The final stretch!

Days 26-30 were certainly a struggle. It wasn't fun anymore and I just wanted some icecream, or cereal, or tortilla chips....but we pushed through and made it to the end, Hooray! Here are a few of the final meals:

"Boston Butt" (basically a giant hunk of pork from our farm share) in the crock pot all day with home made BBQ sauce, spaghetti squash, and broccoli.

 Chocolate chili, roasted veggies, and fermented carrots and ginger. I haven't read much about why you should eat fermented foods but I know you should. Just a quick search says they have lots of good bacteria and aid in digestion. It may take some getting used to but I picked these carrots up at Whole Foods and they are pretty good. Tastes like that little piece of ginger that you get at sushi places...pungent and a little salty-not at all like vinegar (it's only carrots, ginger, and salt). I'm going to have to try fermenting at home....

 More pork butt (it was huge), roasted veggies, and cauliflower rice.

I made these paleo Almond flour 'breaded' chicken fingers the other night and YUM! They were awesome! Maybe even better than the glutenous kind. There were recipes to deep fry them but this one was the simplest (we like simple) and tasted delicious. We had them with acorn squash and sauteed collard greens, onions, and red bell peppers. One of our better meals!

 More BBQ Pork butt on PURPLE cauliflower rice (not sure how they made it purple, I didn't ask, but come on, it's awesome) and sauteed zucchini slices.

Hot Italian sausage from our farm share with lots of onions and veggies.

Last Whole30 meal (while on Whole30). Zucchini 'ravioli' with ground beef filling, homemade tomato sauce, over spaghetti squash. Mmmm....

We finished. Still gathering my thoughts. Will post again soon. (is the suspense killing you??? Nope, the food you are eating is killing you!)

Day 25 and a few before

So I kind of lost track of posting and I'm not sure what picture is from what day, but I'll tell you all the foods!  We are in the home stretch! Only 5 days left. It's honestly not as hard as I thought, I am not craving much (although I did dream last night about having a big bowl of cereal on day 30), but I'm looking forward to not cooking so much. I'm not good at prep, and I love cooking but it's difficult with two little girls running around who won't eat anything I cook. 

This was an "I'm sick of meat" lunch. Apples with almond butter drizzled over topped with pecans and baked. No sugar at all but tasted like apple crisp!

 Chicken 'tortilla' soup again in the crock pot with avacado.

One of my many eclectic lunches of random things I found in the fridge. Today's version: avacado, cucumber, sweet potato fries, cherry tomatoes, banana with almond butter, coconut, and pecans.

Typical breakfast. Really yummy but takes a good 45 minutes to make.

Chicken teriyaki with asperagus and broccoli over cauliflower rice.

Leftover pork that we doused in BBQ sauce (from the It Starts With Food book) over sweet potato toasts with sauteed zucchini and harlot verts. This was a particularly delicious meal.

We had guests over on Sunday evening and dinner turned out fantastic. Butternut squash soup, harlot verts (aka little green beans), chocolate chili (recipe in an earlier post) in the crock pot over cauliflower rice, and baked sweet potato fries. How colorful!

Onion, kale, egg scramble over sweet potato toasts and a banana. Not very inventive but filling and easy.

I went to whole foods this morning (which I should not be allowed to do unsupervised) and they finally had ground pork! So I got 4 pounds and made one into this delicious lunch. Ground pork browned with onion and garlic, add chopped apples, a few leftover sweet potato fries, and kale. I had some red pepper slices for color. So good. Plan on making this for breakfast.

Italian chicken (aka chicken with lots of oregano, thyme, garlic powder, basil, and pepper) with peppers and onions over zucchini noodles and capers. How sophisticated.

Leftover pork apple stuff from yesterday with a few eggs.

Leftover chocolate chili (It is SOOOO good) with a few peppers, avocado, and butternut squash soup. I thought about putting the chili in the soup, which probably would have been good, but I just love them both separately so I kept it that way.

Leftover chocolate chili over roasted butternut squash.

Catch up for Days 16--19

Day 16
Another snow day. I think we've reached some record for snowfall. We've had more this season already than we usually have ALL winter-and it's only mid February. There is at least 3 feet standing on the ground and it's so cold that it won't melt!
Church was canceled today because we were supposed to get another blizzard but we didn't get much-but still stuck at home, again, all day. I could use some of that Tiger Blood, when does that come? At least Rob was here to share the misery!

Breakfast was the usual-sweet potato/potato/kale/onion hash with sausage and eggs. That fruit thing in the corner is a Pomelo that Trader Joes convinced me to buy. It pretty much tastes like nothing and wasn't very good. Sometimes new foods are a bust.

Lunch was leftover something, don't remember.
Dinner was chicken curry with lots of veggies over cauliflower 'rice'. It was pretty good, I was hoping for a bit more zing but it left me quite satisfied. I'll have to try a curry again.

Day 17
Does breakfast look familiar? I swear I'm not just using the same picture over and over.

Lunch was leftover curry from yesterday
Dinner was pork tenderloin with veggies and apples. I seared it in the pan and then stuck the whole pan in the oven. This is a great one pot technique (Same one we used for our filets on valentines day) and I'm going to use it a lot more. Yum. I love apples with pork.

Day 18
I tried to branch out for breakfast today. Steph had left some almond milk at our house so I tried out my granola with almond milk and fruit. It was pretty good, a lot more filling than cereal but I'm not much of a fan of almond milk. Just doesn't satisfy like a big cold glass of whole milk from a cow. I'm craving milk/yogurt a lot lately.

Since I didn't have eggs for breakfast, I made an egg/broccoli scramble for lunch to put over sweet potato toasts. I'm getting a bit sick of veggies but I know I need them. The broccoli in the eggs was pretty good actually. I chopped it up really small and sauteed it before adding the eggs. The avocado was probably unnecessary but I love them...

Dinner was supposed to be roast chicken but it was still frozen solid so I grabbed some frozen salmon (salmon can be cooked from frozen!) instead. I saw a frozen bag of butternut squash soup from the fall so I defrosted that and added a handful of chopped carrots. Dinner was looking a bit orange so the brussels sprouts and prosciutto wrapped asperagus made an appearance in an attempt to color my plate. Overall good dinner but Rob and I both agreed that salmon is tastier with some kind of sweet glaze or our delicious maple rub. Mmmm....

Day 19
This breakfast really is delicious.

 I was tired and lazy for lunch so I threw together whatever I found in the fridge.

Dinner will be crock pot roast chicken. And veggies, of course. It's cooking.

13....14...15...and a dessert!

Day 13

The usual for breakfast-it's delicious. Add pineapple and blueberries.

Apple with almond butter, coconut, homemade 'granola' and an avocado for lunch.

Chicken sausage, broccoli, onion, and shredded zucchini made a tasty dinner.

Day 14 

Breakfast-same

Don't remember lunch...

Taco salad for dinner-and an Izze. They are Whole30 (although shouldn't really be an every day thing-especially if you are trying to kick a soda addiction. This is only my second one since starting W30.)

Rob decided his salad didn't have enough calories so he downed a shot of Olive Oil...

Day 15-Valentines day
The girls had heart shaped pancakes and syrup....I really wanted some.

We had breakfast scramble with kale and onions, bacon, strawberries. Very delicious, but still wanted a pancake.

Leftover taco salad for lunch.

I bought delicious (half pound!) fillets for Valentines dinner. Rob seared them on the stove then baked to perfection. One of the best pieces of meat I've ever had. It was perfect. So glad I married a chef. We thought they looked huge but had no problem gobbling them down with some roasted brussels sprouts and carnival squash from the farm share. Missed the glass of wine for sure but kind of made it up with some SWYPO dessert...(look it up-kind of cheating but not really)

...paleo chocolate mug cake! We substituted date paste for the maple syrup and used coconut milk because we didn't have any almond milk. They were tasty. Could use a bit more sweetner-maybe date paste isn't as sweet as maple syrup-and could be cooked less (it's microwaved in the mug!). All Whole30 ingredients, tasty quick, healthy dessert that might become a staple for us post W30 also. Great end to Valentines Day.

Day 11 and 12

I was super excited for this breakfast casserole but it was just ok. I think we added to many potatoes and it just didn't have that nice cheesy flavor that breakfast casseroles are supposed to have....

None the less, we both ate it. We will have to try the egg bake thing again. More flavor, fewer potatoes.

Megan came over for lunch and we made delicious salads with turkey, strawberries, avacado, and veggies.

I managed to make teriyaki sauce in the morning and marinade some chicken so dinner was easy. I made cauliflower 'rice' to go with it and it was super yummy. Even Rob liked the rice, he said he would have thought it was couscous if I hadn't told him it was cauliflower.  So glad I got that food processor.

Day 12
 Although I wasn't thrilled with the breakfast casserole, I wasn't going to waste it, so had that again for breakfast.

I didn't have any meat in the fridge so I had some leftover 'porriage' for lunch and sweet potato 'toasts' with guac. Erica picked out a watermellon at Target yesterday and a few slices of that rounded out my lunch nicely. I was surprisingly full after lunch.

We had leftover pork from our crock pot meal on Sunday and the Whole30 book "It Starts With Food" has a BBQ sauce recipe, so I thought I'd try it out. Here it is (is posting pictures from a book illegal? I am giving them full credit!). Well, the sauce was amazing. I'll certainly make this again, especially after I looked at the ingredients on our normal Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce and saw the FIRST ingredient is High Fructose Corn Syrup, then honey, and some form of sugar appears 3 more times in the long list....no thanks.

We had our BBQ pork over some spaghetti squash with roasted asparagus. One of the better meals we've had I think.

Lots of people have asked how our Whole30 is going. I am not feeling much different and it hasn't really been hard. I have craved a bowl of cereal a few evenings but not that strongly. We are almost half way through and according to the timeline that's when the tiger blood is supposed to show up...can't wait for that! 

Days 9 and 10

Day 9

Breakfast was the typical hashbrowns with kale and eggs before church. We were in a hurry, as usual, and I forgot a picture.

Lunch was leftover "ravioli" mix and Rob roasted up some zucchini and broccoli to go with it. Yum.

Dinner was in the crock pot all day: pork roast with butternut squash and broccoli. Turns out broccoli isn't a good crock pot vegetable, and neither go well with lime juice. Wouldn't recommend it. Oops, can't be perfect every time. The pork roast was good!

Day 10
Getting bored with the usual, I tried a whole30 banana nut 'porridge'. It was tasty, especially with blueberries and cinnamon but I couldn't eat the whole bowl-that's a lot of nuts! A nice pair of eggs (fried in PAM again---sorry) complimented it nicely. Kept me full all morning!

Apparently I was missing my egg and potato breakfast because I made scrambled eggs with kale for lunch, cooked up some bacon, and had it over sweet potato 'toasts' (sliced sweet potato, baked for 15-20 min). Yum. The girls appreciated the bacon too.

 For dinner we had leftover beef stew and added a baked potato with clarified butter and more bacon!

After the girls went to bed, we cooked up a delicious looking breakfast casserole that I can't wait to try tomorrow morning and Rob whipped up a banana-almond butter snack to munch much on before bed. Rob was starving when he got home from work today, I don't think he is taking in enough calories with this diet. We are thinking of ways to bulk up his lunches. 

One third done!