a day of meal prepping

The more busy I get in life, the more I've become aware of some emotional needs of mine. I need time alone. I need time to decompress. On Casey's days off, you'll rarely find him inside the house. He does well in his off time doing things outdoors or playing basketball at the gym for hours at a time. In my off days, I need at least one day a week to be in the house. Some of that time will be spent on the couch or in my bed doing NOTHING. I need that. I need time to not feel busy. One of my things I've become accustomed to as a way of therapy is cooking. I think I've always felt that way about it but have become more aware of what it does for my mind in becoming a wife and having someone else to cook with. I think one of the reasons my summer spent at Crooked Creek Ranch is so memorable is because I was cooking! It's such a comfort for so many reasons. It's mindless and instinctual to me. I rarely use measuring units and instead rely on taste. It's why I'm not a very good baker. I also just REALLY love good food and love the comfort of having good food available to me.

I've had alot of people asking about what I've done to help myself succeed in completing 3 rounds of whole 30, how I deal with the massive amount of cooking involved, etc. One of the most important things I've done is planning ahead! At the beginning of each week I use the "Numbers" app on my phone to create a spreadsheet of everything I will eat that week. Seriously, everything. The app has an already made template that even includes a blank grocery shopping list on the second page that makes it easy to flip back and forth and create my lists. The menu spreadsheet has slots for breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as 2 spots for snacks (though I usually try not to snack and just eat bigger meals).

Yesterday was a prep day for me and I made the following:

• 1 quart sized mason jar of cooked sweet potato hash  (about 8 breakfasts worth)-- ready to be heated up
• 1 quart sized mason jar of caulirice (about 10 servings) -- it's not cooked but this will save me tons of time on dinners!
• 4 salads in mason jars -- this usually includes a shredded chicken breast on bottom (to keep the spinach from getting soggy) spinach, tomatoes or fruit such apples or berries, and some sort of nut
• 1 small mason jar of homemade salad dressing --that I'll pour into idividual tuboware as needed
• 1 GIANT batch of minestrone soup -- 2-3 servings in the fridge and the rest in the freezer for lunches
• 12 hard boiled eggs -- for snacks or to pair with meals for more protein
• all vegetables for meals cut and cleaned and stored into zip locks -- huge time saver!
• Aideli's chicken and apple sausage sliced for breakfast and divided into single servings into ziplocks
• chicken cut into individual servings and put into a snack sized ziplock to be frozen -- this makes it so easy to pull to be thawed. I used to put 3 chicken breasts in a ziplock to be frozen since I usually cook for just the 3 of us but have found that it's even easier to just divide them individually for when more people come for dinner or for when Casey and I eat fish and just Marcel eats chicken (because he hates fish)

All of this prep took around 2 hours and gives me the ability to have a ready (or almost ready) to go breakfast and lunch every day so that I don't have to add time to my mornings in order to eat well. No need to be tempted to eat food at camp when I already have lunch made. Spending just a couple hours once a week doing all of this gives me the freedom to slow down when I get home from work and take my time making dinner and relaxing.

Casey has built our new bed frame and we're working on staining it now. We also bought supplies to make these copper wall sconces for above our bed so stay tuned for pictures of our bedroom transformation!

Happy cooking!

whole 30 cashew cheese stuffed bacon wrapped jalapenos

Y'all...I struck whole 30 gold on Saturday.

This cashew "cheese" is creamy, filling and it totally tastes like cheese! I'm totally making these on Superbowl Sunday this year.

Ingredients:

2 cups cashews, soaked in water for 4-6 hours

3 heaping tablespoons nutritional yeast

1 teaspoon minced garlic

2 teaspoons garlic salt

3/4 cups of water,  adjust as neccessary

12 fresh jalapenos, sliced in half and seeds removed

6 pieces of bacon, cut in half

So this cheese can be made in a food processor or a blender. I would have preferred to have had a food processer but had to use the blender that was at the house we stayed at because we forgot our food processor on this trip. It's important to have your cashews soaking in water until they are soft and swollen with water so that when you blend them, they turn into a paste instead of being grainy and dry. Throw contents into your food processor, holding back half of the water at first and pulse until it's nice and smooth. Add more water as necessary until you have a nice and thick paste. Taste and add more salt or nutritional yeast as necessary. The yeast is what's going to give you the cheesy taste. You may need to break this up into two batches, especially if you're using a blender. I then filled the pitted jalapeno halves and wrapped a half piece of bacon around each of them. It's hard to know how long they took in the oven because the oven we had at the house was really old. I had to set the oven at 450 and cooked them for 40 minutes to get them cooked all of the way. In a normal oven I would have set it to 350 and it would have probably taken 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

whole 30 chicken and sweet sausage kabobs with rosemary caulirice

Ingredients: 

2 chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces 

2 Aidell's Chicken & Apple Sausage, sliced
1 bell pepper, cubed
1 zuccini, sliced
mushrooms, halved
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
2-3 tablespoons coconut aminos
lemon pepper seasoning
garlic salt

1/4 head of cauliflower
1 tablespoon ghee (clarified butter)
rosemary

For this dish, I prepped my veggies for the kabobs as soon as I brought them home from the store. One of the most beneficial habits I've gotten in is to go ahead and clean and cut any veggies and meats as neccessary as soon as I get home from the store. This cuts out tons of time used later in the week when I need to make a meal fast. I was able to come home from work and skewer these immediately and coat them in my marinade for Casey to grill outside while I made the caulirice. Casey isn't a huge fan of cauli rice but I love it! He says it's just not fun to pretend to eat rice...I think it's quite fun. So anywho, I ran my uncooked cauliflower through my food processor, pulsing until it was pretty grainy. Then, I put it in a pan with some melted ghee and crushed rosemary and stirred it around on medium heat until the cauliflower started to soften. Be careful not to cook it too long though because it can get mushy if you do so.

Happy cooking!

SWYPO chicken carnitas

Sorry my blogging game has been a little weak lately. We've been a wee bit busy preparing our house for Marcel. Work's been crazy lately too, making the transition from summer camp to afterschool and all that that entails. So with my schedule being pretty crazy lately, I gave myself a break and made these SWYPO quality carnitas and they were the bomb. Minimal prep + it being ready when I came home = winning.

ingredients:

8 chicken breasts

1 cup chicken broth

juice of 2 limes

1 heaping spoonful of minced garlic

2 serrano peppers, diced

1 sweet onion, sliced

1 tablespoons garlic salt

1 tablespoon cumin

1 tablespoon chili powder

2 tablespoons lemon pepper seasoning

Makes 8-10 servings

Combine ingredients in a crockpot and cook on low for 5 hours. Take 2 forks and shred chicken. We just topped ours with avocado and cilantro in a tortilla because I didn't feel like spending any time cooking but I think it'd be awesome with sauteed onions. I prepped all of this the night before and put it in a big ziplock bag. That way, I just poured it in the crockpot on my way out the door to work and came home to an already made dinner. I obviously had leftovers and will be having these for lunch tomorrow. Just think: soon I'll have a garbage disposal in the form of a teenage boy to finish off my leftovers. I'm so excited!

Whole 30 Kung Pao Chicken

I'm not sure if this is still considered kung pao chicken anymore because I made it with cashews since peanuts are not Whole 30 approved...so maybe it's cashew chicken...but I made it in a kung pao sauce...so maybe I should call it kung pao cashew chicken. Anywho.

This is Hubs's all-time favorite dishes I make. For his birthday I told him I would make him anything in the world that he wanted: steak, lamb, etc. He chose this dish. So I'd say it's pretty good.

I made a few adjustments when making this to make it Whole 30 approved, and I think I might actually like it better than my original! Hubs liked my original more but that's only because I made this with cauli-rice instead of the real stuff...so if you're not too keen on substituting veggies for grain go ahead and make you some rice.

Ingredients:

6 oz tomato paste
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 red or green bell pepper
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/8 cup crushed red pepper
3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
4 tablespoons coconut aminos (substitute soy sauce if you're not doing whole 30 or the paleo diet)
1/2 cup crushed cashew pieces
1/8 cup dried minced onion
2 heaping tablespoons garlic salt
Juice of half of a lemon
4 chicken breasts cut up
1/2 head cauli rice
1 tablespoon ghee

Combine all ingredients except for the bell pepper, coconut oil, garlic, cauliflower and half of the cashews in a bowl. Cover and let marinate during the day or at least 30 minutes prior to cooking. The longer you let it sit, the more the chicken will absorb the flavor.

Break half of a head of cauliflower into smaller pieces and put in food processor. Pulse food processor until cauliflower is rice-like. Cook in a skillet on low heat with ghee, stirring occasionally while you prepare the chicken.

Sautée garlic and bell pepper in coconut oil over medium-high heat for about a minute or until garlic starts to turn golden. Add chicken mixture and make sure it is well blended. Cook for 8-10 minutes, or until chicken is cooked all of the way through. Top with more cashew pieces.

This would be a really easy recipe to prepare ahead of time and have ready to make portions in the freezer. That way when you're looking at a busy day ahead, you can just pull out a bag of this and throw it in a pan for a quick meal.

Happy cooking!

PS: I bought my dream giant dining room table on Tuesday! I'm working on painting it right now and I'll have some pictures up  soon.

fall off the bone sweet and smoky ribs

Hello Whole 30 round 2! I can't believe I'm almost halfway done already. This time around has been easier than the first time around. I think because I've done it once before, I know that I can and it's not as hard to pass up on stuff. I'm also doing a WAY better job of prepping and cooking in advance. I think the best thing I'm doing this time around that I didn't do before is keeping veggies chopped. This saves me so much time in the morning making breakfast. PS: hubs caved today and ate  a fried chicken sandwich for lunch. Good try hubs.

So anywho, I've made this rib recipe twice and have it on the menu twice more this month because it's SO GOOD.

Marinade: 

1 cup apple cider vineger

1/4 cup liquid smoke (if you are doing Whole 30, make sure you find one that doesn't contain molasses! I found this one at an organic grocery store called Earthfare)

3-4 tablespoons Coconut Aminos (this is alot like soy sauce but soy is not on the Whole 30 approved list)

1/4 cup melted coconut oil or olive oil

juice of 1 large lemon

1/8 cup minced garlic

1 tablespoon garlic salt

lots of black pepper (just eyeball it)

a couple dashes of cinnamon

Makes approximately 4 servings.

Cut up 1 rack of ribs and let marinade for at least 30 minutes and continue to baste it consistently while grilling. I like to sprinkle more pepper on it when the ribs are almost done since most of it will roll off as you baste it. I only cooked half of our rack of ribs and froze the second half in the leftover marinade and made 2 dinners our of this 9$ rack of ribs. BOOM!

Happy grilling : )

zesty tuna cakes

These are one of my favorite whole 30 recipes. Although there are a thousand ways to cook chicken, I was ready for something different after week 2 but don't exactly have it in the budget to go buy a whole lot of fresh fish. I stumbled upon a similar recipe on Instagram one day and decided to put my own spin on them. Hubs wasn't thrilled with the idea when I told him what I was cooking for dinner but was really happy with how they turned out. The sun dried tomato and capers make them taste closer to crab cakes than fishy tuna. They're super versatile and are kind of hard to mess up.

Ingredients:

1 can tuna
1 tablespoon capers
6-8 sun dried tomatoes
1/2 cup YELLOW mustard (I have dijon pictured but I should have stuck with yellow)
3/4 cup almond or coconut flour
juice of one small lemon or 1/2 of a large lemon
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 tablespoons lemon pepper seasoning (make sure this is whole 30 compliant)
a pinch of cayenne

Makes 2 cakes

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and roll mixture into patties. Mixture should look pretty thick and you should not see any juice. If it seems runny, just add some more almond or coconut flour. Heat coconut oil on low-medium heat in a skillet. Cook patties for 4-5 minutes on each side or until each side is a golden brown. Eat by themselves, on sweet potato buns, or rolled in lettuce like I did. Fun fact: our sweet neighbor across the street brought us this lettuce last week that he grew himself!

Like I said, these are extremely versatile and you can change them up as you wish. I think they'd be really good with some craisins and pesto thrown in there too. Happy cooking!

whole 30

So I'm not normally an in-your-face, gotta-try-this-product/diet/thing kind of gal...BUT you've gotta try this.

Starting May 1st, I embarked on the whole 30 challenge looking to lose some weight, get some encouragement and basically I just wanted to see if I could do it. I've struggled with my weight and lack of motivation to do anything about it for like...6 years. I've put together some pros and cons of my experience.

Pros:

1. I lost 14 pounds in 30 days and was never hungry. BOOM. And I only ran a total of 5 miles and attended ONE spin class at the gym. So I did all of this with very minimal excercise

2. The concept of the whole thing is so stupidly simple, it's easy to figure out what's okay and what's not okay to eat. Could a caveman have access to this? Yes? Eat it. 

3. Saving money! Yes, healthy produce is expensive but when you take out all of that money I saved when I passed up eating out with some people and just waited to eat until I got home, I saved money. I was able to cook for 30 days for Casey and I at least 80% of our meals on a 300$ grocery budget. That included all of our toiletries and cleaning products I needed to buy for the month as well. 

4. Quick results. 8 of my pounds lost were during the first week and half and I definitely felt the difference. You're not supposed to weigh yourself while you're on whole 30, but well, I broke that rule.

Cons:

1. Awkward social gatherings. Having to deny food and make a thousand modifications when ordering at restaurants was a new challenge for me. I felt rude and high maintenance at times.

2. Not being able to eat sugar or sweetener. It was far more than not getting that sweet tooth fulfilled. EVERYTHING has sugar or some type of sweetener in it now-a-days. I had to make my own sausage, spaghetti sauce, etc. Not having access to those products as easily made it a challenge.

3. Having to cook all of the time. And even worse than that, having to do dishes all of the time! Thankfully, Hubs was super supportive with that and helped with that a bunch.

4. Planning out what I was going to eat. I'm a pretty big planner when it comes to our menus anyways, but there were many times where we had crazy busy work days and would have to wake up at the crack of dawn to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner and then be out the door before 8. When stopping and picking up fast food isn't an option anymore, it makes life difficult. 

Here are some of the products I kept stocked and it saved my life:

Now that I've done whole 30 and gone so long with things like grain, dairy, soy, legumes, sugar, etc, I feel empowered and in control of what goes in my mouth, instead of my cravings being the one in control. The more times I passed up on that roll at dinner or the hazelnut syrup in my coffee, the easier it was to go without those things and the more I realized that I don't need that stuff to enjoy food. And boy, do I enjoy food. Now that I'm off the challenge, I'm still eating  mostly whole 30 food but am giving myself a few exceptions like honey and a cheat meal a week. On our camping trip last weekend, I went a little nuts and discovered a lot of the things I'd looked forward to enjoying just weren't as enjoyable anymore. Eating good food that's good for my body feels so much better. And y'all, this is coming from a girl who ate a half a dozen krispy kreme donuts in my car secretly the day before this challenge started.

I'll definitely be posting a lot of my favorite new recipes on here for you all to try. Stay tuned!

For a more extensive list of the dos and don'ts, visit whole30.com