HOLY GUACAMOLE!!!!

• 5 avocados (lightly mashed)
• 1 jalapeno (minced with seeds)
• 1/2 red onion (diced)
• 3 small tomatoes (or 1 big one)
• cilantro (somewhere between a handful and a bunch)
• juice of one lime
• salt to taste

Lightly mash the avocados and then add the remaining ingredients.  Gently mix.

Chips are not Whole30, so try dipping cauliflower slices.  Or just use your hand.  Don't eat you hand, though.

Pudding (from Avocado)!

The kids like it too.  Nuf said...

Dark Chocolate Pudding

Yield: Serves 4-6

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 3 hour Chill Time

Total Time: 3 hours 10 minutes

Deep dark chocolate pudding that is made with a secret ingredient...avocados!

ingredients:

1 cup unsweetened almond milk
2 ripe avocados, peeled and pitted
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract (I didn't add this)
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch of sea salt
Raspberries, for garnish

directions:

1. Put the almond milk, avocados, cocoa, maple syrup, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and salt into your blender and puree on high for 30 to 60 seconds, until smooth and creamy. You may need to stop and scrape down the sides with a spatula.

2. Transfer the pudding to glasses, ramekins, or jars and chill in the fridge for at least 3 hours.

3. To serve, top each pudding with fresh raspberries.

Note-the pudding works best with ripe avocados that don't have any brown discolorations. The pudding is best the day it's made, as the avocados will oxidize and the flavors will change over time.

Recipe reprinted with permission from The Blender Girl: Super-Easy, Super-Healthy Meals, Snacks, Desserts, and Drinks--100 Gluten-Free, Vegan Recipes! by Tess Masters, copyright © 2014. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House, Inc.

Homemade Bars

Continuing on the path of less-inconvenient foods (eating well takes more time and planning than eating junk), I decided to make some bars.  My inspiration came from cragmama's homemade Lara Bar post.  I (and my food processor) learned the hard way that dates have seeds - big, unchewable, un--processable seeds.   But once I figured out, I was able to make my first 2 batches, and the initial taste testers are all giving thumbs up.

• 1.5 cups cashews
• 1.5 cuts dates (with seeds removed!)
• handful of dried black cherries
• pinch of salt

Process then nuts a bit and then start adding dates.  This gives you the base for you bars.  Before you food processor catches on fire, add salt and cherries.  Dump the resulting stuff into a loaf plan lined with saran wrap and chill.  They are as 'bar like' as I would like yet, but I will play with the ratios and processing time to fix that in the future.

A Simple One

Ingredients

• 6-hole muffin pan
• 6 eggs
• sautéed veggies of your choice (onions, garlic, mushrooms used here)
• salsa or pico de galo

With 5 minutes of prep and 15 minutes of cooking (in a toaster oven) this is one of my favorite meals.  I eat 2 of them and reheat the others later (for breakfast or lunch).

Saute the veggies
Oil the muffin tin with avocado oil
scramble the eggs and divide evenly among into the muffin tin
add the veggies when done
bake on 350F for 15 minutes in the toaster oven

Packing Lunch

Work lunches are non-trivial with Whole30, even if you are surrounded by restaurants.  Assuming you don't mind asking the waiter for ingredients lists (like I do), you are likely to find few dishes that are Whole30.  On a trip to Raleigh NC, the best I could do at a well regarded establishment was pulled pork on a plate with 2 sides of green beans.  The meat tasted like it had brown sugar in it and the beans were cooked in butter. On another occasion (at work), a lunch spread was provided:

• pizza (dairy)
• sandwiches (grains)
• chips (grains)
• 'nutrition' bars (sugar)
• salad (with 2 kinds of cheese and only creamy dressings)
• brownies (sugar, dairy, grains)
• donuts (duh)

The only Whole30 item on the table was a container of chopped onion for the sandwiches.  I made due with a bag of almonds I brought and picked some plane veggies from the salad.

Fortunately, we've been cooking a variety of tasty meals at home, so when I'm in the office, I can take  tasty lunches like this:

• a lime to spruce up my glass of water
• strawberries
• leftover spinach and egg frittata
• dates and dried peaches
• pumpkin soup
• a small glass of smoothy

Smells like heaven

Sweet Potato Chews

Made our second batch.  Smells so good in the house, it should be wrong to have these...  sadly they'll be gone by tonight.  I used just over 3 lbs of sweet potatoes to make 2 full trays.

I'm eating a ton!

First not enjoyable meal was a slow cooker cheater pork stew in the crockpot for Wednesday night.  I liked it better as leftovers and did realize today (Friday) that I forgot the balsamic vinegar in the recipe.  So I poured balsamic over it today and it was much better.  I'm not a fan of cooked cabbage however so that probably has a lot to do with how I feel about it.  The boys and Mike and really liked the pork.

I woke up Weds morning with a headache, possibly from dehydration.  I don't think I drank enough water yesterday between my cross-training and MTB ride.

I realized I've also been craving simpler foods.  Thursday night I went back to an old standby, steak and potatoes (see pic above).  This is a typical dinner for us.  And Whole30 before we even started this whole thing.

So meals...

Day11-Weds

Breakfast-fritatta?, 2 oranges

snack before riding-almonds, dried cherries

Lunch-leftover butternut squash lasagna, salad

Dinner-sweet potato, hardboiled egg

Day12-Thurs

Breakfast-3 scrambled eggs, sweet potato, smoothie

Lunch-chipotle

Dinner-steak, oven roasted herbed, garlic potatoes, large salad, dried cherries (I was sooooo hungry)

After dinner eats-cauliflower pilaf (because Mike made it)

Day13-Fri

Breakfast-mushroom, garlic, onion egg cups, orange, bowl of cauliflower pilaf

Snack (before riding lesson)-smoothie with kale and spinach, avocado

Lunch-pork and cauliflower pilaf

Dinner-more steak, mushrooms sauteed in ghee, garlic, thyme with coconut aminos and a spritz of balsamic at the end, and salad (the usual)

more salt!

Steak, potato, mushrooms and SALT.  I had some dizziness on the 10th night; the whole30 wisdom on the inter webs points at 'carb flu' or lack of carbs and electrolytes.  So the potato got a couple extra spindles of salt tonight.

Squash and crockpots

Snow days have me yearning for comfort food (not to mention hot chocolate or a soy chai latte).  The Rogan Josh somewhat falls into that category, a sensory delight, hot and delicious-but the lamb left both Mike and I a little queasy and foggy.  We are wondering if it was the fat content in the lamb.  I found some crockpot recipes for this week knowing I would be tired of cooking and that I had busy days (I cooked early last week to get through those days).  I needed marinara sauce for one so I made that Monday to put on spaghetti squash for us/noodles for the boys.  Great recipe!  I did use proscuitto (still getting through that big pack I bought at BJ's) instead of saltpork and left it in the marinara.  Leave it out for vegetarians.

The butternut squash lasagna was heavenly!  My definition of a comfort food.  I couldn't find Whole30 hot Italian sausage so I used 90% lean ground beef, red pepper flakes and fennel to simulate it.  And I added about 5 cloves of garlic to the tomato sauce in the blender.  I'm a garlic freak, what can I say?

Day8-Monday
Bfast-fritatta/onion, mushroom,garlic with guac + 1 strawberry
Lunch-leftover rogan josh
Dinner-marinara over spaghetti squash, mesclun salad with tomatoes and cucumbers and olive oil/ raspberry balsamic, mustard vinaigrette

Day9-Tuesday
Bfast-fritatta crammed with onions, mushrooms, garlic and tons of spinach, 3 strawberries
Hardboiled egg after MTB
Lunch-chipotle
Dinner-Butternut squash lasagna casserole, chicken "wings" (see below), and mesclun salad. A small handful of dried cherries for dessert

Kaveh made these awesome chicken wings with wing drummettes and legs at Deep Creek.  I throw in thighs too to feed hungry boys (and meateaters like me).  This time I just used the legs and thighs.

Chicken "Wings"
(preheat oven to 375, I did 400 last time and it worked well)

legs and thighs, with skin removed (about 3 lbs)
6 cloves garlic, minced
avocado or olive oil
red pepper flakes
salt/pepper

sauce

8 oz Frank's Red Hot sauce
2+ TBSP ghee
2 TBSP apple cider vinegar

Put wing in large bowl.  Toss with oil, garlic, a couple of dashes of red pepper flakes and salt and pepper, seasoned to your liking.  Put in 13x9 pan or cookie sheet covered by foil (for easy clean-up) and place in oven for 25 mins.
Mix sauce by melting ghee in large pyrex or the like in microwave.  Add hot sauce and vinegar and whisk together.  Preheat grill to med/med-high heat, depending on how closely you will watch it.
Take chicken out of the oven, and completely douse in sauce.  Place on grill and baste with leftover sauce, making sure to do this only 2x as you need to thoroughly cook the sauce if the chicken was in it.
I typically leave the chicken on the grill for 2 mins per side and do each side 3 times.

YUM!

We had Josh Brogen for dinner

For the main dish, we made Paleo Rogan Josh.  It smelled amazing while cooking, so I decided to add a side of faux rice pilaf.  

Day 6 Whole30

Day6-Saturday

Mike gave me a break and made breakfast this morning, as I've been cooking all week (and chopping, and shopping, and reading-how does a person with a full-time job outside the home do this??).  So, without further ado...

Breakfast-fritatta with mushrooms, onions, garlic and proscuitto topped with homemade guac (avacado, onions, tomatoes, jalopenos, and lime), banana
Lunch-raw pad thai (I made a ton knowing we'd all be tired of thinking about what to eat today)
Snack-sweet potato with ghee and cinnamon, a few almonds and 2 dried cherries
Dinner-Fuddruckers elk burger, just the patty, with avocado, sandwiched in lettuce leaves, tomato and pico de gallo.

We read what Fuddrucker's seasons their burgers with and we believe it may have had a little brown sugar in the seasoning.  We both are feeling foggy for lack of a better word with a slight headache, but boy did the burger taste good.

Earlier today, I was noticing how clear-headed I felt and it's been easier for me to remember things, like passwords that I normally forget. And my energy levels are very good.  Interesting...

Whole30 for the record, first blog attempt, yada yada

We started Whole30 on Monday Jan 19 at noon.  For now, this a record of the meals we've eaten and hopefully a link to some recipes, for posterity, or maybe to help someone else. The first post is going to be a spew as it's been 5 days. 1/6 done!!

Day1-Monday
Lunch-Chipotle-for Mike and I, this will always be a salad, carnitas, all 3 salsas and we split the guacamole.
Dinner-chili with ground beef and veggies for us.  Casey can have beans, no meat in hers.  Lots of chili.

Day2-Tuesday
Breakfast-Frittata with onion, garlic, spinach and broccoli.
Lunch-out to lunch at Great Sage, roast potatoes with 2 sauces, buffalo broccoli salad with lime dill vinagrette, shared a smoothie with Casey-banana, peach, mango and spirulina.
Dinner-roast chicken/an orange (so I didn't get too full before going back to class then I bonked at cycling class as I didn't have enough fuel after cross-training)
After class snack-microwaved sweet potato with ghee and cinnamon and something else, lots of water

Day3-Wednesday
Breakfast-Proscuitto cups, strawberries, banana
Lunch-Potato soup, roast chicken  ( I basically use this recipe, use leeks instead of onions and and a whole30 approved oil, don't use escarole, use whole30 veggie broth or chicken broth and add chopped green chilis as the pototoes are cooking, can also add carrots)
Dinner-More potato soup, chicken, fruit, salad

Day4-Thursday
Breakfast-Frittata with onion, mushroom, garlic, spinach and broccoli topped with salsa.  orange, strawberries
Lunch-potato soup with crispy proscuitto
Dinner-Raw Pad Thai, modified dressing for whole30 (use almond butter and coconut aminos instead of soy sauce and don't put in maple syrup) with chicken (cubed, sauteed in coconut oil, salt and pepper, ginger and garlic)

Day5-Friday
Breakfast-Scrambled eggs with mushroom, onion and proscuitto, banana
Snack-small potato soup, almonds
Lunch-sweet potato mash with ghee and cinnamon, orange
Dinner-Raw Pad Thai (so yummy and I need more veggies), oven cooked chicken wings, drums, thighs

After dinner snack- another bowl of pad thai veggies with dressing

Snacks have been small amounts of dried fruit, a handful of almonds, an apple here and there, oranges and strawberries.  And I made sweet potato chews, roasted then sliced and roasted again sweet potatos coconut oil and cinnamon.  YUM!


Lots of water, and 2 cups of black coffee every day.  I love my coffee.  Oh, and when I say eggs in the morning, it's always 2 or 3 for one of us.

I had a headache Tuesday morning from overdoing it on the weekend, too much wine and sugar, probably knowing we were going into this.  But I have felt mostly good ever since, except for the lack of energy Tuesday when I sorely miscalculated the fuel needed for my 2 workouts.

We feel like we've been eating more decadently than ever, the fat makes up for the usual fillers.  Bread, pasta, beans, chickpeas, cheese etc. are replaced with avacados, proscuitto, eggs (with yolks), ghee and sweet potatoes.  What's not to like?

We've seemed to avoid the normal timeline of headaches and wanting to kill all the things.  We think it's because we eat fairly healthy normally, we don't rely on grains and sugars.  But I've also had lots of energy to cook and shop this week. Talk to me in a week or 2.  Speaking of shopping, this is really hard on the budget.  Very expensive to buy organic foods and the oils needed to do this.  Not for the budget-conscious in our opinion, but most likely very worth it for 30 days.  TBD.

the boring room

My other blog, 'the boring room'