I was always told that the jumbo eggs were less yolky.  From what I understand they are produced by chickens bred to lay really big eggs on a consistant basis.  They are prone to many issues such as "egg bound" and prolapse.

I've had pastured chickens and ducks my whole life.  For the last 5 years or so only heritage "dual purpose" breeds, so no "large egg/high production layers".  The only "small pullet eggs" are literally only the first couple that the young hen lays.  I never notice a difference after that, if there is a difference, it must be very subtle.  (Unless they happen to lay the rare double yolked egg, then it is huge.  I get one like that once per 3 months, always from the same hen.)  I have a mix of pullets, middle aged and old hens and ducks.  Their eggs are always consistant in size, from year to year.  My mixed flock is small and everyone lays a different color of egg (chocolate brown, dark brown, light brown, pink, sky blue, olive green and white, so I can keep track.  My ducks are between 9 months -2 years old, their eggs are all the same size.

This weekend, I quit coffee and alcohol consumption 100%.      WOOT!!!

Breakfast/lunch combo...small (dairy-free) pesto (basil, olive oil, pine nuts) and water cress salad with 2 raw egg yolks on top. 

(I usually don't have much of an appetite by the way, I don't know how you guys eat up to 1-2 pounds of raw meat a day!!  A few ounces is enough for me, even if it is all I'm having for the meal.)

1 Avocado and a handful of grapes

Dinner plans: veggie soup with my handmade WAP style bone broth.  (I'm still cleaning out all the veggies (onions, cabbage, bell peppers, squashes, garlic etc.) in my fridge and I have quarts of frozen homemade broths in the freezer.)

I need to run to the butcher, I'm out of edibly-raw meats.
Questions:
1. I've been reading the stickys for the answer to why no root veggies?  Can someone point me in the right direction?  Is it not something cavefolks would have eaten and/or is it that they aren't easily digestible? 
2. It sems most of my butcher's grass fed meats are frozen, how bad is that? 
Thanks!

Heading out for my daily 4 mile walk.

Thanks Armis!  I agree, I needed some transition veggie dishes when I started this journey.

Here is the recipe for 'primal hummus'. 

2 peeled and cut raw zucchini
3/4 cup of tahini
1/4 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup of lemon juice
4 cloves of garlic
2.5 teaspoons of sea salt
1/2 tablespoon of ground cumin


Just whip it all together in a food processor and serve on cucumber slices etc. 

Oh thank you for explaining...I was raised an ovo/lacto vegetarian with the main part of every meal veggies, usually raw too.  I am so glad I don't really have to give that up.  I would love to see some of your raw veggie recipes!  (My dear mother was a terrible cook!  That is why they were usually raw! lol ) Thank you so much!

I have a good one to share with you (if you are up to eating tahini and like hummus).  I found a recipe for 'paleo hummus' that uses raw zuchini rather than chick peas, lemon, tahini and raw garlic.  It tastes exactly like if not better than hummus.  I eat it on sliced cucumber or other veggie slices.  TO DIE FOR!!

The jerky (I'll bet) can be made in a hot car too.  (That was the method I used when I didn't have a dehydrator.  Just put my herbs etc. on a flat clean basket, covered it with tuelle and set it on the dashboard.  Parked in the sunshine with windows adjusted for heat levels.)  It wasn't too hard to chew and tasted like real (healthy) jerky.  I can't believe you tried raw chicken!  That would be really hard for me.  Right now I have a beer can chicken on the bar b que.  I can't bring myself to eat any of it raw and I have to get rid of it somehow.  I might be able to stomach raw turkey jerky...we'll see. 

I too have a garden and put a ton of planning into it, so I'm so happy veggies are allowed.  (Still trying to catch up here on info.)

This is my day 2 on all raw and so far so good, thanks to this forum.  Yesterday was raw egg yolks, raw oysters and wild salmon, oranges and avocado.  Today was more egg yolks and un trimmed grass fed sirloin.  So far so good. Oysters are a given, I will eat them all season long.  I really loved the raw salmon and the raw sirloin.  The sirloin is not tough (as it would be if I cooked it.) and has a wonderful taste/texture. (I am quite afraid of raw chicken, thanks to society, so I can't even think about it yet, oh and pork, even though I have my own pasture raised piggy in the deep freeze.)

We started the non raw paleo diet last January b/c of my daughter's health issues.  Before that it was Weston A. Price.  I was raised ovolacto vegetarian, going vegan for a while...which I hated.  I was shocked that my daughter's plumnologist and clinical dietitian strongly recommended the paleo diet. Doctors??  I was all for it as soon as I understood what the premis was about.  Stumbled on raw paleo just a few days ago and the rest is history.

I live on a farm, so fitness is in the form of farm work, daily long walks and weekend long hikes in the Olympic foothills.  Example, yesterday I carried four 80 pound bags of horse food from the car into the barn (up 4 steps).  I walked the perimeter of the electric fence...we live on a huge hill.  Fed and cleaned up after 4 horses, 3 sheep, 2 St. Bernards, the ducks and chickens.  I cleaned out one of the duck ponds using a bucket and a hose.  The buckets of dirty water went to my veggie garden about 20 feet away.  Whew!  Then I caught my horse and got him ready to ride.  I ride him bareback a lot, it makes for a great core and leg workout.  IMO...at least that is how I see it.    I occasionally have to wrestle sheep and chase someone who got loose.  Almost everyday after everyone is settled down, I take a 4 mile walk (hilly) to the lake and back.

I look forward to learning more and I have a ton of questions as you can imagine.  I''m trying to read as much as I can before I ask too many "already been answered a million times" questions.

How do I post pictures?

I know this is sorta an older post....

Anyway, as I said in my intro, I was raised as an ovo/lacto vegetarian in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere...no fast food joints anywhere.  My mother and grandmother stayed at home with us, runing an antique store out of our barn.  We usually ate raw veggies right from the vine when we were out in the garden, gathered millions of pecans from our grove, picked wild dewberries all summer etc.  We ate fresh eggs and had a raw milk source.  I never crave fast foods...never.  At the grocery store I head straight to the produce section and fill up my cart, now I also head to the local butcher shop etc.  I skip all the sections in between...where all the boxes are.  Easy peasy for me.  Now that I'm switching from paleo to raw paleo it doesn't seem to be very hard at all.  Learning "the rules" has been the hardest.  The food part is easy.

My best friend in the whole world, on the other hand was raised in the city on a typical suburban diet, fast foods, white bread sandwiches, pizza, meatloaf and pasta laden casseroles.  As an adult she got  fast food every single day for lunch and made rice a roni for dinner b/c she never learned or cared to learn how to cook.  She was a (young and thin) runner and never had to worry about her figure...until a few years ago, it all caught up with her...poochy tummy, junk in the trunk and even a double chin.   She was running 6 miles everyday and doing strength training, nothing helped as far as exercise was concerned.  (Not kidding, every damn day!)  So she turned to me for help with her diet.  At that time, I was a big Weston A. Price follower...12 servings of veggies 1/2 cooked, 1/2 raw; grass fed meats; pastured butter, coconut oil and fermented veggies, kombucha and kefir.  She went cold turkey to the WAP type of diet.  OMG!!!  She had such a difficult time of this, like someone trying to quit a drug.  She got headaches and body/joint aches, sick to her stomach, her face broke out, crabby and irrational.  She missed work too, something she never does.  (Oh, and her fast food cravings were horrible.)

Anyway, the point being after about 2 weeks she started to feel better and she eventually lost most of the weight she had put on.  I'm not saying go cold turkey, I'm just saying yes, it is very hard but you can do it.  She is living proof.  

Now we are both 100% paleo, headed into raw paleo.  (Sorry I don't know the abbreviations for it, but the raw omnivore diet is where we are going to start.)  Both of us are thin and more healthy than we have been in years...thanks to the regular paleo diet.  Going raw or mostly raw sems like the logical "next step".  On the WAP diet, we couldn't shed the last few pounds...too many "properly prepared legumes and grains", and gluten in the form of sourdough, me thinks.

One thing that helped her go straight (non raw) paleo was to make food that tricked her, like taco lettuce wraps, using her own homemade taco seasoning, spaghetti squash spaghetti, protabello bun-ed hamburgers etc.)
 
Soon you will see and feel the results, in the form of a flatter tummy, cut arms and clear skin. You will have more energy than ever and you will have to 'remember to eat'.  And as soon as you do see/feel these results, you will be so motivated to continue on your journey.

Best of luck to you!!

Me too.   

They didn't have strip steak today, so no steak tartare...that is ok, they had fresh pacific raw oysters and bright orange/pink wild caught sockeye salmon fillet.

We ate the oysters as is, fresh shucked.  The salmon I made into sashmi with wasabi and coconut amino acids, (non-soy soy sauce).  I was very surprised that the salmon was so good b/c I normally don't enjoy salmon unless it is alderwood smoked.  I probably could have eaten it without the wasabi and amino acids, but I was sorta craving the sushi experience.

I also picked up some grass fed eye of round for jerky and a leg of lamb steak...for tomorrow.  Anyone eat leg of lamb raw? Does it taste lamb-y?  (I don't really like lamb cooked.)  I've got an order for grassfed organ meats and marrow. 

I have a whole freezer full of my very own pastured piggy, "Benson".  Can or do you eat raw pork/lard?  (I dewormed him (naturally) daily by feeding him with raw pumpkin seeds, garlic and charcoal from the fire pit.)

One last question, I am noticing that most of you avoid veggies.  Is there a link that may explain this?  I'm not arguing, I'm just coming from a 'cooked' paleo diet mentality that allowed lots of cooked and raw veggies.  (Plus, due to my upbringing, I sorta eat more veggies than anything else, except when my apple and pear orchard produces in the fall.)

Thanks everyone for the welcome!

As of Jan. 2011 we eliminated raw dairy products.  (My sheep are heritage dairy sheep, purchased specifically to have as our own raw dairy source.  Their milk is supposed to be very easy to digest.)  My daughter has had 14+ bouts of pneumonia throughout her life, had surgery in Sept. 2010 to drain her chest cavity due to the last severe pneumonia.  Her heart stopped for 10 minutes, they saved her thank goodness...and did such a fantastic job of CPR that she didn't suffer permanent brain damage.  She did have a brain insult, however.  Now, 7 months later, she is almost 100% recovered.  ANYWAY...her clinical dietitian and pulmonogist strongly suggested we switch her to a paleo diet back in Jan.  So no dairy since then.  (I am a fan but we are playing is safe for a while.  I thought about selling my tiny flock, but I can't bring myself to do it yet.)

The cause of her pneumonias... (and they just figured this out --not bashing her current doctors/surgeons up here.  I am bashing the ones in TX who just stamped her with asthma and asthma related pneumonia and gave her all kinds of inhaled sterroids.  Guess what??  She never had asthma!!!) ...the cause was 1.) an enlarged/inflammed lingual tonsil which blocked her airway and 2.) a paralyzed vocal cord...probably due to heart surgery she had when she was 4, they had to put a scope down her throat.

(edit to add: she was silently aspirating food and drinks.)

Someone on facebook mentioned that they were on the raw paleo "diet".   (I hate to call this a diet, b/c that makes it seem temporary.  Instead I'll call it a lifestyle. lol)  He wasn't someone I knew, but we were both responding to a facebook page's post on the gov.'s new plate style of food pyramid.  Yesterday was the very first time I heard of "raw paleo", paleo, yes, but never raw.  I did some googling and found this forum.

Anyhoo, thanks for the welcome.

I have 5 acres in the forest of pacific northwest, I raise most of my veggies during the summer using permaculture methods, I raise the occasional piggy, have horses for work and pleasure...all rescued from bad situations, 3 sheep for mowing, fertilization, dairy (chickens and pig love it) and wool, chickens and ducks, livestock guardian dogs (rescued st. bernard mixes), a cat and a 14 year old daughter...trying to be as self sufficient as possible.  Not quite off grid, but I don't rely on electricity/gas much.  I hand built my own outdoor kitchen that uses only yard waste or forest discards for energy, I have a solar clothes dryer and 5 rain collecting systems, one being a pond the size of 1/8 of an acre.