Author: Cheryl

At one point while I was writing yesterday’s post, I woke up with my head on the desk. I was that tired. So it seems a little incoherent, and I was going to rewrite it, but I think I’ll leave it. And review.

I had some grim kids last night. Seriously hostile. Since I’m flying solo this week, it’s particularly exhausting. Something had to give, and it was the rigid adherence to Whole30. This was not my hill to die on.

And you know what? Today, as far as I can tell, they all stuck to Whole30, ate their lunches that they had packed the night before, and were in good moods at dinner. No one modified their meal or complained. As a matter of fact, we had a lot of fun and probably spent more time laughing than eating.

The lesson? Control is a powerful thing. If my kids feel like things are under their control, they will do almost anything, and willingly. But if I give it as an edict that can’t be argued with, well, look out. Having the choice is important. And I think even more so with something as personal as the food in your mouth.

So, to recap, I modified their Whole30 last night. Our house will continue to be Whole30, and I’m cooking Whole30 meals. If it’s not on the Whole30 approved list, I’m not buying it at the grocery store, either. However, they can modify Whole30 to the extent that they want. If they want to cook that is fine with me! More importantly, the girls get to go to the pancake breakfast at the local high school this weekend.

My package from Pre-Made Paleo also arrived last night. The kids chose a couple of the entrees for lunches today and everything got rave reviews. It is a huge relief to have those meals in the freezer and know I don’t have to prepare every single bite!

So for meals today, we discovered that Aidell’s Organic Sausages (in some flavors) are okay, and the kids love those. I sliced them and cooked them up with green beans and eggs for another yummy scramble. Dinner was kind of a surprise:  the Pioneer Woman’s Hamburger Soup. Pioneer Woman Paleo–who knew? It was delicious and just the thing for a day that has been 38 degrees and raining most of the day. Deep January, I think this is called.

What about cravings? I was surprised to realize that I’ve been sugar-, grain-, dairy-, and wine-free for eight days now. I haven’t felt deprived at all, and rarely have I felt hungry. Only now sitting here at the computer do I really miss a glass of wine. Twenty-two more days.

I think the reason for few cravings is that I’ve been absolutely focused on meal preparation for my family. I’ve been so concerned about what we can eat that I haven’t thought about what we can’t eat. Also, a lot of the reading implies that people can get bored with the diet. That isn’t a risk at all for me, because I’m preparing meals all the time. If I were doing this by myself, I’d be tempted to just grill up a bunch of chicken breasts and knock this thing out. And by day four I’d be feeling deprived. Instead we haven’t had the same meal twice, and I’m honestly not sure when we will start repeating.

As for me, I feel fine, and not really any different. Some stomach distress is the only indication that things are changing. Waiting on that “Tiger Blood” feeling.

Please feel free to ask anything about Whole30. I think it’s been a good thing to do with my family so far.

Wednesdays are my quiet day around here. We usually eat at my mom and dad’s on Wednesdays, and this week my sweet mom made homemade ketchup! Because of our crazy Whole30 thing she fixed a whole Paleo meal: pork chops cooked with onions and ketchup, potatoes and green beans. It was really sweet.

Oh! I also made the salmon cakes that are in the It Starts With Food book. They were wonderful! A couple of the kids took them for lunches today. The others took the barbecue. No one took the slaw from yesterday.

But the big thing today was that I changed the rules on the kids. I started thinking about how I had basically given them absolutely no choice on their lunches, and they also didn’t have much of a choice when it comes to social outings. For example, Paige had a meeting at school today at lunch. They served pizza! Of course I let Paige eat lunch with her friends but it got me thinking.

I haven’t given the kids much of a choice about food. Even more, I certainly didn’t consult them before implementing Whole30. But events like this are going to happen, and I want to give the kids some feeling of control about what they do put in their bodies. I’ve been dealing with some grumpy kids lately (one in particular!) and so I decided to give them a small measure of control over what goes in their mouths.

So I decided to tell them that I will continue to be Whole30, and we will only have Whole30 foods at home. But if they have the opportunity to be out with friends, then they can make their own choices. It may only placate them for a week, but I certainly had some happier kids going to bed tonight.

I hope this was wise!

Bunco night! Usually a fun night for me, especially when I host. I love finding a fun theme and then pulling together an interesting menu complete with a couple of yummy desserts and a great mixed drink. Just typing that makes me sad.

Bunco is a simple little dice game–it’s really a good excuse to get together and chat with friends. My group has been meeting together for more than fourteen years! I really love these women. What a disappointment to realize that Bunco night was day six, and worse yet I was hosting!

I had two choices: I could just go to the store and buy all of my party food ready-made, and cook for the kids; or I could just cook Whole30 and let the kids eat the food I prepared for my friends. I went with the second choice, a bold move! I decided to make a slow-cooker pork roast and barbecue sauce and go with barbecue as a “theme.” I was inspired by Nom Nom Paleo’s Ginger Slaw, made from Brussels sprouts. I added a mixed fruit salad and roasted potato wedges and my kids were set. For my friends I had chips and made a dressing for the fruit salad from lime juice and maple syrup. It smelled yummy!

Of course I had desserts for my friends: an assortment of mini cupcakes and chocolate macaroons. And wine, of course!

So–I hated it. The food tasted okay but it wasn’t fun. The slaw is great, but has about a thousand ingredients. Really, would it kill someone to make a three-ingredient recipe?! The barbecue sauce is fine if you have never actually tasted barbecue sauce. (Recipe from Well-Fed.) That recipe was a disappointment because the ketchup was terrific.

I was really convinced that I did the right thing in cleaning out the cabinets when we started this. Just having the chips and sweets in the house was really hard on the kids. I don’t need to make this harder than it already is.

I think it would be good to talk about how they are doing and what I’m seeing so far, but it’s late and I’d really rather go to bed. If you wonder anything about Whole30 and our experience, please ask!

Whole30. First, Larabars. Thank you, God, for Larabars. They are energy bars, Whole30 approved, and I was able to buy them at Publix and bring them to my wrestlers before practice. You would have thought it was actual manna from heaven. The girls also had one. I tried theirs and they were yummy–but I know the girls’ tastes have already started to shift because they absolutely wouldn’t have found them sweet enough even a week ago!

Another frittata with asparagus and prosciutto for breakfast today. Lunch was a scrounge-in-the-fridge affair for all of us. I marinated a London Broil in a little olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic and salt/pepper, tossed it in the oven and slow-cooked it for several hours. We had that along with the leftover curry and some dairy-free mashed potatoes. The sauce from the curry was just so good we needed something to soak it up with. Potatoes were just added recently to the “okay” list for Whole30, so we were good.

Bill left town today and I did a ton of driving. So much, in fact, that I didn’t have time to go to the grocery store for my big run. No laundry, either. AND–I am hosting my Bunco group tomorrow and I simply have no idea what we will eat. Even if I serve non-Whole30 (very likely), I don’t know what it will be!

I’ve got to get a longer horizon for cooking and shopping than 36 hours. I’m not sure that will happen anytime this week, but maybe next. With Bill out of town and tons going on this week, I may just try to survive each day!

I’m not going to lie. I am cooking all the time. I mean, all the time. Today I made ketchup, for goodness’ sake. This diet may do me in just because it seems like all I am doing is cooking, or thinking about cooking, or cleaning up from cooking, or shopping. It is taking a lot of energy and time, and that is really eating into the laundry time around here. I may need to rethink my priorities.

This morning I made an awesome breakfast. I would order this in a restaurant, no lie. Steam some asparagus, toss it in a frying pan with ghee and sliced prosciutto, add some eggs and stir til almost set. Run it under to broiler so the eggs get puffy and slightly brown and delicious. Don’t forget the salt and pepper. It almost made up for my black coffee.

I’ve started following the @whole30recipes feed on Instagram, and so I decided to make the vegetable curry for lunch today. We ate it with leftover meat (whatever the kids wanted, pork, chicken, some shrimp I pulled out of the freezer), and it got thumbs-up. After this is over, I will definitely make this again but with RICE to soak up all the yummy curry gravy.

Dinner is thanks to NomNomPaleo, Bacon Burgers. I cheated–We are using an all-natural but not whole30-compliant bacon, but I am SO TIRED of worrying about it. And it’s only Day 4. We’re having roasted brussels sprouts with it, and roasted portobello mushrooms that I’m pretty sure no one will touch. And whatever fruit I can scrounge.

Oh, gosh, I said that and I realize that we don’t have any fruit for lunch tomorrow. UGH!

But I’m carrying on. I think the benefits will be there when we get done. Don’t tell the kids, but I think we will be doing good if we get to “Whole10.”

And I’ve decided to order some pre-made meals, too, from this site. It was a recommendation from the Whole30 blog. We’ll see. I think the ease of a few meals is worth the expense. I hope I’m right!

Yes, day two was actually yesterday (Friday). The natives are getting restless and claiming I am trying to starve them out. Yesterday I cooked a six-pound pork shoulder–Kalua Slow-Cooker Pork–so obviously they are right.

The pork was good but I really wanted to pour a bunch of barbecue sauce on the side! It was just so terribly porky. Pork has dark and light meat, and sometimes that dark meat has a flavor that is really strong. I also fixed cole slaw with that homemade mayonnaise, baked potatoes, broccoli, and assorted fruit. Yes, obviously starving.

One thing I realized yesterday is that, without sugar as an option even as a seasoning, flavors can go to the tart side really fast. The homemade mayo is amazing, but tangy, and the coleslaw really needed another flavor to balance out the tart. I think now I might have grated a little apple with it, but without sweetness flavors can be one-dimensional. I need to think about this more.

Today I am fixing a huge pan of chicken drumsticks for the kids to munch on. And I’m putting on a pot of Vegetable Soup to simmer as soon as I can get to the grocery store. I’ve made the vegetable soup before and it is like salad on a winter day. It’s also a good foil for added protein of all kinds. And–confession time–I’m going to use store-bought broth. I haven’t gotten around to making the chicken broth at home yet, so this will have to do.

What about the beef broth? Nasty. I was going out on a limb when I added ox-tail bones to the soup. What part of the cow is the tail near? Yes, that is what it tasted like.

Another problem is that I hate being consumed with what we are going to eat. On a regular week I make our schedule out, shop, boom, done. But I feel like this is a kind of experiment, so I am buying and adjusting as we go. We have eaten 22 eggs in four days, and I think we would have eaten more but I ran out.

So, off to the grocery store!

We’ve had an entire fall, and maybe longer, of excess. It’s time for a reset. Several blogs I read (including Modern Mrs. Darcy) have done Whole30 and have had good success with a diet reset. We are in need of an adjustment of our taste buds and eating habits (if I adjust my waistline that will be a very welcome bonus) and so Whole30 sounded like a good approach.

The basic idea is to cut out sugars, grains, dairy and legumes (and alcohol). So what’s left? Proteins, veggies, fruit and limited fats and nuts. My kids and I can consume massive quantities of sugar, so that seemed like a good reason to go on Whole30. At least, it seemed like a good idea yesterday before I went to the grocery store!

So today, I clarified butter, cooked beef broth, and roasted chickens. Before breakfast. We had chili for dinner (and it tasted good but the kids missed the beans!) and I made homemade mayonnaise. Have you ever made mayonnaise?

Shut the front door. Go make some. Seriously delicious stuff.

So day one is under our belts. We’ll see how this goes.