Adventures in Whole30 (and probably some other random thoughts too)
Sick baby (getting better thankfully). Sick wife. Sick dog. Not feeling great myself. What I mean to say is that there was no good rest to be had last night for anyone in the house.
Remember Mr. Ice Cream Cake? Today he brought sugar free ice cream. The ingredients were: cherries, bananas, vanilla, and almond milk. I know, I know, vanilla has sugar alcohols in it. Strike 1. Without looking at the carton, the almond milk probably had a forbidden ingredient. Strike 2. The no pancake rule probably applies in principle of not imitating foods that aren’t on plan. Strike 3. However, my heightened spider-senses picked up on his hopefulness that I could eat this round of ice cream. I think he felt a bit bad that I was left out last time. And furthermore, in the long term, any endorsement I can give that moves Fat Wednesday more toward Svelte Wednesday is a good thing. So on balance I decided to have a mini scoop. It was good, but I bet not as good as the cake was a couple weeks ago. There is no need to be a diet extremist. And, for the record, I’m not going back to Day 1 as the Whole30 rules stipulate.
As it turns out, the egg cups I brought for Svelte Wednesday were well received, but a side-note to the ice cream drama for the day.
We had much more success with our salmon cakes this time around. Thank you Sam’s Club for not cramming bones and scales with a side of fish into your salmon cans.
More than halfway through this 30-day experiment and in the words of REM, I feel fine. I should clarify that the “tiger’s blood” mentioned in the last post is the next major milestone where you’re supposed to feel alive and vigorous after cleansing your body of food pollutants and getting through the rough times at the start. I still wouldn’t say I have that. But I do really miss rice and refried beans. I’m also pretty bored with egg cups for breakfast.
Happily, I’m done with the nasty medication mouth rinses; just salt rinses for the next two weeks.
Sick baby is having a massive impact on the rest of us bedsides her poor little soul. Here’s hoping for some better sleep over the next few nights.
Note about dinner- usually the crockpot meals don’t work out so well for us. They end up overcooked and have a burned aftertaste. But today I was home so I could start it at the appropriate time. So instead of burning our food I overfilled the pot. Nothing catastrophic happened, it just would have been better with less in there and I wouldn’t have had to fish excess liquid out partway through cooking.
No “tiger’s blood.” I found dried apricots without the forbidden sulfide preservative at the Crunchy Grocer. They’re nasty brown colored and aren’t as supple as normal dried apricots.
We used our leftover mayo to make an herb dipping sauce for fish that we breaded with almond flour- good stuff!
Lesson for the day: I am not a big fan of orange sweet potatoes, but the white kind are pretty tolerable.
So far the baby is seeing to it that there will be little or no improvement in sleep quality. Maybe it will be easier for me to fall asleep by the end. But who could really say when operating at exhaustion so much of the time.
We made mayonnaise for the first time. It was actually pretty easy and improved our chicken salad immensely. I saw some mayo recipes and they talked about how frequently a Whole30er would use them but I didn’t actually think we were going to.
We had some friends over for dinner and made a bunch of food we could eat. They brought along some snacks and it was actually kind of challenging to keep from sticking my hand in a bag of chips and take a swath of bean dip. I barely like a limited range of beers and found myself wishing I could have one. But I made it through with no slip ups. In the long term I will need to be able to navigate situations like that with restraint.
Dear diary, it has been nearly two weeks since my last grains. I’m really starting to wonder what I’ll be able to eat when this is all said and done. I like bread, but it is everywhere in too great abundance to be worthwhile. Maybe my tastes will change and it won’t seem so appealing eventually. I wonder if a 6″ sub would fill me if I got double meat?
Today was Taco Friday at work. That is not an official holiday, by the way, it is just the day you go get tacos from the food truck for lunch. I actually stopped playing that game a while ago because they are just too greasy and don’t make me feel good. But I was pining for a fresco bean burrito during my drive home… perhaps I have hit the daydream of forbidden foods stage.
Another day, another egg cup. They are better with mushrooms than shredded chicken.
Today was one of those frustrating days at work.
Challenging day. The wedding we attended tonight was a potluck. It actually wasn’t too bad having the crock pot in my office because I was right there and couldn’t really smell it. However, by the time we got to the venue and waited around and waited some more I was getting desperate for food. There was lots of authentic Mexican cuisine and I was starving, but I didn’t cave. Finally we ducked into line out of turn and got our food. There was one other dish that we could eat- smoked pulled pork. Our chicken curry was excellent though. It’s a shame we had to share. Then we packed up the baby and headed home. I will need a feasible long-term game plan for events like that when these 30 days are up. It would have been easy to eat a lot tonight.
Busy day! Yesterday I went to Sprouts and was surprisingly disappointed by how many foods were not acceptable to the plan. I was especially disappointed by the dried fruit. It mostly had sugar or sulfur dioxide. But who knew Sam’s Club would have so many simple foods? So today we have a bunch more meat, nuts, and produce in our stock. We made food to take to the wedding we’re attending tomorrow evening (both for us and to share). We made food for our friend who recently had a baby. The next batch of egg cups are made. And we got through our meals for the day. Phew.
In trying to find the name of the preservative in the dried fruit just now, I realize I am probably consuming too much fruit. I’d been thinking it has not been as difficult as I thought it would be to give up sugar. But my raisin intake has gone up in the past week. And as I think back, I have had plenty of fruit sugars, especially today. I suppose I better try to improve on that front going forward.
Despite the fruit gut check, I’m calling week 1 a success.
One more pleasant surprise: Pace Picante Sauce has no forbidden ingredients. Yay easy salsa!