21 Day Sugar Detox: Day 3

Well, it was back to work today.  I was feeling lethargic and a bit headachey, but I honestly don't know if that's the sugar cravings leaving me or if I'm just off the couch and back to work!

The good news is I had a 2 hour delay so I had plenty of time to prepare a yummy breakfast and a delicious lunch.

Breakfast was 1.5 strips of bacon, 2 fried eggs and bell pepper, green beans and sliced brussels sprouts.

I was well prepared for lunch as well.   Chili lettuce wraps, carrots, celery and almond butter and almonds.

However, one of our colleagues who likes to go out to get lunch, offered to get lunch for my co-worker and I.  Luckily he was running out to Subway - so I ordered a Chicken Chopped Salad with lots of veggies and no dressing.   And I snacked on my celery, carrots and almond butter through the work day.

I also had an extra cup of coffee this mid-day to push me through the headache and the hump of getting over Wednesday and day 3!

Dinner was incredible.  I made a modified version of the mini-mexi meatloaves from 21 Day Sugar Detox.  I didn't have any cilantro or some of the other spices it called for, but it was delicious with cayenne pepper and chili powder and bell peppers in there.  I also used the other 1/2 lb of pork-beef mixture left over from my meatza yesterday.  I made two of them out of this 1/2 lb of meat and ate one for dinner.

Served with sauteed green beans. (blanched them for about a minute or two in boiling water, then sauteed in coconut oil).  and 2 leftover savory herb drop biscuits.

I'm not sure what is going on - but as much as I'm enjoying my food and really savoring my meals, I am not staying full.  I'm not sure if I need to add more protein or fat, but I need to figure this out.  I'm munchy.   :)

For a non-sweet treat (and to add some more fat) last night I had 2 Lemon Vanilla Meltaways, also from the 21dsd book.

All in all it was a pretty good day - aside from the headache and the fact that I only had about 4-5 waters, I feel pretty good about the choices I made!

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21 Day Sugar Detox: Day 2

Today was the coldest day on record at nearby Dulles Airport - we got down to 1 degree and high winds, so a very negative windchill (between 10-20 degrees below!) This meant school was cancelled and I was home...

I scrambled two eggs, two strips of bacon, a bell pepper and a few Brussels sprouts with black coffee. Yum! I had to head out to an appointment at 8 ....and it was a balmy 4 degrees at that point.

Lunch was amazing - since I was home in a cold house, I decided to cook a few recipes from the 21 Day Sugar Detox book. It would give me something to do, some delicious food and provide a little extra heat in the house.

I made the Meatza - seriously good! I made a half batch, and only cooked one of them. I plan to use the other half of the meat recipe to make into a meatloaf another night this week. You can see it in the oven on the top right. It's a pork and beef patty, pressed out nice and thin that serves as the crust. I topped it with bell pepper rings, zima tomatoes and olives.

I also made a half batch of the Savory Herb Drop Biscuits. I didn't have fresh herbs but instead I used dried rosemary. They are a little dry, but nice for a biscuit.

And for my third recipe - I made Chili-Cocoa Cauliflower. I don't understand how this is so good! It has chili powder, cocoa powder, cinnamon, salt and pepper, plus coconut oil on cauliflower. SOOO good! I made a 1/4 of a head of this and enjoyed it all!

Lunch was absolutely amazing. It took quite a while to create this amazing meal, but it was so worth it! I ate around 2pm....and I wasn't really very hungry when it came to dinner time.

So for dinner, I just heated up a mug of the chili I cooked on Sunday.

For something sweet tonight I had a half a grapefruit, broiled just a bit to warm it up. Perfect!

I didn't drink enough water today - but I did control my snacking!

 

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Almond Milk! A mess and a half...

I made my first batch of almond milk yesterday. It was a mess!! But really delicious. I will try again for sure...but not for a while. :)

First - soak 1 cup of almonds in the fridge. I put them in a glass measuring cup and covered them with water. Soak overnight. They will swell and get a little softer and the water will start to look cloudy over night.

 

Drain the water from your soaked almonds. Add the almonds and 2 cups of water to your blender (I tried this in the food processor first and it was a disaster. For some reason the water went everywhere. So do this in your blender). Run your blender on high for a few seconds to start to break them up, then run on medium for a minute or two. You'll see the water turn into milk right before your eyes!

Now it's time to strain it - this is where the mess came in. I didn't have cheesecloth so I decided to strain through the fine metal strainer I have. Press as much of the liquid out that you can.

And enjoy your milk! I think if I had cheesecloth I could have squeezed a bit more out of the almond mush. As it was, I got about a pint of delicious milk from the 1 cup of almonds.

And I had this dish full of almond "mush" leftover. I spread it on a cookie sheet and dried it in the oven at 175 for a couple of hours. I'll use this as almond meal in recipes (today I used it in the 21 Day Sugar Detox Meatza recipe).

I bought some cheese cloth today and I will figure out how to make this a less crazy process with (hopefully) less mess tomorrow!

 

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21 Day Sugar Detox: Day One

Today started off really well. It was my first day back to work after a really long winter break. I actually was excited to start this challenge on the first day back into a routine.

I actually woke up when my alarm went off the first time. Nothing short of a miracle.

I got up and made breakfast (plus I drank the first bottle of water), and I packed my lunch before I settled down to enjoy breakfast with a nice hot cup of coffee. My days always go better when I start without rushing to get out the door!

Funny story about cravings at work - we had 3 little chocolate bears left over from the holiday party we had. Those little bears were staring me down this morning! Daring me to eat them!! When our 5th period boys came in, I asked them to do me a huge favor and eat those bears! Hehee. THey laughed (at me or with me?) when I told them the bears were begging me to eat them and I wasn't going to give in!

I ran a bunch of errands after school today - and I was definitely beginning to get a bit hungry and tempted when I passed yumminess on the shelves. I stayed strong and came home to make a yummy dinner.

I also made almond milk tonight - It was absolutely delicious. However, it's a lot of work (and a lot of mess) for just one little pint jar of milk! But it was really creamy and delicious.

Tomorrow we are off school for extreme cold - I'm a little nervous about the munchies setting in tomorrow.. I have prepped by getting the junk (leftover Christmas cookies and candy especially) out of this house!

 

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Planning for the first week - 21 day Sugar Detox

So this morning I took my yes foods list and no foods list to the grocery store and did our shopping for the week. I don't do very well choosing exactly what I will cook on each day of the week, so instead I plan general ideas and then make what I feel like eating from that list through the week.

*One additional goal I have is to drink more water this week. I didn't do so well on water during break!

I went to two stores and used some meat I have in my freezer for my meal planning purposes.

Costco:

• 5 lbs of red/yellow/orange bell peppers
• Large bag of raw almonds
• bag of brussel sprouts
• bag of sweet kale salad (throw the cranberries and dressing away) plus I have a 1/2 bag of this leftover from last week

Aldi:

• 2 12 oz bags of salted roasted almonds (watch for added ingredients like oils)
• 4 cans of tomato paste (again, watch for added ingredients...just tomatoes and a citric acid for preservative)
• green beans
• brussel sprouts (these are big ones in a box, not a mini bag)
• bag of lemons
• head of cauliflower
• 2 stalks of celery
• hearts of romaine
• 4 small zucchini
• 1 package of nitrate free bacon
• 2 dozen eggs
• green bell peppers

In my freezer or pantry:

• sausage with no additives (I have a 1/2 lb thawed that needs to be used this week)
• steak (not thawed yet, so I'm not sure if I'll use this for week 1)
• ground meat (use beef, but I have deer and elk right now to use up!)
• homemade turkey broth
• I still have 5 Aidell's Chicken Apple Sausage to use up this week
• Turkey breast (not thawed yet, so I'm not sure if I'll use this for week 1)
• pints of home-canned tomatoes
• lots of herbs and spices

Now, for my plan for food.

Today I cooked a big crock pot of chili/sloppy joes.

• 2 pints of tomatoes
• 2 cans of clean tomato paste
• 3 TBSP chili powder
• 5 bell peppers (finely chopped)
• 2 lbs of ground meat (I used deer meat)

Brown the meat in a skillet (deer is very lean, so no grease to drain off. If you cook beef you might need to drain some of the fat if there really is a lot). Add the beef to the large crockpot. Add in the chili powder, pints of tomatoes, cans of tomato sauce and chili powder. I used my new food processor to finely chop up 3 of my bell peppers. I left two of them a little less finely processed to give it a little more "body" and crunch. Cook on medium heat for a few hours.

I will eat this on lettuce wraps, with eggs as huevos rancheros for breakfast and even on salad as a "taco salad." This is my go-to meal for the week that I will eat most of the week.

Almond Milk

I also started to make almond milk. If you read the labels in the store, they add all kinds of sweeteners and preservatives and thickeners to the almond milk. True almond milk should be almonds and water. That's it. To start it off today I put 1 cup of raw almonds in a glass measuring cup and covered them with cold water. They will soak overnight tonight and after work tomorrow I will make the almond milk.

Also on the menu this week (I'll post recipes and pictures as I go through the week).

• cauliflower rice
  
• mashed cauliflower
  
• stuffed peppers (stuffed with a mix of riced cauliflower, sausage and ground beef plus tomatoes)
  
• breakfast scrambles
  
• lots of brussel sprouts (oven roasted and pan sauteed with bacon)
  
• carrots and celery plus salted, roasted almonds for snacks
  
• grapefruits (one allowed per day) when I need something sweet. These are really good warmed up under the broiler for a few minutes.

I feel pretty ready to take on this challenge! What did you do to prepare?

 

 

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Show off your corks!

So on this wining adventure I've become a bit of a collector. I have this china cabinet filled with the wine glasses we have collected, one from each winery we visit (that has a logo glass. Some are so new or small that they haven't invested in the logo glasses yet).

 

And I have been collecting corks. Any bottle that we open and drink, I put the cork into the dish and save it. Some of them are from wineries around here, others are from gifts, and still others are from grocery store wines. Recently, I realized how many corks I had when I put them away to make room for Christmas decorations..

So I decided to make a cork board. After scouring the internet, I found that I basically had two options: frame or no frame. The framed version seems to be most popular - buy or reuse a picture frame or mirror and fill with corks. I liked the unframed version better - less formal and a little more relaxed.

I chose to use cardboard for the backing. My design is square. It's a 13x13 square and I used a cardboard box that I cut apart to make the background.

Next I laid out all the corks to start to make a pattern. I knew I had a ton of corks from a few of our favorite wineries and I needed to figure out how to spread them out. I had a bunch of synthetic corks, which have a very different texture than natural, so I needed to space them out.

After I decided on my pattern, I cleared them off and started hot-gluing them onto the cardboard. I started at one end and worked up..

It went faster than I anticipated. I put a row of glue, and placed the cork carefully on the board. I chose to make the words and designs on the corks all facing the same direction. I found that if I wiggled the cork a bit on the glue as I pressed it down, it stuck better.

Most of the corks are exactly the same size, but there are some that are shorter. I cut one of my Rappahannock corks into small slices to fill in those spaces.

It's very neat to see how the corks make a pattern, how I can pick out the wine bottles that we enjoyed here and there. And it is wonderful to see how the places we spend the most time have the most corks on the boards - Quattro Goombas and Rappahannock Cellars and Leaves of Grass.

 

 

 

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Another Challenge - Starting a 21 Day Sugar Detox

Over the past few holiday weeks my 80/20 way of eating Paleo has slipped more than a bit. I'm finding myself indulging in more and more things that make me feel not so hot. Corn (corn chips, chex mix) makes me feel bloated and slow. Sweets just make me want more and more sweet things. Some of the gluten free substitutions I've made are filled with other options (rice, tapioca flour, etc) that make me feel tired later.

So instead of a Whole30, this time I'm challenging myself to complete the 21 Day Sugar Detox that Diane Sanfilipo has created. It is said to reset my cravings, clear my system of the junk I've been eating.

I know that I need to do is prepare ahead of time. A plan, step by step, shopping lists, etc. Here is what I've done so far!

• First step - buy the book. Downloaded to my Kindle app (only $9.99 from Amazon for the digital copy).
• Second step - read it! Cover to cover. Done! I worked on reading this on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
• Third step - make a shopping list, fridge list, download the resources and create a google drive folder to have access to the resources from my phone, anyplace I need a reminder. I wrote out my own list of YES foods, limited foods and NO foods to help it stick in my brain.

One thing I really like about this program is that there are lots of options. Diane has a quiz that will lead you to the level that is right for you. Some people will do level 1, level 2 or level 3. AND there are addtional modifications for those training for endurance events, with very active jobs or lifestyles, and with immune disorders.

I'll be completing Level 3 (set up for those who are already following the Paleo lifestyle) with no modifications.

Next step - shopping trip (when it warms up above 20 degrees!) and menu planning. I'm also going to pre-pack some snacks and lunches so I can grab-and-go this week.

I will start on Monday, January 6th!

Stay tuned for more recipes, lessons learned and reflections!

 

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