Valentine’s Dinner Review, Whole 30 Do-Over and New Recipes

It’s 70 degrees outside, sunny and it’s Sunday, our rest day. We have a couple things on the schedule today besides church, but we still squeezed in a three mile hike and it was wonderful. Walking is difficult for me sometimes, often times, but this hike was amazing. I thought we were going to have to turn back at first, but once I got going, my feet decided to play along and I was able to hike and enjoy and not be constantly preoccupied by the pain. I had some great conversations with my son. It was a gift and I’m so, so thankful for it.

We took our winter break this past week. The kids and I both needed a timeout from school. Somehow, our week felt busier than normal. I made a conscious decision to take it easy on Friday and spend some time with good friends and lounge on the sofa a bit. Hopefully, this little rest will translate into a productive few weeks ahead. Deep breaths.

The Valentine’s dinner I prepared last Sunday was a big hit. My boys were camping in some frigid temperatures for the weekend, so I figured they would want/need a warm and comforting meal when they arrived home and thawed out. I set the table all pretty, turned up the thermostat and presented them with a beef roast with carrots and potatoes and grilled asparagus. My husband practically drooled. IMG_4086

And of course, we followed this up with the Chocolate Cake I showed you last week. With a little dab of fresh whipped cream on top. They ate on this cake for a couple days and then I wrapped it up and put it in the freezer. They were not happy. But we’ll all be happy when we pull it out in a few weeks and indulge! I, for one, can’t wait!!

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Which brings me to my Whole 30 Day Sugar Detox update. I made it to day 15 – half way – almost to the downhill section – and I caved. I started thinking about those chocolate cake scraps that I froze after making my heart shaped cake. That was all it took. Just a little thought and then I had to have some. I ate too much to feel like I could gloss over it and carry on with the Whole 30. I allowed myself some dairy for the Super Bowl, but this was too much and I knew it. So I started fresh the following day. I am now on day 5. I had arrived at the place where sweets were not a constant temptation and I thought that hopping right back on the bandwagon would be easy, that I would not feel like I was starting over from scratch. I was wrong. It’s been a challenging few days. Oh well. I’ll do better next time.

If you haven’t seen it already, I wrote up a little article on cooking fats. People ask me pretty regularly what kind of oil I use for cooking and what I use for baking when we’re not using butter. So I did some research to make sure I got my facts straight and wrote a little fat primer for you. Mine is just one more voice on the internet and I’m certain you will find others who disagree with me. I’ve presented to you what I believe to be true and how I have translated that knowledge into practice in my kitchen. I hope you find it helpful.

When I wasn’t eating trimmings of chocolate cake, I was sticking very strictly  to my Whole 30 Sugar Detox. Breakfasts continued to consist of eggs, some sort of vegetable, and usually bacon or sausage. These are delicious, quick, filling breakfasts that I find myself looking forward to each morning.

Applegate Chicken Apple Sausage and sweet potato hash browns. Yes, all of my sweet potatoes are white or purple. I planted equal numbers of traditional orange ones, Hannah whites and garnets, but it seems the voles ate all the orange ones. At least they got plenty of vitamin A!

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Pederson’s Paleo Bacon, eggs and sautéed greens

IMG_4140Ground pork, spinach, tomato, scrambled eggs

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Lunch is salad. Always salad. I went a little crazy one day and added a hard boiled egg and chopped green apple. Somedays I’m rushed in the mornings and I’ll just have an egg. So for lunch, I make sure to always have a huge pile of greens to compensate.

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With our break from school this week, I did have more time to cook. On the flip side, I have felt convicted about the amount of time I’m spending working on the blog and shooing my kids away. After all, they are my true job right now and it’s a job that I know will end some day. I want to want to spend all this time with them. So, I tried to only work on blog things after they were in bed or on the weekend (like now). As a result, not many recipes actually made it to the write-up stage this week, but they will be coming. Here’s what you can expect in the coming days:

  • Crock Pot Pork Carnitas with pineapple mango salsa/slaw, taco and nacho versionDSC_2173
  • Pan seared burgers with autoimmune friendly “buns”
  • IMG_4107Paleo “Shake and Bake” Chicken Nuggets

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  • Fried Shrimp tacos

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  • One Pan Chicken and Veggie Bake (no picture of this one yet)

 

This week, I posted the beef roast mentioned above. I also put up a recipe for paleo banana bread. This is nothing fancy, but my gang considers it a treat, and I consider it recycling. I don’t really like bananas, but banana bread is like cake! The next time you have browning bananas lying around looking for a home, try this bread. It is, of course, gluten free and dairy free, but full of yumminess.

That’s it from around these parts. My technical expert is working on putting up a recipe index as well as the resources page I’ve been working on. Look for that soon. I get lots of questions about ingredients and cooking tools and I hope many of them will be answered with this resources page.

Happy cooking this week!