Monday, Jan. 2, 2017

What we ate:

Breakfast – Boiled eggs, smoothies (recipe to follow), organic chicken apple breakfast sausages

Lunch – Tuna salad, cut up veggies

Dinner – Turkey tetrazzini with zucchini noodles (recipe link below), salad, blackberry vinaigrette

I always hear people talk about how expensive it is to eat healthy and they can’t afford it but they buy Starbucks every day, eat out for lunch every day and eat dinner out a good portion of the time. Add in soda, cigarettes and beer and you’ve got a big fat liar on your hands. Um, sorry. You can afford it and you can totally do it. Buy the best you can with what you have. Cut out the unnecessary stuff that’s no good for your body.

Then people try to convince me they don’t cook, can’t cook or never learned to cook. You see, we live in the glorious age of the interwebs where you can learn how to make a bomb or sew a skin suit just by typing it in Google. You’re smart! You can do it. Cooking isn’t that hard. There are a few tricks of the trade and some hard fast rules, but most of it is just trial and error. You just figure stuff out by trying. Nobody teaches babies how to walk. They just figure it out.

I couldn’t make biscuits for crap for like 10 years. One day while I was pregnant and starving but not able to make food because I would barf, I got obsessed with the cooking channel. I figured I could live vicariously through Ina Garten. I watched a show on biscuits and learned that the only thing I was doing wrong was stirring the stink out of the dough and making it rubbery. That’s why my biscuits were hockey pucks. It took me about 2 more times of trying to have pretty respectable biscuits. Problem solved. I’d kill someone for a biscuit right now. *salivates*

By lunch today, my 8 and 4 year olds were in dire straits. The 4 year old was crying for milk and turning her nose up at her tuna salad. She asked repeatedly, “Isn’t there a cracker for this stuff? How am I supposed to eat this?” Eating it with a fork or on a cucumber was not acceptable in any way in her mind.

The 8 year old was a basket-case from the time she woke up. She roamed around and threw herself dramatically upon random things – couches, benches, end tables. She said her head hurt and she was tired. I knew what she was going through. I’ve had the “Carb flu” a few times myself. Just like with any other thing the body is addicted to, it will resent being deprived of carbs. It will whine and balk and make you feel like crap. You’ll be sure you’re doing something wrong or killing yourself because you’re not eating bread.

I had to give the poor dear pep talks all day and convince her that what she was feeling was just her body’s way of saying, “Man, you’ve been eating a lot of grains and sugar and I like it! Give me more!”. She kept giving me the stink-eye but calmed down. She asked more than a few times if we had any bread. At one point all the kids were like, “Geez! There’s no bread. Anywhere!” I’m pretty sure I saw her digging through cabinets just to make sure there wasn’t any secret bread anywhere.

At one point, I caught the 8 and 4 year old with a bowl of goldfish and cheerios. I kept those two items in the pantry for when we have to go places with the twins. Sorry folks, sometimes you just gotta carry snacks like that for babies. Anyhow, apparently they “forgot” and were scarfing them down. I was able to wrench the bowl from their sweaty little sausages before they did too much damage. The 4 year old just smiled like a naughty cat.

Several times throughout the day, the 8 year old moped and whined for milk. She sincerely asked me what she was supposed to drink multiple times. Apparently, water did not occur to her. The 11 year old snuck some cheese and kept asking me what she could eat. I realize that my kids are epic grazers.

The turkey tetrazzini for dinner was a hit. It was really surprisingly good and everyone scarfed it down, zucchini noodles and all. I used the last of my frozen leftover Christmas turkey, so that made my heart sing and the almond flour topping totally tasted like bread crumbs. My husband even questioned whether I had, in fact, topped it with bread crumbs. It was that good.

Either that or we’re those freaks on a diet who think nasty stuff tastes delicious.

And guess what, people? I put peas in there. Bwaaahaaahaaaa.

Dressing recipe:

http://thenourishinghome.com/2012/04/our-favorite-healthy-salad-dressings/

Turkey Tetrazzini recipe:

http://inspiralized.com/chicken-tetrazzini-with-zucchini-noodles/

Smoothie Recipe (serves 2 adults and 6 kidlets)

1- 2 cups orange juice (We get organic from Costco)

1- 2 cups fresh-pressed apple cider (We get organic from Costco) (you can sub coconut milk or almond milk or more OJ)

2 Bananas

2 raw eggs (we have our own chickens so this is safe)

2 tsp vanilla (omit if you’re hardcore – I make my own with no sugar but it still is alcohol based)

2 handfuls frozen Pineapple

2 handfuls frozen fruit of any kind (I use blueberries or mango or peaches or strawberries)

4- 6 tablespoons coconut milk or almond milk

4 tablespoons Collagen Hydrolosate Protein (optional) (We use Great Lakes brand)

Blend all this in a blender. We use a giant Vitamix for our crowd.

Sunday Jan. 1, 2017

What we ate:

Breakfast – eggs and bacon, applesauce, avocados

Lunch – turkey salad with apples and walnuts (leftover turkey from Christmas), cucumbers, peppers, snap peas, cherry tomatoes

Dinner – leftover chicken with leftover Victoria pasta sauce (with hamburger) dumped on top and baked, roasted carrots, roasted leftover potatoes

My kids are 13, 11, 8, 4, 18 months and 18 months. They are, for the most part, pretty good eaters. My 8 year old is affectionately known as the “Carb Queen” and although I’ve gone to great lengths to not draw attention to it, she has gotten a little chubby in the last 6 months. My 4 year old is a chronic grazer and has a really bad attitude. We all have our issues.

For our family, milk is like Crystal Meth. We get whole, raw milk from a local dairy. We buy 10 gallons per week and there will be a full on revolt if we run out or try to ration it in any way. I swear I’ve seen my kids bathing in it.

I know cutting dairy will be difficult for the kids. I’m still letting the babies have their normal allotment and the four year old can have 2 sippy cups per day, but for the duration of the Whole30-ish, the older kids and parents are cut off.

I say Whole30-ish because we are a family of 8. I am a psychotic mother of 8. Sometimes I may deviate slightly and not feel bad about it. I have a whole container of homemade ranch dressing I just made in which I used sour cream. I’m sure as heck not going to throw that away. Kids will get ranch on their salad if they want it. I may put peas in something…gasp! My husband and I will be stricter with ourselves because we’re fatter and have more at stake.

I guess my point here is don’t get offended or surprised if I list my menu for the day and there are peas. It is what it is. Don’t comment to let me know peas aren’t allowed. I know. And I don’t care. Smiley emoji.

Today is the first day and it went pretty well. We typically eat mostly whole, organic food anyway (think 80/20) so today’s food wasn’t really all that different from we normally eat.

Dinner was actually not what was on the original menu. I had an inordinate amount of Creamy Onion Chicken (chicken that I dumped homemade onion dip on and baked) and a bowl full of Victoria Marinara sauce with hamburger in it. I also had leftover boiled potatoes from our New Year’s Eve shrimp boil. I couldn’t waste that stuff! I feed 8 people on a relatively low grocery budget and that was perfectly good food. So I did what my family calls “rehydrating food”. I cut it up and do something to it so they don’t know its leftovers.

I put the chicken in a pan, covered it with the hamburger-infused marinara sauce and baked it. Done. Whole30-ish. The only thing I’m thinking was against the law was the onion dip. I know it had some dairy in there somewhere. But I made it myself with whole food ingredients, so suck it. The marinara was actually approved. Yay.

I cut up the leftover boiled potatoes and fried them in ghee and added some random spices. Then I cut up carrots and roasted them with ghee, salt and pepper. I felt quite proud and thrifty, especially when the kids said, “Wow, this is good chicken. Is this a new recipe?” Uh huh. It shore is.

Day one. Success.

Go on to day two.