So, about 5 months ago when I met up with my brother in Barcelona, he told me about his new paleolithic lifestyle. After a brief overview he gave me a simple task to try, stop eating bread and pasta for a month and see how you feel. He said just replace it with as many eggs as you need to fill the gap (I now eat 4-6 a day). I tried this back in June and have not looked back. I am by no means a strict caveman and get a little bored of people finger pointing when I drink 20 beers in a night but I have significantly altered my diet from what I thought used to be healthy modern man.

This isn't intended to be an educational post, just more of a segue into some great home cooking adventures I had with my brother when he stayed with me last month. I have embedded links to articles by Mark Sisson for anyone interested in reading further. The gist of the diet is not a no carbs high protein package but rather to ingest what our bodies evolved to use, i.e. pre-agricultural revolution produce. I get my daily energy needs from slow burning fats (avocado, butter, nuts, cheese, fish), after intense exercise I replenish glycogen with carbs from fruits and vegetables (bananas, potatos), dump the fructose and keep a few basic ratios in check, eg omega 3 to omega 6. Stopping the bread and pasta, i.e wheat/grain (which I used to eat breakfast, lunch and most dinners) eliminates gluten from the diet (which the latest studies show basically everyone is intolerant to) as well as shifting the body's energy use from carbohydrate to fat, a much slower burning source of energy. A testament to this was my choice this year to weather my 27 hour Yom Kippur fast on 2 avocados..the fast has never been easier!

Upshot: no longer do I feel tired in the evenings after work, a big meal makes me feel energised rather than triggering a food coma and I haven't had a single headache, stomach cramp or any inflammation (which I used to think were just a normal part of life). Recently I had a health check done. My one worry was that eating 4-6 eggs a day may have upped my cholesterol which used to be high 5s. The theory is the body produces it's own cholesterol in the absence of a dietary source, so it is better to try regulate your own levels by eating an abundance of good cholesterol. Quite astonishingly, my cholesterol came in at 4.4, the lowest it has ever been!

So here (finally) are some photos of some of our paleo dinners:

Tuesday night was sadly the last night I spent here with my girlfriend as she has to move back to Australia. One of her favourite dining experiences is good french cuisine, so I looked up somewhere nearby and came up with Restaurant Christophe'. Coincidentally we had walked past this restaurant in the past and admired the creative displays in the front window so we were delighted to turn up and discover we had inadvertently booked there.

We really enjoyed ourselves. There was no wine by the glass but they did have half bottles, we had the chablis. The tables are sparse and candlelit, which made for a romantic experience and the place has charm, it doesn't feel like a modern sterile number. The waitstaff were very friendly and helpful and the food was delicate and special, on par with the best french food we've had in Sydney; duck liver pâté and eggplant terrine for entrees, roasted rump / suckling pig for mains. It will cost about 75 euro per head for 2 courses with wine.

Leave room for the cheese platter, the selection is prolific and the traditional white gloved plating process is splendid!

I walk past Bussia each day on my way home from work and always notice smiling faces, glasses of wine and crisp white table settings out on the street front. So one evening when I had an urge for good italian food, upon searching tripadvisor and seeing Bussia come up in the top results, I made a booking and was there 20 minutes later.

The service, food and atmosphere were all excellent. The menu is simple but the dishes are special, 3 entrees, 3 pastas, 1 fish, 1 meat and 5 desserts. The photo is of our entrees, north sea crab done 5 ways and canneloni soup. We both had pasta mains, home made gnocci with lobster and a piemontese with veal and pork. We were too full for dessert, but the desserts that came out to other tables did look spectacular.

I definitely recommend Bussia if you are after a cosy and relaxed italian fine dining evening.