Category: Random

Day 40

Gluten-tag! Triscuits at lunch were a nice change. The dinner highlight actually wasn’t the gluten. We made avocado pesto and it was excellent! Grandma also made us a loaf of homemade bread and we ate the pesto with whole wheat pasta. The bread was fantastic. It was a wonderful feast, but my wife made an interesting observation. She noticed with this meal that it was possible to overeat before her head knew whe was full. That probably explains how I can eat so much pizza- there is room in my hollow leg and no stop signs in my head. 

Svelte Wednesday offerings today were homemade breakfast burritos and a separate egg bake without cheese or sausage specially made for me. Thumbs up. 

Rasberry Pi
Rasberry Pi

And the really exciting news of the day is that my Rasberry Pi arrived. Not the food and nothing to do with Pi Day. It is an inexpensive tiny computer. Hopefully I have time to play with it this weekend. 

  • Breakfast: egg bake
  • Lunch: leftover shredded beef and mash
  • Dinner: bread and whole wheat pasta with avocado pesto

Day 35

No significant effects from rice day. 

Regarding Let’s All Gamble at Work Month, I don’t think I will ever understand basketball. Specifically, fouls make no sense to me. I can hardly see them in slow motion replay with someone explaining the situation to me, let alone in real time. Meh. 

  • Breakfast: eggs and Sloppy
  • Lunch: chicken salad
  • Dinner: shrimp in salsa

Day 32

Snow day! There were no noticeable effects from legume day, but it was also a weird day of being snowed in and heavy shoveling. 

I tried the chicken cacciatore recipe for dinner. It was okay, but the chicken ended up fairly rubbery. 

Let’s call it 12 pounds lost over the 30 days. I would love to lose more, but all things considered, that isn’t too bad. Especially when considering that I wasn’t  aggressively running or training for anything. I did run, but nothing crazy for my standards. And besides limiting the foods I put in my mouth, I didn’t restrict quantities at all. 

<rant>On a totally unrelated note- I used my snow day to update the OS on my Mac, which is an activity I truly despise. Settings and configurations change in unexpected ways. Some programs become obsolete. New apps get added. I HATE it. Apple likes to forget that it is my machine and I want access to all the files, including the raw photos. And since I don’t give a rip what Apple stock prices are don’t make it so hard for me to remove that stupid widget. I could go on, and on.</rant>

  • Egg scramble
  • Chicken salad
  • Chicken cacciatore 

Day 27

Traveling is rough on Whole30. Restaurants in the airport like to lure patrons by wafting smells out into the walkways. It was interesting how much more sensitive we both were to it than usual. The scent I picked up on most prominently was ketchup. 

Also, it is spring break season, so the airport security lines were CRAZY! But in the end we made it to our plane and there was only one other person behind us. The baby did great, except for some tired crying toward the end of the flight. 

We had plenty of snacks with us- gorp and Larabars. And we had leftover steak and veggies from yesterday for our meal. Upon arrival we made a grocery run and our room has a kitchen in it. We should be set. It will just be strange to not go out for fun and delicious foods while we’re out traveling and having an adventure. 

  • Breakfast: egg cups
  • Lunch: salad
  • Dinner: leftover steak and veggies

This morning there was snow to shovel at our house. Tonight we are sleeping a few hundred yards from the ocean. 

Day 24

Beware the ides of March and nobles with six fingers.   

mason jar salad part 1
Salad Part 1
mason jar salad part 2
Salad Part 2

I tried a mason jar salad for lunch today. Preparing it added time to my morning, but it was good. The basic concept is to put the dressing and toppings in the bottom with the greens on top so they don’t get soggy before you eat it. I approve of this lunch. 

  • Breakfast: egg cups
  • Lunch: mason jar salad and leftover shepherd’s pi
  • Dinner: stew

Day 23

Happy Pi Day. One week to go. 

 

Pi's on Pie Day
Pi Day

Black cherry and rhubarb pi’s were hanging out at work today. Normally Pi Day is a day worth going great lengths to ensure there is pi to stuff in my pi hole. In 2012 I was in Brazil and, against all odds, found delicious pi. Had I purchased these particular specimens myself I probably would have delivered the exact same flavors. But alas, no fruit pi for me today. 

Actually, it was easier to not participate at all today than had I been able to have some. That is what worries me about the long term. Normal me has a modest piece of each in the morning when they show up, but then can’t resist a matinee later in the day and perhaps a bit for the drive home. There wasn’t a whole lot of those pi’s left at the end of the day anyway, but there might not have been any a month ago. I can think of some tactics, but I don’t have long-term confidence in my ability to avoid a trap like this in the future. 
 

Shepherd's Pi
Shepherd’s Pi

This special day was not totally lost however. We had shepherd’s pi for dinner. It was excellent! The mash on top was a white/orange sweet potato mix and was amazing. The filling was good too. 
For the record: daylight savings is stupid, miserable, and bad for your health. 

  • Breakfast: egg cups- not scrambled and made with green chili. Thumbs up. 
  • Lunch: leftover grilled chicken & veg
  • Dinner: shepherd’s pi

Day 6

Let’s start with a quote from the instructions for the Bluetooth headphones my mother recently purchased:

“Pairing is a process to connect Bluetooth equipments each other. It will crreate a pemanent and safe link betweeb your equipments and provide them with quick service fron Bluerooth without using any password.”

I would discourage you from purchasing that brand of headphones, but there is no brand listed on the packaging or the equipments themselves.

We were going to make salmon cakes for dinner. However, when we opened the can it wasn’t nicely processed like tuna. It was a cooked portion of the fish crammed into a can- bones, scales, and all. Yuk. Also, probably not the best food choice for me with stitches and a delicate hole in my mouth that is trying to heal.

And for my final thought of the day, just betweeb you and me, I’m wondering whether improving my health is worth all the extra dishes at the end of the day.

  • Breakfast: same same same
  • Lunch: leftovers leftovers leftovers
  • Dinner: crab cakes on greens with asparagus

The good news is that there will be no leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

P.S. The grouchy stage is not complete. There were just lots of things to talk about this time around.