Usually by the time I drive to a restaurant, get seated, order, wait for my order, eat, wait for the check and pay… I could have whipped up an amazing meal and enjoyed myself more in the process.

Then there is the issue of food quality. Cooks at 90% of restaurants really don’t give a damn about how much effort they put into your meal. Its just the facts. They are pressed for time, limited to crappy ingredients and most of them are paid like poop. I realized something interesting the other day when I had to go to a business meeting over lunch at a restaurant. How often have you gone out to eat with someone and heard the question asked “How is yours?” How often has the response been “Its ok” or “its alright” or its “so so”? This just isn’t something that has happened to me since not eating out anymore. The food is always excellent or phenomenal and if it isn’t… its my own darn fault.

Then there is the issue of cost. A meal at a half decent restaurant for just the wife and I always seems to put me back at least $30. I can cook whatever I want, grass fed, top shelf and organic for way less than that! I always leave a restaurant feeling a little like I just got robbed.

Kind of tying in with that is the issue of service. How often do you really get good service anymore. Admitted I do get better service when traveling than I do here locally (you other Albuquerque locals can probably vouch for this as well) but you just don’t get decent service anymore. It seems tipping has become a given requirement now and no one feels that they should have to work for it. I am not kidding… the last 3 times I have gone to a restaurant, I have had to stand up, track down my waiter/waitress and demand a refill on my water. When I get good service, I am a generous 20% tipper but it seems that never happens anymore. It is a “gratuity”… it iss meant as a gracious gesture for me to show my gratitude for being taken well care of during my meal. A lot of restaurants these days have even started automatically adding the gratuity to your bill for you thereby deciding for you exactly how much gratitude you posses for your meal.

And then there is… you know what? Never mind. I am just getting myself aggravated. 

I like to post periodic pictures of myself to show that I haven’t fallen off the wagon and primal is still really working for me. I just snapped these two quick pics (got too much sun this weekend). Terrible I know, but I haven’t really been working out much or trying to hard and still look pretty decent if you ask me!

Relaxed and sunburned

What the heck, throw a flex in there

On to the food pics!

Primal Enchiladas

Echiladas Dressed

Primal BBQ Sauce and Sweet Potato Fries

Coconut Cheeseballs in new deep fryer

Primal Awesome Blossom

Primal Pizza Ready for Oven

Blueberry Macadamia Nut Muffins Ready For Oven

BBQ Chicken in my cool rotisserie

I think I might be.

I am going to warn you ahead of time. This post may go a million different directions at once and in the end not make much since. This is the state of my mind lately… going a million different directions and getting nowhere. lol. You have been warned.

I was thinking about this the other day. Most of our (well at least my) lives have consited of people trying to convince us to do something. You can look at the obvious commercials or salesman… ever trying to talk you into buying their service or product. But is doesn’t stop here. My life has pretty much consisted of someone talking me into doing something.

My parents… always trying to convince me that they know whats best for me or how to live my life. My boss convincing me to stay in a job I don’t like or to do work I don’t care about. If you think about it, almost everything you do (at least that I do) is because someone or other has talked me into doing it. I am usually on the losing side of the argument.

This innate ability to get talked into anything has caused me to “learn the hard way” on everything from over paying for cars I don’t need and can’t afford to living in a city that I really don’t like or doing a job that I could really care less about.

Everyday it seems like I am still under these influences and I am getting tired of it. Hell, even my mother still calls me every day trying to tell me what to do.

Where am I going with this? Somewhere I am sure but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

I think we all need to do something for ourselves. And by that I dont mean something that someone else convinced us that we think we want to do for ourselves. Going primal represents one of these things that I think I did for myself. And I like it and I am getting greedy and I don’t want to stop there.

Why is it that we as people will put up with a ridiculous amount of unhappiness because we think that we have to? At least that is my perception of it. So many people waste away their lives living in places they don’t like doing things they cant stand. Do you think Grok would have put up with this?

What are your thoughts? When is the last time that you truly did something for yourself?

I have a big interview today for a promotion. This means not a lot of time to put together a post because I am preping for the interview. Therefore… enjoy another installment of random pics and stuff!

Speaking of work, here is me at work. The SoG isn’t always running around shirtless lol.

Here is the wife Foraging fresh vegatables… in the produce department.

I always said they should have individual servings of wine. That way you don’t feel obligated to polish off the bottle. Well here they are. This way you can enjoy wine one glass at a time!

Grok On! These shirts are soon to be available from Mark Sisson’s MDA.

The wife doing some climbing.

Me doing some climbing. This route is harder than it looks!

My sister asked me if going Primal gave you abs. Sometimes a picture speaks louder than words… (P.S. my brother in law is now going primal… awesome!)

What better way to make pork better than to stuff it with… well pork (chorizo in this case)

Final Product

Salmon Patties and grass fed stir fry… yummmmmmmmmm

Now thats what I call Breakfast! A stack of bacon, 4 fried eggs, some salsa and some black coffee…. yummmmmmmm. This is my typical weekend breakfast.

No this isn’t a scene from Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. Snapped this on the walk home from work. This giant concrete dome is is actually a church. Its hard to tell the size from the pic but this thing is HUGE.

It has been pretty cold lately but some of the flowers in my back yard are still trying to bloom.

One of my favorite DIY projects. Getting ready to lay out some jerky for drying.

Onion , red and green bell pepper and shredded pork quiche. I have fallen in love with these silicon baking pans. Nothing sticks to them and they make cooking so easy.

This is the fancy store where I was fitted for the photo shoot. Probably the only time I have worn a $3000 italian suit or a $2500 cashmere/mink sport coat. lol.

Tha tha tha thats all folks!

My new ride. Triumph Thruxton. I ditched my Lexus in a little expirement trying to be healthier and “greener”. I am now car-less. Now I either have to walk to work or ride. Weather has dictated that I have been walking lol (Winds, Rain, Cold). The wife still has our other car as she works like 30 miles away.

This dog followed me home on a walk home from work. He followed me for about the last 1.5 miles! I treated him to some primal pistachios and some water. Then animal control came, scanned his microchip and took him home.

New side of grass fed cow filling the freezer… yummmm.

My first try at making primal sushi… it was actually pretty good!

Yeah… I made a lot of it. lol.

Grassfed short ribs getting ready to marinate.

Scottish Eggs getting ready to bake. These were awesome! Hardboiled egg packed in pork sausage, basted with and egg and rolled in a little bit of almond flour.

Tha tha tha thats all folks!