We Made Fire

This is Geoff and Caitlin’s 6-week cooking project blog. For the next month and a half, we are cooking Paleo (or at least, modified Paleo) food inspired from cuisines around the world.

Why?
Humankind has been around for 200,000 years, during most of which we went by the moniker of hunter/gatherer. In fact, we really only stopped hunting and gathering about 10,000 years ago at the dawn of the agrarian revolution. Another nine thousand nine hundred fifty-seven years after that, civilization as we know it peaked: we invented the Big Mac™. Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. 

Yeah. Yum. Bring on the superprocessed sugar-coated meat with millions of dollars worth of marketing power behind it, bro. And super size it! But I’m on this healthy kick, so toss me a Vitamin Water, will ya?

Early in our young budding relationship (which was like, two minutes ago), food, diet, and cooking were rather hot topics. She loves to cook. So when it finally came up that I follow a rather unconventional diet, she was skeptical but curious.  After a little research she determined that she was on-board for about 85% of the concept. How can you argue with eating more fruits and vegetables while avoiding high sugar cereal and frozen pizzas? Try. You can’t.

With food being a topic very front and center in both of our lives, we talked about it a fair deal. On one fateful night, she asked how Paleo-followers know what cavemen ate. Did cavemen on all continents eat basically the same thing? They couldn’t have, right?  There was no cold storage shipping or over-night delivery.  If you wanted vegetables, you ate the greenest thing you could find in about a half mile radius.  If you wanted meat, you had to kill something… So an Asian caveman eating a delicious panda bear probably couldn't relate to his North American brosky feasting on a turkey leg.

Therein lies the goal of this blog.  For the next 6 (possibly 7) weeks we are going to attempt to craft paleo-friendly meals from each continent using the flora and fauna native to each land. We are lucky and have access to tons of ingredients, so unlike our cavemen ancestors, we are free to be a little more creative. The rules are pretty loose and much of the food will be "continent inspired" rather than actually eating an adorable little puffin.

Week 1:  Our Homeland - North America

Week 2:  ASIAN! Week

Week 3:  Europa.

Week 4:  South America

Week 5:  Down Under with the Kiwis

Week 6:  Africa

Week 7:  Antarctica – Yaaa! Snow cones for dinner all week!