Whole30, a beginning...

Hey! It's the new year!  A new beginnings!  And it's time to kick-start with eating better.  Hubby and I are taking on the challenge of Whole30.  In a nutshell, you CAN eat meats, eggs, veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds, and good fats.  What you can't eat is sugar, grains (so no breads, pastas and etc.), legumes (including peanuts) and no dairy except for ghee or clarified butter and lastly, no alcohol or tobacco.  Really, it's not bad unless you are addicted to sugar.  I thought I was pretty good about being on the low end of sugar consumption, but I'm feeling the lack thereof.  Honestly, I feel pretty good overall, and I'm thankful that we are allowed fruit.  Fruit never tasted SO good!  We've been eating an orange a day and sometimes share an apple or a banana.  I know that the first week of something like this is hard, hard, hard.  You want what you should not have.  But we are strong, and we can do this!  Whole30 is not meant to be a lifetime eating plan, but rather a kick-start way to learn to choose better foods, to eat less processed foods and sugar, and to be more conscious of what you are eating on a day to day basis.  We plan to carry on with this plan longer than 30 days and may modify it a tiny, tiny bit.

One delicious idea that I came up with is a spin-off of my old recipe that I called, Fried Apples which had a bit of sugar and plenty of butter.  Here's what I'm doing now:

1 apple, chopped
handful of walnuts, chopped

1 t. butter
2 T. raw, unsweetened, shaved coconut (opt)
Cinnamon and nutmeg to your taste.

Melt butter in a non-stick skillet and add everything, including spices.  Saute until apples are tender. If you like your apples really soft, just put a lid on it after a few minutes and turn off the heat, letting apples steam-cook.   EAT!  Enjoy! because you will.

We shared this recipe and had it alongside our scrambled eggs for breakfast.  It was so sweet and warm and spicy.  I would like to do the same with bananas next.  Kind of a Bananas Foster minus the sugar and alcohol.  I would add vanilla extract to it though.  And I can imagine this recipe with frozen peaches too.

If anyone out there has a favorite recipe idea within these guidelines, please share.  And speaking of sharing a good recipe, I have one more for you.  It's called Egg Roll in a Bowl and it's really quick to make and very delicious.  I've made it many times before ever starting Whole30 and I like to add ground beef to mine as a variation.  This recipe calls for powdered ginger, but I like to grate fresh (frozen) ginger into my recipe.  A tip I learned a while ago is to peel raw ginger with the side of a spoon and then cut it into 1/4" discs.  I freeze them and take out a disc whenever I need it and use a microplane zester to grate it.  It's so fast and so much tastier than dried, but dried ginger will work fine too.  I also like to use the frozen ginger discs in tea and to flavor kombucha.

Here's to eating well in 2018!