A Whole Lot of Shock and Discovery : A Whole 30 Diary

I had a huge breakthrough discovery for week 4 that you MUST know about before I continue!

It's slightly killing me not to have a coffee drink in my hand, complete with 2% milk or half and half, BUT, I have found a solution for the time being! When visiting Starbucks or Caribou, tea is truly the only thing (next to water) that will usually be Whole30 compliant. It's kind of sad. Even though Starbucks offers "coconut milk", it is chock full of a ton of crap and you just can't have it. Heck, if the ever delicious vegan Mudpie Bakery has to use sugar when making their coconut milk, it's just all a lost cause in my book. But, if you must step foot into a coffee shop during your Whole30 and if you don't want to drink black coffee, the best thing you can do is to do your research beforehand. Look up the menu on your phone prior to going, scope out what you are allowed to have, ask questions, and make a wise decision. That is the best way you won't fail or surrender under pressure. 

That being said, I'm a sucker for a fun coffee on the way home from church sometimes! For the past few Sundays, we have had ZERO donut fun or coffee fun, but my husband was in the mood for a campfire mocha from Caribou. Honestly, if you are familiar with Caribou and their chocolate obsession, it's like a glorified hot chocolate with a ton of mini marshmallows floating on top.

So....yay for Craig.
My order lacked chocolate, but I was pleasantly surprised with what was handed!

HOT CINNAMON SPICE TEA!

Don't ask me for the brand, just go to Caribou. It somewhat reminds me of a cinnamon red hot candy! The ingredients consist of a blend of black teas, three (three!!) types of cinnamon, orange peel, and sweet cloves! I'm telling you, it tastes like it has sugar in it! I've never had tea like it and I would get it again!

That afternoon, as I sipped on my tea and the last of my Z-pak was kicking my sinus infection to the curb, I was determined to have another successful week of meal planning! I still had several items from my Costco run the week before and I wanted to incorporate a few of the same recipes into the current week.

I may have incorporated a lot of the same snacks too : Hard-boiled eggs, avocados, pineapple, kiwi, apples, and bananas. As you can see, I also slacked on the vegetables (again), but hey, no vegetables is better than mindlessly munching on candy and chips in the break room at work. Because before my Whole30, I would do that all.the.time. Just saying.

To prepare for quick dinners, I made the last rotisserie chicken from my 2-pak of Costco fryers! Although this time around, I wanted to try my hand at homemade chicken stock--also known as bone broth. I'm that weirdo that would normally take a chicken bouillon cube, drop it in a mug of water, heat it in the microwave, and think I was sipping the best broth in the world. More recently, I've heard of many people making their own broth and the many health benefits to drinking it. Seriously, there is too much information on it and I encourage you to research it for yourself! After cooking the chicken, I shredded everything and left the bones, juices, fatty pieces, and carcass in the crock-pot. At this point, you could also throw in vegetables such as celery, carrots, and onions, but I chose not to use them. I instead sprinkled a little bit of kosher salt, black pepper, and onion powder over the bones, covered them completely with water (cover them until they're covered, don't drown them), and set them on low for 12 hours! You can simmer the broth longer if you'd like, but 12 hours worked fine for me! Guys. This was SO good! I even tried to make a second batch, but unfortunately, the bones weren't having it and it turned out a little too watery for my liking.

I must admit that after that little fun experiment, my dinners for 3-4 busy nights out of the week consisted of a variety of my healthy snacks, my amAzing bone broth, and/or shredded chicken with Frank's Red Hot sauce.

The second half of the week settled down and Craig and I were finally home together to eat dinner. So what did I do? You know I made fish tacos--AGAIN. You can head on over to my last post for the yummy recipe details! SO GOOD!

The weekend arrived and I was so thankful to have a Saturday off work! Craig had a busy week so while he caught up on some much needed rest, I jumped out of bed and started making breakfast.
Remember those pancakes I made in week two? You know, when I whined and pouted about dinner being ruined and ended up making those pancakes in anger? Well, I followed the same recipe, but I added two bananas, 1/4 cup of tapioca flour, and several shakes of cinnamon! I decided they needed a little something extra so I took a bag of frozen blueberries and warmed them up over the stove. I poured them into my Ninja, blended them until smooth, and we used the puree as a topping! It was tart, but it balanced well with the sweetness of the pancakes. Our plates were completed with fried eggs and sauteed spinach and breakfast was served! Aren't you proud? A vegetable before dinner...

To finish out the week, I used the last of my spaghetti squash and brought back the yummy Buffalo Casserole for the weekend meals! Unfortunately, I ran out of eggs by that point so I decided to make it without mayonnaise. I was a little unsure about the texture turning out right, but it turned out just fine and tasted just as good as before!

 Oh my word, I feel like all I talk about is food anymore!
This post has been the recap of week four, but as I type this, I am officially DONE--I truly can't believe I finished!! I did WHAT?! Thank you, LORD!

 I will be recapping my final few days of my journey, sharing some of my new-found realizations as well as some websites and blogs that helped me, and what I hope my mindset will look like after the Whole30! I'm also excited to post about my first day of "freedom" and how I'm feeling as I introduce certain things back into my diet. Stay tuned and hang with me for a couple of more posts! I promise this has NOT turned into a Whole30 blog. Haha! Can you imagine? I'm already overwhelmed thinking about it.

If you're curious as to what the Whole30 is or you would simply like more information before starting your own journey, head over to www.Whole30.com!
 

A Whole Lot of Recipes (That Were Actually Good) : A Whole 30 Diary

I was definitely not about to head into week three without a solid meal planning strategy! I learned my lesson in week two, whining got me nowhere, and I was coming for those fish tacos!

Uh, I'm also not about to continue detailing each and every meal for you. I think you got the gist after week one and do you really need to know every single thing I eat? I kind of bore myself when I type all of it out. If you're interested in doing a Whole30 for yourself, I'll help you along with a few dinner recipes below that worked perfectly for me during week three, but all you really need to know is that I am craving chocolate as I type this.

So by now, you all know I love Trader Joe's, but Costco is one of my other favorite places to grocery shop! I generally stock up on produce, fruit, pre-made rotisserie chickens, avocado oil, and milk. Remember that Craig is not doing the Whole30, so my list didn't stray too far from those staple items, but all of my Whole30 meal planning for week three had me adding a 2-pack of spaghetti squash, a 2-pack of organic fryers (they finally had some in stock!), organic eggs, and organic chicken stock.

We discovered that our stove was working properly after all so I made hard-boiled eggs as soon as I got home from Costco! I love fried eggs, but hard-boiled eggs are such an easy snack to have on hand! I love to eat them warm, just after they've finished boiling and have had a chance to sit for a few minutes! My week of snacks (and to be honest, breakfast too) consisted of those yummy eggs, plain guacamole (with Tabasco, of course), plantains, pineapple, and kiwi. Sorry vegetables, you took a backseat again, but I wasn't mad when you showed up at every dinner!

Onto the magic!
The dinner recipes below saved me in week three and I was so happy with how they all turned out!
(Let's be real--I was happy because they were actually good!)

Coconut Chicken Tenders with Pineapple and Mango Puree and
Green Beans

I bought a 2lb package of chicken tenders, dipped each one in egg whites, and then coated them in Bob's Red Mill unsweetened and unsulfured coconut flakes sprinkled with salt and pepper. The flakes are bigger than shredded coconut and just plain amazing (here they are)! I used coconut oil to grease the cooking racks (placed within cookie sheets to keep the chicken elevated) and baked the chicken tenders at 400 degrees for 25 minutes!

The puree is super simple! I threw a handful of pineapple chunks and an entire sliced mango into my Ninja, blended until smooth, and poured the mixture into a skillet to warm it up. Easy, sweet, and healthy dipping sauce! It would also work well paired with coconut shrimp!

The green beans were canned, so nothing fancy, I promise, but we did open a few cans instead of just one. I dressed them up with a little bit of salt and ghee (clarified butter) and placed heaping piles of green on our plates.

Beef Stew

My beef stew is usually pretty simple. I normally throw a the items together in a crock pot and leave it on low for several hours! It all consists of a package of stew meat, a huge amount of cut and diced vegetables (carrots, celery, and sweet potatoes), a smidge of tomato paste, and a couple cartons of beef and vegetable broth. Again, I don't care about grass fed beef, but I did not realize how hard it was to find compliant beef broth! Wow. It's kind of ridiculous. I couldn't find a readily available beef broth which caused a Google search to see if beef stew would even be good with chicken broth! See, these are the moments during the Whole30 where I get extremely frustrated (especially when I have a box of beef broth in my cabinet that I can't use). Surprisingly, I found that there are a few people that use chicken broth when making beef stew! Weird. That's when I discovered that Costco carries organic chicken broth that was Whole30 compliant and it was immediately added to my grocery list! The only other ingredient I needed to worry about was the tomato paste. Clearly Organic carries a compliant paste and I found mine in the health food section at Price Chopper!

And you know, after all that dumb research, my beef stew was pretty good with the chicken stock!

Crock-Pot Rotisserie Chicken

Yay! Thanks to those fryers, I could finally make my own rotisserie chicken! I knew I would use the meat for snacks and a dinner recipe later on in the week. First, I layered my crock-pot with balls of foil to keep the chicken elevated instead of sitting in its juices. I then removed the innards of the chicken and rinsed it well. After patting the skin dry, I lathered the chicken with avocado oil and sprinkled generous amounts of salt, pepper, paprika, oregano, rosemary, and sage over top! I love my spices if you couldn't tell! I placed a few bay leaves over top the chicken and cooked on low for 8 hours!

Buffalo Chicken Spaghetti Squash Casserole

I randomly came across this recipe and was immediately excited to try it. The ingredients weren't too weird, plus, I am a fan of ANYTHING that calls for buffalo sauce! My Pinterest searches would agree. Honestly, I was really surprised with how good this casserole tasted!

Looking at the picture below, it kinda looks like it has cheese on top, right? You're not alone, it fooled me too.

The photo above and the recipe can be found at here (via www.PaleOMG.com), but I tweaked a few things here and there. I used a glass baking dish which was slightly smaller than a 13x9 and greased it with coconut oil. I nixed the yellow onion, the ground chicken, the avocado, and the scallions. I used minced garlic from a jar instead of garlic cloves, shredded chicken (from my crockpot fryer), shredded carrots instead of diced carrots, and my trusty mayo recipe (linked below in the following recipe). I followed the directions for the most part, but I decided to cook my vegetables in the skillet a little longer until they got a slight char to them. All in all, this recipe was very easy to prepare! I don't usually love working with spaghetti squash because it tends to be watery, but whisking the eggs into the mixture before baking was a perfect solution! I also may have added a lot more Frank's Red Hot sauce to this dish than called for...

Fish Tacos with Cilantro Lime Slaw

Whole30 Rebels, I have fish tacos for you this week! The weekend hit and even if I had to go through an entire carton of eggs, that homemade mayo was happening!

I think the most important component of fish tacos is the coleslaw. My coleslaw is always haphazardly put together meaning there are no exact measurements! Growing up, I never knew how to make coleslaw because it just wasn't something we ate. When I had fish tacos for my first time ever (2014 in Vegas), I wasn't sure I'd like them, but I immediately fell in love and couldn't wait to try and re-create them back home.

For my coleslaw, I use a hefty amount of shredded cabbage (bagged is fine) and throw in the same amount of broccoli slaw. I then add a few handfuls of chopped cilantro to the mix. I dump in about a 1/2 cup of mayonnaise, a generous splash of apple cider vinegar (more of both if need be), the juice of one whole lime, a few drops of Young Living Lime essential oil (I obviously love lime), and a sprinkling of salt! Mix everything together, but taste as you go in case you need to adjust it to your liking! Now, when I'm NOT doing the Whole30, the only thing I do differently is that I tend to use a half and half ratio of plain mayo from Hampton Creek and plain greek yogurt (Chobani is my favorite).

For the fish, you can use whatever you prefer! I like to use what we have on hand, which is usually tilapia or salmon. They come frozen and individually packaged so they're easy to thaw in cold water and be able to bake a half hour later! I usually bake four fillets, and once they are cooked, I either place them in a bowl and shred them or leave them in big, sliced chunks.

Like I mentioned in my last post, I had also found an alternative recipe to make my own Whole30 compliant tortillas (found here). They are surprisingly pretty simple to make! The link suggests using a tortilla press (which I'm very tempted to buy), but if you don't have one, I would suggest flattening the dough balls on a spatula (not too thin!) so you have a better handle on them when peeling them from the spatula and placing them into the skillet! Mine looked more like the size of discs and were not fold-able like a tortilla should be, but they were still very good!

I assemble my tortillas (or discs) with a generous amount of slaw, shredded fish, and avocado. And, of course, everything is always doused in Tabasco. Whole30 Rebels, I recommend adding whatever salsa you like, a ton of shredded cheese, and sour cream (or in my pre-Whole30 memories, plain greek yogurt)! And might I suggest some lime chips to go with the tacos? The good old days.

 So there you have it! My week of meal planning victory!

 It's kind of weird having to rethink certain components of your favorite recipes! It can be frustrating, and yes, it takes more time, but the end result is usually very good. I've realized that I can go without all the extras and I can definitely be more aware of what I'm putting into my body. I have the power to say no--and the power to say yes.

And that's a win in my book.