Whole30: Day 19

How I felt: Woke up with a headache, which wasn't cool, but I was fairly alert and not too tired. Strawberries are what got me out of bed again today: I had a meeting starting at 9 and the Santa Monica farmers market opens at 8:30, so I had to get up there early to make sure I could leave by 8:40 to get home in time. (Half of us were joining the meeting remotely.) And mid-morning, either staying home had made me antsy or I was more energetic than usual, so I tried going for a run. It sucked: one of my worst times for that distance (it ranked 32 out of 36), and although the first three minutes were fine, all the rest was miserable. Breathing was hard, and I was just super tired, and walked far more than I have in awhile.

I felt good the rest of the day, though. Had a late breakfast, so it was really more like brunch at that point, and it carried me all the way until dinner at almost 9, which is really something. I wasn't really all that hungry until we sat down to eat dinner, and then I scarfed everything down, despite missing soy sauce. They say you can sub in coconut aminos, but that's like saying you can substitute zoodles for spaghetti: maybe you can get by, but no one is EVER going to mistake one for the other.

Brunch: Scrambled eggs, sausage patty, sliced avocado, and bowl of what I am convinced are (were?) the best strawberries in the world.

Dinner: Beef with broccoli, and cauliflower fried "rice": tonight, I provided the inspiration, and Austin provided the dinner. He looked incredibly disappointed when I informed him that I was headed to a Women in Data happy hour meetup and that cooking dinner would be his responsibility (or that I could start at 8:30, when I got home), but he came through just fine.

Whole30: Day 18

How I felt: I've had better days. I slept badly again last night and was super tired and irritable this morning. Did ok for most of the day--took Ellie on a nice, long walk nearly to the Venice pier--but then started having headaches in the evening. I have one now. I'm not a fan.

Breakfast: My kingly breakfast of two fried eggs, sausage patty, sliced avocado and strawberries. Am almost out of strawberries.

Lunch: Tuna salad (why it's called that when all you do is add mayo, I don't know... maybe I'm not using that term correctly), and actual salad of arugula, avocado, and what was left of last night's balsamic vinaigrette. I still miss blue cheese.

From left to right: sparkling water with lime, tuna salad, actual salad.

Dinner: Pan-fried salmon, using this Serious Eats post as my cooking guide. It turned out pretty well, but didn't quite follow what they said, and I don't know if that's because I should have had the heat higher, or had it lower. On the side, we had roasted butternut squash, and sauteed zucchini with garlic, and some fresh lemon added to both the zucchini and the salmon. Delicious dinner.

This is a picture of Austin's plate, because it turned out pretty.

Whole30: Day 17

Today was a boring day. Most of what we ate was pre-planned, to some extent: my breakfast was a decadent affair consisting of strawberries, eggs, avocado, and one of the sausage patties I made yesterday. Lunch was leftover chili (Austin insists it should be spelled 'chile': something about the ingredients or the proportions or something? And I feel like I've just looked at the word too long and don't know how it should be spelled, have never known, and never will know, and have resigned myself to being judged on the off chance I chose the wrong spelling.) Dinner was also leftovers because one of the things left over was that hash which is our FAVORITE now (I should note that we've now gone through over half the bottle of Cholula that I bought a week ago), warmed up by being sauteed again, with extra spinach thrown in. Also, I was tired, and not in the mood for salmon (bought a gorgeous piece of salmon at the farmers market yesterday), or for cooking, really.

There are plenty of things I don't really miss, but the things I do, I feel sharply. I miss cheese so much. Part of dinner was a spinach salad with balsamic vinaigrette, and some crumbled blue cheese would've been amazing. That was the only thing I missed today, though: I didn't even miss beer or wine, because I was too tired for it (I didn't sleep well last night). If I were drinking, I probably would have had a beer or two out of habit, but I don't think I'd have enjoyed them as much as I now think I should in order to warrant their consumption. I do not feel that way about blue cheese crumbles. It feels silly to forgo blue cheese crumbles. Or crumbled feta. In fact, all the cheese I really miss is cheese on salad. Not parmesan crisps, or grilled cheese sandwiches, or chevre on crackers, or queso fundido, and I think the reason why is because I can't have ANY part of those dishes: I can't have the bread or butter in grilled cheese either, or the crackers the chevre would go on, or tortilla chips I'd cover in queso fundido. But I can have salads, and I find that I don't like them as much without cheese: that plays a pretty significant role. Blue cheese more than any others: I may order a cobb salad from Tender Greens again, out of desperation, but without blue cheese, it's really a very sad salad.

Cobb salad? More like sob salad!

(I've been working on that for over a week, and I know it's stupid, but I'm unreasonably proud of it anyway because IT IS TRUE.)


How I felt: Kind of drained, actually: glad it was an easy day. Slept terribly last night for some reason. Hoping to get more sleep tonight.

Breakfast: Sausage patty, two fried eggs, sliced avocado, and a big bowl of strawberries. And Venice Cold Brew. Downright luxurious.

Lunch: Our smallest container of leftover pork chile verde (leftovers were in two big containers and one little one, and after that giant breakfast, I figured the little one would be fine; Austin took back his indignation at my taking leftover chile to work when he found out there was still another big container in there for him to have tomorrow). I topped it with a squeeze of lime, some freshly torn cilantro and chopped maui sweet onion. We've gotta make tacos soon and use more of those garnishes, they're so good!

Dinner: Leftover hash from Friday, reheated in a pan with more oil. I added in the few leftover potatoes from last night, and another big handful of spinach when everything was almost done cooking. There wasn't enough hash for us to have that as our entire meal (unfortunately), so I also cooked the other two Trader Joe's chicken sausages that were left, and made a spinach salad with balsamic vinaigrette. Half a bottle of lemonade kombucha with dinner, and then some cold sauteed apples for dessert.

Let me explain about the apples.

A few days ago, maybe a week now, I really wanted a cinnamon roll for breakfast. The cinnamon and the sweetness, I couldn't stop thinking about it. And it stayed with me, so I tried sauteeing some sliced apple with ghee, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, and some fresh squeezed orange juice (it's a cheat to add sugar, but if that's the worst I do on this diet, I'm not going to feel bad about it). I didn't have any apples that night, though: just stuck them in a food storage container in the fridge. But I took them out tonight to try and... it worked: those apples tasted like the most delicious apple cider, in solid form. And I've got lots left still--it only took a few bites to really scratch that itch--so it's handy to have that in my back pocket.

Whole30: Day 16

OVER HALFWAY YESSSSS. Only 14 days left. On Memorial Day, I can drink a ton of *ahem* reintroduce beer into my diet and see how things go. Or cheese. One of those two. I will keep it to only one of them, because I do think the whole reintroduction phase is the right idea and that was part of why I wanted to do this, but yes, I am counting down to that day.

Today wasn't all that bad as far as the anger and resentment go. I was feeling kind of irate and snacky around 4, and would have LOVED a glass of rose or a beer (and also a snack to go with them), but I settled for a bunch of pumpkin seeds and some freeze dried pineapple. And then there were things to do again: keeping busy is essential. Today it was farmers market, followed by breakfast (I made some breakfast sausage from scratch and it is GOOD: five more patties left, so I can have more over the next few days!), then giving the dog a bath, finally finishing our wedding photo album (our one year anniversary is in just over a month, oops), writing the other posts that I published today to catch up on the last few days, doing a fair amount of dishes, and then cooking dinner, which was ALSO quite good. I didn't miss cheese or bread or any of the foods we're not supposed to have, today, because what I did eat was so great, but I sure did miss a beer while I was blogging or a glass of chardonnay with the scallops we had for dinner. That would have been lovely.


How I felt: Pretty good: slept almost ten hours last night, which really surprised me (was expecting to wake up by 8, as I usually get up earlier). But no grogginess, no headaches, solid energy all day.

Brunch: Fried egg, sliced avocado with olive oil, some camarosa strawberries fresh from the farmers market (I almost didn't get any: they said these were overripe and weren't going to sell them at all, and only sold them to me because I looked so disappointed when they told me they'd sold out of that variety altogether; I got two baskets that were handpicked, plus a grudging basket of albions that'll last a few days longer; albions are fine, but the camarosas are my favorite), and some homemade breakfast sausage that I'm kind of proud of. I love the sausage patties we had the very first weekend we were doing this and haven't been able to find any breakfast sausage without sugar, so I just bought a pound of ground pork and mostly followed this recipe to make patties this morning. The tester I had for breakfast today was delicious, so I made five more patties with the rest of the pork and look forward to having them this week.

That patty may not look like much, but appearances can be deceiving.

Dinner: I realized a few days ago one really decadent-seeming item that we could totally have was scallops, so I've been wanting to find those the last couple days. Santa Monica Seafood was out of sea scallops altogether yesterday (only thing they were sold out of that I could see), but I found some at the farmers market today that were pretty affordable (well, that's all relative, I guess: we've been spending a fortune on food, anything that costs less than $25 feels affordable). We still had some broccolini from last week that would be good broiled; roasted potatoes are always a solid addition to the meal; and I picked up some arugula from Maggie's Farm that would be great with a lemon vinaigrette, and so we had seared scallops and those three things.

And here, I have to talk a little more about the searing part, because historically, that hasn't gone well for me. I've heard that you have to get the scallops as dry as possible in order to get a good crust on them, and aside from that, I had no idea what to do. So I turned to Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and he has a recipe for seared scallops with a lemon pan sauce. Now, this almost didn't work out: he says to heat a pan over medium high heat for 3 or 4 minutes, then add butter (ghee, for us) and olive oil, then garlic, then the scallops. Well, that's just too fucking hot. The garlic started to burn, and I learned a few weeks ago that pan sauce made in a pan with burnt stuff in it will just taste like burnt stuff, and I already did all this work to get all the other ingredients for the sauce ready, so you know what, garlic, you are OUT. I pulled the scallops out of the pan, even though they were partly done, dumped out all the garlic into a ramekin (maybe it would be salvageable), put the pan back on lowered heat, added more ghee and olive oil, and put the scallops back in to get their sear. Had to lower the heat still more, because everything was smoking, turned over the scallops, started to brown them on the other side but was worried about overcooking them if I waited to get the crust, so I decided to call it a day with good crust on just one side and took everything out. Held my breath and added the lemon juice that the recipe called for and scraped up all the brown in the pan (almost no black! it was getting there, though), waited for it to thicken up, and then added the chives, and then the scallops back, and tossed everything around to get them good and coated in what became a glaze. Thank god it wasn't awful, because I'd have ruined the scallops if it had been. I want to make this again soon, because I feel like I've almost got it. Lower heat next time, and I'll have more oil in the sauce, too: it was almost all lemon, which was a bit much.

Maybe not the best picture, but I was in a hurry: I wanted to eat it.

I will say this: I am learning quite a bit throughout this. More than I expected to. So as irate as I sometimes am, that alone is making it... almost worth it. (The child in me is saying "I could have learned this shit with wine too, you know.")

Whole30: Day 15 YAAAS HALFWAY THERE

Ok guys, where is this "Tiger's Blood" thing we've been hearing about. I've read this timeline of what to expect a few times now--I guess we're still in the Days 10-11 section, where the novelty's worn off but we don't feel good enough for all the fuss to be warranted--and, while I feel good, it's not, like, an OMG kind of good. This is how I usually feel after I've slept well. But more resentful, because there are all these things I can't have, and I know that if I don't eat every four hours or so I'm going to become REALLY unpleasant, so I'd better make something at home (and nothing sounds good) before we start running errands because this diet just feels incredibly limiting at moments like that.

Yesterday was a productive day (am posting a day late): slept in a bit, made a delicious breakfast, did Responsible Things on the computer, like check our accounts and update everything in Mint (I was curious if we were spending more, less, or the same amount of money on food this month, given that we've cut out alcohol; it looks like we're actually spending a bit more, BUT I think part of the reason for that is that normally, we'd be going out more individually and spending our individual rather than joint dollars on that, but since we're total shut-ins this month, we've shifted that individual spending into the joint category). We did laundry. We ran some errands: we needed more dog food and a new harness for our dog (we've had the same harness for over three years, and she's hated it for three years), and a nice office chair for the office because I want to be able to work from home more, and be comfortable when I do it. I picked up some wine I'd ordered from the Wine House because they had a sale on a pinot that I really like. And before we set out on all of that, I realized I was starting to get hungry and wouldn't make it through the errands without turning into a world-class asshole if I didn't eat, but nothing sounded good, so I grudgingly made a second breakfast of omelet and bacon (I'm telling you, snack bacon should be a thing.)

We got back from errands and I made dinner, an InstantPot pork chili verde that was fantastic. (It had better be, for what the pork cost.) And happily, there are some leftovers for lunches during the week. And then we got dressed for a friend's birthday and headed to that, and it's probably just as well that we were late, because there was a food truck there, and we couldn't have any of what they were serving (Texas BBQ, and things like Frito Pie), and it would have sucked to watch everyone else eat while we couldn't partake.


How I felt: Resentful.

Breakfast: Hardboiled egg, sliced avocado, strawberries, and cold brew. I love this breakfast.

Second Breakfast: Omelet with sauteed fennel and spinach; two slices of bacon.

Dinner: InstantPot pork chili verde

Whole30: Day 14 -- In which we both become very whiny

I miss cheeeeeeeese. And beeeeeeeeer. This diet is bullshit it has sucked ALL FUN OUT OF OUR LIVES.

For lunch, all I wanted was the kale salad with roasted garlic vinaigrette from Tender Greens. With the salt and pepper chicken. And I got there and asked what was in the dressing and SUGAR IS IN THE DRESSING WAY TO RUIN MY DAY, TENDER GREENS. I don't even want sugar!! I want garlic! What is sugar doing in there?! I was willing to try it without the parmesan cheese (I also really love that salad for all the parmesan cheese) but no. The only dressings at Tender Greens that I can have (I quizzed the very patient person at the front about this) are the tarragon, the balsamic, and the cabernet. They had roasted potatoes and those were ALMOST off the table too because they are also made with sugar, but then I found out that the sugar in question came from apple juice and BAM loophole I'm ordering those fucking potatoes.

It's two days later and I'm STILL super peeved about this. Clearly. I should probably ease up on the cold brew: I now drink a great deal more of it because it is the only beverage I have access to that's emotionally satisfying to drink. (Beer is usually my go-to for that. Not in the morning, obviously: mornings are for coffee, because Adults Drink Coffee In the Morning, and beer is occasionally in the evening, because Adults Who Had a Rough Day At Work Drink Beer In the Evening.)

I was so ticked off about not having what I wanted for lunch that I focused on making that sausage potato spinach hash again for dinner, because that is DELICIOUS, and I picked up all the ingredients for it during a late afternoon I-will-cut-a-bitch-if-I-don't-have-a-snack-right-now run to Trader Joe's. The only sausage without sugar was some fully-cooked chicken sausage, so I got that (I found out that the sausage I'd bought for the hash the prior week had sugar in it--oops), and it wasn't as good, but the potatoes in that hash recipe are just sooooo goddamn good that they rescue the whole thing. I found a recipe on the NY Times cooking site for eggs poached in marinara sauce that's supposed to be served over a piece of bread, and I'm sure that's lovely, but I'll bet it'd be pretty good over crispy potatoes, too.

How I felt: Angry.

Breakfast: Hardboiled egg, sliced avocado with olive oil and seasalt, sliced strawberries. And cold brew, obvs.

Lunch: Tender Greens: salt and pepper chicken, roasted potatoes, and salad greens with balsamic vinaigrette.

Dinner: Potato spinach sausage hash again (pictured below prior to serving, this time): would have been better than the last time but the sausage wasn't as good. Used Trader Joe's chicken sausage: four Italian sausages and two garlic and herb sausages that just kind of tasted like hot dog, honestly. And lemonade kombucha to drink.

Whole30: Day 13

How I felt: Slept badly on Wednesday night, for whatever reason; have been really anxious about work, so that's probably it. Pretty grouchy all day. Austin even more so, apparently: he ordered a chicken caesar salad for lunch without looking at what was in caesar dressing (lots of dairy, which we can't have), and resorted to just eating dry lettuce and chicken for lunch. I'd be pissed too.

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, strawberries, and cold brew

Lunch: Rad Thai salad from Sweetgreen, with avocado added

Dinner: A Jamie Oliver recipe for meatballs and tomato sauce over fresh papardelle, but instead of fresh papardelle, we had "zoodles" (spiralized zucchini noodles). I love that Jamie Oliver recipe--that sauce is lovely--and overall it came out ok. I cooked the zucchini in the tallow left over from the meatballs and I don't think I'll do that again. Also, this is better with parmesan cheese.