. It’s tasty, refreshing, and seemingly innocuous – but is it loaded with carbs? It seems a little carby, and I’ve mostly avoided it (a difficult task in Southern California where fruit carts beckon from every other street corner) for that very reason, but a couple reader comments have prompted an investigation.

If my informed, Primal readership was supporting jicama consumption, surely there was more to it.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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The Many Uses of Coconut Flour

A barrage of comments to our post on low-carb thickeners confirmed that while coconut flour is terrible for thickening sauces, it does serve other purposes. Our last post on a Primal flour – almond meal – went over well, so I figured the time was ripe for a look at coconut flour.

Coconut flour is simply dried, ground up coconut meat. Most likely you’ll be buying it online or from a specialty grocer, like Whole Foods or a food co-op, but you’ll occasionally come across highly processed, ultra-white coconut flour. Stay away from this. The good stuff will be like actual coconut – slightly cream colored, rather than bone white. You can make your own at home with a food processor, but without a grain mill you’ll probably have issues getting a “floury” consistency. If that’s okay with you, have at it.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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The Red Scare

It’s a headline you’ve probably seen by now splashed all over the news sites and channels – “Eating More Red Meat Ups Mortality Risk.” (Red meat once again wears the black hat: surprise, surprise.) Actually, millions of readers/viewers have likely stumbled across the caption and unfortunately taken it at face value. But you know us by now. It’s just too much fun being the merry skeptics when it comes to these sound bites of misinformation.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Sodium Nitrite: Another Reason to Avoid Processed Meats

It’s lurking in breakfast meats, lunchboxes and carving stations across the country. Sodium nitrite, that is: preservative and coloring additive extraordinaire. It’s undeniable that we have a penchant for processed foods in this country, and meats are no exception. Bacon, sausages, hot dogs, cold cuts, ham, packaged smoked meats, pates, Slim Jims (everybody’s favorite, right?) – meats many would consider part and parcel of the quintessential American diet. Many of us crave their delectable saltiness and welcome convenience, but are we paying a price for their processing, specifically when sodium nitrite is on the label?

Posted By: Worker Bee

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