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.
