Paleo Comfort Food

Paleo comfort food. That’s what I want to eat. If I am going to eliminate processed foods, grains, legumes, bad fats, non lean meats and sugars from my diet, I am going to enjoy it.  Isn’t comfort food what we really want to eat on a diet? Diets are about what we can’t eat, but that’s all wrong. Your diet is what you eat – not what you don’t eat.

I started cooking Paleo foods in order to lose weight and generally improve my own health. One thing I know about maintaining a diet is that you have to enjoy what you are eating and you shouldn’t feel restricted. You need to enjoy the food you are eating. By eliminating grain-based carbohydrates, dairy and refined sugars, my appetite naturally declined along with my waistline. Seven months after turning Paleo, I dropped over 40 pounds and had never enjoyed what I was eating more.

Cooking is my passion. I am a self-taught home cook. My cuisine is typically American with a strong French influence. Roasted or grilled meats, fish and vegetables. Seasonal, fresh, local, organic ingredients. Good ingredients make a huge difference in the outcome of dishes. Don’t ever compromise on ingredients.

Ultimately, we are going to eat what we want to eat, and what I found I wanted to eat was comfort food. So I embarked on this journey to Paleoize the foods I most loved to eat. Replacing one ingredient for another; finding alternative cooking methods; experimenting with proportions; modify, taste, repeat until it comes out right.

My definition of comfort food might not exactly match yours. I make a lot of traditional American comfort food dishes of which there is no question: Meatloaf and Fried Chicken and Chili and Beef Stew and Barbequed Ribs – but also French comfort food that I can’t live without – Duck Leg Confit and Coq au Vin and Braised Short Ribs. I’ve also recently been rediscovering my Greek heritage and making traditional Greek comfort foods: Moussaka and Keftedes and Leg of Lamb and occasionally Greek Roasted Potatoes (for a skip meal).

Does this sound good to you? It sounds good to me. Paleo Comfort Food. Yeah – I’ll have some of that.