Whole30 Complete!

Part 1 of the challenge complete! This was the last day of my strict challenge (Whole30), and tomorrow I’ll be following along with the rest of the folks at the gym for a slightly more relaxed challenge for the next few months. I’ll still be focused on whole, unprocessed (or minimally processed!) foods, but there likely will be a few more healthy desserts around here, because I miss my chocolate.

How’d this month go?

First off, I attempted to eat at meal times and cut out snacking. This worked out quite well. I learned that by adding a little bit of extra protein and fat to each meal, I really did find myself satiated enough to tide me over to the next meal without finding myself hungry.

This was largely helped by the blood sugar regulation from cutting out refined sugars and sweeteners of any kind. Even honey and maple syrup. Near the end of the month I had a couple of LÄRABARs which I learned are technically verboten, but I didn’t over do it. You’ll also notice that I largely cut out desserts. This was helpful retraining myself to get out of the habit of needing something sweet after every meal. I’m guessing that I’ll be much more mindful of this in the future. While I missed out over the holidays on one of my favorite desserts ever (pumpkin chocolate chip cake!), I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to let the daily dessert habit go.

Although the first few weeks I felt fine (with no noticeable change positive or negative), the last few weeks I’ve been feeling great! I’ve been doing awesome things in the gym, eating lots of delicious meals, and feeling bouncy and peppy in general.

Most of all, I had a lot of fun cooking. So many great meals at home! My tummy and my wallet are thanking me.

And, I finally made it through an entire jar of almond butter. It lasted me the whole month, and I ate the last scoops on a ripe banana.

For lunch, I had what can only be described as a “clean out the fridge meal”, but one which tasted much better than it looks. In the bowl is leftover shredded beef shanks, a cup of frozen artichoke hearts from Trader Joe’s, and an egg.

In the late afternoon, I headed out to do some grocery shopping. A few things at Formaggio, Whole Foods, and a trip out to M.F. Dulock to pick up my weekly meat allotment. (Three stores again, Sam? Yes, I’m in love with grocery shopping.)

Here are the cases this week. Gorgeous:

I picked up some lamb shanks, a small portion of lamb liver, some all-beef Romanian sausage, a little Eye-of-Round roast,  some ground beef (ground to order!), and a gorgeous pork tenderloin. I’ve been trying to get a little of each animal in the case each week, and going for variety.

For dinner, I put together a fall dinner of roasted pork tenderloin, acorn squash, and a fennel and apple slaw.

I chopped an acorn squash, tossed it with some coconut oil, salt, cumin and chile, and roasted it at 450 for 20 minutes, and then 20 more minutes at 400 – while the pork was also in the oven. The pork tenderloin I seasoned with Nom Nom Paleo’s Magic Mushroom Powder from her iPad app, and some rosemary (yep, exactly how I seasoned the lamb yesterday). I seared the tenderloin on all sides the stove top (about 3 minutes), and popped it in the hot 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. I then took it out and let it rest for 10 minutes, lightly covered with the lid.

Right as I put the pork in the oven, I added a little lamb liver to the pan to roast along side it. (Chef’s treat!)

While the pork was cooking, I made a quick fennel apple slaw. I toasted a tiny handful of walnuts, and I thinly sliced a bulb of fennel, and a gala apple, and tossed them all together with the juice of half a lemon of lemon to keep the apples from browning. I then made a quick dressing: juice from the other half of the, a tablespoon of cider vinegar, a teaspoon of mustard, and 3 tablespoons of olive oil. I seasoned it with salt and pepper, and tossed it all together, letting it sit out on the counter about 20 minutes to mellow before serving.

My dinner:

Evening Walks

Today’s Happiness Booster: Evening Walks. I remember when I was a teenager spending the summer in France, we used to go for evening walks. Usually before dinner, or in between dinner and dessert, we’d head out as a group, sometimes just the kids, sometimes the whole lot of us, and stroll through the neighborhood. There was always a lot of smiling, laughing, waving to people eating in their gardens or doing the same as us.

This is a practice that I’ve been longing to make a habit of, but it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve been doing it. You get rewarded at that time of day, the blue hour*, when twilight hits and the sun has set and things all of a sudden become magical. (*Also, love this blue hour.)

I took these tonight, on my phone, as the light was fading on my evening walk.

Today was an odd sort of day, trying to fit a few different things into my schedule that I hadn’t planned for. I decided at the last minute to go to the gym because I’m committed twice a week, and although I usually go on Friday or Sunday, I wanted to give myself enough rest for my little road race this weekend.

I had half a cup of coffee, and headed to the gym on an empty stomach, because of my last minute judgement. Although having some food is better than none, if I don’t leave several hours between eating and my workout, it becomes uncomfortable and “an issue”. I’ll leave it at that.

Today’s workout was called “Tarpit“.

AMRAP 20 (As many rounds as possible in 20 minutes):

200m Run

16 Lunges

8 Push-ups

4 Pull-ups (Jumping pullups for me!)

If this looks painful, well, it was. I got in an honorable 5 rounds plus a run. (Three rock stars in my class got 9 + change. Crazy!) To reward ourselves, we did 8 sets of 20 seconds of situps + 10 seconds of rest in between. I did a less than honorable 52 situps. Eek!

Before heading home, I stretched for a good 15 minutes, and swung by the Needham library to flip through a cookbook of mine that is stuck in a box. They have this fantastic statue outside that I just love.

When I got home, I set about making a simple soup of leftovers that turned out better than expected. Butternut squash, roast beef, a few handfuls of baby spinach, and the last bit of homemade beef stock I made last week. I seasoned it simply with salt and pepper and a little bit of Turkish urfa biber (a deep oily red pepper flake).

Later in the afternoon, snack was an entire half pint of raspberries, and some iced tea with coconut milk. I had a heck of a time trying to photograph the milky tea, the camera just didn’t want to do it. It was good, I promise.

In the early evening I headed off to M.F. Dulock again in Somerville to pick up some pasture raised and freshly butchered meat for the next few days. Having a great source of high quality, humanely raised meat is so important to me – leaving my meat c.s.a. in the Bay was really hard, and I just can’t say enough about having access to this stuff. I picked up some beef shanks, beef stir fry meat, fresh pork sausages, lamb shoulder chops and goat! Variety is the spice of life!

After my evening walk, I set about making dinner. First I gathered vegetables to make my salad.

I chopped up the tomato and cucumber, and tossed them in a bowl with a little bit of salt and thyme, and let them sit while I prepped everything else. This allows the juices to puddle at the bottom, and all you really need is a little bit of vinegar and a spoonful of olive oil to finish it off.

The goat meat I had picked up at the butcher had already been seasoned – salt, pepper, garlic, onions and parsley – pretty much exactly what I do to my ground meat to make Turkish köfte – convenient!

I formed the meat into little balls, and fried it in some tasty lard in my cast iron. Goat is a very lean meat, so a little bit of extra fat was welcome here.

I was surprised at how much they really crisped up in the pan. I made Devon a salad with a little bit of Caesar dressing, sliced up an avocado to share, and made up our plates. This is his, mine had just cucumber and tomato salad without leafy greens for no good reason other than the fact that I had put away the greens before making my own plate and forgot.

And wait! Dessert! Before my walk, I managed to cut up a melon and put it in the fridge. I ate several cupfuls mindlessly while watching “Breaking Amish”. And to think I had seriously contemplated giving up fall TV…

 

Meat Shop.

{Scroll down if you aren’t interested in fitness enthusiasm and only care about food. It’s okay, I understand, sort of.}

I took this picture last weekend at the CrossFit New England Firebreather Festival of one of my fellow Charles River CrossFit members. I’d never been to an event like this before, but it was something like homecoming/tailgating, minus the massive amounts of booze and grilling. Although, I’m not sure why there wasn’t more grilling. B.Good had set up shop, but I find their burgers to be “meh” at best. Where were the delicious grass fed meats?

Seeing members of my own gym and my coaches killing it was a pretty awesome experience, and got me excited to get back into the gym and push my limits.

Inspired by the weekend festivities, I headed into the gym this morning excited to tackle this workout:

9/14/12 WOD (Workout of the Day)

Warmups: With a partner, switch off between 200 m. runs. While the other is running, we did a few minutes each of leg overs, frog steps, and a few other torturous moves. Nothing like working up a huge sweat before you even start the workout.

Strength:  Push Press – establish a 5 Rep Max.

WOD:  “Trenchcoat”

AMRAP 6: (As many reps as possible in 6 minutes of this combination)

6 Hang Power Clean 115/80 (I’m not quite at the women’s prescribed #80, but getting there!)

6 Ring Dips (I use a band to keep the rings together. It’s still hard.)

Today I chose a heavier weight than I’m used to, and thus made it through just over three rounds and some change before dying. It was fun though!

I’m growing rather fond of lifting in all forms, because I had no idea that a) I could lift heavy things, and b) how well it translates into the real life activities that I do all the time, such as bringing heavy groceries up three flights of stairs, or lifting ikea furniture, or come winter, shoveling massive amounts of snow. (Just kidding on that last one!)

On to the food!

After my workout, I had a sub-optimal post workout snack of a venti black iced tea at Starbucks. So sue me.

Once I had cooled down, I headed over to Volante Farms in Needham to pick up some fresh produce at their farm stand (which is really a small grocery). I ended up with their homegrown eggplant, zucchini, peppers, and a few pounds of tomatoes.

When I got home, I made a batch of roasted vegetables. I chopped up some of the zucchini and eggplant, drizzled them with olive oil, a big pinch of salt and pepper, and roasted them at 450F for about 45 minutes. I’ll eat them over the next couple of days.

In the meantime, I was now starving, so I put together this simple lunch: sauteed zucchini, leftover roast chicken, and Rao’s marinara sauce. You heat them up together on the stove until warm, and eat!

It took me a long time to get through this bowl, and I ate while sitting at my computer getting some work done. Later in the afternoon I chowed down on a snack: a sliced banana with a spoonful of almond butter and a spoonful of coconut butter. After years of not eating bananas because they weren’t seasonal, I admit that I’ve succumb to the tasty fruit a little too often. In San Francisco, I always had delicious local fruit to eat – here, not so much.

In the early evening, I went for a short walk around Fresh Pond, and then headed out on my most exciting field trip of the day: M.F. Dulock!

M.F. Dulock is a local pasture raised butcher shop that just opened last week in Somerville. I was there on opening day, because, a grand opening of a real live butcher is a blessed thing indeed. I left last week with pork chops, beef, ground pork and Italian sausages, and everything was good. Meat that tastes like meat.

The cases are full of whatever has been butchered, and changes up every day. (Yes, those are bacon burgers down there.)

I ended up leaving with some ground pork, beef stew meat, ground beef, and a small amount of lamb liver. You’ll be seeing it around.

When I got home, I took out the ground beef – gorgeous large grind, a healthy amount of fat. So good you could eat the stuff raw. But I had better plans – a beef and carrot stir fry with Asian flavors.

I used this “Emergency Protein” as the basic template for the dish.

I blitzed an onion, ginger and garlic in the food processor, and softened them in the pan in a little bit of lard from Formaggio kitchen. I grated a carrot and added it to the pan, and then added my ground beef. I seasoned it with a few tablespoons of coconut aminos and a dash of fish sauce. When the beef had browned, I added in a cup of shredded cauliflower for bulk (you can’t really taste it).

I doused it all in a dressing of lime juice and fish sauce, added some chopped mint and basil, and served it with tomato wedges.

Ta da!