Music and cakes as bait attract guests to stop, but:
To speak of the Tao seems insipid and tasteless.
To inspect it, the Tao seems inadequate to view,
To listen to it, there is nothing worth hearing.
To use it seems simply not worth trying,
since it’s already in use everywhere, always anyway.

Well, Lent is here, so that means that today is day 1 of the Whole46.

Menu for Day 1 of 46:

Breakfast
Eggs, Bacon, & A Sliced Apple

Lunch
Avocado Tuna Salad (without mayo, with double the tuna!) served in Butter Lettuce leaves or on Sesame Almond Crackers – Instead of the spices listed, add sesame seeds and rosemary!

Avocado Tuna Salad from The Paleo Periodical

Snack
Grapes

Grapes

Dinner
Easy Shredded Beef w/Baked Potato &/or Blasted Broccoli

Easy Shredded Beef by PaleOMG!

Dessert
Your favorite kind of berries.

Jerk Chicken

Ingredients
2 lbs. of chicken, deboned
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp sea salt
1 tbsp thyme
½ tsp cloves
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp allspice
1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
¼ c. water
½ c. white vinegar
¼ c. olive oil
2 tbsp 100% maple syrup

Preparation

1. Marinate: In a zip-top bag mix all of the above ingredients aside from the chicken to achieve a homogeneous mixture, and then add the chicken. Place in refrigerator for at least 2 hours, or for as many as 24.
2. Preheat the oven to Broil.
3. Broil: Broil the chicken for 5 minutes, then flip. Repeat.
4. Finally broil for a final 4 minutes. Total Broiling Time: 14 minutes
5. Serve and Enjoy!

Everything relies upon it
in order to live and grow
without needing to decline.

When achievements are accomplished,
it seeks no fame;
it clothes and supports the Ten Thousand people
without acting as their master.

Always lacking desire,
it can be placed among the few.

Ten Thousand people return to the Tao,
without needing it to serve as host,
and thus it can be placed among the great.

Because its end is not for oneself to serve as great,
it causes one to become capable of being great.

Here’s what you need to pick up for eating next week!

3 lb bag of Apples
1 bunch of Bananas
Strawberries
Raspberries
Grapes
4 avocados
Garlic
1 Lemon
1 Lime
Cilantro
2 sweet onion
1 red onion
1 bunch green onion
1 jicama
4 oz. mushrooms
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Roma tomato
Baby Lettuce
1 head red-leaf lettuce
2lb bag baby carrots
1 diced jalepeno
1 can diced tomatoes
Sweet Potatoes
Red Potatoes
35 oz of Green Salsa
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
white wine vinegar
Eggs
2 lbs Bacon
2 cans tuna
small jar of capers
Raisins
Almonds (for almond flour)
Cashew Butter
2-3 lbs of the cheapest cut of beef
3 lbs Pork Shoulder
5 lbs of Chicken (for Jerk Chicken, salad, and curry)
Ham

SPICES, ASSUMING YOU HAVE NONE:
cumin,
chili powder,
cayenne,
ground coriander
onion powder,
garlic powder
red pepper
dry hot mustard
celery salt
ground paprika
Salt and pepper if you don’t already have it
hot sauce
Curry Powder
Tumeric

Have I got a delicious menu ready for you for Week 1 of the Whole 46. Every meal is one that I’ve had before, so I know that it’s tasty.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Breakfast
Scrambled Eggs, Bacon, & A Sliced Apple

Lunch
Avocado Tuna Salad (without mayo, with double the tuna!) served in Butter Lettuce leaves or on Sesame Almond Crackers – Instead of the spices listed, add sesame seeds and rosemary!

Snack
Grapes

Dinner
Easy Shredded Beef w/Baked Potato &/or Blasted Broccoli

Dessert
Your favorite kind of berries.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Breakfast
Breakfast Burrito Omelete (using leftover meat from the previous night)

Lunch
Almond Mandarin Salad with Chicken instead of Bacon (though you can have bacon if you want – I’m trying to give you some white meat).

Snack
Sliced Apple with Cashew Butter and Raisins

Dinner
Slow Cooker Chile Verde with Paleo Tortilla Chips
Dessert
Banana

Friday, February 24, 2012

Breakfast
Almond Flour Pancakes with Berries

Lunch
Spinach “Cobb” Salad With Bacon, Mushrooms, Avocado, Carrots, a hard boiled egg & honey mustard dressing

Snack
Sliced Apples w/ Cashew Butter & Raisins

Dinner
Jerk Chicken & Baked Sweet Potatoes – Adam’s special marinade makes all the difference in this dinner. I’ll be posting it tomorrow for everybody.

Dessert
Banana

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Breakfast
Eggs, Ham, and Fruit (grapes, banana, apple – whatever you have leftover)

Lunch
Leftovers

Snack
Grapes

Dinner
Yellow Curry Chicken and Cauliflower Rice (The Yellow Curry Chicken is a recipe of our own, but don’t worry – I’ll post it before next Saturday, and for those of you who have access to my recipe database, it’s already in there!)

Dessert
Berries

THAT’S IT FOR WEEK ONE! I hope you enjoy it.

In order to make things easier for us both (and because I know that by the middle of the first week, I’m going to want to quit if I don’t have the “easy” factor), I’m currently in the process of filling out a spreadsheet of “what we’re gonna eat” for the whole time.

I’m building it based on the meals that we’ve fixed for ourselves over the last 5 months that we’ve enjoyed the most and that have been easy for us to make.

It’s always easier for me to complete tasks when they’re not just for me, so I’m asking: Who wants to join us?

So far, it’s Me, Adam, and a good friend of mine from high school, Emily, who are participating. With Lent starting on the 22nd (next Wednesday), I’m kicking it into high gear so that we can do our week 1 grocery shopping this weekend.

Tomorrow, I’ll put out the list of Week 1′s meals (Wednesday – Saturday), along with a shopping list for those of you who want to play along at home.

Now, I don’t know about you, but most folks don’t love needles. Gilenya was the hope of generations of MS patients to be able to simply take a pill for our condition. That’s why, when a patient died within the first 24 hours of their first dose of Gileyna, Novartis was reasonably concerned.

Both the European Union and the FDA are reviewing Gileyna (also known as Fingolimod). This doesn’t mean that it is going to be pulled from the market, or that the drug itself is bad! It just means they want to review it to ensure the safety of Europeans and Americans who have multiple sclerosis and who choose to take that medication.

This doesn’t mean the end for Gileyna. There were a number of deaths from PML that occurred before Tysabri was pulled from the market in 2005 and then reintroduced in 2006 with new safety precautions and a “risk-benefit” analysis.

Now, I don’t know about the “risk-benefit” analysis for any of my fellow MS sufferers. I can only speak for myself… but when death is on the line with your disease modifying drug, I personally believe that you’re messing with something far worse than your incredibly annoying and often painful disease.

To put it frankly: Multiple sclerosis itself is not fatal, so why would you take a drug that has proven itself fatal to others and very well might cause fatality in you?

I may not love giving myself a shot every night, but I can guarantee you that I will continue doing it until they create a pill or liquid that doesn’t kill folks — or until my symptoms disappear (and stay gone) thanks to the Paleo Diet.

That being said, I have plenty of friends online who would swear by their wonder-drug, and who are doing very well on Gileyna and are hopeful that the FDA simply says, “keep in good contact with your doctor.”

Whatever the outcome, my heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones, and my hope is that the safety and care of those patients still living and on the drug are put ahead of Novartis’s profits, while real research is done.

Good health, everybody!