Carina Coomber <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hi Fredrik.
>
>Where are you from? My husband is English, I am Swedish. Where in Sweden do
>you live? We live in Sundsvall.

I'm from Estonia. I moved to Sweden when I was a child and I've lived here
most of my life. You're just 50 km from the town I call my hometown. I live
in Härnösand!

>Do you think it is easy to find all the stuff you need for this diet ?

I wish it would be easier. There's no butcher here in Härnösand, and the
stores don't always have what I want, especially organs like kidneys,
hearts and tongues. I have to order many things. It takes time.

I know a hunter, and people who know hunters, These people have provided me
with fat, bones, organs and meat from the wilderness. Once I tried to order
a moose brain from the hunter but he seemed to find my order repulsive. He
told me that some other hunters he knows have drunk fresh moose blood and
eaten fresh raw moose liver. I could see the discust in his eyes. Not to be
sensational, but my mouth watered when I pictured the feast on blood and
liver.

I haven't been able to order moose blood yet. I have to continue eating pig
and beef blood. It's always available in the supermarkets here and it's
called "blodbägare". I drink it as it is or make my own blood pudding. One
of the ingredients in my pudding is rye flour. It's not paleo in great
quantities, but I only use a little, and rye seems to be something I
tolerate, perhaps because it's a traditional Estonian cereal. (Maybe I
should try some nut flour in the pudding instead?).

I'm glad there's plenty of fresh fish here in Härnösand. My absolute
favorite is herring, which is another traditional food of Estonia. I gut it
and remove the head. Then I dry the body with bones in it, and eat it plain
and simple, including the bones. I make stock of the heads. The eventual
fish eggs or milt I dry and eat. (I never use salt. I don't have to force
myself from eating it. It seems I've never been a big fan of it.)

Recently I started to make bone broths. Bones are quite easy to get hold
on. I'm not sure if broths are paleo, but hopefully they will eliminate my
desire for yogurt that pops up sometimes. I've had several periods of
yogurt bingeing since I found the paleo diet in the beginning of the fall
of 2002. Pure yogurt (Naturell Yoghurt) used to be one of my favorite
foods, but the fact that it's homogenized scares me.

>Well, as I said in another mail, I have read Loren Cordain's book, but I
>use my own head, the internet and friends to decide what we can eat.

Good you're not hooked on Cordain. He provides a lot of useful information
and has interesting ideas, but his implementation of the paleodiet is, in
my opinion, screwed up. Take his non-starchy vegetable thing for example. I
know many edible wild plant parts here in Sweden and in my homeland that I
would eat if I were a hunter-gatherer. Guess what type of carbohydrate
dominates in many of these vegetables? Starch! (If I want a potato, I eat
one. It hasn't happened often however.) And, his emulation of wild fat
profiles with vegetable oils makes me gag! If I need vegetable oils I eat
whole vegetables, nuts or seeds; raw or cooked. I eat whole foods, wild and
domesticated, organic and non-organic, and let my taste buds guide me to
the proper composition. Sometimes I find grain fed chicken delicious and it
goes down with all its skin and fat; other times the thought of it makes me
puke. Sometimes I find myself eating a lot of nuts and berries. Other times
it's organs. Some periods I like highly saturated fat, like suet.

>Do you know of any other books that are good?

Here's some of the many books and links I like:

* Neanderthin, by Ray Audette
* Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Weston A. Price
* http://www.westonaprice.org/splash_2.htm
* http://www.beyondveg.com

Here's a diet I wish I could eat:

http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/native_americans.html

Fredrik