Close but Not Close Enough

Today started off quickly! I had to tackle GROCERY DAY, and then hurry down to my parents' house for a family get together for my dad's birthday. Oddly enough grocery planning and meal planning this week was more difficulty Han the entire month. You see, next week I get to start the reintroduction process. My 30 days will finally be over and I can add back all the things that I gave up. 

Here's how the process of reintroduction goes: you add one of the "forbidden" food groups back into your diet for one day, then you remove it for 2 days to reset your system before you add in the next food group for one day. This is a lot more difficult than you think. I have relied A LOT on leftovers this whole month. But I can't make a dinner that contains a forbidden food group and expect to have that on a different day. So I had to be careful to plan meals that I could add the forbidden food into but be able to take it out the next day to utilize leftovers that would then be whole30 compliant. I also had to remember to plan meals that added only one food group at a time, they can't overlap. Much more complicated than I originally planned :/

So anyway, a quick breakfast and off to a not super complicated grocery store day, thankfully, because of careful planning and the help of Roomie. I even got to buy some oatmeal to eat for breakfast one day :) it's the little things haha

Then it was off to my parents' house to celebrate my dad :)

Lunch was thankfully not super complicated. My mom let me roast some potatoes so I would know they were completely compliant, then we had burgers which of course I had without the bun and cheese, and I had a pickle just to make it feel more like a real burger haha

 

It was so nice to get to spend a day and have a meal with my family. I haven't gotten the opportunity to do that since I started Whole30. I'll admit it was a little difficult, more so than I think I imagined it would be. It's definitely getting harder to abstain from things I think. I feel like that seems opposite of what I imagined. I thought at this point in the game that I wouldn't be missing things as much, but I feel like I miss them more. I think it's wearing on me a little bit more at this point not to be able to celebrate and enjoy things as much with my friends. Not to be able to go out, let loose, ever... at all...

 

I really like the choices and values of food that Whole30 has promoted in my life, and I would love to eat compliantly every week, but maybe not on weekends.... There has to be some give and take you know! Today I'm just really ready to be done :/

 

I did get to go out to grab a bite to eat with Stephen at an actual restaurant before the show tonight!!



It's so nice not to have to cook a meal for at least an hour ;)

<3 ME

Here Comes the Sickness

I woke up this morning and the cold that I've been desperately fighting off for a week now has finally settled in a little more comfortably.. sore throat, hoarse voice, cough, stuffy nose.. Time to break down and get some tea and medicine.

I got by with the tea that we had this morning, we had some green ginger tea which unfortunately has a little caffeine but not a lot. It definitely made my nose feel a little less stuffy to sip something hot and aromatic.

I had to work half of the day today, but when I got off I stopped by and picked up some medicine and vitamin supplement and snuggled up for the rest of the afternoon to rest before the show tonight.

  

The cough and throat relief is all natural flavors with no added sugars, so totally whole30 compliant. The medicine has some dyes and extraneous things that probably aren't exactly adherent, but when you're sick you're sick and you have to take care of yourself right?

After a little rest, it was time to tackle dinner. I decided to attempt to redeem my gnocchi from last night. And I think I did a pretty good job!

I added a lot more spices than the recipe called for to cover up the coconut flour flavor (garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper, and Italian seasonings). I then sautéed them for just a bit with clarified butter, garlic, and red pepper flakes and topped with some fresh basil and a quick balsamic vinegar reduction I made. So so yummy :)

My voice was definitely gone after the show tonight, so it's time for some rest and medicine. Hopefully it'll be ready the show tomorrow!

<3 ME

Little Surprises

A slow beginning to my day was so nice knowing that the rest of the day was going to be so busy, you know a change of pace for me hahah

I'm not sure what makes breakfast in bed so luxurious, but I really do love it. It's something about getting to lounge for those extra five minutes, even if I've already gotten dressed and ready for my day and breakfast is literally the last thing I do before I walk out the door, having it in bed is just so nice.

I had some leftover Thai meatballs from last night for lunch today over yet another meeting, while fielding phone calls from parents, and then running off to more kiddos.

After such a long day, I came home to attempt to make some gnocchi again today. Unfortunately they did not turn out like last time, I think my ratios were off this time :( but thankfully I had some leftover mashed potatoes and grilled up a chicken breast and steamed some broccoli for a really yummy meal.

I also did a bit of a balsamic vinegar reduction for the mashed potatoes. Just to give them a bit of a different flavor than usual. Pretty good for an improv :)

Then I settled in for a quiet night of paperwork with one of my favorite girls

Instead of such a quiet evening, I had a really surprising and amazing evening. I put in an order for a training manual for a new protocol that I want to try with some of my kiddos and I have one kiddo starting on Monday that I was really hoping to utilize the protocol for. But I haven't received the book yet. So I asked our front office coordinator if she could help me in tracking down the shipment expectation or if there was any way I could get this book by Monday to try it out on my kiddo. She came back after some research with the cell phone number of the woman who developed the program, and a message for me to call her. I put in a call and left her a message.
Well, this evening she returned my call. She gave me the unfortunate news that the training manual that I was so looking forward to is backordered and she's not sure when the publisher can get it to me. BUT, she spent half an hour on the phone with me, explaining the protocol, how to implement it, tips and tricks and strategies for my kiddo. She also offered to make copies of the book with some notes and things she likes and fax them to me, tonight. Not even tomorrow! She was so generous of her time and knowledge. It's days and encounters like this that make me fall more and more in love with the career that I have chosen. I am so lucky to get to surround myself with the amazing people who also chose this profession. One of the best decisions I've ever made.

It was a great day :) #25 on this Whole30 journey and my wonderful dad's birthday.

Must be a little bit of birthday magic making the day so special :)

<3 ME

Game Night

Thankfully today was not quite the early morning that yesterday was, so I at least had time to sit at a table and eat some breakfast today :)

Work was pretty busy again today, but surprise surprise I actually scheduled a lunch break!! A rarity of itself for sure!

I've found myself bringing more snacks lately. I don't ever eat them all, but I like choices for some reason haha

Now after work the real fun began!
We're hosting game night for some of our friends tonight at the Little Yellow House. I really wanted to be able to make some appetizers that they could enjoy even though we're so restricted in our diets and they aren't. I also had to throw some dinner together somehow haha

So I found a recipe for buffalo chicken dip and a veggie dip that I could serve with veggies or chips (you know, for the normal people). I was a little iffy about the buffalo chicken dip because it called for making a cashew cream and mixing in and I'm not going to lie, I thought it sounded gross.
For dinner I also threw together some thai meatballs, with some rice for Boyfriend.

They're turkey meatballs with some zucchini in them. They're in a coconut milk and red curry paste sauce. I could've stood a bit more spice I think, but overall a pretty solid Asian meatball.

And then the guests arrived!

Our friends are the sweetest and brought grapes and plantain chips that we could eat too :) The buffalo chicken dip was SO GOOD!!!! It was an overall super fun evening. We love hosting and it definitely felt good to still be able to host a fun night where everyone was full and satisfied, because as a good Southern woman it has been engrained in me from a very young age that I must feed and water everyone who walks into my house. So it's definitely unnerving to not have options available that people would normally choose. But this was perfect and gives a lot of hope to life after Whole30.

<3 ME

Cough Cough

This morning started sooo early! I was at the office at 7:15 to grab a couple egg muffins

 

and do some unfortunate research ...

Needless to say, there are no such things as Whole30 approved cough drops, and very very few Whole30 approved cough syrups or cold medicines in general. Which is quite discouraging :/ I mean you're going to get sick eventually in life and you need something to help you feel better because you can't just lie in bed until you do. (If that's your life please sign me up for whatever you do!) But in my life, there are no sick days. There's always work to be done whether at work or home. The biggest suggestion most of the forums I found were to try homeopathic teas that had no added sugars. I'm sure that would help me feel better, however, I don't have time to make and sip hot tea all day... at least some of the time I've got to hold these little babies! haha Also, bottom line: if you're really sick just take the medicine. If that is the thing that's going to make you feel better then take it in moderation, don't overdo it, and honestly it'll be fine. That's my opinion at least ;)

So the early start to my day and I hit the ground running, a pretty busy day today as compared to my day full of cancelled patients yesterday, so I had no time to take a picture of lunch only the aftermath of a hurried slurping of leftovers from last night and getting as much paperwork done as I could.

And of course, after a long day at work I can't go home and relax, I have to go home and work some more haha
But I was really happy to do it actually ;) we're hosting a game night tomorrow which will be a different kind of adventure with being a host without being able to serve snacks/drinks to our friends :/ BUT more of that struggle tomorrow. For today I had to prep the house, which meant finally taking the time to take down Christmas decorations haha I know I know it's the end of January and I'm just getting around to this, but it's been a really busy month. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! Well, that and I just love Christmas decorations. They make the house festive and warm with twinkly lights and it always looks so empty when I take it all down. But it's down and clean and now we have up season appropriate decorations haha

After cleaning it was time to cook a little dinner. I had salt and vinegar chicken on the docket for this evening. I roasted some quick potatoes, made a little salad, and baked some chicken in some spices and balsamic vinegar.

All in all a productive, exhausting, and very satisfying day. We have only one full week left in this 30 day journey before we enter reintegration. How time flies!

<3 ME

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

Food Boredom

Today I definitely hit the ground running to make up for my lack of productivity yesterday :)
I made a quick breakfast and then recruited Boyfriend to venture out for GROCERY STORE DAY with me. He had a great time I assure you! haha

 We got home with just enough time to get just a little bit of meal prep done before we have to head to the theater.

I made some more egg muffins this week! (I know you're all surprised haha)

This week I tried some garlic, fresh basil, sundried tomatoes, and some balsamic vinegar that I reduced down in a pan a little bit. I made sure to put TONS more seasoning than I did last time, so hopefully they'll be better than the ones I made week 1.

Unfortunately getting meal prep done to the last minute meant that I ran out of time for a real lunch, so I just had a snack when we got to the theatre and planned a yummy dinner for when we finally would get home.

I'm really not in the mood for healthy food today... I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that Boyfriend has eaten fast food and pizza in front of me all weekend as well as a cupcake haha

So I searched around and found a recipe for Buffalo Chicken Tenders that were Whole30 compliant with some mashed potatoes!

They actually called for a few pork rinds to add that crunchy outside to them, and a pretty nice take on buffalo sauce with apple cider vinegar, lemon juice and some spices.

Then to make myself feel better about dessert... I baked some peaches with cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Pretty yummy even if it wasn't a cupcake haha

I can't believe I've already finished 3 whole weeks!!! Only 1 more full week left plus two days. I must say I was apparently getting really lazy with meal planning at this point in the plan and I've had to make a lot of changes. I assumed that at this point just grilled chicken and veggies would be fine, but I couldn't be further from the truth. If anything I need and crave much more flavorful foods at this point than I did at the beginning. Funnily enough Whole30 warns of just this mood at Day 21 (which is today!) They call the culprit food boredom and that is so accurate. So I spent a long time today researching some different recipes and switching the meal plan up a bit more.

So here's what this week is looking like (so far :/)

WEEK 4 JANUARY 25-31

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Breakfast	egg muffins	egg muffins	egg muffins	egg muffins	egg muffins	Breakfast casserole	breakfast casserole
Snack	banana	banana	banana	banana	banana	banana	banana
Lunch	leftover	salad	leftovers	salad	leftover	leftovers	leftovers
Snack	apple celery	apple celery	apple celery	apple celery	apple celery	apple celery	apple celery
Dinner	shrimp and sausage skillet	salt and vinegar chicken tenders	thai turkey meatballs	gnocchi	shepherds pie	stir fry	chicken and mushrooms

 Obviously everything is subject to change depending on my mood haha

Here are the recipes I used for Week 3
Pumpkin Breakfast Custard
Thai Coconut Soup
Buffalo Chicken Tenders
Gnocchi -- for this one I substituted coconut flour for the regular flour and I baked them in the oven

Not a ton of recipes since we ate out as well, and I repeated the chili recipe again. Hopefully this last full week will be easy, and hopefully I'll be excited about some of the new recipes I plugged in this week!!!

<3 ME