Whole30 Day Ten

• Breakfast - three ghee-fried eggs (overcooked because I was trying to appease Leela. I'm not sure why I try sometimes), garlicky greens, half a sweet potato, half an avocado.
• PreWO - snack handful (12) of almonds at 10:50.
• PostWO - hard boiled egg white
• Lunch - last of the carrot ginger soup with a handful of coconut flakes, hard boiled egg with hot sauce, and a large serving of steamed asparagus (7 stalks!).
• I couldn't decide what to have for dinner, I had the "bacon" all ready for BLTs, but Ebon wasn't going to be around, so I decided to make the stuffed peppers. They had eggs, mushrooms, and spinach. They would have been better with cheese, but they still tasted pretty good and were filling. Leela had leftover pizza. After putting Leela to bed, I finished most of the grapes that I had cut up a couple weeks ago.

I had a pretty bad headache, so I went to bed early, but I'm still craving cheese and sweets pretty bad. The timeline says these are the "hardest days: redefine your idea of reward. Think long and hard about the foods you’re grieving and ask yourself what need you’re expecting them to fulfill. Are you feeling anxious and looking for reassurance? Are you feeling sad, and looking for something to cheer you up? Are you worried you won’t successfully finish the program, and it’s easier to self-sabotage than fail? Remind yourself that food cannot fill that void for you—cannot make you feel truly accomplished, comforted, calm, happy, beautiful. Then, find another way to fill that need that does not involve those foods. Prepare yourselves for these days, knowing that all you have to do is see them through to the other side before things get much, much easier."

I probably need to delve into this more, but not right now.

Whole30 Day Nine

• Breakfast was the last of the ratatouille, garlicky kale, three fried eggs (fried in ghee!), and half an avocado. Leela had a very hard time at breakfast after I offered her three types of eggs, decided on yogurt and ate about half the container - sigh.
• Lunch was the carrot ginger soup with a handful of flaked coconut on top, one of Leela's rejected fried egg and a hard boiled egg, and two thirds of a banana. I'm missing a green veggie, we'll see how that pans out later on.
• Snacked on a handful of almonds shortly after lunch - whoops.
• Dinner tonight was stir fry with lots of mung sprouts! I added in a carrot, a yellow pepper, ginger, garlic, and green onions with sesame oil and coconut aminos. It tasted good! I added a big handful of olives from a jar, which weren't all that good. The olives form the olive bar are so much better. I need to get more of those, or I wish we lived closer to Watertown and Arax market with all their lovely olives!

To do tonight - roast sweet potatoes, so I have them for the rest of the week. Make the "bacon" shitakes, Maybe shred the zucchini for Thur?

I feel so crampy and crappy today, boo. All I wanted today was cookies and ice cream. All the chips and granola bars were staring me in the face. I didn't give in though.

Sarma

Ebon and I got out for a date night after long bouts of illness on both of our parts for several months. We went to Sarma in the eastern part of our fair city of Somerville - it's in the "lowlands" between Winter Hill and Spring Hill. We didn't have a reservation, but thought we might be able to get a spot at the bar, seeing as it was early (6:30pm) on on Sunday. Boy were we wrong! It was super busy with several groups of people waiting to sit at the bar. We put our name on the list with the hosts in case anyone canceled their reservation and started waiting in the bar for seats there. Ebon ordered drinks - beer for him and non-alcoholic drink for me (Buzz Aldrin, the menu said it had Orange, Cinnamon, and Sage). I thought mine was pretty good, not too sweet - hopefully no added sugar. Being newbies, we didn't know that the bar had a separate list for seats there too, so we put our names on that list! Luckily, someone else had cancelled a reservation so we got to eat in the dining room!

I ordered the beets without the goat cheese and the asparagus. Ebon ordered the fava bean pate, potato wedges, and the vegetable frito misto - all of which were not W30 compliant, so I didn't have any of his. My dinner was 90-95% compliant though, the asparagus had an egg that was wrapped? in some phylo spikes, so that was probably not compliant, but I'm pretty sure everything else was. The beets were very good and the "salsa" that was on it was fragrant and spicy, but not hot spicy. The asparagus was OK, the flavors were very interesting but I didn't really taste the black truffles and thought the asparagus was a little too burnt - though it wasn't overcooked. I was pretty full after eating everything though!

Ebon ordered a dessert- frozen yogurt with a chocolate/peanut topping- but didn't like it because the yogurt was too tart and the chocolate was dark/bitter. I had mint tea that was lovely.

Ebon seemed to like his meal, but said it was kind of "fancy" for his taste.
I'm glad we got to go, but not sure we'll go back together. I'd probably go back, but not with the W30 restrictions.

Whole30 Day Eight

I've completed a week of this and have not shriveled up to die!

• Breakfast was three eggs, half an avocado, half a sweet potato, and garlicky greens. I cooked up a big batch of kale and beet greens for the coming days! The eggs were a little overcooked, if nothing else, I will hopefully have learned how to cook eggs better.
• Some green grapes for snack.
• Lunch was broccoli and some leftover ratatouille with walnuts and hemp hearts sprinkled on top. I fried up two eggs with runny yokes, much better than breakfast.
• Ebon and I finally went out on a date for dinner at Sarma. The food was pretty good, and I had a few options to choose from. I'll put more detail here!

I finally made ghee in the crockpot. I have a pretty old-school crockpot and I don't think I had enough butter in there to reach the main part of the heating element. I tried to follow the method outlined in this tutorial, but after about 6 hours or so on high, the milk solids never really got brown. I tried to transfer to a pot on the stove, but it kept bubbling up and splattering everywhere. I had pretty good luck filtering out the top stuff using an old napkin. However, once I got down to the milk solids on the bottom, those were flowing though the filter too. Only a little bit got through, and I probably should have tried to re-filter, but by that point I was so done. I just said screw it. Hopefully that doesn't ruin it in the long run.

Also I felt like I had a lot of energy yesterday, so much so that I almost cleaned the whole house - vacuumed all the rugs-including the basement, swept, and most time and energy intensive - cleaned the bathroom and especially the tub. It was so disgusting, and now it's much cleaner. I always feel so much better when the house is clean!

Whole30 Day Seven

Trying to clear out the fridge today!

• Breakfast was three eggs fried, garlicky kale, 1/3 or half a sweet potato, and half an avocado.
• Leela and I did a lot of walking in the morning so I was ready for lunch a little early, but didn't have any snacks before. I ate egg salad lettuce wraps with leftover curried veggies and two cherry tomatoes.
• Snack was a handful of pistachios and some grapes.
• Dinner was two hard boiled eggs, leftover curried veggies, cucumber, olives, a side salad from Ebon's order from Mike's pizza, a (too?) large handful of cashews, I had some pineapple and half a mug of warm apple cider too.

I felt pretty good today. Good energy for walking, though I did take a nap when Leela did. I will make ghee tomorrow. I will make it my mission!

Whole30 Day Six

• Breakfast was three eggs fried, garlicky kale, half a red pepper this time, and half an avocado. I've also been eating the eggs with Tabasco sauce.
• Lunch was two hard boiled eggs with hot sauce, leftover spaghetti squash and sauce with the last two "meat" balls, a handful of olives, and green beans with red and yellow peppers from lunch provided at work (one of two things that were compliant, the other being a green salad).
• I had a handful of almonds as a preWO snack, not realizing I had a lunch meeting and wasn't actually able to go work out. I think I'll run tomorrow morning - to yoga in Inman Sq and back.
• Handful of cashews while cooking dinner (oops).
• Dinner was ginger carrot soup from here. I used coconut oil as the cooking fat and used veg broth and water for the liquid. I thought I might like it a bit more ginger-y. I also had egg salad lettuce wraps with tomato using the mayo I made the other day. Good dinner! 

Tomorrow I think we need to clean out the fridge, though I was trying to do some meal planning. Sunday Ebon and I finally get a date night out! I picked a restaurant with a few compliant options, more on that later.

Whole30 Day Five

• Breakfast was three eggs fried, garlicky kale, half a sweet potato this time, and half an avocado. I also tried less greens, because yesterday I just couldn't finish all the food I put on my plate.
• PreWO was a small handful of almonds about 45 minutes before running. I was pretty sluggish during my 3.6mile run and got some cramps that I stopped to walk twice. Not sure if it's the "hangover" the almonds, or not getting enough protein in general.
• PostWO was a hard boiled egg white and a couple bites of spaghetti squash (from lunch).
• Lunch at about 1pm was leftover tomato sauce with "meat"balls over spaghetti squash with broiled asparagus and a grapefruit. I only ate about half the spaghetti in the container (big container) and I was full by the end of lunch, but around 4:30 I started getting hungry.
• Dinner was a curried stir fry in coconut milk with sugar snap peas, broccoli, bell pepper, green onions and tofu and rice for Ebon and Leela. I poached two eggs and added some olives for protein and fat, respectively.
• I had some chia pudding from the leftover coconut milk for "dessert." It was really good, even without sweetener. Probably the full-fat coconut milk doing that.

Overall, I felt kind of sluggish and tired today and hungry from about 4:30 until dinner.