This fall, I went Paleo for five minutes.
Actually, it was five weeks, but still, I’m no expert. The real experts can tell you a lot of cool stuff about the Paleolithic Diet, but is it the important stuff? No, it’s not. The experts have too many things at stake, things like cookbook sales. That is why I, the non-expert, will now tell you the important stuff you should consider before beginning a Paleo lifestyle. The “important stuff” amounts to two things.
Number 1: Your house is gonna stink.
I’m not kidding. Get ready. Unless you take the trash to the curb every single day or already have a compost pit rarin’ to go out back, you are going to have to buy stock in Febreze. Because broccoli and spinach and cauliflower may taste good, but their remains smell like sewage. And it is not just the stalky bits in the garbage that start to reek, it is any bag, bowl, plate, or utensil that broccoli ever touched in transit from the market to your mouth. Seriously, you have to stay right on top of the whole cooking/clean-up process, or forget about it.
“I know how to deal with vegetables,” you are thinking.
Yes, you may, but when you go Paleo, you are going to be eating at a whole new vegetable velocity, and if you get even one day behind on washing all those brocc-ed out pots and pans, you are going to come home one afternoon thinking there’s something dead in the kitchen.
Number 2: You are gonna stink.
It’s the bone broth. At first, I was very excited about the bone broth, because once it’s made, it is the only Paleo meal that can be considered “fast food.” Everything else, you have to wash or peel or crack open (and, frankly, all of that takes waaay too long). Homemade bone broth just has to be heated up! It’s filling and it tastes great. You will even find it easy to prepare. But first you will have to get past being shamed by the butcher when you ask meekly, “Sir, may I please have some, um, grass-fed cow bones, preferably with some … let me see, here … it says … yes, with some knee or foot cartilage attached?”
Try not to jump when he barks, “I don’t know what the dang cow ate or what’s attached to its bones! Whatever we have is over there in the case with the rest of the meat, lady!” Keep in mind that he will be holding a large cleaver when he says this, so it’s best to move along quickly.
Next, you will have to go home with the unidentifiable bone-shards and load them up in your Crock Pot with other goodies, such as celery, bay leaves, and onions. That’s what I did. Then, I switched the dial to LOW and waited while I watched a comforting episode of something courtesy of the BBC. Feeling accomplished, I pulled the afghan up to my neck and imagined Dame Judi Dench herself coming over to my house to sit by the fire. (“May I offer you a nice cup of bone broth, dear? You must be dreadfully cold!”) I mean, I have never been a great cook, or anything, but this felt different. This wasn’t just meat I was cooking, it was bones! I was on the culinary fast track, now! I had gone straight from making Manwich to brothin’ bones! And because I am an overachiever, I had not just turned on one Crock Pot, are you kidding? I had turned on TWO Crock Pots, baby! One beef, one chicken, what’s uuup!!
Within a few hours, the fragrance was warm and savory. The whole house felt cozy, like a ski lodge. My hopes soared. Not only would this broth be easy and delicious, it would also be good for me! I’d probably start consuming a double-batch of bone broth every week! The YouTube videos promised shiny, flowing hair! They promised strong nails! They promised fresh, clear skin and rosy cheeks! I was going to look like Heidi, the lovely girl of the Alps! At 10 PM, I went to sleep smiling, eager to awaken and pour myself a steaming mug of health.
Something happened overnight.
At 5 AM, I shot up as if waking from a nightmare, only to find I was still in one. My dear little ski lodge had turned into a Boy Scout latrine, and a stout one, at that. A putrid fog crept from the kitchen. The atmosphere was foul. I took a whiff of the quilt, the pillow, the sheets. It all smelled … brown. Worse yet, my skin had been steeping in that stench all night long. When I sniffed my hand, I realized that I, too, was wearing eau de outhouse.
I screamed.
Still in pajamas, I ran into the kitchen and poured the smelly broth through a too-tiny strainer, heaving a heavy Crock from container to container. I spilled half of that boiling rot on the counter and down the front of my flannel fat pants, burning my foot. I filled jar after jar after Mason jar until I ran out of jars and used crystal stemware. It was a weird re-run of I Love Lucy, where she can’t keep up with the bone broth on the conveyor belt. An hour later, I had cleaned the kitchen and was sweating, but before I could enjoy my first sip, I wanted to take a shower. Except the shower didn’t help, because beef stink stays with you, somehow. It’s like eating at a Tex-Mex restaurant; you get home and for the rest of the night you have fajita hair.
Nevertheless, I came back for more bone broth madness, week after week. In the name of good health, I tried to get used to the fact that walking into my house felt like walking into a Texaco bathroom. I made bone broth faster than I could drink it, faster than I could saute onions in it or boil brown rice in it. My refrigerator became that creepy cabinet from my high school biology class, with its top shelf lined in jars of murky liquid. All that was missing was the floating baby mice and the formaldehyde frog and the swine fetus.
Finally, I gave up … because of the smell. Sure, in five weeks on a Paleo diet I lost twenty pounds, stopped biting my nails, and felt lithe and energetic. But then one day I hugged my 7 year-old niece and she backed up suddenly, saying, “Whoa. Your arms smell like meat.”
I threw in the towel right then. What good is it to adhere to any protocol that presents the possibility of looking like Denise Austin in a leotard AND the possibility of smelling like Wolf Brand Chili? I didn’t see a leotard wardrobe in my future anyway, so I went with the “not so meaty” life plan.
Like I said, I’m just here to tell you the important stuff. Go Paleo if you want to. But warn your friends and family first. They will need to chain their dogs when you come over.