Three weeks in

Three weeks in and I love this diet. I'm not a proselytizer...so I'll just tell you what I love about it for me.
#1 I never feel deprived. I think if I was more stringent about fats, I'd be losing weight more quickly, but it is way way easier for me to stick to an eating plan where I'm always full.
#2 I really do have more energy. I thought that was a bullshit claim, but it's true.
#3 I feel lighter. Not in a scale way, in a buoyancy way. Though I'm also down between 8 and 10 pounds (I don't remember exactly where I started because I'd simply gotten above my "Danger, Will Robinson!!" number).

Things that surprised me:
#1 How quickly sweet things became too sweet. I don't think it was even a full week before I snuck a bite of cookie and didn't like it because it was just too much.
#2 How gross I feel after misbehaving. I feel bloated and icky. And what's really surprising is that for the first time in my life, I remember that feeling from instance to instance so it actually *stops* me from indulging.
#3 How much easier it is to stick to a diet with a fully thought out meal plan, even if I deviate from it often.

My staples so far:
Banana/almond butter/bacon sammies
Cauliflower "rice"
Kai jong with something green (eggs, fish sauce, and tapioca flour)
Clothes Make the Girl Pad Thai
Chicken nuggets: brined in salt water, dredged in tapioca flour, fried in coconut oil a la Nom Nom Paleo.

48 hours

Sooooo...it's hard to start a paleo diet when somebody offers to make you waffles on New Year's Day. Ooops!! So I started with lunch.
1/1/14 Lunch: Subway salad with veggies, ham, vinegar and salt and pepper.
Dinner: steaks, mashed cauliflower with ghee, roasted broccoli.

1/2/14 I started 6 chicken legs in Fiona's green marinade (Nom Nom) for lunch and dinner.
Breakfast: banana, bacon and almond butter sandwiches...these were insane. Ugly as sin, but a taste sensation.
Lunch: I roasted two of the marinated legs, and chopped them up with apple, avocado, red pepper, leftover bacon from breakfast, a little balsamic over chopped romaine topped with hard boiled eggs.
Dinner: Roasted the other legs, and made Nom Nom's curried cream of broccoli soup. Both were amazing.

1/3/14
Breakfast: scrambled eggs with fish sauce, sautéed red peppers, and left over mashed cauliflower.

Lessons so far: if you put enough good tasting things together they taste amazing. I don't feel satisfied after most meals without the carbs, but if I wait 10-15 minutes for my body to recognize that I'm full then I feel quite fat and sassy.

Recipes for the Whole 30 Calendar

Recipes

"Nom" = Nom Nom Paleo: Food for Humans by Michelle Tam

"Well" = Well Fed by Melissa Joulwan

Breakfast

Smoothies

Eggs

Banana,almond butter, bacon sandwich

Fritatas with mushrooms and peppers

Furikake, asparagus and eggs (Nom p. 126)

Kai Jiao (thai omelet, Nom p. 131)

Maple Sausage patties (Nom p. 240)

Lunch:

            Chicken-Avocado Salad Lettuce Wraps

            Avocado, Egg and Spinach Salad

            Hardboiled egg, red pepper, tuna, apple

            Summer sausage, tomatoes, pickles, hardboiled egg

            Cucumber sandwich (meat in hallowed out cucumber)

            Guacamole deviled eggs

            Hardboiled egg and coleslaw (Nom Nom p. 99)

Snacks:

            Snap peas

            Cashews

            Almonds

            Dried fruit

            Apples w/almond butter

            Kale chips (Nom Nom p. 73)

            Just Apples chips

            Bars

            Ranch (nom)

           

Sides:

-Broccoli/cauliflower

-mixed frozen vegetables

            -sweet potato fries

            -roasted root vegetables

            -Green beans

            -mashed cauliflower

            -sweet potato hash (Nom p.152)

            -cauliflower rice (Nom p. 156)

            -plantain fritters (Nom p. 166)

            -cumin carrots (Well p. 115)

            -Lemony spinach

            -cauliflower rice pilaf (Well p. 121)

Dinners:

            -zucchini lasagna

            -fajita salad/quesadillas

            -roasted chicken

            -steak/chops w/ketchup

            -BBQ chicken sandwiches and coleslaw

            -tomato soup and grilled cheese

            -Crockpot Italian Chicken soup and roll ups (use cooked chicken from soup for rollups)

            -homemade pizza/cauliflower crustpizza

            -Carrot coconut soup

            -Slow cooker greek chicken w/pita orsalad

            -Crockpot coconut roast

            -Egg muffins with sweetpotato hasbrowns

            -Salmon cakes

            -Meatloaf

            -Cream of broccoli soup (Nom p.113) and grilled green chicken (Nom p. 193)

            -Chicken nuggets (Nom p. 195)

            -Yankee pot roast (Nom p. 218)

Whole 30!

◄ Dec 2013	~ January 2014 ~					Feb 2014 ►
Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
			1  B- eggs and fruit L- McD Salad, no dressing D- roasted broccoli, mashed cauliflower, steaks	2  B-banana, bacon, almond butter sandwiches L-Chicken avocado lettuce wraps, red pepper strips D- cream of broccoli soup and green chicken	3 B-Kai Jiao L-hardboiled egg, apple, red pepper D- salmon cakes, roasted broccoli, sweet potato fries	4 B-Green smoothie L-Avocado/egg/spinach salad D- chicken nuggets and mixed veggies, cumin roasted  carrots
5 B- Asparagus and eggs L- cucumber sandwich D- zucchini noodle lasagna	6  B-bacon and eggs L- cucumber sandwich D-Well fed PadThai (p.63) and Well Fed cucumbers (p.135)	7 B- Banana, Almond butter, bacon L-Sommer sausage, tomatoes, pickles, HB egg D-Fajita salad/quesadillas	8 B-Frittata L- Sommer sausage, coleslaw D-Pizza and lemony spinach	9 B- Green Smoothie L-Chicken Avocado Lettuce Wraps, apple D- Crockpot coconut roast, green beans	10  B- Kai Jiao L-Chx avocado, tomatoes, cucumber D- BBQ chx, sweet potato fries, coleslaw	11  B-bacon and eggs L-out/snacks D-Roasted chx w/root veggies
12 B-Asparagus and eggs L- plantain fritters D-Tomato soup and grilled cheese, cauliflower rice pilaf	13 B- banan/ almond butter smoothie L-HB Egg, coleslaw, apple D-Whole foods salad bar	14 B-maple sausage, fruit L-tuna, cuties, red pepper D-slow cooker greek chicken	15 B-kai jiao L-guacamole deviled eggs D- Meatloaf and mixed veg, lemony spinach	16 B- Green smoothie L- snap peas, carrots, cucumbers, ranch dip, tuna D- Carrot coconut soup, roasted cauliflower and broccoli	17 NM	18 NM
19 NM	20 NM	21 B-Green Smoothie L-Snap peas, tuna, cucumbers, ranch D-Crockpot Italian chx soup, salad	22 B-Banana almond butter bacon sandwich L-Salad with lunch meat D-tomato soup and grilled cheese, cauliflower pilaf	23 B-Green smootie L-chx avocado, cucumber D-MT	24 MT	25 MT
26 MT	27 B-Green smoothie L- restaurant salad w/protein D- out	28 B-kai jiao L-sommer sausage, tomatoes, pickles D-Yankee roast and mixed veg, mashed cauliflower	29 B-mango smoothie, maple sausage patties L-Plantain fritters and salad D-chx nuggets and sweet potato fries, Well Fed cucumbers (p. 135)	30 B-frittatas L-avocado, egg and spinach D-BBQ chx, coleslaw, green beans	31 B- egg muffins with sweet potato hashbrowns L-chx avocado, tomatoes, left over coleslaw D-Cream of Broccoli soup and green chx, salad

Rocking Your World

This is not my idea, but it is revolutionary. This idea comes from the Lovely Susan's hippie sister who seriously lives in a commune and possibly a yurt, but the yurt part might be extrapolation on my part. Here is the amazing idea:

There. Are you sufficiently amazed and awed?

I thought so. 

For those of you not cool enough to understand what that is, it is all my veggie scraps that I saved in the freezer for a couple weeks. There are onion skins, dried out ginger root, wilted celery stalks, potato and carrot peelings, cauliflower butts, chard trimmings, bell pepper cores....you name it. Here it is boiling in a bunch of water for awhile. I know you like super precise instructions. You're welcome. I filled the pot and boiled it til it looked like broth - is that better? 

Then I poured the cooled broth into mason jars, frozen them, put lids on them, and now I don't ever need to buy broth again! But don't forget the cooling part, otherwise you'll end up with a bunch of broken mason jars. Not that I know that from experience. Ahem. Happy brothing!!

 

Two Small Things

Thing the First:
I'm sure I've shared this before. The almost-five-year-old won't eat what I make for dinner. In fact she has even taken "tasting bites," declared it "yummy," and  promptly refused to eat anymore. She will state, "I don't like what's for dinner" before I even know what's for dinner. So imagine my shock when I turned around the other night and she had hoovered up the half portion of these corn bites before I had even sat down, and was politely asking for more. She ate two and a half. The rest of us enjoyed them too. I made them in my popover pan. They are not what one would call "healthy," but if it gets a vegetable into my child at dinner with no screaming, I'll make them every damn week.

Thing the Second:
Just an update on the quinoa burgers that we already loved. I made them last night substituted half a red pepper and a handful of spinach, both minced, for the shredded carrot. Even better than before. I am now envisioning shoving all kinds of random veg in these. I also omitted the sugar (which I used instead of Splenda) and saw no difference.

Mushroom Bourguinon

I love this recipe from Deb at Smitten Kitchen. It's been awhile since I made it, but it will make your house smell divine. Two things I want to share about this time around......

Thing #1: I love these new-to-me frozen herb cubes. They are called Dorot and I got them at Trader Joe's yesterday. I bought garlic (used in this recipe), basil and cilantro. I, of course, forgot I had them, and pulled out my garlic cloves to mince...I was dreading the mincing. I have an irrational hatred of mincing. THEN! I remembered! I had cubes! Pop! Pop! Done. Love it.

Thing #2: While we're on the frozen topic. I really, really hate that recipes usually only call for a tablespoon or so of tomato paste. Hate. What I hate more is that I regularly store the extra tomato paste in my fridge. And forget about it until it's fuzzy. But because I was using frozen herb cubes, I had a brainstorm! I could freeze the rest of the paste in tablespoony portions. And so I did:

Oh, wow. That's not pretty. Form over function, I guess. I put them on wax paper. Froze them (they've been in there for two days now, because I'm thorough. Not lazy, thorough), then put them (well, I will put them) in a freezer bag, and TA-DA! Stop the hate.

 I'm sure I'm not the  first person to do this. Some of your are probably shaking your head thinking, "Um....doesn't everyone do this already?" But I'm going to ignore you and have a celebratory glass of wine for being such a culinary-effing-genius. Yo.

Guinness. Nothin' wrong with that!

Last week I went to the Scholastic Warehouse sale at the Tabala (Tebalah? Tabawhoosie? I think it's a Mason thing?) Temple. I get a little crazy at these things. Not crazy as in buy too much. Crazy as in "By-pass anything I would normally buy and pick up only things that I'm marginally interested in or heard of once, I think. Maybe. But look! 50% off!"

So I picked up Cooking Light: Comfort Food, because who doesn't love comfort food? Even better if it's made lightly, right? Dear lord. This stuff isn't really....light. Unless you want to use a lot of fake cheese, fake eggs, and fake sugar. I made the Beef and Guinness Stew....It was **not** light. The lightest thing about it was that I used buffalo instead of beef. But day-um was it tasty.

I'm sorry. I am both too inept and too lazy to make that horizontal. I love you, but still. Turn your head.

Basically, you take the meat cubes, dredge them in flour and then sear them in a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of oil. Take it out. Put in the onion for five. Add the paste. Add the liquid, seasoning and raisins. Boil, then simmer for an hour. Uncover, boil for 50 min. Add the veg and simmer for 30 min.

Enjoy. 

Magic Chalkboard of Postiness.

Here's what we had this week:

Except you have to start at the bottom. With the roasted chicken. I love roasting chicken. Especially fancy-schmancy happy chickens from Kathy at Open Range Products in Pecatonica. Kathy is wonderful and her farm is wonderful and the meat is super yummy. She happily hosts groups and is great with kids (being a retired teacher and all). To roast the chicken I shove a lemon and some garlic up its hooha, slather a little butter on it, salt and pepper, roast at 425 for about an hour, or until your meat thermometer, that hopefully your 18 month old hasn't dropped on its face shattering the glass, points to "poultry." Cause chicken is poultry. When I'm motivated I cut up some root veggies to go under the chicken in the pan - this time I did carrots, turnips, parsnips and onions. Then I had some left-over white wine in the fridge that had been there a few weeks, so I poured that in the bottom of the pan too. YUM.

The next day I threw the carcass in a pot with a bunch of water and let it simmer for - awhile. Several hours maybe? Then I used three cups of the resulting broth for this chicken, butternut squash and quinoa stew that I got from.....Pinterest, of course. I have to admit I was skeptical. Despite being related to a woman who dates a Canadian, the title "Cookin' Canuck" does not inspire trust in me. At least not for fine cuisine. I would trust a Canadian with just about anything else. Call me racist, but "Canada" and "Yum" don't really go together for me. Anyway. I was wrong. The Canuck's stew was de-voon. I used pheasant instead of the chicken thighs because: a) it's the end of the pay period, we're broke, and it's what we had in the freezer and b) it's almost Thanksgiving - also known as "the time when we go to Dad's and he won't let us leave without a cooler of game birds because his wife won't eat them," so I figured I'd better use the game birds I had from the last cooler.

I don't know what to tell you about the quinoa burgers. Except - make them. They tasted like falafel....but more interesting. I served them with edamame and the "fry" sauce of mayo and ketchup. Even the four year old deigned to eat them. And yes, it's from Pinterest.

Tuesday I cooked for my family and for a friend's, as she is out of town with a sick father. I jumped at the chance to make pork. I lurve pork. Hubs doesn't eat it. So I made pork chops and stuffing for most of us, and subbed in a chicken breast for the bleeding heart liberal who doesn't know good meat when it hits him in the face. It was just browned chops, over Stove Top (with a few apples and mushrooms to make it interesting), smothered in mushroom soup and baked for 45 minutes. But I did serve it with this broccoli (Pinterest. Again.)....I heart this broccoli and will eat it like potato chips. I don't even get all fancy with the cheese and nuts. Just keepin' it real, yo.

And Thursday's potato bites. Also - Pinterest. Duh. Served with asparagus.

Good, basic, not healthy. The cooking times are long....I put them back in to "crisp up" planning on 30 minutes, but they were done at 15 when I opened the oven to put the cheese on and put the asparagus (tossed in olive oil) in. I was so sure the kids would love them, but no dice. There were "crunchy parts" according to the Queen. I know I should be anti-Baco-Bits. But I'm not. I love those fake little soy buggers.

So there you go! Five totally worth making dinners! And I'm out of squash, so you don't need to worry about anymore squash recipes. You're welcome.

Last week.....

So I have a new obsession. A big, huge, problem of an obsession. It's Pinterest (it's addictive, I don't encourage starting, as you won't be able to stop. But if you want a new drug, lemme know - I'll send you an invite). I love pinning things. Now there are pins that seem to indicate that people don't actually do the things that they pin. And I can see how that would happen. It would be so easy to pin and pin and pin and pin.....and then it's time to go to bed. But I got inspired and last week I did this:

I am unreasonably excited about my new backsplash. I used three coats of magnetic paint and two coats of chalkboard paint. Now my weekly menu is right there, instead of on several post-its which may or may not be in one or three locations around the kitchen. Or maybe my purse. And so when it's 4:00 on Tuesdayand I can't remember what I was going to cook....it's right there!!!! White Chili!! I know it's silly, but it really helps and has cut back on my urge to go to Subway. 

I also found some yummy things on Pinterest. Twice Baked Squash from good ol' Marth. Ah. Mazing. I made it as-is, but I think you could switch out the sour cream with some yogurt if you felt like it. And because it's squash time at the Farmer's Market, or rather it was last week....I was going to try this lasagna I found on Pinterest. And now I can't remember why I didn't. It still looks delish. But instead I made a Butternut Squash Lasagna that my Beautiful Roommate Ness (ok, she hasn't been my roommate for....um, wow. Eleven years. Damn. I'm old.....)sent me awhile ago. It was scrumptious. Not that the kids ate it. But still. And then, more Pinterest: chili mac and cheese. The four year old almost died with loving this. I've never seen her eat so much meat. Hubs and I were less enthused, but the next day he put some chili sauce in it and it was actually much better. 

Enjoy!

Tomatoes and Corn

I started writing this post pretending that what we had for dinner was really good. I'm not sure why I did that. It should have been yummy. But it was icky. Don't run away!!! It should have been yummy. So try it anyway.

Here is the fascinating story of how I decided to make Buttermilk and Corn Popovers, and tomatoes and cheese for dinner:

I love, love, LOVE August at the Farmers Market. Tomatoes and corn. Two years ago I made this pie from Smitten Kitchen. It was friggin' amazing, even though I used a frozen crust which was soggy. In my typical fashion, for some ridiculous reason I decided to make this one from Epicurious despite the proven genius of the SK recipe. Belatedly, I realized it had no corn. So I thought I'd do this one. But, um, I didn't leave enough time for the crust and I wanted to use the buttermilk I'd purchased. With that in mind, I went back to Smitten Kitchen and searched "tomato and corn pie." The way those crazy little interwebs spiders work, they brought back this recipe for Corn, Buttermilk and Chive Popovers....which has nothing to do with tomatoes. But it got me salivating.

As luck would have it I got some yummy, yummy smoked brick cheese from a new-to-me dairy in northern IL that would go great on the fresh tomatoes. I tasted it at the market, asked for a small package, toted it home….and it’s not smoked brick. It’s smoked swiss. Which didn’t taste good with the fresh tomatoes.

And I’m coming to the realization that I can’t bake. I suck at baking. My popovers didn’t pop:

They are sad. Very, very sad. They’re kind of muffiny. Eh.

But this is all my fault. So I still think you should make the popovers. And I still would like some fresh tomatoes with brick cheese. Just sayin’. 

Summer Time

I didn't want it to be hot again. I really didn't. I wanted it to be fall. The child started school. There are a few leaves on the ground even. So why the hell is it 90 degrees? Answer me, Al Gore, WHY???????

However, since it's hot I found this Ceviche Verde. You're welcome.

You don't have to turn on the oven in the original recipe. But if you Morganize (yeah, you can make a lot of "morga...." combos. Guess which immature one they called me in high school, despite being the anti-slut)  it, then you quickly boil some shrimp instead of using the fish, because then you can use the plain shrimp to pacify the picky 4 year-old.

And if you further Morganize it, you add an extra avocado, because you love avocado. And then you eat it with Garden of Eatin' Multi-Grain Everything Tortilla Chips. And drink it with See No Pinot boxed Pinot Gris. And then your family sings your praises, treats you to a spa day, and cleans the bathrooms for you. Or not....more likely they just say, "Yum," which sometimes is just as good.

No. That's a lie. It's nice, but it's not as good as all that other stuff.

Graduation Party Beans

My baby's graduating!!! Sad face. Well....she's not really my baby. Technically she belongs to the neighbors. And she graduated a while ago. But there's a party! And she chose a theme. This hurts me to say....I am trying to be very culturally aware when I say this. To recognize that I am a child of the 80's and she's a child of the 00's. But I'm not sure I can forgive her sweet little 18 year-old heart. She chose......Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.   Gah. I can barely type it. Sigh. I guess there's no accounting for taste. But anyway, the sacrilegious theme did allow me to make Red Beans and Rice to go with the Cuban pulled pork her actual parents made.

Overall, it was a hit - unless they were all just being nice to me! I thought it was good, not great. But everyone else seems to disagree, and who am I to go against the crowd? I skipped the bacon to make it veggie, the flavor of the bacon really would have made the dish I think. I upped the beans by a quarter and I still think it could have been more beany. The smoked paprika is key, and I might even go as far as to double it next time.

I made this for about 40ish people....to do that I sauteed the veggies in Crisco in my dutch oven, then added the spices and let it meld for a few minutes before adding a can of tomatoes and chopped chilis instead of tomato paste. Then I emptied half the veggie/spice mix into a pan, added all the beans, and popped it in the oven to heat through. Meanwhile I added the rice to the dutch oven, stirred to coat and added twice the water - I'm not sure why they have so little water in the recipe, but I've learned the hard way that it doesn't matter what the recipe says, you must use double the measure of rice. So because I used six cups of rice, I used twelve cups of water and it was perfect.  When the rice was cooked, I mixed it all together, took it to the neighbors, and drank mojitos. Many mojitos.

Michigan

We spent a week in Michigan with my extended family. Well, it wasn't really Michigan -- but Indiana is waaaay less glamorous sounding. Seriously. You might not realize this if you're not from the Midwest. But trust me. It's true. And we did go to Michigan. For ice cream. Twice. But on this trip I realized why the cooking gig didn't work out for the Cousin and me (it just kind of fizzled...no harm, no foul). But here is the reason, crystallized in one picture:

Aren't they beautiful?????? They are like little fairy berries. They make me want to go to Fairyland, eat some of these berries, and stay for an hour, but when I come back the world has been going on for 20 years. I should have used something for perspective, but that's a pint. So they're tiny! and sweet-looking! and dainty! and pressssshus!

So Cousin and I were at the Michigan Produce Mart in some town that starts with an "S" (I'm not being coy, I really don't remember where we were), when I saw these translucent, enticing little things. They were white currants. I asked, "Hey, have you ever had white currants? Let's get some and try them!" To which Cousin replied, "But what are they? What are you going to do with them? What's your plan?" I, of course, did not actually have a plan, and the berries are totally tart. And when I Epicurious-ed them (totally a verb, shush) at Cousin's prompting, there wasn't really anything. So they got, tossed - she was right. But still. I think that's what happened to my short-lived cooking for fun and  profit career. I'm a little hit and miss in my cooking, a little too distractable by the romantic stories I tell myself about fairy berries.

Anyway, on a related note: after a week of meals for 20 (everyone took a night; I made grilled glazed salmon , the cucumber-avocado soup, and cold green beans with feta and pecans), we were in the mood for something with a little more .... zing. So the menu this week started last night with Rachel Ray's Curry in a Hurry (chicken and sweet potatoes sauteed in jarred curry paste; add other vegetables - like onion and peppers; add 1 tbsp flour to thicken; add a couple cups of chx broth, a cup of cream, and 1/4 of jarred mango chutney), stuffed peppers tonight, buffalo taco salad tomorrow, and then shrimp fried rice.