Category: Information

Weekly Meal Plan: Shelter-at-Home Week 7

Well, happy Wednesday. Monday holidays always get me a little off course. You too, maybe? If so, then you’ll be thrilled for another meal planning post on your Tuesday…err…Wednesday. Ugh, life and kids happened yesterday, but hey, a little meal inspiration and planning help any day is better than no day. At least I hope that’s how you feel. 🙂

As always, I’ll show you what we really ate last week, compared to the meal plan, and then I’ll show you what’s planned for the coming week and why. I’ll also share substitution ideas where appropriate. This particular week will be more “what we actually ate” and a little short on planning since we’re mid-week already. Let’s dig in!

Here’s how our meals shaped up last week:

Monday: Fish Tacos with Cod, Tropical Salsa Slaw, Sautéed Squash and tortillas

This is definitely a family favorite meal around here. Everybody loves the tortillas, they love fish (for which I’m very thankful) and they love pineapple and mango. Now the kids don’t like slaw, but I leave a little of the fresh fruit out of the cabbage mix for them and that doesn’t create any extra work for me.

Tuesday: Carnitas, more slaw (just lettuce for my slaw hating kids), and roasted sweet potatoes

This was another fan favorite dinner around here. Not sure why, but we haven’t had carnitas in a long time and everyone loves this tender, succulent meat. It’s super simple to put together too. For the Cole slaw, I just made extra on Monday and set aside half before I added the fruit for the tropical version.

Wednesday: Jambalaya over rice

It’s almost like I’ve done something to make them mad and I’m trying to make up for it because I’m cooking all their favorites this week. My son begs for jambalaya almost every day. No kidding. I always prefer to make it after we have carnitas because the extra spices from the meat flavor the broth and it is ahhh-mazing! The recipe calls for shrimp, which I did not have, but I did have two pieces of cod in the freezer so I used that. It was delicious in this recipe. And yes, you do see some form of bread peaking around the bowl. See below…

Paleo Breadsticks – a new creation that is still under development. These tasted really great, but I need to try them with a different flour. The best flour to use for any paleo bread where you want a bit of a chewy texture is tapioca, but too much tapioca can be pretty hard on the body so I’ve been experimenting with other options. Stay tuned – these were really close to just right. 

Thursday: I made Fed and Fit’s Hawaiian Chicken and Rice Bowl with Pineapple Avocado Salsa

This recipe came to my inbox a couple weeks ago and looked so good that I wanted to try it. Usually, I’ll end up changing a recipe a good bit from how it’s written, but not this one. I made it just as it was written because it looked so darn good. My kids wanted plain pineapple, rather than the salsa, so I did leave out a teeny bit for them to eat plain. Here’s my assessment of this recipe: it was very good, but way too salty. It called for a full cup of coconut aminos, which I thought was awesome because we love coconut aminos, but it was just way too overpowering. I was parched all night afterward. It was also a little spicy for my taste. The sriracha in the chicken plus the jalapeño in the salsa was too much. I’d opt for one or the other. You may see this recipe here at some point after I’ve made it my own and perfected it. It was a good recipe and I recommend you give it a try, but definitely cut back on the aminos, maybe even by as much as half.

Friday night, Pizza night. Can I just confess that it’s been a hard week? I’ve felt very unmotivated. This is the trouble with entrepreneurship – there is no one breathing down my neck if I don’t get my work done. I put a lot of pressure on myself and usually I deliver, but this week has been tough. I’ve just not been motivated to work. And then at the end of the day, I feel bad about not being productive. I love ending my day knowing I’ve accomplished a lot. I did make some good food this week so at least there’s that! This confession/rant has nothing to do with dinner, I just felt like throwing it in. But this yummy pizza with banana peppers did made me happy.

Saturday: Bacon and Egg Salad (I needed to document this recipe because even though I’ve been making it for many years, I have never published it. You’ll see it soon). I also made spinach salad because I had all that yummy bacon grease from the bacon for the egg salad. I toasted the leftover breadsticks for croutons. And last, but not least, I made a patriotic fruit pizza, the recipe for which you will have in time for July 4th. But in case you want to make this now, it was just a recipe of my paleo sugar cookie dough, topped with the almond “buttercream” frosting and then lots of fresh berries.

Sunday: We ordered takeout. We’ve only eaten restaurant food four times (including today) since quarantine began in early March. I just haven’t felt good about it from a safety standpoint, but I was ready for a night off from cooking, so I just went for it. We chose Chipotle and I made a homemade queso dip. I was just in the mood for that and wanted to know for sure the ingredients would be ok for me.

I hate to complain, but I’m going to for just a minute. This Chipotle meal is exactly why I cook at home 99.9% of the time. I paid about $10 for that carnitas bowl and I got about three bites of meat, one slice of onion, two pieces of pepper and about two cups of rice. They left off the salsa altogether and added about a tablespoon of cheese. It was just super disappointing, not what I even ordered and without being there in person during the preparation, I was trusting them to change their gloves and avoid cross-contamination. Boo hoo. I wanted this to be a good experience because sometimes I want a night off! Ok, rant over.

What’s on tap for this upcoming week:

Monday: Burgers, tater tots, grilled squash and a patriotic cake.

  • burgers: self-explanatory and nothing fancy
  • tater tots: I figure it’s better to make these at home than eat them in a restaurant so occasionally I’ll buy some decent quality organic, frozen ones and bake them up
  • grilled squash – with balsamic glaze/dressing is delicious!
  • cake – the kids (my son especially) have been asking to bake a cake together, so who am I to refuse? They have been wonderful lately, so good through all this quarantine stuff and I am loving spending time with them. I gave instructions and helped a tiny bit, but they baked the cakes almost entirely on their own, I made the icing (because I have tricks for keeping it lower in sugar) and they decorated it.
  • PS. I’m writing this Tuesday morning so I can actually show you how this meal turned out – the cake anyway. I forgot to snap a pic of my dinner plate. And I forgot to cook the tater tots, but my son brought home some roasted potatoes from work, so we all ate a few of those with our burgers and squash.

Tuesday: Honey Mustard Chicken in the Instant Pot, Rice and Green Beans

  • chicken: this is an experiment, but my plan is that it will be fast, easy, yummy and one that can easily double, prep ahead and/or freeze. It’s a simple sauce combo of mustard (any kind you like), a little honey (can sub maple syrup), coconut aminos and garlic all cooked up in the Instant Pot in about 10 minutes
  • rice: easy carb we can all eat and enjoy
  • green beans: purchased during my last shopping trip and I’ve been using the more perishable veggies first. After this, I’m down to broccoli, cauliflower and kale.
This turned out delicious and the entire meal was done in 20 minutes.

Wednesday: Nut-Crusted Snapper and kale salad

  • I’m going to use the snapper we brought back from our day at the beach. You can easily use different fish and even chicken in this recipe. It’s a family favorite around here.
  • Kale salad is a little sweet, a little tangy and is flexible too. You can put in some fresh apples or use any dried fruit you like.

Thursday: Hot dogs, oven-fried okra, and applesauce

  • All food from the freezer!
  • If you haven’t tried my oven fried okra, try to find some frozen cut okra and give it a try. It’s addictive!
  • Thursday is new Invisalign day for me and my teeth are always super sore. I think I can handle the okra and for sure the applesauce, but maybe not the hotdogs. Might have to switch my protein to eggs.

Friday: Girls’ night! We’re kicking the boys outside to camp for the night so we’re having a girls’ night. My little assistant has chosen the dinner and surprise, surprise, it’s pizza! She loves raw veggies so she’ll make herself a little veggie platter with ranch dressing and I’ll probably cook something for myself that’s a little easier on my teeth – maybe squash! There are currently a couple dozen little yellow squash in my garden and there’s a chance I’ll have one ready by the weekend.

Saturday: Salad with grilled chicken

  • One more package of chicken tenders is in the freezer from my Costco run a month ago and I think I’ll just drizzle them with some olive oil, salt and pepper and grill them up quickly.
  • Salad will be whatever greens are still looking good. I’ve had a decent amount of spinach coming in the garden, so that will probably be it. And maybe a little kale. It’s a hardy green that lasts a long time so I think I’ll still have some edible by next weekend.

Sunday: Either leftovers or takeout or inspiration may strike and I’ll create something, but I have a feeling it will be leftovers or takeout. 🙂 If there’s a new recipe you’re looking for, let me know and I’ll try to create it for you. I’m always looking for new recipe inspiration and most of my good ideas come from you!

I hope you make it a great (rest of the) week and eat some yummy (and healthy) food!

Weekly Meal Plan: Shelter-at-Home week 6

Another week at home, another meal plan. In case you haven’t been following along since the beginning, my purpose in providing these looks at what I’ve been cooking each week is to 1. provide meal inspiration (which we all need) and 2. show you how I’m making do, getting creative, being flexible, and still trying to maintain our healthy, anti-inflammatory way of eating.

If you want to catch up, you can see the other weekly meal plans here:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

I always begin each meal plan post recapping what I had planned for the previous week and showing you what we really ate. Then I provide the next week’s plan with details such as why I chose that meal, how I procured the ingredients, and suggested substitutions.

Here’s how our meals shaped up last week:

Sunday was Mother’s Day and my people did an amazing job of treating me like a queen, which included a delicious dinner. They do get off easy in the meal department because of intermittent fasting, since I only eat one meal a day most days, but they did this one meal just right! We had burgers and dogs on the grill, buttered and toasted buns (the only way to get gluten free buns to stay together well), green beans (made by my dad), fresh strawberries, pound cake and whipped cream. It was deee-licious!

Here they are busily getting dinner ready. I can almost never catch my daughter with her eyes open so this is as good as I was able to get!

Monday was my 18th anniversary! Our favorite NC beach had just re-opened to non-residents and we took the opportunity to get out of town for the day. Usually we would not include the kids on an anniversary outing, but we didn’t have a choice this year and it served as an end of school year celebration and just an all around treat for all of us. As soon as we rolled into Holden Beach, we stopped at the Provision Company for takeout, headed over to the beach and enjoyed our feast. My favorite thing there is the house salad with grilled tuna. It is so good, I think I could eat it every single day.

And just because we could, we stopped on our way home for more of this yumminess for dinner. This time I got grouper instead of tuna, but my husband had the tuna and we ended up sharing. We do that on our anniversary. 🙂 We also stopped for ice cream at Beaches-n-Cream. Twice. Forgot to get a picture of that one. We had Pina colada and salted caramel cashew. Yuuu-um!

Tuesday was back at home and reality. As planned, we had chicken fingers, roasted potatoes and roasted cauliflower. The cauliflower and potatoes were my very last remaining fresh veggies from almost three weeks ago. For some reason, I was really craving onions, so I caramelized some and then added just about three cubes of potatoes to the onions and ate that, leaving the rest of the potatoes for my family. This was an extremely white/tan meal, so it’s not very pretty. It did taste really great though.

Let me share a tip regarding the breaded chicken tenders: Whenever I make a batch of the breading flour, I almost always have a little leftover. Sometimes I’ll add flaked coconut, sometimes toasted nuts, sometimes seasoning like my cajun seasoning, and I just keep collecting those little bits of leftover breading in the fridge. So when I make my chicken tenders now, there’s almost always some additional ingredient in that breading which 1. tastes great and 2. I’ve not wasted a thing. This batch of chicken looks a little darker than normal because there was a lot of paprika in my breading flour.

My sauces for the chicken were:

  • honey mustard: mayo, yellow mustard, honey, a sprinkle of onion powder and a dash of coconut aminos
  • spicy remoulade / thousand island sort of sauce: mayo, ketchup, hot sauce, sriracha, coconut aminos, zucchini relish for sweetness – I just start adding things in and tasting as I go until I get a flavor I like. No science to this really.

Wednesday: This was the meal that was totally up in the air due to availability of produce, but I thought I might surprise my family with berry pie for dinner with a side of bacon. I know that sounds strange, but it would be awesome. Pie = awesome. Bacon = awesome. Dinner of pie and bacon = awesome. But alas, I ended up with meetings from 2 – 5 PM and just did not have time to get the pie made for dinner. So we had pancakes and I sacrificed one of my bags of frozen berries as a topping. You’ll be relieved to know that we did not have to endure a spinach and water smoothie. I was also able to make waffles from the same pancake mix and they turned out great. Yes, I did eat that big bowl of “melted” berries and it was delicious! This is simply frozen berries, defrosted on the stove, brought to a boil and cooked until the level of softness you like. I added about a tablespoon or less of maple syrup to sweeten just a tad. If you keep boiling the berries, it will thicken a lot, just like syrup. This time, I simply chose to keep it a little more liquid. I decided at the last minute to scramble up a few eggs for added protein.

Thursday – evidence that I went shopping! We had tuna “noodle” casserole and a fresh green salad. This casserole is chocked full of vegetables, so a side dish is not really required, but I was so excited to have fresh greens, we just had to go ahead and eat some. The salad dressing is just the leftover sauces from chicken fingers on Tuesday. I had to thin it out with just a drop or two of water.

Friday: Pizza night and camping! The kids have been asking to camp in the backyard and we figured – why not! It was forecasted to be a relatively warm night with no chance of rain and we had nothing else to do! They gave me a fire pit for Mother’s Day, I bought firewood at the hardware store and made paleo graham crackers, so we were all set.

The kids had Costco frozen pizza (I can’t eat that crust now with Invisalign, my teeth are too sore because it’s a little tough – but tastes great and I do recommend it) and I made a Simple Mills Crust Mix for Chris and I. I do recommend that crust because it was very easy to put together and it tasted great, had a nice texture too. But something in it upset my stomach. I do have a sensitive digestive system so there’s that. I will say that I can eat any of my homemade pizza versions with no trouble so I know it’s not the cheese or other toppings. I keep trying these convenience versions hoping for the best, but alas, I think I am going to have to make my pizza homemade when I want that treat. Oh yes, and I had a great big salad with a simple balsamic dressing (olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey and a pinch of salt).

These graham crackers were perfect for s’mores because they’re just the tiniest bit sweet.
We set up the fire pit on our stone pavers for safety – and it didn’t hurt that the water spigot is right there as well. You can see our camp all set up and ready for bedtime.
Chris and I slept in his backpacking tent and the kids slept in their hammocks. Kate’s is the blue one and Luke’s is dark green so he’s pretty well camouflaged to the right of Kate. This night really whet our whistle for camping and we hope we’ll be able to go sometime this summer. (PS. don’t the veggies look nice! I’ll have a garden update video coming to YouTube at the end of the month.)

Saturday: Shrimp Salad and Cheesecake! – we picked up some fresh shrimp on our way home from the beach Monday and I planned to enjoy them on Saturday so I would have plenty of time to peel and devein them without having to rush.

Here’s the backstory on this recipe – whenever I’m waiting at the deli counter at Whole Foods getting meats sliced, I look at all the prepared foods in the case next door. There is always a big pan of shrimp salad and it looks so good. I really don’t know what it is about it that is appealing to me because it’s just shrimp, celery, some seasonings and mayonnaise, but I always think, “I need to make that.”

I looked at a few recipes online for ideas for the different herbs and spices to use and came up with this combination that is delicious! Don’t worry, that recipe is coming to you in the next few weeks.

Shrimp salad on top of more of those amazing fresh greens

I will be honest and tell you that my children prefer simply boiled or steamed shrimp with some Old Bay seasoning so that’s what I made for them, but this shrimp salad was divine! With a big bed of fresh greens underneath and a slice of cheesecake for dessert, this was a delicious and decadent meal we all loved!

My husband is the cheesecake cooker in our house and he whipped this one up using the leftover campout graham crackers for the crust. We served it with some of the leftover pancake berries on top and it was sooo good! My body didn’t like it though, so no more of this for me, but I really enjoyed that piece!

Sunday was a combo of leftovers and frozen foods (Costco tacos for the win). I was actually feeling quite unwell by the time dinner rolled around so didn’t eat anything at dinner time. I was feeling better later so ate one of those little cups of mashed avocado from Costco with some plantain chips. Not very exciting, I know, but I aim to be honest.

And here’s our plan for the coming week:

Monday: Fish tacos with tropical salsa slaw, sautéed squash and AIP tortillas

  • frozen Cod from Costco, which I will quickly pan sauté
  • tropical salsa slaw made with a mango and pineapple from my Aldi haul at the end of last week
  • sautéed squash, but you could easily substitute any other vegetable you have or like
  • AIP tortillas – really, really yummy and hold up great for tacos, but a pain to make (just being honest). I recommend setting aside an hour and making a double batch

Tuesday: Carnitas, leftover slaw or I may make a fresh batch of plain slaw and roasted sweet potatoes

  • Bought pork last time I was at Whole Foods – they didn’t have the pork butt I usually buy, but they did have “country style ribs” which are a cut of pork that has both dark and white meat and make good carnitas as well. This is a really easy Instant Pot meal that takes only basic ingredients.
  • Got a really big head of cabbage at Aldi so more slaw. 🙂
  • Sweet potatoes just sounded good to me so that’s why we’re having those. Mama’s appetite often dictates the meal choices. I’ll cut these into cubes instead of fry shape because they’re just easier that way.

Wednesday: Jambalaya with rice

  • Whenever I can, jambalaya follows carnitas because the carnitas produce a really flavorful broth, which I save and use for the jambalaya. The jambalaya is delicious with even store bought broth, but if it has all those carnitas spices in it, yu-uuum-y!
  • Totally out of cauliflower rice so we’ll be serving this with regular rice. There are lots of veggies in the jambalaya, so a vegetable side dish is not necessary.

Thursday: Hawaiian Chicken Bowls and Roasted Cauliflower

  • Another day, another experimental meal. I’ll be saving part of the pineapple from Monday (which is no small feat because my family will eat a whole pineapple in one sitting if I let them) to make a pineapple avocado salsa to top a super flavorful (and easy) shredded chicken prepared in the Instant Pot.
  • Again, this is an experiment so we’ll see how it turns out.
  • I will have extra rice from Wednesday night so people can choose to serve their bowl with rice or roasted cauliflower. 

Friday: Pizza night, of course

  • Friday pretty much has to be pizza night or I will have a revolt on my hands.
  • Again, I’ll probably make a Costco Pizza for the kids (they love it, it’s easy and it frees up space in my freezer) and I’ll make a homemade version for Chris and I. Probably this one.
  • Side will be more salad or whatever vegetable needs to be eaten first.

Saturday and Sunday: I haven’t gotten that far in my meal planning. I’m starting to lack inspiration. I do have a long list of meals made up that use protein I have on hand so I’ll consult that list and come up with something, but when I planned the rest of the week, I ran out of planning steam as I got to the weekend. I did stock up on ground beef and hotdogs when I last went to Whole Foods so we’ll be ready to cook out on Memorial Day. This weekend, we may end up getting takeout once, which would be a real treat. You’ll have to come back next week and see what ended up on our plates.

That’s it for this week’s meal plan. I hope you go out (or stay in) and make it a great week! If you’ve had some amazing meal inspiration, please do tell!

Weekly Meal Plan: Shelter-at-Home Week 5

We are now heading into our ninth week of sheltering-in-place and my third week of meals from my last grocery shopping trip.

A few things have evolved through these weeks at home (just related to food):

  • I am no longer wanting to bake constantly (thank goodness!)
  • The urge to go to the grocery store has lessened
  • We are getting really good at putting meals together from strange ingredients
  • We do not waste a crumb

All of these are positive in my opinion. We have been given so much and we are expected to be good stewards of it so we are doing our best around here.

That being said, this week’s meals were pretty experimental. Some turned out well, some just ok, but all have potential and will likely end up here on the website eventually. Let’s recap the plan for this week and what we really ended up eating:

Monday: Sausage Gravy and Biscuits

  • This is indeed what we ate. The gravy was delicious and felt very decadent – probably because it is.
  • The biscuits are a new version I’ve been working on and I think they keep getting worse instead of better. They look better, but the texture is off. The recipe I linked above is one that has been here for a while and is indeed a goodie.
  • Fresh broccoli just steamed and then sautéed until crispy
They even look good before they’re baked!

 

Beautiful. But not quite right.

Tuesday: Taco Rice Soup in the Instant Pot

  • This was probably the highlight of the week. Everyone in this house loves Mexican night and this soup was super flavorful and delicious.
  • It’s a win when everyone gets to customize their own dish and Mexican is perfect for this.
  • We used up the leftover tomato soup from the weekend before.
  • This was an old recipe I had written up, but never published so it helped on the work front as well.
I topped mine with a little shredded grass-fed cheddar and a whole container of that avocado mash from Costco.

Wednesday: Pizza Egg Bites

  • Another experiment that actually went well.
  • Based off of Paleomg.com’s recipe.
  • When I make my freezer quiches, it uses 18 eggs and this recipe only used 8 and since I’m quickly running out of eggs, that was a big plus.
  • Kids were suspicious, but really liked it.
  • A great recipe for paleo beginners because it has all the flavors of pizza, but totally paleo.
Next time, I would cut the pepperoni into little pieces because it would easier to eat that way.

 

The pepperonis look like lips to me in this picture!

Thursday: Butternut Squash Risotto

  • Another day, another experiment.
  • My son didn’t particularly enjoy this, but the rest of us thought it was really good.
  • I served it with smoked sausage I found in the freezer and everybody loves that. The flavors actually went really well together so I would serve it this way again.
This is the real dish – just the risotto and totally paleo.

 

I ended up adding rice to the risotto because we had a ton leftover from our Chinese dinner out last week.

Friday: Lemon Chicken Picatta

  • This is a basic recipe that felt really special.
  • It was quick and easy to put together.
  • My package of chicken tenders was pretty small and I knew it would not be enough so I added a box of Bell & Evans gluten free chicken nuggets. The oven was already on to roast the okra, so I quickly microwaved the nuggets for a couple minutes (this brand is made with fresh chicken so they are raw), then popped them in the oven to finish baking then added them to the other chicken and sauce.
  • I made it extra saucey to serve over gluten free pasta.
This picture needs a slice of fresh lemon or something, but this is real life here, not professionally styled photography. Thanks for understanding.

Remember how at the beginning of this post I said my desire to bake non-stop had waned a bit? Well, as I sorted through my pictures for the week, I realized that wasn’t really true. Oops! This was all in the name of recipe development for the website though. 🙂

Snickerdoodle Mug Cake

 

Chocolate Mug Cake

These mug cakes are perfect for one (or two if you’re feeling generous) and come together in about three minutes using my Paleo Baking Mix (recipe coming this week).

Edible Cookie Dough

Because we’re short on eggs, the most logical treat to make is edible cookie dough. Of course! This is basically all the good stuff from a batch of cookies, minus the eggs (or egg replacer) and not baked. Yep, just eat it with a spoon. Because I added toasted walnuts, coconut flakes, and almond butter, this is basically a granola bar, which = health food. Never mind the red and green M&Ms that I found in the cupboard. I was out of my favorite Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips. You know what they say – desperate times and all that. My daughter was suspicious of this and would not even try it. The rest of us enjoyed it. A lot.

Saturday: We had a decent amount of leftovers from the week – lemon chicken piccata and pasta and butternut squash risotto. I had one more link of smoked sausage in the freezer so I cooked that (mostly for myself since I can’t eat leftover chicken). The fruits and vegetables are slim-pickings around here, but my parents brought us some fresh strawberries (hallelujah!), my son (thankfully) brought home some veggies in his dinner from work and we added the spinach from the garden to the leftover risotto (which is mostly vegetables anyway). I also made garlic toast from some of my new gluten free yeast bread. 

What’s on tap for the coming week

Remember here that I last went to the grocery store over two weeks ago. We have plenty of protein, but things are getting a little sketchy in the produce department. I still have a little spinach coming on in the garden, but everything else is about a month off at least. And we’re having freezing temperatures this weekend so that won’t help anything at all. Nevertheless, I have a plan. If nothing else, at least have a plan! Restaurants are open for take out, but restaurant food is never our first choice, both from a health aspect and budget, but it’s nice to know we have that option if we need it.

Sunday – Mother’s Day: Hamburgers and hotdogs, fresh strawberries, canned green beans and pound cake with whipped cream.

  • Burger and dogs (and buns!) are in the freezer
  • Fresh strawberries will hopefully come from a stand set up by a local farmer and just around the corner from us
  • Pound cake is the second half of the recipe I made for Easter and has been in the freezer. If you ever need a dessert to feed a crowd and don’t want questions about it being gluten free, this is your cake. It makes a big cake and tastes just like regular pound cake, maybe better.
  • Whipped cream because I had to buy a quart of cream last time because that’s all they had at the store. I put cream in my husband’s quiches so this is a staple on my grocery list. This time, it just so happens that we’re out of eggs (sorry honey), but have cream left so whipped cream it is (yay! for the rest of us).

Monday: Grilled cod, Cole slaw and AIP tortillas

  • Cod is frozen and from my last Costco haul
  • Cole slaw is thanks to a half a head of cabbage I found in the bottom of the crisper drawer. It has some mold on the outside, but I will just cut that off. It will be fine.
  • AIP tortillas – just takes some basic paleo flours and lard, which I have plenty of because nobody else wants it and so it was easy to come by during my last shopping trip. I’ll double the recipe so we have leftovers for the kids to make quesadillas or just snack on. They’re really tasty. If you haven’t made these yet, I highly suggest you try them.

Tuesday: Chicken fingers, roasted sweet potatoes, broccoli

  • Chicken tenders from last Costco trip
  • Sweet potatoes from last Whole Foods trip. I put these in the fridge so they would for sure last a few weeks
  • Broccoli – score! Two bags of frozen broccoli buried in the back of my freezer!!!

Wednesday: Pancakes, Bacon and Fruit

  • This might be a wish and a prayer meal. I do have bacon in the freezer, but I am desperately low on eggs. And fruit.
  • Aldi has shopping hours for people considered high risk on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I am tentatively planning to go Tuesday as soon as they open to restock my produce and hopefully get some eggs. They’ve been limiting eggs so I hope to get two dozen.
  • If I can’t get eggs to make pancakes, I will see if I can make do with a flax egg substitute since I do have plenty of flax meal.
  • Fruit will be frozen berries (I’ve been saving two bags because they make my favorite pie) unless I do get to Aldi and stock up on fresh fruit. Hey, as I write this, I just had a genius idea! I can just use those berries to make my berry pie! The crust can be the pancakes, the filling is of course the fruit and we’ll have bacon on the side. Wouldn’t my family love it if I served pie and bacon for dinner!!! Who wouldn’t love that!? The great thing about this pie (other than that it is delicious) is that it contains very little added maple syrup. And it’s jam-packed with antioxidants because of all those berries. It’s basically health food, just like the edible cookie dough.
  • This meal is subject to change to something else entirely!

Thursday: Tuna Noodle Casserole

  • May be the real deal recipe with squash (if I get some) or may include gluten free pasta since I have about a half a box of that left in the pantry.
  • Unless I go to the store, the only vegetable I will have left by this night is a head of cauliflower which I will roast.

Friday: Pizza

  • I have frozen Costco pizza, a pizza crust mix and if I have eggs, I could make Crazy Crust Pizza. So we have lots of pizza options.
  • I should have some sort of cheese left (mozzarella or provolone, I believe) and I have a package of Applegate pepperoni in the pantry. I didn’t know they sold this shelf-stable kind, but I snatched it up a while ago and I just found it in the cupboard.
  • Last bag of frozen broccoli! I actually also have a bag of frozen spinach which has been in my freezer for a LONG time. Years, I believe. If we have to eat that, I’m not sure what I’ll do with it. Smoothie probably. It might be a spinach and water smoothie. Hey, they had pie and bacon for dinner the night before, so no one is allowed to complain.

It’s getting interesting this week. If not for my desperate need for eggs (my husband really needs them for breakfast every day) then I would absolutely not go to the grocery store for another week. For one, I don’t want to expose myself and therefore my entire family, to this virus. And secondly, I am kind of loving the challenge of “making do.” Hmmm…not sure how this will shake out, but I will definitely let you know.

I hope you make it a great week. I hope all of you mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, friends…had a wonderful Mother’s Day. Whether you are an actual biological mother to someone or not, there is some child for whom you play an important role and I thank you for it! You are doing a good job. None of us are perfect and we all need help to continually improve, but if you are loving someone, giving of yourself in some way, then you are being a good mother and I thank you and I honor you!

 

 

Weekly Meal Plan: Shelter-at-home Week 4

Are we still on stay at home orders or are we not? For many of us around the country, that is the question. Where I live, our County has lifted the stay at home mandate, but the state has not. So who’s the boss?

No matter the rules, my family has decided we aren’t changing anything right now. According to the experts, virus cases have not yet peaked in NC so we are still playing it cautious.

Whether you’re slowly getting back to a normal routine or still firmly planted at home, I hope this week of meal show-and-tell and new ideas will be helpful to you. And don’t forget, if you’ve made something extra tasty this week, please share in the comments. We all need more ideas!

Here’s a recap of last week’s meals (we diverged a bit from the original plan). I’ll tell you what I planned, but what we really ended up eating and why.

What we really ate last week

Monday: Ham soup made with ham broth from the freezer, lots of vegetables, some ham and a little rice. This was really delicious on a chilly night and we all loved it.

Tuesday: The plan was hotdogs and salad, but we still had leftovers from the weekend (Shepherd’s Pie, lasagna and soup from Monday night). Everyone chose what they wanted and I made myself a little stir-fry. My son worked Monday night (he’s a server at a retirement home) and he brought home dinner of grilled shrimp, squash, some sort of green vegetables (we couldn’t tell what it was, but smelled like broccoli to me!) and rice. He only ate about half of it, so I sautéed the squash and mystery vegetable, added in the rice, the couple shrimp that were left, got that all hot and then added in a couple eggs to make like a fried rice. I served it with coconut aminos. It was super tasty!

I also decided how I wanted to treat myself for passing the National Board exam for Health and Wellness Coaches – snickerdoodles! I have eaten approximately 25,000 of these cookies this week. 🙂 They’re just so perfect and delicious. They demand to be eaten in great quantities. Make some yourself and see.

Wednesday: The plan was tuna salad or tuna casserole, but this ended up being a warm night so we had our Chinese take-out this night. Everyone loved this little parking lot picnic. We devoured everything and I forgot to take a picture.

Thursday: The plan was burgers, sweet potato fries and okra, but I scrapped that plan because all of those ingredients will last a while. I had some vegetables I wanted to use up so I made the tuna noodle casserole. I didn’t have enough squash so I added in a bunch of broccoli too. I also found a half a pound of sausage in the fridge that really needed to be cooked so I added that. And, oh yeah, my canned salmon was older than my canned tuna so I put in the two cans of salmon and one can of tuna. I ended up just calling it “casserole” since it was a pretty far cry from the tuna noodle casserole I set out to make. Three out of four Heinzes liked this meal, although we all agreed it was strange. 🙂

Friday: Crazy Crust Pizza  – look for this recipe on the website and YouTube soon. Sausage, pepperoni, lots of veggies. Just a really great, basic, easy, gluten free pizza that is super easy to customize at home.

Saturday: Because I’m filming the pizza recipe on Friday, our normal “kids learn to cook” night, and my son really wanted to cook shrimp anyway, we had shrimp Saturday night. In my weekly plan, I said that weekend plans were up in the air, but this shrimp salad is what I had penciled in. It’s just a basic spinach salad with hot bacon dressing and grilled shrimp. It feels light, but is still filling. You can add in whatever fresh veggies you like. And you can top with any meat or seafood you have on hand. We added a little crumbled goat cheese and fresh strawberries to make it extra special.

Sunday: Grilled sandwiches, kale salad, corn (off) the cob and tomato soup. My dad dropped off some gluten free bread from a local bakery so we used that to make grilled cheese sandwiches, which felt extra indulgent somehow. Kale salad recipe is here. The tomato soup is super duper simple. It’s actually a recipe from Trim Healthy Mama that is on the web so I can share it with you here:

    1. Pour 1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce into small saucepan.
    2. Add about 1 cup of water or chicken broth – I recommend broth if you have it
    3. Add 2-4 Tbs. heavy cream or dairy free milk/cream of your choice
    4. Add 1 tsp Pure Stevia Extract Powder or just a drizzle of honey or maple syrup
    5. Add sea salt, black pepper to taste and optional cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes
    6. Heat through and enjoy
This is my plate, so no corn. : (

The plan for this week

This week’s meal plan is full of recipe experiments. They will either turn out well and you will see them here in the future or they will turn out poorly and you will not see them here. 🙂

Monday: Sausage Gravy and Biscuits

  • This one actually isn’t an experiment (see the gravy recipe here), but the biscuits are a new creation and I’m wondering how this version will hold up to the gravy.
  • My son has been asking for me to make this for at least a year and I’ve just been putting it off. We love it and it’s delicious, but it feels so darn unhealthy, I just can’t bring myself to make it very often. Of course, this version is way healthier than any restaurant version, but even still, it’s not a salad!
  • We will serve this light dinner (ha ha) with a big fresh fruit salad – assuming there is any fresh fruit left. If not, I’ll defrost some frozen berries or I might go on the hunt for some fresh strawberries around town. Friends have told me there are some strawberry farmer stands set up nearby, but I just haven’t been out to find out for myself.

Tuesday: For Cinco de Mayo and Taco Tuesday (how wonderful that they merged this year) we are having Taco and Rice Soup in the Instant Pot

  • Super easy recipe made with basic ingredients like ground beef, salsa, a few vegetables (totally flexible on which ones), coconut milk and cauliflower rice. Lots of easy substitutions with this one. I will be using some of our leftover tomato soup from Sunday night.
  • There will be lots of vegetables in the soup so you can add a salad to the side if you want or maybe just some chips to dip in the soup (Siete Foods grain free tortilla chips are really good! Plantain chips would also be great.)

Wednesday: Pizza egg bites

  • This recipe is intended to be an easy, kid-friendly, intro. to paleo sort of recipe. We’ll see how it turns out!
  • Will be served with some sort of vegetable. My fresh produce is dwindling, so may be frozen okra that I will just roast in the oven.

Thursday: Butternut squash and sausage risotto

  • I’m creating this one for hopefully a fall launch because it seems like a fall recipe, doesn’t it? I just found butternut squash at the grocery store last time (weird times = weird food) so I picked some up and thought I’d get creative.
  • We will have something green to go alongside. My spinach patch is coming along great so maybe some fresh spinach or I might even stir some into the risotto. I’m planning to use cauliflower rice instead of traditional rice so this main dish will be veggie packed anyway.

Friday: Lemon Chicken Picatta

  • Because there has been a jar of capers in my fridge for…I don’t know how long. And I have some lovely lemons. And chicken. Enough said.
  • I might make this extra saucy and serve it with some gluten free pasta, which is always a hit around here.
  • This will be “Kids learn to cook” night and this is basically a sauté the meat, deglaze the pan and make a sauce dish that I think my kids should be able to pull off pretty easily.

Whew! That’s the plan! If we make it through in the produce department, that will be two full weeks on one grocery trip and I’ll be pretty stoked. A new Aldi opened up really close to my house and I’m excited to go there, but I know it will be crazy busy for a while and so I want to stay away as long as I can. I wish they were open 24 hours a day like some stores used to be because I would totally stay up late to go shopping in a way less busy store right now!!! But I’m not complaining! I’m so thankful for all of the people who are making things run right now.

I currently have plenty of protein to last us a couple more weeks, but we are just about out of fresh produce. I have a feeling I’ll be heading to the store by the end this week for produce alone.

I hope you make it a great week and eat some yummy, healthy food!

April Research Round-up: All About GMOs

First of all, I just have to share that I spent a big part of my childhood on my grandparent’s farm and this corn field picture brings back wonderful memories for me. That was before the days of genetically modified crops.

I think that by now, you all have likely heard about GMOs. Maybe you try to avoid them when you do your grocery shopping. Perhaps you’ve even watched a documentary about GMOs. As a result, you have likely developed an opinion on GMOs one way or another. Either you think they are dangerous and are to be avoided or you think they’re just a part of life these days and can’t do much harm.

I actually love watching documentaries, but I would caution you to not put too much stock in what is presented in any documentaries about the food industry. Whereas there is often some truth presented in these films, they are prepared with very heavy bias and it is not always easy to discern the people or organizations backing the final product, which is what drives the bias that is presented.

This is actually a problem with information about GMOs in general. Most searches for information will yield articles that are clearly biased one way or the other. With some digging, you can sometimes find out the organization or company ultimately behind said article and then make a decision about whether or not it is to be trusted, but many times the true source of the information is not clear. Most of what you can find are opinions.

My goal with this post is to present facts and only facts. I’ll explain what GMOs are, why they were created and what they were promised to do. I’ll summarize the research that currently exists and consult with functional medicine experts who have earned my trust and thereby hopefully provide you with the tools you need to decide if you want to avoid GMOs or not.

Bear in mind that every piece of information is presented with bias, even this one. I’m sure you can figure out on which side of this issue I fall, but I’m trying very hard to present a fair picture. Also know that these research round-ups come out at the very end of the month because there is always more to research. Every time I think I have one of these posts finished, I find another article I want to review and then end up tweaking the post. So this is by far a complete picture of the issue. I could actually summarize the topic by saying, “Some say GMOs are fabulous and can solve many problems and some say GMOs are poison and are to be avoided at all costs. The end.” The truth has to lie in there somewhere and I’ve tried to uncover it.

This quote from the well-respected British Medical Journal sums up these thoughts well,

“In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) identified glyphosate, the world’s most commonly used herbicide, as a probable human carcinogen. It quickly became evident that separating science from politics and economic interests would be difficult for glyphosate.

IARC’s assessment prompted a major controversy between health evaluation agencies, led to unprecedented lobbying by Monsanto (the primary manufacturer of glyphosate and genetically modified products resistant to glyphosate), and resulted in high profile court cases in the US.

Glyphosate typifies the problems associated with research, evaluation, and regulation of pesticides. These include serious difficulties in the conduct of human research; important gaps in post-market research into exposure and risk assessment, particularly in low and middle income countries; lack of information on environmental effects; extensive industry involvement in evaluation and regulatory processes; and the major legal implications of these evaluations.”

Now that we understand how difficult this topic is, let’s dive in, shall we…

What are GMOs?

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are living organisms whose genetic material has been artificially manipulated in a laboratory through genetic engineering. This creates combinations of plant, animal, bacteria, and virus genes that do not occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods.

Most GMOs have been engineered to withstand the direct application of herbicide and/or to produce an insecticide within the plant. However, new technologies are now being used to artificially develop other traits in plants, such as a resistance to browning in apples.

You are most likely to hear about GMOs in combination with Glyphosate, Round-up, Round-up ready crops, and Monsanto. The reason for this is that the most famous of the GMOs is Round-up ready corn, which is a variety of corn made by Monsanto that has the glyphosate (the active ingredient in Round-up) built right into the plant’s DNA. This supposedly saves the farmer from having to spray this particular herbicide (weed killer) on the plants in the field because the plant is now serving as it’s own herbicide. So discussion of GMOs and their safety naturally involves a discussion of glyphosate and its safety. The two go hand in hand.

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world and is applied to more than 150 food and non-food crops. In addition to its agricultural uses, glyphosate is also commonly used on lawns, gardens and parks where pets and kids play. Glyphosate is considered by many in the scientific community to be a carcinogen. There is enough data to strongly suggest that glyphosate is carcinogenic, but the company that makes this product is very large and has many resources at its disposal and is continually fighting against that reputation. The good news for savvy consumers is that there is a lot of ongoing research so expect to hear more about this for years to come.

Potential Health Implications

Genetic modification involves the transfer of genes from one species of plant or animal to another, through techniques that can cause mutations in the genome that may have unintended consequences for the crop’s safety and ultimately, the consumer. The imprecise rearrangement of genes can create new proteins in these plants that may trigger allergies or promote disease.  Our immune systems often do not recognize these new proteins and may mount an immune attack against them if they enter our bloodstream intact. This could even be the beginning of an autoimmune condition. These are thoughts that have been presented in the scientific community, but have not yet been proven in human studies.

In addition to Roundup-Ready crops, the other very common GMO field crops include Bt-potatoes, Bt-corn, and Bt-sweet corn. In these genetically modified plants, a gene from a bacteria called Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) is inserted into the DNA of the plant, which causes a toxin to be produced within the cells of the plant. This Bt-toxin kills insects that eat the plant by breaking down its gut lining and killing the insect from septicemia caused by the ensuing blood infection. While this toxin has not been proven to be toxic in this way for humans and other mammals, several recent studies have suggested this toxin could have effects on immune health, gut health, liver and kidney function, and fertility. The gut seems to be most susceptible to the potential dangers of GMO consumption. Some argue that gut bacteria are capable of acquiring DNA sequences from genetically modified plants, which could lead to the development of antibiotic resistance.

Analysis of Monsanto’s own research and that of an independent laboratory in France determined that mice and rats eating Bt-toxin producing corn sustained liver and kidney damage. Additionally, harmful effects were noticed in the heart, adrenal glands, spleen and hematopoietic system of these GMO corn-fed rats. Bt toxin has also been demonstrated to reduce fertility in mice, with fewer offspring being produced than by mice fed on natural crops.

Potential Benefits

Modern agricultural practices, like the creation of genetically modified (GM) plants, provides the potential for sustainable feeding of the world’s increasing population and there are reports that genetically modified products have enabled increased yields and reduced pesticide usage. When GM plants were introduced in the late 90s, farmers were promised less work, more yield and therefore higher profits.

Growers have turned to genetically modified crops to address their challenges with insects or weeds that affect their yield and their bottom line in the long-run. They have been told that planting GMO crops will benefit everyone. 

Current Data on Benefits of GMOs

We now know from recent reports that genetically modified foods do not meet their promise of increased yields and decreased use of pesticides; in fact, the opposite might be true. In 2016, The New York Times released an extensive examination in which they compared two continents – North American (which embraces genetically modified crops and Europe (which banned them). What the researchers found was that there was no difference in crop yield, and the U.S. growers saw a 21 percent increase in herbicide use with the introduction of these crops. By contrast, in France, use of insecticides and fungicides has fallen by a far greater percentage — 65 percent — and herbicide use has decreased as well, by 36 percent.

Remember, the promise of genetic modification was twofold: By making crops immune to the effects of weedkillers and inherently resistant to many pests, they would grow so robustly that they would become indispensable to feeding the world’s growing population, while also requiring fewer applications of sprayed pesticides and herbicides, increasing profits for farmers. An analysis using United Nations data showed that the United States and Canada have gained no discernible advantage in yields — food per acre — when measured against Western Europe, a region with comparably modernized agricultural producers like France and Germany. A report by the National Academy of Sciences found that “there was little evidence” that the introduction of genetically modified crops in the United States had led to yield gains beyond those seen in conventional crops. Supporters of GMOs still tout the increased yields as the reason for needing GMOs, but so far, the data do not support this.

I could not find any recent data that supported the theory that GM crops would financially benefit the farming community, specifically in the United States. I found one “scientific” article that seemed to report data contradictory to everything else I found – data that supported the theory of increased yields and increased profits for farmers. Because this information was so different than everything else I had found, I began to dig. An article that is posted by what appears to be a scientific magazine may seem reputable, but if you dig, you often find that they are either financially supported by or have their editorial boards composed of executives from the seed and biotechnology companies that are producing these GM products. Other sources were not from scientists at all, but from economics firms that provide consulting services to these biotech companies. Personally, I didn’t feel that type of data was trustworthy. What is more widely reported in the US is that many farmers found their expenses increased after years of GM crop growth because the surrounding and troublesome weeds became resistant to the herbicides, requiring the application of much more product (which increases labor and cost).

Difference between Heirloom, Hybrid and Genetically Modified

If you are a gardener, you have surely run across these terms and might be wondering if your hybrid vegetables are actually GMOs. Let’s break it down: In plants, these terms refer to how the plants are reproduced: whether by simple seed saving (heirloom), by cross-pollinating two different species (hybrid), or by introducing foreign genes (genetic modification). None of these methods are easily labeled good or bad and you won’t find much agreement on which is the best, either. Heirlooms are plants that have stood the test of time, hybrids are often more disease-resistant or higher-yielding, and GMOs, although still the subject of many studies, are still being touted to have the potential to positively impact the world’s food supply.

Heirloom Vegetables

Heirloom vegetables are not a special species of plants. The term heirloom is used to describe any type of vegetable seed that has been saved and grown for a period of years and is passed down by the gardener that preserved it. It has a provenance, of sorts. To be capable of being saved, all heirloom seed must be open-pollinated, so that it will grow true to seed.

Open-pollinated—or OP—plants are simply varieties that are capable of producing seeds that will produce seedlings just like the parent plant. Hybrid plants do not do this. I learned this the hard way one fall after a particularly successful garden season. I grew a variety of tomato that year that was delicious and produced really well. I told my dad that I was going to save some of the seeds to plant the next year and he told me not to bother because they would not produce the same tomatoes the next year. What? And thus began my understanding of hybrid vegetable plants.

Hybrid Vegetables

Plant breeders cross-breed different types of plants in an effort to create a plant with the best features of both parents. Usually, the parents are naturally compatible varieties within the same species. This hybridization, or the crossing of compatible varieties, happens naturally in the wild; plant breeders basically just steer the process to control the outcome. These are called hybrids and many of the modern plants are the results of these crosses. In fact, it may be difficult to find something other than hybrid varieties at your local garden center. The hybrids dominate the selection these days.

While plants can cross-pollinate in nature and hybrids repeatedly selected and grown may eventually stabilize and become open-pollinated, most hybrid seeds are relatively new crosses and seed from these hybrids will not produce plants with identical qualities. Using a method of controlled crossing devised by Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel in the mid-19th century, plant breeders can now produce seed that combines the desired traits of two pure parent lines in the first generation. This creates a new variety known as an “F1 hybrid.” To create F1 seed, seed companies grow two parent lines in the field each year, designate the male and female parents, carry out pollination under controlled conditions — such as hand-pollination under row cover — and then harvest seed from the females.

Humans have been cultivating new plant varieties since the beginning of agricultural development, but until fairly recently, the process required patience. Developing a non-hybrid, open-pollinated (OP) variety using classic plant-breeding methods takes six to 10 generations. Not anymore.

For example, each year new hybrid tomato varieties are offered. You may see them labeled as hybrids or F1, also known as the first filial generation (first-generation hybrid) or F2, also known as the second filial generation. These may eventually stabilize, but for the moment, a tomato such as the popular ‘Early Girl’ does not produce seeds that reliably have the features you expect in an ‘Early Girl’ tomato. Seed from hybridized plants tends to revert to the qualities of the parents, so tomatoes grown from the seeds saved from your ‘Early Girl’ tomatoes might still be tasty, but will not be the same as your “Early Girls.”

Plant breeders like F1 seed because it’s faster and easier than breeding new open-pollinated varieties. You can cull the bad traits from the parents while stacking their good traits in the F1 offspring. For gardeners, hybrids sometimes provide advantages compared with OP varieties, such as better disease resistance. Big seed companies also like F1 hybrids because the process gives them proprietary ownership of each new variety. And because seed from F1 plants won’t produce uniform offspring, gardeners must buy new seeds each year.

Genetically Modified Plants

Hybrids should not be confused with genetically modified organisms, which can be any plant, animal, or microorganism that has been genetically altered using molecular genetics techniques such as gene cloning and protein engineering. Plants like corn that has the pesticide Bt engineered into its genetic makeup to make it resistant to certain pests are GMO crops. Bt is a natural pesticide, but it would never naturally find its way into corn seed.

Unlike hybrids, which are developed in the field using natural, low-tech methods, GM varieties are created in a lab using highly complex technology, such as gene splicing. These high-tech GM varieties can include genes from several species — a phenomenon that almost never occurs in nature. With GM varieties, genes are transferred from one kingdom to another, such as bacteria to plants. So far, only commodity crops with GM traits — such as corn, soy, alfalfa and sugar beets — have been approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for use, primarily in processed foods and animal feeds. The exception is GM sweet corn, which is now available at your grocery store.

The trouble is that nobody knows how these unnatural new organisms will behave over time. The seed companies that develop these varieties claim intellectual property rights so that only they can create and sell the variety. In some cases, companies, such as Monsanto, even refuse to allow scientists to obtain and study their GM seeds. For some crops, such as corn, wind can carry the pollen from GM varieties and contaminate non-GM varieties. And there is no mandatory labeling of GM content in seed.

Though few vegetable seeds are GM now, they may be soon. One way to avoid GM seeds is to buy certified organic seed, which, according to the National Organic Program, must not be genetically modified. If a seed catalog doesn’t say a seed has been tested, ask the supplier.

In a nutshell: Hybrids are the product of guided natural reproduction, while GMOs are the result of unnatural, high-tech methods used to create untested organisms that would never emerge in nature.

Cookies/Snacks/Chips. Almost all include high-fructose corn syrup; soy, corn or canola oil; soy lecithin and other soy isolates; or other additives derived from GM corn and soy.

Pasta/Rice/Beans. You’re pretty safe here, because wheat, rice and beans are not (yet) genetically modified, but watch out for the heat-and-eat pasta meals that include GM ingredients.

Ice Cream/Frozen Prepared Meals. Unless labeled organic, these are virtually guaranteed to have GM ingredients, including corn and soy products, whey protein from rBST milk, and GM beet sugar.

Oils/Fats/Shortening. Olive oil is non-GM. “Vegetable oil” usually is GM, as are corn, soybean and canola oil. Solid shortenings are hydrogenated canola, corn and soybean oil.

Condiments/Prepared Foods. All of these items contain GM soy, corn and/or canola unless labeled organic.

Bread/Crackers. Almost all commercial bread is made with corn syrup and soy-based ingredients.

Summary

The bottom line is that there is a lot we still do not know about GMOs and their potential health implications or their benefits to the farmer and the food supply.  Since GMOs are still relatively new, we do not have long-term study data to prove their safety or otherwise. My advice would be to stick to real, whole, minimally processed foods, and as a result, you will be consuming very few genetically modified foods. And remember that organic means it will not be genetically modified. So if you want to forget all the details, but want to avoid GMOs, just look for the organic label.

References:

https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l1613.short

https://www.thespruce.com/hybrid-vs-heirloom-vegetables-1403361

https://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/hybrid-seeds-vs-gmos-zb0z1301zsor

https://www.iarc.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/MonographVolume112-1.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28645870

www.seedalliance.org

www.drhyman.com

http://gestacolectiva.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2018-Davoren-REVIEW.pdf

https://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/food-policy/how-to-avoid-genetically-modified-food-zmgz12onzphe

Paleo Pantry Meals

For our fifth Wednesday this month, instead of creating another new recipe and in light of our current world situation of self-quarantine and grocery shopping challenges, I’m offering you a one week menu of meals that are extremely flexible and can be made with what I consider to be paleo pantry (and fridge) staples.

I’ve simply listed a meal and then described what I consider to be the essential ingredients for that meal and then offered some optional ingredients.

For example, Monday’s meal is a frittata and fruit. Required ingredients are eggs, vegetables and fruit. You could use any combination of vegetables you like and/or have available. Optional ingredients are breakfast meats like sausage and bacon and also cheese or cream of some sort that would also be good in your egg masterpiece. A frittata can be made simply by cooking vegetables in a pan and then pouring scrambled eggs on top and cooking until the eggs are set. BUT you can add lots of additional ingredients if you want to and have them available.

For a fruit side dish, you can simply slice some apples and oranges, make a fancy fruit salad or open a can of peaches or jar of applesauce. Lots of flexibility here.

Remember that functional medicine is a whole systems approach. That means that if you are feeling stressed and anxious right now, the solution is not simply targeted at your mind. You can address your anxiety by paying attention to your diet, getting regular exercise, prioritizing sleep, etc. So my goal here is to help you continue coming up with meals that are satisfying, full of ingredients that you are likely to have available and will help to create a high level of health.

(You can click on the image below, save it to your computer and/or print it to post it in your kitchen.)

Weekly Meal Plan: Shelter-at-Home week 3

How’s it going in the food department where you are? Are you finding what you want and need? How are your stores managing the crowds? It’s a mixed bag here – both in terms of availability and safety.

I successfully made it two weeks between big shopping trips and am now stocked up and hoping to not have to go again for a month. I have never spent so much money at one time at the grocery store and it feels strange! I was still able to find everything on my list, although sometimes I had to buy more expensive versions of things, like canned organic green beans instead of regular, but I’m thankful to get good quality, healthy food.

I shopped at Costco, Aldi and Whole Foods this week. The one thing I would have liked to have more of are eggs. Every place was low in stock and so I didn’t buy very many. Just for reference, we usually go through 3 dozen eggs a week. If not for intermittent fasting, we’d definitely be coming up short in that department. I used to eat eggs for breakfast/lunch every day and now I generally only eat them on days the family has leftovers. But my husband still eats eggs everyday. This is the one thing we will probably run out of before the month is up.

The big score this week was fresh chicken at Costco. Additionally, I was also able to pick up two pounds of grass-fed ground beef at both Aldi and Whole Foods. I don’t feel like I’m hoarding, yet I’m still able to procure what my family needs. I even found some convenience foods I’ve been looking for, such as frozen gluten free chicken nuggets.

Self-control was on full display on my most recent shopping trip and I’m quite proud of myself. Since all this pandemic stuff started, I’ve bought way more treats and other items not on my list than I care to admit. The one splurge this time was a bag of “healthy” marshmallows from Whole Foods for our upcoming backyard campout and obligatory s’mores. We don’t have a fire ring, fire pit or anything similar, but I trust my two Eagle Scouts can come up with a safe way for us to have a little backyard fire.  I already have some good chocolate (of course!) and will make homemade graham crackers. Actually, we might use chocolate chip cookies instead. I’m making a batch to give to the kids’ teachers and could easily make extra. Everyone loves s’mores made with chocolate chip cookies!

Let’s get to the meals, shall we? First, a recap of last week’s meals and then I’ll preview the upcoming week. See the previous quarantine meal plans here and here.

Monday we made Chicken Pot Pie, Instant Pot style, live on YouTube. You can catch the replay here.

Tuesday was Hillbilly casserole in the Instant Pot. Recipe coming to the website soon and on YouTube a little later. Roasted cauliflower was our side dish. This is my favorite way to eat cauliflower. If you haven’t tried it, please do!

In the “for what it’s worth” category, I almost always use salad sized plates for my dinner so portions aren’t quite as large as they may seem.

Wednesday brought Tuna salad, apple slices (apple sauce for me) and gluten free macaroni and cheese. Yep, I ate the mac and cheese too. That’s what quarantine life and sore teeth will do to you!

Thursday: Lasagna! I finally made this for my husband. It’s one of his all-time favorite foods and I really wanted to make it with the sauce from our first date restaurant, but they didn’t open until 5:00, meaning we would end up eating dinner around 8:00 if I used their sauce. Then I realized I had never written up a recipe for lasagna, probably because I’m too lazy to write down all the ingredients! So I made it from scratch, documenting meticulously so I can publish it for you. It was the best lasagna I’ve ever had. This is not my favorite food, but this version was so good that I went back for seconds! And then thirds! I was so stuffed, but I can’t eat it leftover so needed to get my fill!! My family ate salad with their lasagna, but I made a green smoothie that I drank over two days. I’ve had a hard time digesting raw vegetables lately so I’m having to be careful.

Friday was kid’s cook night and we had my daughter’s favorite, General Tso’s Chicken, broccoli and rice stick noodles. It’s a pretty labor intensive dish, but she did an amazing job. Didn’t complain about cutting the raw chicken, battering it or anything. And it was delicious! This recipe calls for rice wine vinegar, which I didn’t have so I used half white vinegar + half rice wine and it was perfect. Just wanted to share that in case you ever need to make that substitution as well.

Couldn’t resist including a picture of my chef. I had to take this picture carefully as she wouldn’t actually “allow” me to take any.

 

A great take-out at home recipe!

Saturday was a new recipe: Thanksgiving-inspired shepherd’s pie. I used ground turkey, celery, carrot, onion, etc. and topped with a combination of mashed potatoes and mashed sweet potatoes. It was good and hearty, but needs some tweaking before publishing. You’ll probably see this one in the fall.

I love how the gravy bubbled around the edges and the potatoes browned a bit on top!
We celebrated six weeks of quarantine with a happy birthday to quarantine cake (just an excuse to eat cake)!

Sunday was lots and lots of leftovers because each of these dishes this week made a lot and my children decided not to eat a ton. (I think they were eating a lot of snacks late in the afternoon and I decided to let it go.)

Without further adieu, this week’s meal plan:

Monday: Ham soup

  • broth made from Christmas ham bone – needs to get out of the freezer because it’s a large, round container
  • ham “steak” purchased on last trip to Whole Foods
  • veggies: onion, celery, carrot, mushroom, zucchini (could use any veggies you like, though)
  • rice (use potato or cauliflower rice too)

Tuesday: Hotdogs, buns, salad

  • When this pandemic started, my local Whole Foods was out of all hotdogs, bacon and packaged sausages, which I thought was strange, so the last time I went and they had hotdogs, I snatched them up. They’re not a bad choice when you buy grass-fed all beef dogs from a reputable brand like Wellshire or Applegate.
  • Buns! Yes, hotdog buns require their own mention in the menu, because we don’t usually have them. These were an impulse buy back at the beginning of quarantine and have been in the freezer waiting for their day to shine. Why are buns so significant? Because every time we have hamburgers or hotdogs, my kids’ first question is, “With buns?” Ninety-nine percent of the time, my answer is, “No,” but this particular day is their last day of Classical Conversations (their homeschool community class) and their final exams so it’s a celebratory meal.
  • Salad because we have fresh greens right now and I’m not shopping for another month (I hope) and have to eat first what will go bad first.
  • We’ll also probably go out for ice cream because that’s how we celebrate around here.

Wednesday: Tuna salad or maybe tuna noodle casserole

  • I have canned tuna from my last shopping trip to Costco – this had been in short supply early on during the pandemic, but I’ve seen it at all my local stores lately. It’s a great, shelf-stable protein source.
  • Whether we have tuna salad or casserole depends on the weather (warm weather = salad; cold weather = casserole) and also my mood. Let’s be honest, somedays I feel like a lighter meal and somedays I want comfort.
  • I put in new Invisalign trays on Wednesdays so my teeth are always sore and I want to eat something soft, which is why this meal is scheduled for today. I used to schedule my meals based on what activities were on the calendar for that day and since now there are no activities on the calendar, my only determining factors are the weather, my mood and my teeth!

Thursday: Burgers, sweet potato fries and okra

  • These are all ingredients I have right now, with the meat and okra taking up space in the freezer and it’s a family favorite meal. Simple, delicious and nutritious.
  • Now that I think about it, we’ll probably have a fresh vegetable instead of the okra since it will last (frozen) compared to all the fresh produce. Hmmm…will see what kind of mood I’m in come Thursday. You’ll have to come back next week to see what we ended up eating. 🙂

Friday: Kids cook day again: Crazy Crust Pizza (recipe coming) and veggie platter

  • This is the easiest pizza in the world (we had it two weeks ago as well) and I want my kids to know how to make pizza rather than just ordering it. You can control the quality of the ingredients, keep it gluten free (no cross-contamination) and it’s way cheaper.
  • A veggie platter with ranch is always more fun and Friday night-ish than a salad!
  • Just a note: When I asked my son what he wanted to learn to cook for his next cooking lesson, this was his reply (I told him it had to include ingredients we already had and he helped me with the groceries so he knew what was available.): “Ribs or steak.” Um, no. I’m not spending money on expensive cuts of meat right now, bucko!

And as we head into the weekend, things are a little up in the air. Some weeks, we’re having lots of leftovers (like this week) and others we have none. So one weekend day will probably be for leftovers and if we don’t have any, I’ll come up with something else.

We’re also planning to go get takeout one night. But let me tell you a little story. I hope this encourages you in some way if your children are not perfect either (or it may terrify you). My children are 13 and 15 and I still have to remind them every. single. day to brush their teeth and wash their faces. They are both getting breakouts (and I sell Beautycounter skincare so this is a personal affront to me!), one has braces and the other has “weak enamel.” So it’s super duper important, as if it weren’t anyway, that they brush and floss really, really well. I happen to have naturally bad teeth and want to spare them all the dental work I’ve had to endure. Sooo…..I started them on a sticker chart/reward system again just like we used to do when they were toddlers. Yep, they have a sticker chart for their teeth and face washing. They have to come show me their sparkling little faces or they don’t get a sticker. With the accumulation of 20 stickers, they get a prize. Now, if you can do math at all, you would realize that a minimum of brushing teeth twice a day and washing your face once a day would earn three stickers per day, meaning you get 21 for a week. I won’t tell you how many weeks it took them to accumulate 20 stickers, but they have finally done it and their prize is take-out from our favorite Chinese restaurant that has an extensive gluten free menu. (for local people, it’s Goji Bistro in Cary – I’ve never been sick after eating there and the food is delicious) The problem is that their restaurant is about 30 minutes from our house so we are waiting for a warm night so we can pick it up and have a parking lot picnic so we can eat it while it’s fresh.

And that’s our meal plan for the week. I just found out, as in right now, as I’m putting the finishing touches on this post, that I passed the National Board Certification exam for Health and Wellness Coaches. Woo hoo!!!! It was a very difficult and tricky exam and I’m so relieved that I passed and that the waiting is over. I took the exam in February so it’s been a long wait to find out my results. So we will be celebrating this week for sure! Not sure what that will look like, but I’ll post it here. I may make myself a favorite dessert. Hmmmm….decisions, decisions.

Here’s a little beauty for your week – a peony from my garden, that thankfully survived a couple really heavy rainstorms. Thank you, Lord, for all the beauty around us right now!

Weekly Meal Plan: Shelter-at-Home 2.0

Hey, hey and welcome back to another week of meal plans! If you missed last week’s meal plan (with lots of explanation) head over here to read that one. In this week’s post, I’ll tell you what we really cooked last week, show you some pictures and then give a little run-down of what’s on the menu for this week.

Here we go…

Last week’s plan included fish tacos, Mexican night, spinach salad with shrimp, breakfast for dinner, burgers and maybe lasagna.

Here’s what we really had:

Cod seared in cast iron pan, AIP tortillas, tropical salsa slaw, and looks like squash and mushrooms on the side

 

Taco meat (under all that cheese), fresh guacamole, but all the rest leftovers – tortillas, veggies and slaw

 

Spinach salad with hot bacon dressing, hard boiled eggs, assorted veggies and grilled shrimp

 

Eggs, sausage, one little piece of bacon I wrestled away from my daughter, experimental biscuit and pancake, apple slices

 

Here’s a close-up of the biscuits made with my all purpose baking mix (still in experimental mode). They run into each other, but are soooo delicious!

 

Perfect, flaky biscuit texture inside

 

Friday night was my son’s turn to cook. He grilled burgers, cooked okra on the stove and I made these baked, battered onion rings (an experiment that turned out great). I didn’t get a picture of my final plate with everything, but here are the onions rings, which were the best part anyway. 🙂

 

I had planned to make lasagna on Saturday, but I found 4 containers of mystery soup in my freezer, so I defrosted them altogether, added quite a lot of coconut aminos and hot sauce to mask the freezer burn taste and we had soup with grilled cheese sandwiches (the gluten free bread recipe is coming). This was not the best tasting meal ever, but it was nutritious and filling and I felt great about cleaning some old stuff out of the freezer.

 

This was Sunday night – I found an interesting new pizza crust recipe on YouTube and tried it – and loved it! I’ll post it later this week. It’s made with gluten free flour, egg and milk and could not be easier. For the sauce, I combined tomato paste, water and part of a packet of spaghetti sauce mix that had been in my cupboard for ages! Again, it tasted really good and I felt great about clearing out some old stuff. There was sugar and maltodextrin in that mix, but a little bit of these ingredients are fine on occasion and desperate times call for desperate measures.
I wanted to show you a couple more pictures of the crust. It held together beautifully – we could eat it with our hands! But it was also easy to bite, which may sound silly, but with two of us with orthodontia right now, that’s important. Holds together, yet isn’t hard to bite, makes this the perfect pizza crust for us now. Plus, you really won’t believe how easy it is to make.

 

And the baking continues! These are lemon tarts – my paleo sugar cookie dough with lemon zest added and baked into mini muffin cups. Then I made a paleo lemon curd, folded in some real whipped cream to make a lemon pudding. Everybody loved these. I loved the pudding with fresh strawberries.

And that’s the recap for last week. It’s a good thing I’m really enjoying intermittent fasting or I would be busting out of my clothes!

This week’s plan continues with what we have on hand. I did end up making an impromptu visit to one grocery store on Saturday because I was picking up a Redbox movie (Ford v. Ferrari which we all really loved) so I decided to go on into the store and pick up a few things. We were totally out of fruit and the only fresh vegetable left was broccoli. This is a store I don’t shop regularly, but there are a few things I typically buy there, like our favorite sausage, so I stocked up on those things.

Monday: Instant Pot Chicken Pot Pie

  • I’m making this live on my YouTube channel TODAY at 5 PM EDT so join me if you can!
  • Chicken breasts from the freezer that I picked up last month at Whole Foods
  • fresh onions, celery and carrots plus some green beans from the freezer
  • I usually add mushrooms to my pot pie, but I don’t have any – I did have a can of mushrooms, but I put those on the pizza last night
  • crust is made from paleo pantry staples – almond flour, arrowroot, salt and lard, all of which I still have – there’s not much demand for lard at my Whole Foods so I can probably get more when I go next time – it makes the best pie crust, pastry crust like used in this pot pie and the AIP tortillas we had last week
  • I found one little container of chicken broth during my freezer clean out last week. I’ll make up the difference with the Pacifica Bone Broth I bought at Costco on my last trip there

Tuesday: Hillbilly Casserole

  • A super simple, very comforting meal that uses simple ingredients
  • Ground beef (can sub any other ground meat) plus potatoes and onion
  • Add in extra veggies if you have them, like bell pepper, squash, carrots, celery, mushrooms
  • Pour in milk of your choice or broth and simmer until potatoes are cooked through
  • Top with cheese and broil until melted and browned, optional. I topped mine with a quick, homemade version of pimento cheese (you can actually watch me make this on my last YouTube video).

Wednesday: Lasagna for my hubby

  • I have a container of ricotta cheese I picked up a while ago and needs a home
  • Sauce will be come from our favorite Italian restaurant, if possible. If not, I have some miscellaneous canned tomato products, dried spices and ground beef so could make this myself. But it’s intended to be a treat for my favorite guy.
  • I’m out of mozzarella so we either won’t have any or I’ll have to go to the store before we have this meal. Ooh, I do have string cheese for the kids so I might use some of that assuming there is any left by Wednesday
  • Side vegetable will probably be okra because I have some in the freezer (it’s one of the things I buy at the store I visited over the weekend and one of the few frozen vegetables available – I guess it isn’t very popular)

Thursday: Tuna salad with some kind of fruit and / or vegetable

  • Unless I go to the store on Wednesday, our vegetable situation will be kind of strange. I do have some frozen fruit and a little spinach in the garden so I might make a smoothie. I could also cook some canned green beans. Not sure what we’ll feel like by then.
  • Tuna salad will be canned tuna, mayonnaise and relish. Simple.
  • If I still have some AIP tortillas left, we might make tuna salad wraps

Friday: General Tso’s Chicken, Broccoli and Rice Noodles

  • I have everything to make the General Tso’s Chicken and this is my daughter’s meal she has chosen to learn to cook so I’ve been guarding that pack of chicken.
  • May not have broccoli, but we’ll see. If not, I do have more frozen okra.
  • Rice noodles – just noodles made from rice. Not sure why my daughter likes this over regular rice, but she does and this is the meal she wants to cook, they had the rice noodles at the store, so this is what we’re having

Saturday: Thanksgiving Shepherd’s Pie

  • Ground turkey that was lurking in the back of the freezer will be combined with onions, carrots, celery and broth to make the base of the pie
  • Mashed cauliflower/potatoes will be the topping
  • Honestly, never made Shepherd’s Pie before, but when I was assessing what I had available, this is what came to mind. If it turns out well, look for the recipe here, probably in the fall because I recognize that Shepherd’s Pie is not a normal spring and summer food!

And that’s our meal plan for this next week. I hope it offers you some inspiration as you try to figure out what to feed your family this week. I can make all of these meals without another trip to the store, but I will probably be going this week anyway. Here’s why: 1. My parents will have a prescription to pick up and 2. My children are both having growth spurts and are eating great quantities of food right now. I want them eating when they’re hungry, but I want to have nutritious and filling options for them and I just don’t have a lot of that right now. They both eat a ton of produce and because it doesn’t last long, the fresh stuff goes fast.

One note for those of you who are new here: Yes, I consider us a Paleo Family, but you’ll notice a good bit of cheese in our diet. We’ve been Paleo for such a long time, we’ve been able to safely add back in some non-Paleo foods, and dairy is one of them. We always have grass-fed when possible and that’s just about all I eat. I limit all non-grass-fed dairy for myself, but my family eats it without issue now. If you’re at the beginning of your health journey, you may need to be more strict and that’s why I always offer substitutions for dairy. Generally, it’s an add-on that can simply be left out of the recipe. This week’s lasagna would be the exception to that.

I hope you make it a great week!

Weekly Meal Plan – Shelter-at-Home Version

Happy Monday to you! I hope that your Easter celebrations were meaningful and special even though they were most certainly not what you had intended.

We enjoyed the day with online church, dress-up pictures like always, a nice long walk, a little board game action and a special meal that was easy to put together. Here are a few pictures of our day and then I’ll share my meal plan for the week below.

Even teenagers like a visit from the Easter Bunny (but they don’t like having their pictures taken).
Family picture with my newly planted flowers.
He’s such a good sport! And that’s a kid in the background helping to put the deck back together after we sanded and repainted all the furniture over the weekend.
Our Easter spread – sausage balls, heavenly eggs, assorted cheese, crackers, fruits, veggies and some sweets.
Everyone was surprised at this lunch and thought it was a ton of fun. Snacks for a meal? Yes, please!
And dessert was the family favorite pound cake made into an ice cream cake with our favorite frozen custard, Goodberrys. I love it because it has really pure ingredients and of course, tastes delicious!

Now onto our meal plan for the week. If you’ve caught me on any of my Facebook or YouTube lives lately, you’ve heard my spiel about groceries already, but for those of you who haven’t heard, here’s a little background on my grocery shopping and what I’ve been able to find around here…

I stock up all the time so when all this coronavirus stuff started, I had a lot of food in the freezer and pantry – meats, vegetables, pantry staples, all of it. But like the rest of the world, we are not eating out (not that we ever did a lot, but usually once a week) and everyone is home for every single meal and everyone seems to be much hungrier than normal. Plus, I’ve been in the mood to bake and create recipes so my kitchen has been extra busy. So even though I had plenty of food in the house to feed us for several weeks, I’ve been heading to the grocery store once a week.

My parents are local and are allowing me to shop for them so they don’t have to, so I just keep a running list of what I’d like to have and when they need things, I go to the store for all of us.

So far, this has worked out well and I’ve had plenty of options to make creative and satisfying meals.

But now the experts are telling us the next two weeks are expected to be the worst we’ve seen. I think we all recognize that these experts are trying their best, but no one really knows for certain what is going to happen. However, I’m taking all the precautions I can and will try to not go to the grocery store for the next two weeks – at least.

Without a weekly trip to the store, our fresh produce will be gone, but I do have a couple cans of green beans, a couple bags of frozen vegetables, a jar of applesauce. And I planted my garden this weekend. We most definitely will not have fresh vegetables in two weeks time, but I did plant some spinach so we may have fresh greens. It’s really too late to plant greens in North Carolina, but I did it knowing we don’t have super hot weather coming in the next few weeks and that I needed to grow absolutely everything I could. So hopefully, those spinach leaves will do well for a little while, because I am going to need them.

All that to say…I have a good selection of ingredients now, but next week will likely be a different story. I do have a good cache of gluten free baking mixes so we may be eating a lot of cake. 🙂

Here’s what’s on tap for this week (some of these recipes are available for free and I’ll link to those. The others are all available with my recipe membership, which is available here. My intention here is not to sell you something or frustrate you with recipes you can’t easily access. It’s simply to give you ideas, to hopefully spark your imagination and let you see what meals you might be able to put together with what you have on hand.):

Monday: Fish tacos with grilled cod, AIP tortillas, tropical salsa slaw and sautéed vegetables.

  • Cod is frozen from a Costco run a couple weeks ago
  • tortillas are made from lard and pantry staples
  • tropical salsa slaw from a fresh mango, fresh cabbage and canned pineapple that’s been in my cupboard way too long
  • sautéed vegetables are the scraps of what’s left from last week’s grocery trip: a couple zucchini, a few mushrooms and a shriveling pepper

Tuesday: Mexican night – ground beef and chorizo with leftover AIP tortillas, guacamole, chips and salsa plus green smootie

  • Ground beef was a score from Whole Foods last week
  • Chorizo has been in the freezer for a while – I just brown the beef and chorizo together, add salsa and a little broth and that’s our meat mixture
  • guacamole comes from avocados I’ve had stashed in the fridge for a couple weeks plus some lime juice and cilantro that needs to be used up pronto
  • green smoothie will be made from spinach, cucumber, green apple and a little frozen pineapple just to add to the vegetable quotient of this meal

Wednesday: Spinach salad with grilled shrimp

  • Fingers crossed for enough spinach from the garden to make this salad – if not, we may need to change this up to maybe broccoli salad because I do have some fresh broccoli
  • Shrimp is frozen from Costco – I plan to skewer it, season simply with salt and pepper and send one of my men out to grill it
  • Salad will be completed with some apple and candied walnuts
  • Simple dressing of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and a little honey
  • I may make croutons or garlic toast with a the leftovers (if there is any) from a new gluten free bread recipe I experimented with over the weekend

Thursday: Breakfast – bacon, eggs, Paleo Bisquick biscuits or pancakes (this has been a long experiment I haven’t perfected yet) and fruit – whatever is left in the fridge and if that’s nothing, then I have one bag of frozen berries I will defrost.

  • Eggs and bacon are self-explanatory. Although, my stores had been out of bacon until this past Thursday when I went so I bought one package and stashed it in the freezer.
  • Paleo Bisquick is a blend of palm shortening, almond flour and a few other things to make what will hopefully be an all purpose baking mix that will allow us to make quick biscuits, pancakes, muffins, etc. I have a good muffin recipe already and biscuits that taste good, but are flat and the pancakes have just been a fail, so I’ll work on one of those with this meal.

Friday: Usually pizza night in our house, but we’re going for a different type of family-favorite meal this week – burgers with buns, onion rings and canned green beans.

  • Ground beef just pattied up and grilled
  • I found gluten free buns at the store last week so that will be a special treat. I like to butter (or ghee) them, toast them, then steam them for a few seconds so they’re a little toasty on the outside and soft in the middle.
  • Onions rings are a marvel I’ve been working on with a tiger nut flour crust and they’re baked. So delicious!
  • Green beans from a can because I’m sure I won’t have anything fresh left by Friday night!

Saturday: If I don’t have leftovers, my plan is to make my husband lasagna with the sauce from our favorite Italian restaurant (lasagna is his favorite food ever and they’re amazing sauce is the key). This was where we had our first date and where we went for every special occasion – until we entered gluten free life. I believe they do offer gluten free pasta, but it’s just not the same experience and so we haven’t been in many years. However, I plan to order their sauce only for takeout and use that to make lasagna at home. Not sure what I’ll use for noodles – maybe zucchini if I have to go to the store for my parents. We may even just eat the sauce as soup! I’ll make more gluten free bread and we’ll be in heaven. We’ll just count the tomatoes as our vegetables and be happy. 🙂

I had one of my YouTube viewers request a live “cook with me” where we make Chicken Pot Pie. I have one precious package of chicken breasts in the freezer so I’m planning on doing making that one day next week (week of April 20th). If that sounds fun to you, be sure to head over to my YouTube channel, subscribe and hit the bell icon so you’ll receive notifications when I post over there so you don’t miss the live streams. I’d love to have you join me. It’s so fun to chat with everyone live.

Ok, that’s it from here. I hope this is helpful to you. Please reach out it there is something I can do to help. Remember that I am a functional medicine health coach so I specialize in helping people manage their health using functional medicine – food, exercise, sleep, stress management, lessening environmental toxins and more. I know this is a strange and stressful time and I am here to help! You can go to www.totalwellnesshealthcoaching.com and set up an appointment with me.

Until next time, keep on keeping on! We’re all in this together.

 

Life Lately – 3/31/20

As we are all living a new and quite unexpected version of our lives, I have really enjoyed reading some “Day in the Life” type posts from bloggers I follow. So in an effort to share a little bit of my family life with you, I offer you this little peek at our life lately.

Chris:

My husband of almost 18 years(!) is an engineer and spends most of his Monday-Friday hours in a cubicle in a large building staring at a computer screen (or three). His screen is black with lots of lines of teeny tiny code in a variety of colors. When I look at his monitor, it makes me go cross-eyed! I really don’t see how he does it.

He goes to lots of meetings, occasionally gets up to get water, use the bathroom, etc. but mostly he stays in his little box and works on a computer.

From time to time, he does this very same work, but from home. He calls into his meetings, still gets up to use the bathroom and get water, but otherwise, sits at a table or desk somewhere in our house and his days look very much the same as always. The biggest difference for him is that he gets a good two hours extra work done each day because he isn’t having to commute.

Working on his side of the office. Notice it’s mostly my stuff in the background. 🙂

Normally, when he works from home, it’s a bit of a disruption (sorry, honey). It’s a novelty for him and so he enjoys the opportunities to visit with the kids and I throughout the day. I’m used to efficiently moving from one task to the next, with very minimal breaks/check-ins with the kids. When he gets up for one of his breaks, he wants to chat. Whereas I do love chatting with him, I enjoy it in the confines of our normal relationship – in the morning and at night, not in the middle of my workday. He never calls me from work and I almost never call him. When the work day starts, I put my head down and I work. So his being home and wanting all these little interactions during the day really breaks my stride. Don’t get me wrong, I love him and love all our time together and am considering it an enormous blessing to have so much time together, but I am an efficiency machine. When there is work to be done, I want/need to get my work done before I can move on to something fun. I don’t like interruptions.

I’m thankful so say that now that his working from home is our everyday normal, the interruptions are much less frequent. He has a number of meetings every day and I ask him to provide me with that information as soon in the day as possible so I can plan my own, flexible online meetings for different times – just in case there is a bandwidth shortage (not as critical as a toilet paper shortage, but equally as irritating). We try to take a walk break in the middle of the day, around his lunch time, which has been completely wonderful for both of us. We get out in the fresh air, move our bodies, take time to connect and it helps refresh us so we’re ready for the second half of the work day.

My husband loves to play board games. All games, any games, all the time. He and my son made a quick list the other day of most of our games and as we play them, they get a color-coded mark so we know we played it and we know who won. This was right after the list was created. We’ve played about 6 games now and I’m the only one without a mark on the board. 🙁

The game list. And evidence that we need to work on penmanship!

One of the things I love about having him home is that I can serve dinner whenever it’s ready. Traffic seems to be getting worse and worse around here (prior to quarantine life) and that makes planning dinner time kind of complicated. Some days he gets home in 30 minutes. Sometimes it takes an hour. As I said before, he’s getting way more work done in his day without having to commute, and I get to serve dinner when its ready. Win win.

My kids are teenagers so they’re beyond the super needy stage and are really good about leaving their dad alone to work. At first, it was kind of a novelty to have him at home, but that has faded quickly (What can I say? Kids are fickle.). They more or less leave him be. If he needs to be on a longer call or the kids need to be where he is currently working, then he’ll invade my office space and I graciously share. I’ll miss him terribly when this is all over and he has to go back to the office.

Luke:

My son, Luke, is in 9th grade and homeschooled with Classical Conversations (CC). We’re nearing the end of the CC portion of the school year and this particular year comes with a ton of projects. I love CC for many reasons, but one of them is that the academics are top notch. I feel like I never learned the things my kids are learning and it is setting them up so well for their later education and career.

His subjects this year are as follows (this is a classical education so the subjects might seem a little strange so I’ll give you the modern interpretation too):

  • Logic – Algebra II
  • Reasoning – Drama and Traditional Logic
  • Research – Physical Science
  • Exposition – American Literature
  • Grammar – Latin
  • Debate – Government and Economics

These are tough subjects and he has handled the workload like a champ. In the fall, he presented Patrick Henry’s “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” speech – from memory and in full costume. This spring, he will be giving a speech by C.S. Lewis.

Patrick Henry in the flesh.

His second formal debate is tomorrow. Of course, all of this is done virtually at this point. He has managed setting up times to meet with his team to prepare, which is no surprise because he’s worked independently for years. I honestly have no idea how to do most of the work that he’s doing. He’s such a mature and responsible kid. When he goes off to college, I am going to miss him like crazy, but I will not at all doubt his ability to take care of himself and make wise decisions. He may eat too much candy and stay up too late at night, but I think he’ll do great with all the important stuff.

He just recently achieved the rank of Eagle Scout and his dad and I could not be more proud. He’s been in Scouts since he was six and it’s been so fun to be a part of his Scouting journey. I’ve seen such a change in him from those early days where he was so shy he wouldn’t even talk to now running for Senior Patrol Leader, the highest level of leadership within the Troop. He’s preparing for the pinnacle of his Scouting career this summer – a 12 day backpacking trip to Philmont Scout Ranch. He’s even worked to pay for half the trip himself.

My husband grew up celebrating all big accomplishments with ice cream. So right after Luke got his Eagle, we went out for ice cream. Never mind it was freezing!

Luke manages his time beautifully, getting school work completed, doing his chores, taking time for friends and working a part-time job. He’s also learning to drive and has almost completed all the required hours to get his drivers license. In NC, they have a permit for a year and have to drive a certain number of hours, then are eligible for a license for independent driving, but still with some restrictions. He loves driving and is pretty good at it, but I hate driving with him. My dad takes him out most of the time and this gift is saving our relationship!

Just got his permit and ready to drive in a big, empty parking lot.

This first child of mine has a dry sense of humor and is quite sarcastic (he gets it from his mom), loves music, both playing the piano and listening to classic rock, is super competitive with games and can be a little demanding and a little too straight-forward at times, but he has a heart of gold, is sensitive and extremely thoughtful. He was the sweetest baby and toddler and still has that same sweetness about him. It just sometimes gets lost, but if I give him one of my mom looks, that sweet spirit comes back out.

And he loves ribs – all meat really! This was a mother, son date night. After dinner we saw 1917 at his request.

His days currently don’t look all that different than they normally do except that his tennis season is permanently on hold, his work hours have been cut, there aren’t Scout meetings and he isn’t seeing his friends in person, but only online. I guess, those are a lot of differences!

Kate:

My daughter, Kate, is 13 and in 7th grade, also homeschooled with Classical Conversations. She’s in Challenge A, which is very aptly named. It is a challenge and such a huge step up in work load and difficulty from anything she has done before. I thought I ran a rigorous homeschool until my kids started the Challenge Program. They are learning to work independently, to learn how they learn best, to manage their time wisely, to be held accountable for the quality of their work by loving peers and an awesome teacher (I’m the teacher at home, she has another teacher on community day).

Kate’s subjects this year are as follows:

  • Logic – Pre-algebra
  • Reasoning – Analogies and Clear Reasoning
  • Research – Natural Science, Science Fair and Biology
  • Exposition – Newbury Literature and Persuasive Writing
  • Grammar – Latin
  • Debate – Cartography

A few highlights from her academic year are science fair, which is a big character builder for student and mom/teacher alike! It’s a lot of work, requires a lot of time management, culminates in learning how to present well and defend your work. It was a challenging and rewarding experience.

Working on Latin while I attempt to cook dinner and help her at the same time. Please ignore all the real life mess in the background.

Before starting Classical Conversations, we used a curriculum called My Father’s World, which was also classical in structure, did a great job of stitching multiple subjects together and taught my kids things I never learned in all my many years of schooling. One of the years in that curriculum was called Countries and Cultures. The kids learned all the countries in the world, could identify all of them by the end of the year and we explored the culture of many countries. Classical Conversations takes that one step further by teaching these Challenge A students to not only memorize countries, but also their capitols and significant geographic features like rivers, mountain ranges and oceans, and also to draw it all. Yes, the final exam for cartography this year will consist of my daughter being given a large piece of blank paper and instructed to draw and label the entire world. The benefits of this are innumerable, but one of the most profound we’ve experienced is that my kids know where every country is. When we meet someone in the grocery store who is from Kazakstan, they know where in the world that is and by association, know the approximate climate, time zone and a little about the culture. That person they just met feels valued because some random stranger knows about them. It’s powerful.

Luke used to tutor Kate in Latin since he knows it so well, but it was causing so much discord that I’ve take over that job.

Kate is my kid that is not at all like me. She’s the extravert to my introvert. She’s the free spirit to my rigid rule follower. She’s the confident public speaker to my terrified, hands shaking speaker. I often look at her and wonder where in the world she came from. But I know where she came from because she looks just like me.

We have that typical mom/teenage daughter relationship where one moment we’re best buds and the next moment we hate each other. Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you mothers of teenage girls know what I’m saying.

I love to get up early, get my day started, knock things off my list and then relax, if and only if everything is done to the absolute best of my ability. My daughter loves to sleep in, could care less about the details and would happily put off her work until one of her parents intervenes and makes sure she gets it done.

She is also the first one to offer a hug or a back rub when she senses you need it. When the kids were little, whenever Luke was hurt or sad, Kate would run and get his favorite stuffed animal, knowing that it would bring him comfort. She’s so compassionate. It’s just part of who she is.

Kate is creative and super outgoing and so this quarantine life is probably hardest on her. She is active in sports and other extra curricular activities and lives for any and every opportunity to be with friends. We’re doing what we can to get her time on video chat with her friends so she doesn’t feel so disconnected, but it’s hard. With four people all trying to work and play via video conference, we have to take turns. When I told her last week that the latest recommendation is to not play with neighbor friends, she was heart-broken and quite upset with us. It’s hard to disappoint your kids under the best of circumstances, but it’s especially hard right now when so much has already been taken away from them.

During our quarantine life, I’m working on getting her access to art lessons online. She’s really talented and one of the many career options on her list is being a Disney Imagineer. She could totally do it! So I’m trying to expose her to different types of art. This at home version of art classes is low commitment and she can try lots of different things.

Kate is so different from me that I sometimes have a hard time relating to her and I know I’m extra hard on her at times, but it’s because she has so much potential and she doesn’t always see it. She needs lots of encouragement and I need to remember to give it.

Me:

Well, here we are, a little update on me. In case you didn’t notice, this Life Lately has really been mostly just an introduction to us because our life is not terribly different now than it normally is. I’m a homebody and someone who doesn’t succumb to anxiety easily so I’ve taken to these changes pretty well. Spring is typically a very busy time for us with sports for both kids in full swing, an uptick in Scouting events, field trips, piano recitals, etc. With all of those things canceled or at least tabled for now, what was gearing up to be a high stress season is all of a sudden more relaxed.

I worked from home anyway, kids schooled from home normally and my husband worked from home enough before that this all isn’t too unusual. What is unusual is that we are never going out to see friends and family and we can’t just run any old errand we want or need to. My meal planning looks a lot different because I’m cooking and serving all the stuff that’s been buried in the freezer for months (or let’s be honest, much longer). I’m “making do” way more than cooking exactly what I choose to be cooking. For example, I could really go for some carnitas, fried plantains and pineapple mango slaw right now, but those recipes require ingredients I don’t currently have on hand. I go to the grocery store not with a list, but with gloves, extra sanitizing wipes and an open mind. I know I want protein and vegetables and then pick up any extra spices or special ingredients I can find or that strike me in the moment as a good choice (like chocolate). Then I get home with my food and make a meal plan based on what I could find. This is completely opposite of what I want to do, what I normally do, what I teach over and over. But it’s our reality now so instead of grumbling about it, I’m embracing it. And you can be sure that if I see chicken or eggs or toilet paper, I buy it.

I usually go to my local YMCA everyday for a workout class, so now my workouts are courtesy of the Peloton app (free for 90 days!!!) and lots of walking outside. The weather has been pretty great lately and everything is blooming so taking walks a couple times a day is a real treat.

This is where you’ll find me most mornings now. I used to watch Christian music videos during my ride because they’re so inspiring, but now I’m doing Peloton classes. Notice the fan. That is essential!

 

Post ride. I really need my daily sweat session!

 

My current Bible study. So wonderful – highly recommend it. You can watch the videos at home for about $3 each.

 

Date night – a walk around the neighborhood with a beautiful sunset!

As always, I’m working on lots of different things right now.

  1. Keeping my family running smoothly, keeping everyone healthy, checking on my parents and getting their groceries and prescriptions for them are my top priorities.
  2. Self-care is next. I must have time to myself every day or I will explode. Ok, maybe I won’t literally explode, but the results could be just as ugly. I’m getting lots of exercise and escaping to my room or office to be alone and read for about 30 minutes each day.
  3. I run a paid membership, a place for people who want to manage their chronic health conditions with diet and lifestyle. I meet with them weekly and produce new recipes and other content for them weekly and monthly. I’m busy cranking out that content to hopefully get ahead so that the coming months will either be easier or have extra time for other projects.
  4. I have been working on an online course for months now. It’s been slow-going because I’ve changed my focus a few times based on needs that I’m seeing in the community. Now that I’m not spending half my days in the car driving my kids to their activities, I have more time to focus on getting that course finished. It’s for people who want to manage their disease with functional medicine, but don’t know where to start. They are looking for some hope and encouragement and a way out of their current state of health. Some people are saying now is not the time to try to sell people something. I think now is the time to provide what people need. This knowledge I possess about how to overcome a very devastating disease and come out on the other side not only well, but thriving, is valuable. Very valuable and people need it. I’m trying to get this course done so I can get it out there. I know that when I was sick with undiagnosed Crohn’s disease, I would have paid anything for this information – for the hope that maybe I could stop this disease. I want to provide that to others.
  5. Planning for the future. We took a huge cross-country road trip a couple summers ago and it was a lifelong dream come true and an absolutely amazing experience for my family. We’re hoping to do it again next year sometime, hitting up part of the country we didn’t get to last time. Planning such a trip is a crazy big undertaking, but I have more time now, so I’m trying to take advantage of it. If you have recommendations for places to see in the southern half of the US, do share. We’re definitely going to the National Parks in Colorado, Utah, and Arizona, but driving from the East Coast, we have a lot of leeway in the route we take, where we stop, what we see. We love to camp and will camp everywhere that is safe so if you’re a camper, share your favorite camping spots too.
  6. Creating tons of recipes. I’ve really been in the mood to bake and so I’ve been baking up a storm. So far, I’ve made cinnamon, orange thumbprint cookies, Dream Bars (a caramely, coconut cookie bar) and sticky toffee pudding. We’re eating well thanks to Amazon’s delivery of 5 lbs. of almond flour!
The Sticky Toffee Pudding. Coming to YouTube at the end of April.

And that’s about it. That’s what I’m up to, what my husband and kids are up to, how life is looking in our neck of the woods. In some ways, life is pretty much the same and in other ways, it’s really different.

I hope you’re feeling well and managing this new normal well. If you don’t already follow me on YouTube, head over there tomorrow night, Wednesday, April 1st at 5 PM EDT. I’ll be on live just chatting and cooking my dinner, whatever that may be. I’d love to see you!