Change

I began today desperately hoping that I would be able to combat this food boredom thing, because the LAST thing that I want to do in the LAST full week of this journey is to slip up!! I mean come on, I've made it 22 days and I'm going to say "forget it"?!?! I don't think so!!

So test #1 was.... did I make better egg muffins this time??????

ABSOLUTELY!!! Guys, I'm telling you these were 5 MILLION times better :) Here's a thing I've definitely learned over the past few weeks, I could season just about everything tons more than I'm used to and maybe then it'll be enough. From making the egg muffins, to making sausage from scratch... everything needs SO MUCH SEASONING! Salt and pepper and herbs and spices. The savoryness of cheese so often over powers any other spices that we put in a dish, but the cheese flavor is what we want to come through... so by using it we don't have to put in as many spices. Or premade sauces or foods that come with sugar and tons of artificial flavors hit our pallets so much harsher than fresh, whole foods that we have to spice up to really appease ourselves. Healthy food is boring and unappetizing not because it's good for us, but because sometimes we just don't know how to cook it to make it interesting. It's inevitable that reality cooking shows they always have a cooking healthy challenge, and every time they emphasize that it's all about infusing flavors into healthy food to make them delicious. I've heard it dozens of times, but why don't we listen?!

Week 1 I put some homemade sausage (that I poorly seasoned), bell peppers, and red chili flakes with some salt and pepper into my egg muffins. And they weren't that great.... Week 4 I put salt, pepper, garlic, red chili flakes, sundried tomatoes, fresh basil, and some balsamic vinegar that I reduced slightly. Not that many more ingredients week 4, but ingredients that imparted strong flavors which made all the difference!

For lunch I had leftover chicken tenders and mashed potatoes from last night with the usual fruits and veggies to supplement haha
The best part of the afternoon was when one of my kiddos made this pizza to share with me...

..and I realized the irony that this is the only kind of pizza I can actually eat right now haha. Wooden pizza that I pretend to eat with a sweet little girl :) It'll do for now haha

Dinner was another experiment to get me out of this food boredom whole. I scrambled the recipe together yesterday as an abridge to a recipe that I already had planned. I had planned to make shrimp with veggies steamed in parchment paper... but I just didn't want it! So I found a recipe for a shrimp and sausage skillet. The challenge was finding ready-made sausage that I could eat. You'd be surprised how much of them contain sugar, or no-no preservatives, or CHEESE! Like tons of them have cheese: cheddar, feta, gorgonzola, gouda.... on and on and on... BUT I miraculously came across some chicken and apple sausages that had nothing in them that I couldn't have, PERFECT :)

 It came out pretty yummy. The shrimp had a spicier sauce on them that the sweeter sausage complemented really well. A nice balance with some yummy zucchini.

I think the biggest reason why I want to combat this food boredom hurdle so much, with good options that are not just borderline good, but really good for me, is that I need to be planning for life after Whole30. What's the point of this whole experiment? Finding out what foods my body responds to positively and negatively. But if I spend all this time making my body feel good what's the point in getting to day 31 and just putting everything back in? Shouldn't I be entertaining the idea of at least eating semi-Whole30 approved indefinitely? If I don't respond negatively to adding any of the forbidden foods back, then what is it that I'm eating that makes me tired around 2/3:00 or makes my face break out randomly etc etc.

This needs to be more than an experiment of will power, this needs to be a change. A lifestyle. At least partially ;)

<3 ME