Whole30 Day one: GO!

Well, I think it is safe to say I made it. I feel pretty good, had plenty of energy, and I wasn't even very hungry!

Today's meals:

Meal 1: 2 muffin sized quiches with prosciutto, spinach, mushrooms, egg, olives and cherry tomatoes

morning snack: banana ( I know it says not to eat fruit alone, but, well, I wasn't hungry for more.)

Meal 2: salad with two different lettuces, half an avocado, mushrooms, lemon juice 2 hardboiled eggs with a little lemon juice squeezed on top, a few strawberries.

Meal 3: This is where it got tricky. I ended up having to work until after 7, and my co workers (and I) were very hungry. So we ordered Jimmy Johns. Here's what I got. A vegetarian unwhich (lettuce wrap) with: avocado spread, tomato, cucumber, onion and bean sprouts. Also a pickle. I wanted meat for protein pretty badly, but I've already learned that deli meats come with a LOT of forbidden additives- everything from sugar to carageenan to MSG to who knows what else. So I opted for no meat. Although it was a bit like (another) salad, it was tasty. But it wasn't super filling. And so...

Meal 4: Since I didn't cook "dinner" tonight (my primary source of lunches because I don't halve recipes) I needed something to take for tomorrow- and after two salads today I was ready to skip on that tomorrow. So I baked a large chicken breast and cut up 3-4 sunchokes to roast. I ate about half of that this evening after my walk with Penelope (my furbaby) and the two sets of bodyweight exercises.

Honestly, I kind of forgot a few times that I had started today. I didn't crave anything, or feel weird, or have digestive issues. I'm pretty achy today, but it is supposed to rain tomorrow, so that's not surprising. All in all, I had a nice (if very busy) day at work, and I felt like my body was fueled and up for it. Success!!

Whole30: Get set...

Tomorrow's the day!!

I've got my food packed up, I've had all my favorites ;), dinner is ready to throw together tomorrow after my afternoon walk and strength training regimen, water bottle packed. Everything is all ready to go tomorrow.

Emotionally? I'm scared. On the one hand, its only 30 days. Like, really. I can do ANYTHING for 30 days. I'm not a picky eater, I like to cook, and ask anyone- I'm super stubborn. On the other hand, so many people I've talked to are on the "oh my gosh, I could never!" or "wow, I'm staying away from you this month!" or "That sounds awfully difficult" side of the fence. And tonight, those voices are kind of winning.

But I know I can do this. I know that I have the ability to get through this. It's just food. I mean really. It. Is. Just. Food.

So I think I'm ready! I'm prepped for tomorrow and I'm ready to face the new me head on tomorrow.


OH! By the way, I'm not allowed to weigh myself or take measurements during this. So I'm planning on weighing myself in the morning, but it takes me a while to turn into a human, so if I forget- I weighed myself on Sunday (3/28) and came in at 198. I was very pleased with that, as a year ago this time I was at 245. So that's fabulous, almost 50 pounds in the last year. I'll be sure to check myself at the end of my Whole30 and let you know.

Ok, it's super late and tomorrow is already a long day and it's late. I'll check in tomorrow night and let you know how my first day was!

Sweet dreams!

Whole30: On your Mark...

Well, hello there!

As is often the way of things, I got distracted, life got busy, I have a million excuses, but really, I just let this lapse. Oh well.

I'm gearing up for a Whole30, and I think it will be very helpful to be able to journey the experience. That's all I'm promising. A record and journal as I undertake this.


What's the Whole30?
The Whole30 is a month long nutritional reset program designed to change how a person views food. For thirty days, participants eat absolutely no added sugars, no alcohol, no dairy of any kind, no grains of any kind (including quinoa!), and no soy.

I am interested in trying this for many reasons:

• to test my follow through on things I say I will do
• to alter the addictive nature of my relationship with food
• to change my taste buds
• to help with body composition change & weight loss
• to see how much the things I eat affect my energy, skin, and other slight physical issues

If you have questions about the program, please visit the website .

I'm starting my Whole30 on April 1. However, considering that that's a Wednesday, I wanted to do a lot of the food prep today. And now that I've got the shopping and most of the prepping done, I thought I'd grab a minute and talk about the things I'm already learning. 

Shopping

I've been a big meal planner and grocery shopper for most of my adult life. I like to have a plan and when you're as busy as I am, not having to think about dinner is great. I typically plan dinner meals and then have a few standards for breakfasts. I tend to alternate between leftovers and salads for lunches. 

So I very carefully planned my week. Here's what I've got:

Monday: chicken and veggie soup

Tuesday: dinner meeting for work, so out.

Wednesday: barbecue pork chops with sunchokes and fingerling potatoes

Thursday: chicken breast with veggies 

Friday: Pork "sliders" with veggies

Breakfasts: muffin cup veggie quiche with prosciutto "crust"

Alright, I thought. Here we go. 

I bought "The Frugal Paleo Cookbook" a couple of nights ago and so far I'm very excited. Not all of the recipes are Whole30 compliant, but many are and the ones that aren't will keep for a month! You can find it here. I got the recipe for the barbecue chops and the ground pork sliders from there. I figured I could make up a tasty soup, and a baked chicken breast and veggies is pretty easy but 

filling. I also get a CSA box every Tuesday, which gives me some freedoms about my choices of vegetables. 

I made a shopping list. It read:

1 lb. ground pork

red onion

prosciutto

ground mustard

chili powder

paprika

ghee

chicken broth

olives

eggs

apple cider vinegar

mushrooms

muffin liners

and a few other non-food items. 

All told this week, I probably spent about $90 on food. Ouch. Read on to find out where that went.

I hit the lottery right off the bat- organic grass fed ground pork was on sale for only $2.50 a pound! So I went a little hog wild (sorry, couldn't resist!) and bought six pounds to freeze. So that was an extra $12.50 right there.

But my local kroger doesn't carry prosciutto. Did you know that almost all deli meats have added sugar? Nope, me either. So there I was, holding up the line examining ingredients when I finally find it! Applewood naturals turkey: Turkey, salt and carageenan from seaweed! YES! $5 for a package. OUCH. I wince and buy it. When I got home, however, I found out that carageenan is on the no-no list. DAMN IT.  So I popped it in the freezer and added that to my "specialty store" purchases. Sure enough, Trader Joe's has prosciutto, ingredients: ham and salt. SCORE. I bought two packages, so I could make plenty of breakfasts. 

Next on the problem list is ghee. Ghee, or clarified butter, is pure butter fats. Basically, you warm up butter, strain out the last of the milk fats and proteins and when it cools, you get ghee! Since I'm mildly allergic to coconut, Ghee and olive oil are basically my only choices for cooking fats. Surprise, surprise, no ghee to be found at Kroger. I tracked it down at Trader Joe's too, 3.99 for 8 oz. Good thing I don't plan on using it much, as I like olive oil better for almost everything. 

Chicken broth turned out to be my real enemy here. There were NO brands of chicken broth that don't have added sugar, and most have added soy as well. I sighed and gave up, thinking I would look at the health food store. Then, I forgot to look at Trader Joe's and found some in the organics section at a second Kroger store. Riddle me this though: The brand had two different sizes of chicken broth. The small size? No sugar, no soy. The larger size? Added cane syrup. WHAT?! I couldn't find any other differences! I sighed, bought two of the more expensive small packages and bought them. When I got home, however, I must have forgotten the bag, because I do not have my broth. At this point, I'm about ready to give up on my soup, except I paid for the broth, and true to form, it wasn't cheap. So I guess tomorrow after work I'll drive BACK to the specialty Kroger and ask them about it... I wonder if I kept that receipt. The soup itself should be fairly easy to make, and quick, so it shouldn't through me off track. Just a bummer. 

Everything else was pretty straightforward- as long as I read the ingredients. And I mean, on EVERYTHING. Even the organic stuff! Everything but produce had to get checked and double checked for non compliant ingredients. 

I don't think I'll be doing my shopping on Saturday afternoons anymore. The stores were PSYCHO, and it was really difficult to ask an employee where something might be, or to stop and check ingredients without being totally in someone's way. Early mornings it is.

So, this morning, I got up and went to my kitchen. I started, ironically, with some scones. I had some scone mix on hand, and I needed to use it up, so I made wild blueberry scones to take to work tomorrow morning- where I can be sure I won't have them lying around in my house on Wedneseday!

As the scones were baking, I mixed up the barbecue seasoning for my pork chops and put it in a tiny ziplock container for later use. Then, I put some eggs (my new favorite snack!) on to hardboil. While the water was warming up, I tore up the last of my lettuce and most of my spinach for a salad at work tomorrow. Now that I have some mushrooms, I'll add those, two hardboiled eggs, and an avocado to round out the lettuce. Next I started some cucumber chips. I sliced two cucumbers very thin. Then I tossed them liberally in apple cider vinegar and salt before laying them out on cookie sheets and setting them to bake for 90 minutes. They're baking as I type this, but they smell good! I'm not a huge fan of cucumber, so I'm hoping this will help me to eat them, as I got them in my CSA box last week.

Then I went to start the chicken soup. Now that I've discovered the missing broth, I'll package that up and let the chicken keep defrosting over night before whipping up a quick soup when I get home tomorrow night. The last thing on my to-do list for today is the mini quiches. All I have to do there is chop up some cherry tomatoes, spinach, kale, onion, mushrooms and a few of my olives very small, and mix them all together. In a separate bowl, whisk up 12 eggs. Line muffin pan with liners. lay one slice prosciutto in the bottom of each muffin cup, mix veggies and eggs together. Pour the eggs and veggies into each muffin cup and let them bake for about 20-25 minutes. Pull them out, let them cool, package them up and pop them in the fridge- great, protein packed breakfasts! I'm also going to parse out some olives, eggs, and veggies for snacks in case I need them during the day!

Whew! Alright, y'all. I'm off to walk my dog before I finish making a mess in my kitchen so I can do the dishes and get myself off to bed at a reasonable hour. 

Eat well!

Charis

headstrong and stubborn

Today I'm broaching a rather tricky subject, but I'm thinking about it, and well, here we are.

To quickly catch you up with my life:

• I have an incredibly wonderful relationship with a man I'll call J. We've been together for about 5 months or so, and I swear I've never felt more right about things. 
• So right, in fact, that I'm practically living with him. (That's a whole other blog post)
• So right, in fact, that without even realizing what had happened, I've slipped into the role of home-maker. I'm buying groceries, cleaning the house, even occasionally cooking meals.
• Yes, I'm still working- in fact, in addition to my day job, I'm working on two shows this Spring, one of which is for the professional theatre in town, so that's super exciting.

Ok, that about covers it. But here's my issue. Today, as I was vacuuming the carpets in the house, I realized that I was quickly becoming overwhelmed by the amount of work there is to be done on the house. It's been neglected for far too long, and for my own piece of mind, whether he notices or not, I like to have things cleaned. A quick google search later, and I had what I was looking for: a quick, easy to do list for weekly cleaning. It was on a lovely blog, time-warp-wife.blogspot.com. Clearly, she has her life pretty together. She's been married for 24 years, has four kids, and if her cleaning schedule is any judge, lives a very comfortable, organized, clean life.

I am none of those things. Not a single one. But, what struck me the most was that this is yet another woman blogging who's blog is about being a Christian wife and mother. Now, I am a Christian. That's the way I was raised, and those are my beliefs. But the idea that women were intended to "serve" their husbands, and not to be their own women, or to hold her own place in the world makes me crazy. ABSOLUTELY CRAZY. I've said since I was a child that if I ever choose to put myself in a relationship with a man- and I have- that I will not settle for anything less than being a full partner in that relationship.

I will not be the woman that has no say in decision making.
I will not be the woman that takes her role in life from someone else, even her romantic partner.
I will not be the woman that says "yes, dear" even when her heart leads her somewhere else.
I will not be the woman that makes her man a sandwich.
I will not be the woman "pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen".

I have friends that want nothing more than to be stay at home wives and mothers, and I applaud them for that.

But I can't do it. I won't, and I resent the implication, both from friends and bloggers, that I am less of a woman because of it.  I'm working three jobs, plus commissions from my website, AND I'm managing to keep track of the house and groceries. I have earned my place in our relationship, and I won't give that up for anything. We are partners, taking life on one day at a time, together. He keeps the lights, heat, and internet on, and I keep the dust to a minimum and milk in the fridge. When it gets warm, I might even plant some flowers.

Because I am a woman, no matter what.

goals for a new year

Good Lord, did life get busy!

The year ended well in most ways. I'm very happy, and oh so busy with lots of sewing projects and ideas.

In the New Year, I have hopes to expand that into a more profitable enterprise, as well as start to market myself in this area as a costumer and a stage manager, and, hopefully, an actress.


The area I'm slacking in the most right now is my physical fitness habits. After a year of doing so well, I have really let it slip in the last two months. I am maintaining my weight, but I do not feel as good and my muscle tone is not as good.

I have some serious goals for 2013 about THAT as well, but for now, I just need to get back on track with exercising and eating well. That's my biggest goal.

So, without further ado, I present:

Goals for 2013:

• post to blog 1x weekly, minimum
• create and maintain an etsy store to sell my bags and other creations
• build a professional portfolio enabling theatres to hire me
• continue to develop and enjoy my personal relationships
• get back to exercising 5-6x/week on average, for at least 30 minutes
• get eating habits under control again- do whatever it takes. 
• read books- one per month at least
• develop my building skills through classes, tutorials and practice

There might be more, and I hope to develop them further in the coming weeks. We'll see.

I hope you all had wonderful, healthy happy New Years! Here's to 2013!

Fantasy Food Friday: Capitol's Pumpkin Soup

Hello again!

Today's entrant in Fantasy Food Fridays is from the most recent addition to young adult cult favorites: The Hunger Games. I read them over my Christmas break this past year, and I have to say, I couldn't put them down. Katniss is a heroine worth obsessing over and her story is heart-wrenching-ly good.

Katniss' first adventure is to the Capitol with her fellow tribute, Peeta Mellark. The foods Katniss and Peeta encounter during the weeks before the Games begin are amazing to them: rich, delicious and bizarre.

But one of the things they try is Pumpkin Soup.

So, I decided that, it now being primo pumpkin season, we should try pumpkin soup.

But first, a quick story:

remember a couple weeks ago when we tried Ginger Beer? Well. I was making Pumpkin Soup for dinner for myself and the Mom last night. Dinner was ready, and I was looking in the fridge for a beverage. In the bottom of the door, there was a bottle of Ginger Beer... I pick up the liter (or more) size bottle, place it on the counter, and go to unscrew the cap.... BOOM!

The whole bottle exploded, a ginger beer geyser in the kitchen. It was dripping down the back of my neck! There were pieces of fresh ginger ON THE CEILING. I'll try to add in a picture of me covered in it later, but anyway, be careful with your ginger beer... and that's why the pictures for this week are... lacking. Apologies.

Anyhow, without any further ado,

Capitol's Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients:

• 2-3 cups chicken stock
• one small can pumpkin
• 3-4 tablespoons chopped onion
• one clove fresh garlic, minced
• two sprigs fresh Thyme, chopped
• 2-3 teaspoons of Salt
• 4 tablespoons heavy cream

step one: heat the stock, pumpkin, onion, garlic, thyme and salt in a medium saucepan. Bring the liquid to a boil and then simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes.



Step two: Remove from heat, and put through the food processor in about 1 to 1.5 cup batches. It doesn't take long, but you do need to make sure the lumps (especially from the onions) are smoothed out.

Step three: return to heat, bring it back to a boil and let simmer another twenty minutes.

Step four: remove from heat, stir in the cream, garnish with fresh parsley if desired.

put in bowls and serve- we had it with a great crusty bread- it was delicious! Enjoy!!

Fantasy Food Friday: Wheel of Time Apple Cider Pie

Hello all!

Welcome to another episode of Fantasy Food Fridays! This week, we're taking on an Emond's Field favorite, Apple Cider Pie.

A favorite of the Fall season, Apple Cider Pie can often be found in Mother Al'Vere's kitchen at their family Inn.

Emond's Field, a small village in an area known as the Two Rivers, is very rural- at the beginning of the series, there are no tile roofs at all. Even in the later parts of the series, the Two Rivers retains it's homey, rural appeal.

So this week, Apple Cider Pie:

This recipe is a little more complicated, but is also easy to simplify- my first recommendation is a simpler pie crust- or buy one. (I know, gasp) But this one has a lot of steps. ANYWAY, here we go.

Ingredients:

In the Crust:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 stick unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch dice and chilled
• 3 tablespoons cold milk
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Combine flour, cornstarch, sugar and salt. Add the butter and work by hand into a coarse texture. Add milk and vinegar and mix until dough just forms.  Pat the dough into a disk, wrap it in plastic and stick it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

Turn the dough out onto a well floured surface and roll it into an 11 inch round. Put it in a 9 inch pie plate. Trim and make pretty and stick it back in the fridge for about 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to about 425 degrees. Get our dough back out and put a piece of parchment paper over it. Fill the pie plate with beans or pie weights and start par-baking it- about 15 minutes or until just set.

Remove the crust from oven and remove the beans or weights. Cover the edges of the pie with foil and put it BACK in the oven ( I told you it was complicated!) Bake 15 minutes or until set but not browned. Remove, leave the foil on, let cool. Press the center to keep it from rising.

The Filling:

• apple cider
• sugar
• sour cream
• salt
• eggs

in a saucepan, boil the cider to reduce it by about three quarters. stir in the sugar when cool, and then add the sour cream, salt and eggs. Pour the custard into the pie shell (don't remove the foil). Bake for 35-40 minutes at 350 degrees, until the outside is set and the inside jiggles. Let cool completely.

The Topping:

• heavy cream
• sugar 
• cinnamon

Whisk the ingredients together until mildly stiff peaks form. Spread the cream over the pie, cut and then serve!

DELICIOUS! A great addition  to a holiday table. The apple flavor is light, but noticeable. If you try it, I am sure you will like it!

As always, if you try it or if you have ideas for a future Fantasy Food Friday, leave me a comment!