Recent Eats: After the Whole30

I haven’t written a recent eats post since completing Whole30 and I have so much good stuff to share with you today!

But first…

They have this “morning cuddle party” ritual and it kind of melts my heart. Could these pups be more rotten? And you’ve gotta love the creeper pug.

Okay, let’s get to the food.

I’ve kept breakfast pretty similar. Scrambled eggs, sweet potatoes with almond butter, coffee.

Chia pudding with berries, bananas, coconut, cacao and almond butter.

Keeping breakfast pretty much the same isn’t because I’m trying to stick to Whole30, I’m just a creature of habit when it comes to breakfast and once I find something I like, I stay stuck on it. How many green smoothie bowl pictures have you seen here?

I’m sure I’ll eventually make my way back to some of my old standbys like green smoothies, oats and overnight oats but for now I’m enjoying having some new options in the rotation!

Lunch out at 300 East. I had a salad with roasted sweet potatoes and butternut squash, pumpkin seeds, avocado and chicken.

Lunch at home, tuna salad in romaine cups. I mixed together one can of tuna, half of an avocado mashed, dried cranberries, diced apple and chopped pistachios and seasoned it with lemon pepper and kosher salt.

Soup and salad. I made a big pot of soup loosely based on this recipe. For this batch I sauteed onions, ginger and garlic and then added in a spoonful of turmeric and kept sauteeing a minute or two until fragrant. Then added one large diced sweet potato, three or four diced carrots and about two cups of cubed butternut squash. I poured in chicken stock until it covered the potato mixture and then let it simmer covered for about 30 minutes until everything was soft. Puree in Vitamix and enjoy! I LOVE THIS SOUP! It’s the most warming, comforting winter soup with all the ginger. This was my first time adding turmeric and it was a nice extra.

Soup and salad again. Salads this week have been spinach, pears, avocado, pistachios, dried cranberries and deli chicken. Deli chicken/turkey was one of the things I was excited to add back because of the convenience of putting it on my salads as a protein option.

Lots of good dinner ideas for you. This was a baked chicken with roasted brussels sprouts and mushrooms and herb roasted potatoes…with ketchup! I missed ketchup on Whole30!

Spicy turkey and mushroom spaghetti sauce over broccoli slaw mix from Trader Joe’s. I was a little tired of zoodles and read somewhere that TJ’s broccoli slaw is a good veggie base for sauces and it was. We loved this! The broccoli slaw is a little firmer than zoodles and holds up well to a thick sauce. I just placed it in a hot skillet with about a half cup of water and cooked it for 3-4 minutes or until it just started to soften.

We have the best salads at the cafe at the studio. I had my first legume test there last week. Remix salad (spinach, pumpkin seeds, avocado, tomatoes, red cabbage, cucumber, sprouts) topped with our housemade sweet potato chickpea cake and vegan coconut milk ranch. So good. I really missed our veggie burgers. They are the best!

Filet with a marsala, prosciutto, mushroom and onion sauce, roasted asparagus and roasted carrots and parsnips. The marsala sauce was off-plan because of a) the marsala wine and b) I used butter in the sauce.

Date night at Block and Grinder. I had the pork belly which was to die for. It was served over some sort of pea, brussel sprout and apple slaw mixture. I’m certain several things about this dish were non-Whole 30 friendly and it was great not to have to direct the server on what I could and couldn’t have. 🙂

This picture is a good representation of how dinner happens at our house every night. Turn oven on, prep veggies for roasting, season a protein, sear protein, finish everything in the oven together. We are also incapable of having leftover roasted veggies. I swear it’s like we are on a “no vegetable left behind” mission. No matter how much I roast, we finish it off.

This was roasted brussels, prosciutto, cherry tomatoes and mushrooms with “perfect chicken breasts.”

This is my favorite dinner creation of this recap. Seared cod with a shallot, almond and date vinaigrette over braised red kale and mashed sweet potatoes. I got the idea for the date vinaigrette from Blue Apron. I modified my vinaigrette by sauteeing the shallots first because I just do not like raw anything oniony. Highly recommend this combo!

This was a simple slow cooker dinner of a twist on my Chicken Tortilla Soup minus the beans. I did add corn to the soup though.

And finally, I did do some peanut butter this week in the form of ants on a log as a snack and…I missed almond butter! My fiance has been teasing me and calling me “almond butter runner” and asking me what I’m going to do about my identity crisis. Haha.

So here’s what I’ve reintroduced so far:
– Wine
– Beans, peas, legumes (peanut butter falls in this category)
– Dairy in form of butter only
– Added sugars (ketchup, deli chicken, sauces, nut butters, etc)
– Corn

Coming next:
– Non-gluten grains (quinoa, rice, etc)
– Some sort of cheese like goat or feta and then greek yogurt
– Gluten (will be last)

My overall reintroduction philosophy has been one food at a time and gradual. We’re going on vacation at the end of this month so I want to have everything tested/reintroduced before then so that I can not have to worry about following any sort of special diet (hopefully) while we’re away. I have some ideas of what my eye trigger might be but too early to post anything here. Acne-wise, my skin has really cleared up in the last 10 days or so (this happened post-Whole30). I’m THRILLED about this but keeping fingers crossed that it’s not going to be dairy or gluten-triggered. We shall see.

What is your favorite type of nut butter? 

Those who have completed Whole30, what did you reintroduce first?