Broccoli Beef (n Kale)

Who could ask for anything more?

Another breakfast salad

Herb salad mix, olive oil and balsamic, hard boiled eggs, olives, avocado, chopped liver.

GOOD MORNING DAY 12!

Trompe l'oeil

No, it's not white rice. In fact, it's grated, steamed cauliflower. It turns out, it's incredibly rice-like in flavor and sauce-absorbing qualities. Happy Me!

Physical activity update: Went swimming for the first time in months yesterday and loved it.

Back pain update: Very low/gone today!

Salad encore

In this salad: herb mix, mustard vinaigrette, olives, avocado, pork meatballs, fried egg.

Back pain update: Comes and goes

Physical activity: Some light gymming on Friday. Feeling weak. Maybe the diet, maybe a December with little strength training.

DAY TEN HAS BEGUN!

Salad for breakfast!

If breakfast for dinner is so cool (or maybe it's totally played out, since even Martha is now on board), why not lunch for breakfast?

The addition of an egg allowed this salad to retain its breakfast-ian credentials.

In this salad: Herb salad mix with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, sliced avocado, roasted hazelnuts, kalamata olives, fried egg. Oh, and Bresaola. My go-to whole30-compliant, lazy, add-this-to-anything cured meat.

Yesterday's breakfast

And the day before, and the day before, and the day before. That is, a frittata with salsa. This day, I added a sliced avocado, because I happened to pick up a very ripe one the previous evening. Joy of joys!

Btw, my new favorite snack is a slice of Bresaola wrapped around a slice of avocado with a squirt of lemon juice and some black pepper.

Re-hash (sans hash)

Curry chicken, broccoli, kale, kimchee.

Physical activity report: Gym time, including stretching!

Back pain update: Not too shabby.

DAY FIVE COMPLETED.

Pics or it didn't happen

Sometimes in the morning you wake up, have a nice, well-seasoned, clean cast-iron pan at the ready, heat it up on the stove slowly, melt a little coconut oil in it, and prep some vegetables to fry next to your eggs. While the food is cooking on the stove, you put together a nice pot of rooibos tea with cinnamon and vanilla. Then you pour yourself a big mug of said tea, flip the eggs (because you prefer them over easy), let them heat on that side for a few seconds, then assemble the eggs and veggies on a plate and take a lovely photograph for your blog.

Other mornings, you microwave leftover frittata, pour on a little salsa, eat it standing up, scramble to pack your bag, and rush out of the house without taking a single photograph, or even looking at yourself in the mirror to see how weird your hair looks.

Guess which kind of morning this was.

K.I.M.C.H.I.

Adapted this recipe this morning(I used chuck instead of short ribs because that's what I had in the freezer. Less unctuous deliciousness, but easier eatin') for beef stew with kimchi. I used onions, carrots, and radishes from the farmers market.

Since I cook in huge amounts, and I've been cooking pretty much every day since Thursday, I'm not sure what I'm going to have for dinner, but it's probably going to be leftovers!

Physical activity report: Elliptical machine at the gym!

Back pain report: not so good, but not so bad. Some tightness in lower back. Whyyyyyy!

A Very Early Brunch

It would be a breakfast, except there's no eggs, and I feel like it's eggs that make a breakfast.

You are seeing: Chicken curry, steamed broccoli, roasted cauliflower, kimchee.

Oh, and I forgot to add that last night I had broccoli, kale, and chicken stew.

Aftermath

Today I had planned to have dim sum with a couple of friends. We hadn't had dim sum in quite a while, so I was looking forward to it. Then I remembered.

There's hardly any (if there is any at all!) dim sum that doesn't have wheat, rice, or other starches in it.

So I invited them over for brunch at my place instead, telling them that I was cutting out sugar and starch from my diet for a month.

We exchanged gifts from our respective holiday travels (they got blueberry candy, I got a trivet), and then we sat down for a frittata, and an herb salad.

I didn't have time to take photos before we ate, but above is some leftover frittata in the pan, and the remnants of the salad in the mixing bowl. In the frittata: mushrooms, chorizo, spinach, roasted peppers, and onions. In the dressing for the herb salad: shallots, balsamic vinegar, mustard, olive oil.

Cheating(ish)

Technically, I am not supposed to even eat food cooked with wine (or other alcohol) during this month. However, I had this beef cheek and tomato stew in the freezer from before, and, other than the fact that I used some red wine to deglaze the pan after browning the beef cheeks, it is (amazingly) totally Whole30 compliant. So I think the anti-inflammatory gods will forgive me this one transgression (I know I'm probably mixing religious metaphors there).

Anyway it is NOM NOM GOOD!

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY REPORT: Went to the gym today for 40 minutes. Upper body!

BACK PAIN UPDATE: Pretty good today!

and that's DAY TWO!

Five Alive!

I once heard that in Japanese culinary theory, a dish should have at least 5 colors in it. This site says that those colors in particular are white, black, red, green and yellow.

As you can see from my photo, I've sort of succeeded at that in this dish. I've got the cauliflower (white) with bits of very browned onion (black), the chicken (yellow) with carrots (red-ish), and of course the kale (green).

The visual presentation is a little lacking, since I kind of dumped everything out of a food container that I used to bring it to the office. I did layer the food when I put it in to the container, though, which is why the parts are still separate. It's the little victories, really.

And you'll just have to trust me that it tasted pretty awesome.

Day 2: breakfast

Managed to do a bunch of cooking last night, including steaming, boiling, and roasting vegetables (broccoli, kale, and cauliflower, respectively). Which means an easy-to-make breakfast this morning of steamed broccoli, some roasted peppers from a jar, two fried eggs, and a bit of salsa.

I'm now about to go for a walk, then eat some lunch!

DAY TWO - I GOT THIS!

Stew stew stew

That's a bowl of beef cheek and tomato stew, with steamed kale, and some pulled braised chicken thrown in for extra protein (the beef cheek was small).

I also had a few slices of Bresaola as a snack (the only preserved meat at TJ's that I could find that did not have sugar in it).

Right after finishing the stew, I had a pretty strong urge to eat something sweet, like a soda, a cocktail, ice cream, or some other dessert-y thing. Still sort of feeling it. Drinking cold water instead.

BACK PAIN UPDATE: It's pretty mild tonight. I'm looking forward to acupuncture next Tuesday, though.

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY REPORT: I didn't do any vigorous activity today, but I did take a couple of short walks during the day, maybe 20 minutes total.

Thus concludes the first day!

Snack!

A handful of almonds! The Whole30 would rather I eat hazelnuts or macadamias, but those are hard to find plain in most stores, if you can find them at all. These raw almonds were the best I could do. I discovered that all of the roasted almonds in this store were coated in corn or soybean oil.

Lunch today

Today started out kind of rough! I could not pull together a Whole30-compliant breakfast at home. I headed in to the office early, thinking I'd be able to take a break to find something in the city in the morning, but was kind of immediately sucked into clearing my backlog at work, and by the time I poked my head up it was 11:30AM. Oops.

Luckily there's a great salad bar in the basement of a nearby department store, and I got the salad you see in the photo above. It's mixed greens, avocado, hard-boiled egg, poached chicken, toasted almonds, roasted cauliflower and onion, broccoli, and roasted garlic, with a balsamic vinaigrette. I'm not 100% sure the vinaigrette doesn't have any sugar, but I decided to just take that chance.

In the photo you can also see the Pellegrino I bought as a delightful fizzy accompaniment. I always feel that it's a luxury to have sparkling mineral water, so I got it in order to not feel deprived.

Right now I'm feeling the mid-afternoon snackies, though. Maybe it's time for a trip to the bank (to deposit a check), then a stop by a convenience store for some nuts.

Pour some vegetables on me

For the next thirty days, I am going to be eating "clean" as the Whole30 people put it, meaning no refined sugars (or, for that matter "unrefined" sugars like honey and maple syrup), no grains or legumes (i.e., no soy), and no dairy. It's a very low-inflammatory diet.

I did this for 27 days a couple of years ago and found that my persistent lower back pain completely disappeared. Then I did a long bike ride (the AIDS ride, in fact), and completely fell off the wagon (kind of hard to not eat a bunch of grains and sugar when you're riding around 100 miles a day). A month later, the back pain was back!

I am planning on keeping this blog for the entire 30 days, to help me stay on track. The first week and a half especially are difficult, I've found in the past.