As I say in the video, my favorite prepper resource is Amazon.com,  and food storage is a major issue for paleo and primal preppers. Since we eschew grains and legumes, our options for storing food is somewhat limited. We have to focus on fruits, vegetables and meats. Our primary methods for storing food are going to be dehydration, freezing and camping.

That’s why I absolutely love buying a case of tuna fish from Amazon online. It’s delivered to my door, it’s cheap, and it’s a great resource in an emergency situation. It has a lot of protein, a little bit of fat, and will not cause me any digestive problems when I need to be on top of my game. The last thing I want to do in an emergency situation is have abdominal cramps or diarrhea!

So if you want to get your own case of tuna fish, or something similar, go ahead and click over to Amazon and get your case today. If you are a Prime number like I am, then you can do a subscribe and save and get an additional 5% discount.

I’m probably a year or two late in writing this post. But I don’t think I’ve ever said exactly what The Primal Blueprint is. So here’s a quick run down of what it is, and what it is not.

The Primal Blueprint is a book written by Mark Sisson. In it, Mark lays out what he believes to be an evolutionarily adaptive way of living. In other words, following the so-called Primal Laws will lead people to living in harmony with their innate strengths and weaknesses as human beings. This is so because all people come from the same evolutionary past.

In The Primal Blueprint, Sisson also reviews what is wrong with our modern way of living. This includes both the food we eat, the way we move (or don’t move as the case may be), and everything else we do that fights against our natural ways of living.

What I focus on here on theprimalprepper.com is how living Primal makes for a better life for myself and my family. It’s pretty easy when you get down to the basics.

When I eat grains, I feel bad. So I don’t eat grains.

When I eat whole, natural foods, I feel good. So I eat whole, natural foods.

Lifting heavy things, occasionally sprinting, and moving around a lot a slow pace makes me feel even better. So I (try to) do that too.

Following the patterns of daylight and night make me feel much more alert and refreshed as opposed to staying up until 3 in the morning. So I (again, try to) do that.

In short, following The Primal Blueprint makes me healthier and happier. Maybe even wiser, which might lead to richer. You never know!

I call myself the Primal Prepper, so obviously living the Primal lifestyle is a big part of my day to day life. Yet it was not until yesterday that I did something that seems almost standard for Primalists: go work out at a crossfit gym.

A Crossfit Gym

For those who don’t know, crossfit is an exercise organization that follows the philosophy that in order to function well as a human being, one must be in all-around physical condition. So they avoid exercises that focus only on one body part or one type of skill. Instead, by the time you are an experienced crossfitter, you should be in a good overall shape and be able to do lots of different physical things.

Since one of the Primal Laws is to lift heavy things, I thought I would give it a try.

So the crossfit gym that I went to, Crossfit HD (one of the best crossfit gyms in Atlanta), had a pretty wide variety of “crossfit equipment”. There were gymnastics rings, tons of barbells with weights, rowing machines, pull up bars, squat racks, and a few things that I didn’t even recognize.

A Primal Workout

I’m not gonna lie. I got my ass kicked by an 8 minute workout. The workout of the day was doing thrusters and rope climbs. Since I was a beginner, I got the baby version: squats and ring pulls. This particular day was a sprint type of workout. So it was just one exercise after the other. 30 squats then 9 ring pulls then 20 squats then 6 ring pulls then 10 squats then 3 ring pulls. My hamstrings were jelly by the time I finished.

I can only imagine what it would have been like if I had started before I lost a ton of weight by eating Primally.

The Paleo-Crossfit Connection

You’ll find a ton of Primal or paleo people at crossfit gyms. In fact, my trainer for my first workout was wearing a shirt that said, “Snatch is Paleo.”

This particular crossfit gym is also hosting a Primal/paleo pot luck this weekend.

The most amazing thing was that nobody even looked twice at my Vibram KSO treks!

So I’m pretty sure I’m in the right place!

So I was looking at my kiddie pool aquaponic system the other day, and I noticed a couple small fish coming to the surface to investigate bugs and such. This is pretty normal. But then I realized that these fish were really small.

I put about 8 large goldfish in the pool several months ago, and it looks like they have spawned!

I like getting more resources for free. I had no idea that the goldfish would reproduce in a pool environment. I thought that they required gravel and tidal action. Apparently I was wrong.

In paleo and Primal circles, you’ll see a lot of people talk about the Whole 9 or Whole 30. The basic idea is to strictly adhere to whichever set of dietary guidelines you set for yourself for 9 or 30 days.

That’s great and all, but I’m a much bigger fan of the Whole 1. As in today. Right now, choose foods the support your health instead of harm your health. Then, when faced with more choices tomorrow, do the Whole 1 again.

I think this works better simply because the idea of trying to be “good” for 30 days at a time is too much pressure. If you screw up once, you’ve “wasted” however many days because you have to start your count all over!

Instead, focus on the now. Focus on the food in front of you. Is the soda worth it (my particular vice)? Is the doughnut worth it? Is any of the crap that you *think* will taste good but ultimately be disappointing worth it?

I recently had the good fortune to do a little guest blogging for Best Self Magazine about my experience at the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival this past weekend.

Here’s  a little snippet:

One of my favorite things about the 2012 Atlanta Food & Wine Festival is that local and world-renowned chefs give presentations in which you get to learn a little bit about the true art of cooking. Sure, there are recipes that you can recreate at home. There are even techniques to be learned. But there is nothing quite like those “Ah-ha!” moments that you get when you are listening to a true master of his craft.

I had one such moment when attending a session given by Chef Noman Van Aken.

Read the rest here: Enjoying the Dialogue of Food at the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival

As a Primal Prepper, and a lazy one at that, I want to create things that require work one time and pay me back in health and preparedness over and over again. So here’s another small project that will pay me back for my one hour of effort: Digging a Swale

Watering my garden definitely falls into the category of things I don’t want to have to do. By building a swale, I help to ensure that my land is hydrated as much as possible by preventing water from running off my land. Simply put, a swale is a ditch that is level.

From the Wikipedia entry on swales:

Swales as used in permaculture are designed to slow and capture runoff by spreading it horizontally across the landscape (along an elevation contour line), facilitating runoff infiltration into the soil. This type of swale is created by digging a ditch on contour and piling the dirt on the downhill side of the ditch to create aberm. In arid climates, vegetation (existing or planted) along the swale can benefit from the concentration of runoff.

So over time, as water is captured and sunk into the ground, the land becomes rich with moisture. This moisture is the basis for life in the soil. Once that moisture is there, it becomes easier and easier for plants to grow.

In other words, less and less work for me!

Without further ado, here is my 5 part YouTube series on how I dug a swale.

A YouTube user asked where to get the siphon that I use in my gas siphon video. You can get it from Amazon at the Hopkins FloTool 10801 page. It’s a handy tool that keeps all your gas siphoning neat and in the tanks.

Just as a note, the Amazon links are affiliate links that pay me a few cents. But it doesn’t change your price either way.

You guys may notice the site going through changes recently. I’m experimenting with stuff, so if you have any particular comments or suggestions, let me know!

So my wife and I drove for hours and hours to and fro over the Thanksgiving holiday. Side bonus: we listened to Clan of the Cave Bear. Now it’s a day later, and I feel the need to do a little post turkey day autopsy.

1, I did a fairly good job of staying 80% primal while on holiday. The drive up and back was pretty easy since we had our travel foods. The more difficult party was while we staying at my parents’ house. We didn’t have total control of the food supply, especially when we ate out.

2, Even with the 80% primal food, I was definitely feeling sub-optimal.

3, I can feel my body detoxing still after a day of being home. Our regular foods taste great and are helping me get back on track. my digestion still isn’t as good as it normally is, but I expect that will take care of itself over the next coupe days.

All in all, it’s good to be home!

Another bright side of the trip was stopping by a food co-op in Harrison, Virginia (might have been Harrisonburg, I don’t remember exactly) and buying some ground beef from Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm. I made some burgers from it today and they were delicious! The beef tastes “light” if that makes any sense. I’d say the beef is a touch better than the ground grass fed beef I get at my local farmers market.

– from the iPad