Day 23

After looking at all the leftover food still in our fridge from late last week and the weekend, we decided that we don't need to cook dinner tonight, we can just survive off the leftovers for another day. Plus, a few of the meals I'm planning for the week will have more than just 2 lunches leftover, like the turkey meatloaf and the pork carnitas. There will be several servings of those leftover.

Since I ate like 1/3 a container of cashews in the afternoon as a snack, I still felt extremely full by dinner time and decided to just make a light salad and have some prosciutto for a little protein. Ugh. I may have just ruined cashews for me for awhile. :(

Breakfast:
Banana with almond butter
Hard-boiled Egg
Coffee

Lunch:
Leftover burger with ketchup and wrapped in lettuce
Carrots
Strawberries & peaches

Snack:
Cashews (ugh I ate way too many, hens the empty container!!)

Dinner:
Salad with Tessemae's Balsamic dressing
1 slice of prosciutto

Day 22

I felt like the weekend went really great, both eating and just enjoying the beautiful weather! While I'm not a fan of Mondays in general, I feel good going into this week. I'm really starting to see the results of eating clean; my pants are much looser and I've been feeling energized at my workouts.

We ate off a bunch of leftovers over the weekend to help clear out the fridge for the upcoming week. It was nice not to spend the whole weekend cooking. I'm excited to try something new for breakfast this morning. The blueberry tortilla thing is a recipe I've had on my Whole30 list since last summer. It got a little messy when I flipped it (need to work on my chef skills) but overall it tasted pretty good! I'm glad I decided to add some sausage to the breakfast otherwise just the egg/blueberry thing would not have been filling enough.

For dinner tonight, i'm pumped to have shrimp because we haven't had them at all yet on this Whole30. This meal is one of my favorites and its pretty easy to pull together and its nice and light. Making the cauliflower rice the day before helps a lot, and its easy to just heat up at meal time. For the shrimp, I seasoned and marinated them overnight with the following: S&P, touch of cumin, red pepper flakes, lime zest, lime juice and some fresh cilantro. I wanted to pull some of the same cilantro lime flavors from the cauliflower rice into the shrimp as well but kick them up a notch with the cumin and red pepper flakes. We'll pair it with either broccoli or asparagus if I can get to the store on my way home from work tonight. The asparagus at Schnucks last night sucked so we didn't buy any. Hoping Whole Foods has some that looks better.

Breakfast:
Sweet & Savory Blueberry tortilla
Apple Chicken Sausage
Green Tea

Lunch:
Leftover chicken fajitas, served over some shredded lettuce

Snack:
Apple

Cashews

Dinner:
Cilantro Lime Cauliflower Rice
Shrimp
Asparagus
Slices strawberries & peaches

Day 21

The weather was so beautiful today (high 60s and sunny!) so we decided to g out and enjoy the day after breakfast. We went to Lone Elk Park and did a 4-mile hike. Ended up seeing tons of wildlife (elk, deer, and bison) along the way which was a lot of fun! After our hike we had a small lunch and relaxed for a bit before having an early dinner because J wanted to watch the NHL All-Star Game. After dinner we went to the grocery store and got all our food for the week. Sundays are typically my meal planning and food prep day for the upcoming week. And we usually spend some of Sunday evening doing various meal preps. J makes a big batch of his potato, sausage & egg hash so he has 5 breakfasts for the week. I also like to make something for my breakfasts for the week and decided to try a new recipe this time: a sweet and savory blueberry egg bake. That should make 4 breakfasts. I also made some more cauliflower rice seasoned with lime juice & zest, garlic, onion and cilantro. We're planning on having shrimp for dinner on Monday night and the cilantro rice (cauliflower) goes will with shrimp served on top. And because I get home late on Monday nights because of bootcamp (6:30-7:30), it makes dinner prep go so much faster!

Breakfast:

Scrambled eggs

Bacon

Strawberries & pineapple

Lunch:

Hard-boiled egg

Apple with almond butter

Snack:
none

Dinner:

Leftover pork chop with applesauce

Roasted brussel sprouts

Day 20

Today was a busy day so I didn't have time for much snacking, which is probably for the better. Started off with the usual 8am bootcamp class, then had a florist appointment in the city at 1:00pm. Since I had a late breakfast after bootcamp, I wasn't hungry enough to eat again before leaving for the appointment so I just brought a beef sick with me in case I got hungry while out with my mamma. Glad I did because we ended up running around to a few stores after the appointment and I was definitely hungry then!

Didn't get home until after 4:00pm so it was too late to have a snack without ruining dinner. We heated up the leftover burgers and fries (baked) for dinner tonight which was very yummy! Then headed out to a movie - The Big Short. It was pretty good. Have to admit, it kind of sucks going to the movies while on Whole30. I love popcorn and it smells so damn good the second you walk in. I don't even need the butter, just plain popcorn would do fine. So to help curb my popcorn desire and the need to snack at a movie, I brought a little bag od sliced almonds and unsweetened coconut strips. It is a surprising good combination, although not as good as popcorn :/

Breakfast:

Blueberry Rx bar

Chocolate coconut shake

Lunch:

Beef stick

Snack:

none

Dinner:

Burger with pineapple slice and Tessemae's ketchup
Baked fries
Green beans

Day 19

I love Fridays because I only have to work until Noon in the office and then I get the rest of the day off. Working 9 hour days through the rest of the week is worth it to get Friday afternoons off. Plus it was a beautiful day!

For dinner, I made the zesty chicken tenders recipe that another Whole30-doin' bootcamper shared and said were pretty good. They ended up being really good. Only thing missing is that chicken tender crispness. But you're only going to get that if you fry them and even if you use compliant oil, it kind of defeats the point. I used chicken tenders instead of cutting them into little pieces and I doubled the spice/breading mixture to make about 10 or so chicken tenders. So we'll have plenty leftover.

Breakfast:

Sweet potato hash

Sunny side up egg

Blackberries

Green tea

Lunch:

Leftover Meatball Veggie soup

Leftover sweet potato fries

Applesauce

Snack:

Hard-boiled egg

2 slices prosciutto

Sweet potato chips (not pictured, but I ate WAY too many!)

Dinner:

Zesty chicken tenders (my sad dinner because I was still full from gorging on sweet potato chips earlier)

Green beans

Day 18

I didn't feel like bringing the leftover pork chops for lunch today, it seemed too heavy and I feel like we've had a lot of heavy meals lately. We had a little bit of tuna salad leftover so I brought that with a tomato and a big piece of lettuce to wrap it in. Should be good!  Dinner tonight is one of Jon's favorites that we did last time on Whole30: burgers and fries. With some modifications of course. No bun, no cheese and no deep-fried fries, they are baked instead. But still pretty awesome. And we bought more of the Tessemae's ketchup which has a much tangier taste that regular ketchup but it does the job of tricking your mind.

I made a chocolate shake after dinner that was AWESOME!  So much so that I forgot to take a picture of it. It was made with 1 banana, about 1/4 cup fat free coconut milk, about 2 tbsp of unsweetened coconut flakes, and some raw 100% cacao powder.  I modeled it after this recipe but didn't freeze the banana, didn't use the gelatin protein, used less coconut milk and also added some unsweetened coconut flakes to give it more of a coconut flavor. I didn't want to taste the banana as much and wanted to taste more of the chocolate and coconut flavors.  A little bit goes a long way with the cacao powder so I did about 1-2 teaspoons worth and it had plenty of chocolaty taste!  Mix that up in the Bullet and then add a bunch of ice to make it cold and give it that milkshake consistency. It was an awesome healthy indulgence after going to bootcamp 4 days in a row! If I can find some paleo-friendly protein powder this would make a great post-workout shake.

Breakfast:
Banana
Almond Butter
Green Tea

Lunch:
Tuna salad with tomato slices in lettuce wrap
Baby carrots
Cantelope

Snack:
Hard-boiled egg
Rx Bar

Dinner:
Burger
Baked fries
Chocolate shake (banana, coconut milk, unsweetened coconut flakes, raw cacao power, ice)

Day 17

I felt great yesterday afternoon and evening, maybe I'm getting into that Tiger's Blood stage after all! The fajitas with paleo tortillas turned out pretty decent! They were a little bit of work (make the dough, knead the dough, flatten into tortillas, fry up in a skillet) but it made the dinner feel more like a traditional Mexican dinner.

Breakfast:
Banana
Almond Butter
Coffee

Lunch:
Leftover chicken fajitas from last night

Snack:
Apple
Hard-boiled egg

Dinner:
Pork Chops
Savory Applesauce
Roasted Brussel Sprouts with bacon