Hey, friends! I was supposed to be posting a garden update this week, but unfortunately, there isn’t really any great news in that front right now. Everything is doing very poorly, and I have yet to decide exactly what course of action to take. So, instead of boring you with my disappointment over my non-growing things, I decided to go in a very different direction this week and share what I am cooking this week!
For starters, let me preface all this by saying that I am not a nutritionist, a purist, or a perfectionist when it comes to healthy eating. But our family does have some hereditary health concerns that we are trying to preclude by means of changing our diets. By far, the biggest part of that involves drastically reducing our carb intake and going grain-free. It is our goal in July to begin a round of Whole30 to essentially get us back to a clean slate in terms of our eating habits. My husband has already been on a modified carnivore diet on and off over the last 9 months, and he has seen great results when he is really sticking to it. I have done a modified Whole30 in the past, meaning I did not cut out all dairy products but kept in butter, cheese, and cultured dairy (kefir and yogurt). However, since our daughter also has some symptoms of lactose intolerance, and I never felt serious benefits from that “version”, our plan is to do a true, clean Whole30 next time around.
In effort to more gently ease us into it, since we can’t start right away due to an upcoming vacation, I wanted to start with a paired down grain-free meal plan for the coming week. (It actually ended up being 9 days of meals because that’s what I needed for this round of shopping.) You can see it below, and if you want to get a PDF copy for yourself to reference, you can click here and download it for free! It is very plain and simple, just the way I made it for myself to stick on my fridge…no fancy graphic designs on this version. Maybe some other time…
You will notice that the first two dinners do include rice, which is almost exclusively for my 14 year old boy who is the least willing to change his eating habits at the moment (go figure!) I decided that now is not the time to press him on it since he is also the one of least concern at the moment, as far as symptoms go. So if he feels like he needs to add a corn tortilla or two to breakfast to make himself an egg burrito, or have a bed of rice with his stir-fry, that’s ok with me.
As you can also see in the above image, there are parts of some meals underlined in the menu. Those are meals that have recipe links in the downloadable PDF. A lot of the foods I listed are things I don’t really have or need a recipe to make, such as meat/egg salads, salmon patties, green salads, and smoothies. But if you want to make any of those things and don’t know how, the internet abounds with recipes for your perusal! I am not, nor will I ever be, a food blogger. I am a competent home cook, and I am happy to share a menu here now and then…but that is where it ends, I am afraid!
I can share, however, which of the above recipes are tried and true recipes I have made time and again and know work for my family, and those are:
The other linked recipes are either just for reference, or they are new-to-me recipes that I am planning to try, a couple of which are specifically Whole30 approved. Hopefully, they will all turn out well and will be things I can add to our regular rotation once we start our actual 30-day challenge! I am afraid I am going to really miss being able to have dairy products because I often rely on high-fat and protein-packed foods like yogurt and cottage cheese to round out a meal. Oh well…it will just be 30 days, and if we want to have dairy be our first food of the re-introduction period, then we can do that!
Well, that was much more than I thought I had to say on the subject of food for this week! So I had better wrap it up now. Please do let me know if you found any new recipes on this menu that you want to try, and check back here next month when I will be checking back in as we kick off our family Whole30! Until then, happy cooking!
Kiel
