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.