Woo hoo! It’s the final week and all I can think of is “just get food on the table until it’s over.” My creativity is gone with the wind, and I don’t mean Gone With The Wind Fabulous. While that may sound sort of boring, I actually think it’s an indicator of success. By the time I get to the end of the Whole 30 I’m basically eating because I have a need to nourish, not to feed any cravings or particular emotions. SCORE!

Monday

Breakfast: will be the same all week. I made Italian Brunch Bake and roasted up some brussels sprouts. Breakfast in boxes all week long!
Lunch: Rogan Josh (straight out of Well Fed. HOLY CRAP this is a simple, but flavorful dish.)
Dinner: A variation on Nom Nom Paleo’s Slow Cooker Kalua Pig (smoked paprika instead of bacon. Oh bacon, how I miss thee!)

Tuesday

Lunch: Taco Salad, because OBVIOUSLY.
Dinner: Turkey Satay Burgers + Broccoli Slaw +Green Goddess Cauliflower Rice (h/t for pointing me in that direction Tara!)

Wednesday

Lunch: Roasted Shrimp (riff on this recipe) + Green Beans (the microwavable Trader Joe’s kind
Dinner: Ground Beef with Baharat (Paleo-ified) over Spaghetti Squash

Thursday

Lunch: Chicken Salad with Avocados + Sliced Cucumber
Dinner: Burgers TBD + Roasted Broccoli + Sweet Potato Fries

No idea what to do with the burgers Thursday night, so riddle me this…what is your FAVORITE way to make/dress/serve a burger?

Happy Last week of Whole 30 you all! Thanks for keeping me (mostly) inspired in the kitchen! ha!

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So! I’m a few days late, but I promise I’ve still been meal planning. This is the last FULL WEEK of the Whole 30. Can you even believe that? Just yesterday we were talking about Make Ahead Meals and now we are less than 10 days from finishing. My mind is BLOWN! It’s going by pretty fast I think, and a stocked fridge and a menu plan full of ideas just keeps me chugging along.

My strategy this week is to rely on leftovers. I’m making a few larger meals for dinner and then serving them up for lunch the next day. I’m also still relying on some convenience food (Trader Joe’s Turkey Burgers and Microwave Green Beans mostly) but hey…ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

Monday

Breakfast: will be the same all week. I made an egg casserole with Chorizo + Kale + Onions and roasted up some butternut squash. Breakfast in boxes all week long!
Lunch: Leftovers (we did some fridge clean out)
Dinner: Rogan Josh (straight out of Well Fed. HOLY CRAP this is a simple, but flavorful dish.)

Tuesday

Lunch: Leftover Rogan Josh
Dinner: Paleo Minestrone Soup

Wednesday

Lunch: Leftover Minestrone
Dinner: Kielbasa Steamer with Stir Fry Sauce (Less recipe more method: Chop up Cauliflower, Carrots and Broccoli and steam with Kielbasa over the top. Serve up with Ghee and Stir Fry Sauce. Plain. Simple. Delicious.)

Thursday

Lunch: Trader Joe’s Turkey Burgers and Green Beans. Sounds kinda simple and boring but I am LOVING this meal right now.
Dinner: Turkey Curry Shepherd’s Pie

Friday

Lunch: Leftover Shepherd’s Pie
Dinner: Pork Chops — TBD — if you have a suggestion I’d love to hear it. Also, roasted brussels sprouts and broccoli.

Saturday

We are going to be gone at another all day event on Saturday — CrossFit competition season is beginning and we really enjoy spectating. Last week this is what we packed up to take with us:

Sunday

I’ll post a new menu on Sunday! THE LAST MENU. Yesssssssssssssss!

*****
So how many of you are still going strong?

Have a great week everyone!

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Twelve days in and I have already lost my desire to be creative in the kitchen. This time around I have a lot more going on in my work life, so this week I have to put kitchen creativity low on my priority list. I still want to make delicious, compliant meals but I think there will be little pomp and circumstance surrounding them.

This week I’m not trying any new recipes and I actually picked up some convenience food at Costco and Trader Joe’s yesterday, including: chicken sausages, pre packed microwave in bag green beans, pre-chopped kale, and frozen turkey burgers. All will be yummy yet will require very little brain power. Plus, I’m calling in the big convenience guns and doing breakfast for dinner one night.

Sunday meals are going to be slapdash. Garrett isn’t around so I’m sort of slapping together leftovers and doing food prep today. Nothing exciting, but definitely sustaining.

Monday

Breakfast: will be the same all week. Beef + Spinach Egg Casserole. The recipe will be on the blog this week!
Lunch: Cinnamon Beef Stew This is a total repeat and I don’t even care. It’s awesome, I made a batch this morning and it will work for lunch for two days. Score!
Dinner: Paleo Krabby Patties with homemade tartar sauce, salad and roasted golden beets.

Tuesday

Lunch:Cinnamon Beef Stew
Dinner: Breakfast for dinner

Wednesday

Lunch: Crock Pot Stuffed Peppers I really enjoyed these last week so I made another batch for lunches this week.
Dinner: Trader Joe’s Turkey Burgers with Zucchini + Sweet Potato Fries

Thursday

Lunch: Crock Pot Stuffed Peppers
Dinner: Paleo Chicken Piccata + Salad +Steamed Green Beans with ghee

Friday

Lunch: Chicken Sausage over Spaghetti Squash topped with roasted kale. (This is my new fave comfort food. Sounds plain, tastes delicious.)
Dinner: Taco Salad. Convenience or not, I must have my taco salad.

Saturday

We are going to be gone at an all day event on Saturday so I have not planned this day at all. I’ll probably figure it out as we go. Have any suggestions for portable food that is compliant? Let me know!

Sunday

I’ll post a new menu on Sunday!

So Hey — Let’s Talk About Homework

I want to see your grocery haul, folks! Where do you go? What do you buy? What are your time savers in the kitchen? What convenience foods are helping you get through this? Show me, show me, show me! And tag your photos with #hwisc for next week’s roundup.

Have a great week everyone!

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Greetings from the weekend! Where Buster just keeps saying “Please Please PLEASE can we do something else besides watch Homeland?” Sorry doggie, it’s not in the cards.

How did your meals go the first week? Hopefully you did some planning and things went pretty smoothly. If not, maybe this coming week you can think through what you’ve got on your agenda and tailor your dishes to that. That is the “ADVANCED” part of meal planning I think. It’s awesome to come up with a delicious menu, but if you are planning to make Beef Wellington on the same night you have to stay late at work and pick your kids up from soccer — well, that probably won’t set you up for success. So definitely look at your week and give yourself permission to make some lazy meals!

My personal favorite lazy meal? Breakfast for dinner!

Here’s a rough idea of what’s cooking in our neck of the woods. And I say rough idea because if you’ve been following me on Instagram you can see that sometimes I completely stick to my plan, or sometimes I off road and turn the ingredients that my meal plan required me to have on hand into something completely different. It’s my inner spoiled child saying NOBODY IS THE BOSS OF ME! Not even a meal plan. I DO WHAT I WANT!

Sunday

Breakfast: Poached Eggs and Butternut Squash Hash
Lunch: Chicken Salads
Dinner: Asian Ahi Tuna Burgers (A paleo riff on this recipe) over spicy slaw with Roasted Broccoli and Sauteed Snap Peas

Monday

Breakfast: will be the same all week. I’m experimenting with a casserole inspired by Mel’s Spinach and Meat Muffins. I’ll probably add some mushrooms. This will last 4 days for both of us. On Friday we’ll probably mob some leftovers for breakfast.
Lunch: Damn Good Chili
Dinner: Lemon Garlic Herb Pork Chops with Basil + Ghee tossed Spaghetti Squash and Sauteed Zucchini

Tuesday

Lunch: Damn Good Chili
Dinner: Crock Pot Stuffed Peppers + Spicy Baked Cauliflower and Sweet Potatoes (one meal: two heads of cauliflower. WILD!)

Wednesday

Lunch: Taco Salad. Because I’m nothing if not predictable.
Dinner: Cilantro Lime Ono + Cauliflower Rice + Salted Avocado Can you tell I have a lot of cauliflower on hand right now? USE IT OR LOSE IT.

Thursday

Lunch: Leftovers. Because we will certainly have some.
Dinner: Garlic Chorizo Shrimp (a riff on this recipe) + Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Friday

Lunch: Spicy Broiled Salmon over salads with dilly cucumbers
Dinner: Crock Pot Beef Stew I need to make something easy on this night because we are meeting with our team to start planning The Relay. Have I talked about The Relay much here? I AM SO NUTS FOR SIGNING UP. More to come on this soon. Including how the hell I’m going to train for this, and what I was smoking when I said “Yes, sounds great to be on a team that runs 200 miles in 24 hours.” WHAT?

Saturday

Garrett is going to be gone most of Saturday so I will be doing the single gal thing. Not quite sure what that will look like yet, but I’m sure it will be creative. Or completely weird. That’s how I roll when I eat alone.

Sunday

I’ll post a new menu on Sunday!

So Hey — Let’s Talk About Homework

This week the homework is 3-fold (oooh, advanced!) but it is still super easy:

1. Find some new #whole30 peeps to follow on Twitter & Instagram and make sure to say hello

2. Continue to add your photos to the mix and using the hashtag #hwisc

3. Leave a comment here about the best Whole 30 meal you at last week. Extra credit if it includes a link!

Have a great Week Two everyone! I’m off to grocery shop!

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Our Whole 30 starts today! And I celebrated by hopping on the scale to get a baseline. I mean it seemed like a good idea at the time. SOB!

LORD ALMIGHTY THAT WAS A RUDE AWAKENING. I can’t even really talk about it, but let’s just say it was worse than I thought, and my assumption was pretty bad to begin with. But hey — LOOK AT ALL THE OPPORTUNITY FOR IMPROVEMENT I HAVE! OH MY. I AM SO GRATEFUL. (sarcasm)

::::the glass is half full. the glass is half full. why is the glass not half full with red wine, is what I want to know:::::

Just kidding.

The glass really is half full and I am not interested in looking back. All those cookies seemed like a good idea at the time, and well — it is what it is. All I can do is do my best today! I’m feeling optimistic but that doesn’t mean that Day One hasn’t had its challenges already. I got to work and found a See’s Scotchmallow Bar in my purse that had been a gift on New Year’s Eve. YOU MEAN I COULD HAVE EATEN IT ALREADY AND I FORGOT? Yeah, so no dice. I had to give that away, STAT. Also there are cookies in the breakroom. I mean, hello, did everyone not get the memo that is January? NOBODY WANTS COOKIES.

But I’m determined to have this awesome Whole 30 experience so enough cookie talk, let’s talk about what we are actually eating this week. I’m going to post my menus each week. This week starts on a Wednesday so it will be short, but from here on out I will try and get the menus up each Sunday.

Wednesday

Breakfast: Southwestern Frittata with Roasted Brussels Sprouts & Roasted Carrots and Parsnips (I made all of this on my days off. Score!)
Lunch: Cinnamon Beef Stew (which we made and had for dinner last night. Leftovers, Holla!)
Dinner: Caramelized Italian Pork Chops with Sweet Onion Jam + Roasted Broccoli + Cauliflower

Thursday

Breakfast: Southwestern Frittata with Roasted Brussels Sprouts & Roasted Carrots and Parsnips (You are sensing a pattern here, aren’t you?)
Lunch: Paleo Minestrone Soup (Yep, made a batch of that this weekend too!)
Dinner: Turkey Burgers with Sweet Potato Fries + Kale Chips (I think I’ll blog my fave turkey burgers next week. What a tease!)

Friday

Breakfast: Southwestern Frittata with Roasted Brussels Sprouts & Roasted Carrots and Parsnips (Sorry, it is just really easy to make 4 days worth of breakfast on the weekend!)
Lunch: Paleo Minestrone Soup (Keeping it simple this week, which SURPRISE! Means a few repeats up in here)
Dinner: Roasted Shrimp (not sure what marinade we are doing yet – TBD) with Green Beans + Almonds and Roasted Brussels Sprouts. (You can not have enough brussels sprouts)

Saturday

Brunch: Poached Eggs over Spicy Sweet Potato Hash (no hollandaise this time around. Sad face.)
Snacks for the afternoon
Dinner: Taco Salads. It’s happening, and I’m already looking forward to it. I’d make them today but my avocados aren’t ripe, and it’s actually not legal to make a Taco Salad in California without an avocado.

Sunday

I’ll post a new menu on Sunday!

So Hey — Let’s Talk About Homework

So I think many of you are Whole 30 social media mavens and you are probably out there tweeting and Instagramming all of your gorgeous meals. Well, actually I know it because I’m probably following you and your feeds make me droooooool. So, if you would like to play along, hashtag your meal pics with #hwisc (Holly Would If She Could, see what I did there???) And I will try and do a round up each week of some of your awesome food porn for inspiration. That way we can eventually all find some new people to follow and perhaps some new recipes to make. What do you think? Don’t you miss homework from your school days? No? Just me?

Have a great week everyone!

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