Whole30: Day 9 (Test Kitchen: pate!)

Yesterday's unfortunateness of our vehicle having a flat tire not only prevented me from going to the chiropractor like I so desperately needed to but it also meant I spent most of the day in the kitchen concocting  deliciousness. I also thought I should take pictures of all the food that ate since half the time I never remember to until I am mostly done my food. So here is Saturday's food

Morning bone broth. I always drink a cup when I get up in the morning before I have anything else. Bone broth is the new coffee haven't you heard?

Then I made a cranberry pom tea while I got the real food ready. I rescued this snowman mug from the trash...don't judge.

Breakfast prep, slicing zucchini for my scramble

My breakfast... 2 eggs with chives, wilted spinach, zucchini and mushrooms cooked in bone broth and tallow, leftover chili and sweet potatoes plus half a banana that I dip in that little dish of coconut oil. I always eat the banana first so I am following the food combining principle for fruit (food combining is NOT Whole30 but I totally get the science behind eating your fruit first....fruit is all sugar so it is rapidly digested so I eat it first. Whole30 people want you to basically not eat fruit by itself or to use fruit in place of sweets or dessert)

Big ol' plate of morning yum

Dipping the banana and yes I drew a smiley on my nail with a sharpie last night

Making dressing for lunch. Dressing is mega easy...some evoo, some acv and a big squeeze of the weird brown mustard all shaken up in a baby mason jar. I don't really ever measure anything...all eyeball.

Then I made fruit sauce for the beasts with the apples, cranberries and blueberries that were going to go bad. I do this about once a week with almost funky produce or I slice stuff up and freeze it for smoothies.

Baked some sweet potatoes. These are super easy to have on hand pre-cooked to throw into any meal that needs a starchy carb.

I whipped up some chicken burgers with the ground chicken that had been in the fridge and was begging to be used. Burgers are easy to make and store in the fridge for "fast food". I always add garlic powder, fresh chives and fresh rosemary to mine...and proscuitto if I have it.

LUNCH! This was husbie's salad I was prepping as he was out dealing with the flat tire.

I roasted a spaghetti squash but when I tried it, it was really bitter. I think it had gone off which is a shame but I just couldn't swallow the bite I took and had to spit it out then chuck it out. I HATE wasting food, hate it.

My lettuce bowl with burger topper. Notice all the meals are a mix of fat. protein and veggies. This salad had an avocado in it plus the oil in the dressing, burger for meat and lots of green things.

Now for something I didn't even want to share with y'all. I am really sensitive in the kitchen. When things don't turn out, I take it personally and get grouchy. I bought this butter specifically to make ghee (clarified butter)...husbie is prepping dinner in the bg.

Melting the butter slowly...ignore my dirty stove

That white scummy looking crap is all the milk solids or the "garbage" in the butter

The watched butter never clarifies husbie!

The butter doing its thing...I guess...this was the ghee crap shoot

The burnt finished product. I was under the assumption that ALL the shit floating on the top would sink to the bottom...IT WON'T!! Little crumb like things will sink to the bottom but you won't really be able to see that through the scum so please take care not to burn your ghee. Now I have no idea what I am going to do with this burnt ghee but no effing way I am throwing it out. Ideas?

No time to wallow over burnt ghee, dinner need to be made. I promise, it looks like all I did was eat all day but that's not the case. Sauteing veggies in tallow and bone broth gives the veggies such a nice flavour

LIVERS! I found a great easy recipe for chopped liver on the Whole30 forum from an active member who is a chef (credit to FenderBender). My frozen livers defrosting while I do other crap. I always have like a billion things on the go in the kitchen at the same time.

Shredded MORE broccoli stems...I swear those thing multiple in the fridge like rabbits. We *just* finished the previous batch and looky, another 3 cups.

DINNER! Sauteed veggies and shrimp over cauliflower "rice". This meal was lacking a larger fat component. The veggies were cooked in tallow but that's not enough. I will counter with the fact that I am not super hungry in the evenings but this meal should have had a better fat source.

This is picture is just to gross out everyone...big ol' plate of bloody livers. I will repeat the recipe as I used it. 2 lbs chicken livers...mine was  1.2 lbs....I'm not nitpicky.

Cooking the livers very well in either coconut oil or animal fat. I went with an onion infused tallow (tallow is rendered beef fat, lard is rendered pork fat, schmaltz (?) is rendered chicken fat) that I had leftover from the ground beef a couple days ago. Cook em until there is no more blood coming out. Set a side to cool and save what fat is left.

Then chop up 1 large onion or a few small ones. The recipe said you should have about 3/4 cup of onion. I added 2 cloves of garlic to mine. Caramelize onions and garlic well. she specified lots of dark carmelization. I used two small onions and honestly, I could have used double the amount without and crazy overly onion taste in the finished product.

Let the onions cool in the pan. Peel 2 hard boiled eggs. When onions are cool put everything plus sea salt and lots of ground pepper in the FP. I added 2 spoonfuls more of the onion tallow because there wasn't much fat left after cooking. All ready to take a ride on the Cuisinart express.

The finished pate. I tried some on a celery stick and it was delicious. I would add more tallow to the FP before making it moosh next time since mine came out a little "crumbly" but still a success. I think the extra fat would make it creamier and hold it together better. Pate poop logs!! But I am very impressed with my first attempt and I think it is delicious. Husbie was NOT a fan and only took one bite before handing the celery back to me to finish. So liver in burgers...check....pate....no dice.

Whole30: Day 1

Why do we wait for specific days to make meaningful change in our lives? (NOTE: bear with me this will be a little long)  Why does the date on the calendar dictate what we are going to do? Most people make a meaningless gesture on January.1st to lose weight after a month of literally stuffing themselves from American thanksgiving, through all the Christmas parties, trays of danties brought in by co-wokers. I have never done New Year's resolutions because I think they are bullshit. You can change you life right this very moment if you want to ("But I just opened this Diet Coke!")

I typically get a bug up my ass about changing my life in either April or September (the last 2 years it has been September). There is no need to wait for the magical first of the year to do something big, something really bold! All of this really stems from yoga.

Yoga changed my life...dare I say, yoga saved my life. I got an email from my studio saying come in for a cheap month. With the weather getting cold I though delicious hot yoga would be a great way to keep moving if I couldn't be out on Drake. Soon after I started they offered their signature 30 day challenge...30 days of hot yoga (with a sticker chart...look at mah stickerz!)

 I participated in 30 days of hot yoga not missing a day and attending over 50 classes in the 30 days. I also went to a special workshop put on by my studio in which I heard a phrase which reshaped the way I was thinking and had been thinking for awhile. The speaker said:

"If you are running FROM something, you can run forever...but if you are running TOWARDS something you have to get there eventually"

I got....it made sense for me. I was running and had been for a long long time and I didn't want to anymore. I was going to stop running from something and starting running towards something and that was going to be the best version of me possible. That was in October.

Yoga gave me courage and strength both mental and physical and my amazing friends silently lead by example. A.C sent me the Whole30 link in the summer and I thought "Whoa, crazy pants no way am I there yet" I probably thought this while drinking a beer but now I am ready. Really ready. Ready to stand up and be accountable for myself and my health because I am so worth it

 So without further ado I am making my official statement

*I AM STARTING MY WHOLE30 TODAY WITH 100% COMPLIANCE*

I want to be standing at the top of the mountain (metaphorically...work with me) on January.1st not at the bottom unable to see the top because the clouds are distorting it. Along the way I will share my recipes, goals, struggles and whatever else comes to me all with fun pictures because reading is for wankers but since you are all wankers already and have made it this far...MOAR reading for your wankery eyes.

I did not do this on a whim. I am in fact going against 2 things that the Whole30 people advocate (sorry Melissa & Dallas...don't hate me, I'll make ya proud).  Don't do this...listen to them, they are the experts but I know me better than they do (sorry again!).

#1...they thought it would be unwise to do a Whole30 over the holiday. I have no big family dinner to attend with Aunt Milfred's special lard crack pie. I do not work in a modern prison office building where Jane, Sally and Barb have all stocked the break room table with more grains, sugar and dairy. There is no boozey work party to attend or friends that are heavy drinkers that would be douchebags and pressure me.

#2...they also advocate a "JUST START NOW" approach. I am a planner, a maker of lists, a fan of pondering and writing things down. I have spent over a month preparing for this by reading, reading, reading FOR THE LOVE OF READING, I bought "It Starts With Food" and I read some more,  I slowly cleared my house of tons of food items and totally reorganized my kitchen cabinets, I slowly bought all the expensive shit like coconut everything, acv etc etc etc (there is a lot to buy if you are going for 100% compliance), sourcing good food in various stores, ordering things online, MORE reading, trying out recipes, talking with friends and finally a 99% compliant 6 days prior to today that I never told y'all about. I know full and well I would have failed miserably on the first day without this preparation.  I set myself up to be successful by preparing, by knowing that I can't drink boxed almond milk, knowing that tons of shit contains sulphites and propolyene glycol yackyackyack.

If I don't lose a pound I don't give a crap (probably since I have lost about 25lbs since September) but it doesn't matter. I am going for 100% compliance and my long term goal is to make this my family's way of life which I have already begun to do with no resistance.

In order to gauge progress I went to see K.P at her sweet place of work to get a BIA done. A BIA is a bio-impedance analysis. It tells you specifically what your body make up is...what percentage of you is fat, water, muscle etc. I wish I would have taken one of these in September, I would have had very dramatic results (I have gone down 2 cup sizes and lost over 5 inches off my waist...these are all just casual clothing observations)

The numbers are good...really good, so good in fact I am slightly worried I am about to make a fool of myself and there will be only a tiny amount of change. I plan on taking this test again at the end of my Whole30 so I am able to have something to compare it to.

Apparently K.P says it looks good. My lean body mass is .2 over their mean "norm" and my body fat is .2 under the mean. I am so over judging fitness and healthy by weight (for myself...if you are fat you are probably unhealthy...sorry). I want my lean body mass to go up and my fat mass to go down (but not too low...woman are naturally "fatter" thanks to babies and biology) I don't care if I stay the same weight, I WANT TO BE RIPPED!  My basal metabolic rate which is the amount of calories your body needs just to do the day to day breathing and cellular repair is 1616 which is 200 over their "normal" mean for my age...this is because I have more lean muscle and lean muscle takes more calories to support than fat mass. Yeeehaw muscle!

Ok no more words and science...PICTURES! This was yesterday's breakfast. Everyone I spoke with wondered why the test kitchen was closing...fear not...I am pretty sure I need to eat every single day for the rest of my life and I still have a few things to test out that I didn't get a chance to do this past week. I stole this recipe from Fast Paleo and hacked it to my own liking. I am physically incapable of following a recipe exactly to the letter. I always tweak or change something. Proscuitto eggie cups. I am loving my ramekins. Line with meat

Sautee any veg you like...zucchini is my go to breakfast veggie and mushrooms since we had fresh ones.

3 eggs beaten then dumped on the whole lot

After about 25 minutes of sweet love in the Breville

Mmmm easy and delicious

 

 Veggies loves me and I lurve veggies

I took these 2 pictures at K.P's work

This was on the wall in the test room...my favourite part... "You live inside a body that either serves or limits you"... this sounds so much like what Melissa & Dallas say "The food you eat either makes you more healthy or less healthy...there is no food Switzerland" treat your body well and it will take care of you.