Prepare for change: cleaning out the pantry

Wanting to change your life by adopting a healthy diet and lifestyle? Here are some suggestions on how to rid your house of the "bad for you" foods!

1. Eat it. All.
Okay, this is the worst advice, but tends to be the most popular way people rid their house of food. A bit ironic almost, and exact opposite of what you want to do, eat healthy or lose weight right? Have one cookie, then find another solution for the rest; don't binge on junk food like it's Mardi Gras! This lifestyle change should be a permanent change; make that decision right now & it'll make this whole process easier!

2. Trash them. 

Just chunk it straight into the trash, empty your trash and drive it to the dump, if you must! This was a safer alternative to "burn it" or "shoot it", but I make no judgment nor accept responsibility for any injuries.

3. Give food away
Can't waste "perfectly good" food? Give it away to your friends, family, coworkers, or neighbors! For us, food sensitivities played a huge role in getting rid of foods, so some friends were open to accepting the foods we couldn't eat.
My surefire way to make food disappear: Just leave it in the break room, and it'll disappear eventually. ESPECIALLY if you use those goods to make other dishes (cookies, etc)

4. Arts & crafts

Hellllo cheap art supplies. Anyone else remember the macaroni noodle decorated photo frame? Rice filled heating pad? Peppermint decorated balls? Gingerbread houses? I mean, your options are only limited by your creativity and/or Pinterest capability! No need to chunk everything if you have young kids who can use the items! Or maybe a church preschool who could take the donation for art projects?

5. Donate it.
You could donate the food to a local food pantry if it's unopened (say boxes or cans)!

Find your local food bank!

Whatever you do, get the food OUT of your house and DO NOT buy more if you want to be successful. Stop shopping in the inner aisles of the stores and only buy what is on your grocery list!

Do it now, don't try to wait to start your lifestyle change until after you finish that bag of chips or gallon of ice cream.

And don't think you can just keep some junk food in the back of the pantry; you will eat it sooner or later.

We are all cheering for ya!

~RR

Disclaimer: none of these pictures are mine

Meal Planning 101

Meal planning isn't something new; for some people what I have to say in this blog is a no-brainer. But for many people living on their own for the first time, whether that's college or thereafter, this is a skill that should be quickly learned and utilized. Your mother is not cooking for you anymore; it is now time for you to create your dinner plan!

For many of us who may lean more Type A, meal planning offers us a small bit of relaxation by planning our lives, even if it just revolves about the week's or month's dinner line up. HOWEVER, this relaxation technique has other benefits that just so happen to fit into our areas of expertise:

1. Dinner is planned, so no stress that night wondering what to cook. (Our FOOD Pillar)
2. As discussed in my crock pot blog, planning=financial saving as well. (Our FINANCES Pillar)
3. You can plan to rotate foods through your diet and aim for proper nutrition. Though a one up from ordering pizza, chicken and rice every night for a month just won't cut it nutritionally. Don't forget about the variety of vitamins and minerals from consuming varying meats, fruits and veggies! (Our FITNESS Pillar)

I personally like to plan a week or two at a time, unless I know I'm in for a crazy month, in which case I do more. Planning in this manner allows me to put like foods semi close together for grocery shopping ease and food optimization. However if I plan a month-long dinner plan, I create a second grocery list for the produce for the latter half of the month so they won't go bad! Essentially, plan asparagus meals within a certain time-frame that balances you not getting tired of asparagus and not letting said asparagus go bad. This being said, I do analyze the produce in the fridge and blanch/quick freeze anything on the verge of going bad.

Questions to ask prior to meal planning:
1. What is your grocery budget for the month?
2. What produce do you have in the fridge you need to use?
3. What meat/veggies do you currently have in the freezer that should or could get eaten?

Things to consider:
1. Travel plans: who will be home that night?
2. Work schedule: should you prepare meals at the beginning of the week?
3. Visitors: do you need to plan to serve more than just the usual one or two people?
4. Weather: what foods pair best with the weather?

Things to research:
1. Foods in season: veggies and fruits not in season are more expensive!!
2. Store specials: advertised online or in those circulars in newspapers you can pick up on your driveway or at the store!
3. Coupons: having a loyalty card with Kroger, they send me coupons every month, plus offer more online via an online card account. These loyalty programs will sometimes offer more personalized coupons in accordance to your actual purchases. Yay for proper marketing & purchase tracking-my college diploma applauds you. Also, coupons are usually in the weekend newspaper! I'm not an extreme couponer but multiple times I have saved about a quarter of my grocery bill by optimizing coupons and store sales. Still working on being better but no shame there!
4. Recipes: time to actually look through that Pinterest recipe board. Dust off those cookbooks and post it mark any & all recipes that look appetizing. This could be a joint effort, often I hand James a stack of recipes, my phone open to Pinterest or a cookbook and tell him to mark which ones appeal to him!

Time to ACTUALLY USE those pretty cookbooks!

Those lists might be intimidating but when sitting down and looking at our January, I knew:
-We would be traveling A LOT (can plan smaller grocery budget or use buy high priced meats or stock up for the future-icemageddon could happen again!)
-I would be home by myself a few evenings, so one meal could probably last 2ish dinners plus lunches, depending on dish. As many individuals agree, it's hard to cook for JUST yourself everynight. So I cook larger meals I can eat for multiple days. If I weren't married, I would still do this then freeze half to pull out later that month to not eat the same thing all week all of the time.
-There was frozen meat we should use from prior Sam's purchases.
-It would be cold; hello roast and hearty meals!
-Any coupons I had on hand would be looked over to help plan dinners.

So this is what our January looked liked:

The plan:
Since we are primarily paleo, we don't do a lot of sandwiches for lunch. This means leftovers from one night's dinner becomes the next day's lunch. If you like having different lunches, this could be one way to spread out how long a meal lasts. Just remember to plan your lunches out too! Same with breakfast!

We cook practically every night. Yes, it gets exhausting. Yes, we have cleaned every cooking dish and utensil multiple times in one week before. Yes, I wear supportive shoes in the kitchen when I'm in for a long haul ;)

I love gathering meal recipes, and planning actually allows me to be creative with dinners and not resort to my comfort food of chicken & veggies EVERY night.

This is literally a whole counter full of clean dishes, and the dishwasher had just ran as well.

HELPFUL HINTS

The List:

Include quantity of items (ex: 3 medium carrots, one 4lb spaghetti squash) as you go through recipes. It'll help when you hit the supermarket and debate prices and quantity! And it stinks to not buy the right amount for your recipe!

Coupons:

Get these organized so you don't forget them when you reach the cashier! Pay attention to brands, but also use them to debate whether that coupon will actually save you money or if you could buy a generic at a cheaper price!

Item ingredients:

This is a HUGE point when dealing with allergies. I read every single ingredient in anything I buy that has a label. Some brands are cleaner or don't contain our allergens so unfortunately some items can throw a wrench in the plan when it comes to shopping by coupons or meals. Start paying attention to which brands you use, when they go on sale and which supermarkets carry them! I stock up when I see a great sale on these approved items!

Sales/organic items:

I know manager special items get added on certain days at my store, so that's the first place I go. Blanch the veggies and use them later or move around your meal plans if there are items there you can use!

As I am starting to learn, there are certain foods that should have a higher priority to be bought organic. Lots of lists out there help you prioritize which produce to buy organically, so keep an eye out for sales!

DON'T GO GROCERY SHOPPING WHEN HUNGRY & ALWAYS BRING A LIST. 

Your budget and checking account will thank you.

Any other helpful meal planning advice to add? Any questions I didn't answer?

Now if you excuse me, I need to finish planning for the month of March!

Financial Peace, Food Love & Joy

RR

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”
― Benjamin Franklin

21 Day Sugar Detox: Week 1 Recap

I have been posting all over Facebook and Instagram about this Paleo 21dsd I'm doing.

Boy has it been an adventure. Here's the recap:

I'm doing Level 3 with the Autoimmune modification. I chose this level since I already was on paleo, can't handle dairy anyways, and my autoimmune modifications worked best with this level. Specifically I'm staying away from nightshade vegetables & nuts compared to the usual paleo, plus eggs (allergen), all grains (oats included), soy (allergen and non paleo), dairy (allergen/intolerant and nonpaleo). And the list actually DOES go on to limit all fruits except minimal green apples and green tipped bananas, specific to the sugar detox.

The point for my specific level and modifications is to, while I am trying to curb sugar cravings, I am also attempting to try a diet and lifestyle of consuming foods that will not irritate my stomach/intestines and cause inflammation, since this is a HUGE deal for me and Crohn's and my lack of 3 feet of intestines.

So instead of focusing on the bad (this really got me down at one point last week), I'm focusing on what I CAN eat. And that's a whole lot of different meats and veggies!! For example, ground turkey meatballs were something my mother made me pre-surgery and making them again for a different reason has been extremely wonderful. And I like them, a lot.

I bought weird things. Ground bison and ground lamb meats? Kroger actually had those; I was impressed. Parsnips? I legitimately googled from the middle of the produce section what those were so I would even know where to look!! And here I thought I was fairly knowledgeable when it came to plants due to my cooking, gardening and college classes that led to a horticulture minor. Canned coconut milk, as compared to the carton coconut milk beverage, who knew!? Fish sauce?!

Produce

Just the MEAT

These will be fun to cook with!

I have made weird things! Herbal tea gelatin? Check.

It's like jell-o, but not sweet or sugary

Everything has tasted AWESOME though. I love new recipes; they get me outta my groove and I LOVE IT. 

Green Apple Breakfast Sausage
Who knew you actually can make your own sausage using ground pork and spices? blew.my.mind. (Yes, I realize this is how breakfast sausage is made; I have never tried it though.)

Sausage with spinach-best breakfast yet

Carrot-apple skillet breakfast hash

Meatza with a salad

Greek style Turkey Meatballs

Cinnamon & fennel braised pork, prepped

I apparently did not get a close-up of that nice pork dinner. So enjoy this Valentine's day dinner view where you might be able to make out food on a plate.

Lamb Burgers

Artichocke & lemon chicken with capers

 Also not pictured is the spaghetti squash bolognese that I made and substituted canned pumpkin for the tomato paste; it was pretty good, except for me over-cooking the spaghetti squash.

See? Not super hard recipes, and all are paleo!

I have so much energy and stay full longer. No 2 o'clock drowsies (though that went away when I began a paleo diet-goodbye gluten comas and sugar crashes). I WANT more food but I don't feel hungry. Snacks are easy to make though so that helps for times like this! 

I have cheated. I would say failed but I'm not done yet and I haven't given up yet. This being said, I ate more gf/vegan cupcakes and chocolate covered bacon in 3 days this past Valentine's weekend than I normally would have than I wish to admit. I ate hummus with bread and chips for dinner one girl's night. I liberally "taste-tested" the nut mixes I made for James's Valentine's Day gift.

But it's...kinda Paleo right?

Those were painful. Not the kind of pain that's mental of "why do I have no self-control?" Side note: perhaps this is the reason it is the last listed fruit of the Spirit-because it's definitely hardest for me to attain and strengthen. The fruit of the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and....I'm coming for ya self-control. (Galatians 5:22)

But we're talking straight up physical pain the next morning from cheating. Perhaps not everyone will experience the same results after cheating when it comes to food. I didn't eat my bloating or sinus pressure causing foods (soy, eggs, gluten), just sugars and grains really. My intestines screamed at me. I'm not sure how to explain it other than being frank, so skip ahead if you just don't want to know. When they sewed my intestines together after removing 3 feet 5 years ago, a pocket occurred at the crime scene. Meaning solids/gases get stuck and occasionally I apply pressure to that region to keep things moving. (Tmi?) Sometimes there are a few moments of pain as things move through this region. It's something I keep an eye out for. Doesn't happen too often lately though.

BUT! It was because of my first successful 5 days of this detox that I realized the latter pain DID NOT occur. At all. For real, honestly, legitimately and seriously, et. al. For me, that has made this detox successful and those cheat days worth it. And that wasn't even the point of this whole detox!

I miss chocolate and sweets but I have found some good alternatives for snacking that are healthier, more nutritious and tastier. So yay for opening horizons!? I also ordered 8lbs of almond flour so I'm definitely looking forward to some serious paleo baking once I get off this detox!

Dipping vegetables into a homemade avocado dip (like guac but without pico really)

So simple. So delicious.

I haven't noticed much change with facial skin, so I'm continuing to lookout for that. That one day will be its own blog post. Maybe even two or three at this rate. However, the bumps on the back of my arms have reduced in numbers. Did some googling and seems as those can be caused by food allergies. Sweet. 

For me, I don't desire a weight change but have noticed a few pounds decrease. Some would find this change beneficial and could see a larger difference depending on the diet pre-detox. Then again, many people say they see weight loss when switching to a paleo diet, so that's not really ground-breaking news.

The hardest times are when I'm at work and someone brings in food (make myself stay busy and not walk past that table full of doughnuts and cookies and candy and sandwiches!) And in the evenings when I'm bored (once again, stay busy. Who knew the study and garage could be so organized and clean? Next up, steam mopping the floors).

I bought way too much food/meal planned for the first 7 days so I still have dinners to make to probably last until day 12, especially now that my vegetable zoodle maker has arrived! :)) But I'm off to plan the remainder of the meals and organize my grocery list! First thing on the list? Bacon. Lots and lots of bacon.

Current kitchen wants:

-Fancy crock pot that has a timer I can set; overcooked spaghetti squash mash is just not the same thing as faux spaghetti noodles.

-Juicer. Oh no, I'm becoming that fanatic! Better just pack the bags and move to Austin!

-Better zester. Or maybe I should just google how to zest without getting most of the zest stuck in the zester itself. Any suggestions?

-Mandolin slicer: after discussing with a friend what this is, it would make things SO much easier.

-Kitchen Food scale: because, I'm not a good judge of how many chicken thighs make up 3lbs after I have already removed said thighs from the package for freezing.

Peace, love & paleo

Cavewoman in the making

Double F: Food and Finances

I have a secret: I love my crock pot! (okay, maybe it's not a secret) Not because it's top of the line or can on its own land a perfect 10 back flip like other fancy slow cookers. 

 See? Only 1 knob with 4 settings including OFF. So simple.

Rather, deep down at the root of my being (well maybe one of the root shoots) I love to multitask. Besides prepping the food (you know super hard cutting meat and veggies or opening cans), the crock pot allows me to cook and do everything else I need to do in a day! AND minimal cleanup time if you use these fancy bags!

 (I buy these in bulk.)

So this 5 year love affair has been blissful, and I can't imagine where I would be without my crock pot.

Seriously.

I'd like to say I'm joking but almost everyone knows that James fell in love with me AFTER I fed him crook pot roast in college. (Single Ladies out there, take note: there are 3 ways into a man's heart, accomplishing 2 will solidify a date. One of those ways is through his stomach, so learn to cook and quench his appetite.

So I write this post to explain how my crock pot fits into 2 pillars of our household (as previously mentioned in this post: finances and food. 

 

Finances: One of the main PROs of a crock pot is the financial efficiency of most meals. I say most because I'm sure there's someone out there making organic, farm raised meat meals who would beg to differ. (Future Rachel we are talking about you!) But point is: Lots of food at a small cost. This food can be eaten all week, frozen for later, or shared. I have done all three and still find it cheaper than a meal out at times (even if I feed 12 other people). So for those days you know you would come home from work and NOT want to cook and cave in to ordering pizza at 8pm or later because your husband sits on the couch the whole time and whines about being hungry but doesn't want to cook anything either, a crock pot would have been a better solution financially and health-wise, too. So think ahead, plan your meals, and don't give in to the "let's just go somewhere and spend money" temptation anymore! When you come home to the smell of dinner, you won't think ONCE about going out to eat. Unless you are thinking about how much money you saved by using your trusty friend the crock pot!

The other pillar: Food. My favorite things to cook in the CP: Roast (True life: I have never not cooked a roast in a crock pot) and taco chicken. I'm starting to crave both of these meals now. The truth is, I wasn't a chef prior to or even during college. In fact, my skills are still minimal compared to many women who have more experience than me (and less for you gifted ladies out there). I began "cooking" in college by using the crock pot. It was my gateway kitchen appliance if you will. There are recipes upon recipes for slow cookers out there, and I rarely find one that's bad. I'll eventually post my winners.

If you don't have a crock pot, buy one. It'll be an investment that will positively change your health and bank account if you find it hard to cook healthy meals and are wanting to save more money this year.

Peace, love, and crock pot meals.

~RR

Cooking Adventures of the Paleo/Vegan Diet

We recently learned my husband James has quite a few allergies: dairy, egg, gluten (to name a few).  We've decided to change our diets for awhile to see if the change affects headaches and stomach aches he has recently been having.  In our attempt to find allergy-free recipes, we have decided we are really adapting a paleo/vegan diet: eliminating processed foods and staying away from dairy and eggs, but still eating meats.  So far we have cleaned out our pantry, restocked it with allergy-free ingredients and products, researched appealing recipes and have started adapting to our new lives.

As my doctor told me, allergies are like a cup of water: as you are exposed to an allergen, imagine pouring some water into a cup; the more allergens you are exposed to, the fuller the cup, until your body goes completely haywire and your cup overflows.  When my younger brother was in the 8th/9th grade, this is exactly what was happening. He was skin and bones and had stomach issues.  We did a blood test on him and found he was severely allergic to soy, gluten and eggs, basically the only food groups he was eating.  Since he has changed his diet, he feels great, looks great, and is now a healthy senior in high school. I admire him; I couldn't imagine being 18 years old and not eating cake, hamburgers, drinking pepsi, and so much more.

With my brother's experience, my whole family changed our diets, so this new diet to accommodate to my husband's newly found allergies wouldn't be too different for me. The change, however, will be the cooking of the foods, as I have rarely cooked many allergy-free foods.

Today I changed up my usual crock pot roast so that it would be soy and gluten free. Normally I plop the roast in the crock pot, empty about half a packet of Lipton Onion soup mix packet on top and add some water. Today however, I used some different ingredients:

Roast from the 'Lewis Place', half of a small cooking onion, half of the package of dried portobello mushrooms, and half of the carton of organic, allergy-free mushroom soup.

We absolutely love returning home from work to the smell of a crock pot creation, especially roast! 

The roast tasted the same, if not better, than my traditional onion soup mix recipe; the main difference actually comes with the higher cost of the allergy free ingredients. I altered my mashed potatoes to use only Original flavored Almond Milk (normally I pile in the butter and regular milk).  The mashed potatoes were creamy and tasted just the same! Of course the gravy from the roast would have masked any odd flavors if there were any!

All in all, we had a successful dinner and, besides for the initial 'full' feeling, felt amazing! No discomfort or drowsiness at all. I look forward to adapting more of my recipes and trying new ones as we experiment with our new life change!

Is anyone else trying a new diet due to dietary restrictions? Any suggestions or recommendations out there?

Yours truly,

RR

"Do not live life attempting to make your presence known, 

but live in a way which makes your absence felt."