I would say on a scale of one to ten, this week ranked as a five. It wasn't awesome, it definitely could have been better, but it wasn't terrible either. Maybe very typical of learning a new normal. As my body craved brie and crackers and dark chocolate, my mind kept thinking "Only X more days, no, shoot. 3 more months!" With that kind of thinking it was easy to feel discouraged. Early on I realized what a job food does on the mind. I couldn't think in terms of time, I had to think in terms of what was normal for our family right. now.
The first challenge was breakfast. We can't have eggs. We can't have toast. We can only have limited fruit: a choice of 1 cup of berries and 1 apple, 1 banana or 2 kiwis. So what do we do for breakfast?? This was the first question I asked on Dr. Aviva's Healthiest Kids forum. The answers I got were exactly what I was dreading.
Dinner for breakfast. Leftovers for breakfast. Pumpkin pudding...sweet potatoes...
INSERT SOBS.
The first morning Simon woke up and immediately went to the fridge. He does this every morning, looking for an apple. He may do this because it's really the only snack he can get for himself while everyone else is still in bed-- but I like to think he eats an apple every morning because when I was pregnant with him, Mike would toss me an apple before he went to work. If I didn't eat before I got out of bed in the morning, I would pass out and an apple was the easiest fix.
Moving on... I had decided when I was prepping for the journey that we would have to eat smaller portions of fruit so that we didn't run out of snack choices before the days end. Limiting fruit is very challenging for us. I offered Simon a half of an apple (which miraculously, he seemed to be ok with) and then I proceeded to make the grossest smoothie ever. I don't even remember what I tried to put in it. I've blocked it out. Sorry.
In hindsight, we should have stayed home this first day to get a handle on things. But alas, we went out for the morning. I packed what I thought would be enough snacks-- but I was dead wrong. Limited kiwi sent the kids into a maniac whirlwind.
Lunch was next. I had planned Meghan Telpner's Heck No Mayo Salmon Salad with quinoa, over a bed of spinach. Hummus and a choice of carrots or cucumber. For me, I skipped the salmon but I had everything else. I am not a seafood person. At. All.
This seemed to go over well except Judah was not pleased by the lack of mayo in the salmon salad.
Dinner was, well, dinner was DELICIOUS. Here is what we made:
Roasted chicken and vegetables over brown rice! Sounds so simple doesn't it? It was easy to make, tasty, clean, filling, and made great leftovers. After a full day of hunger pangs we were all incredibly thankful for this meal.
Roasted chicken
Roasted Chicken and Vegetables
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Serves 4 (roughly)
Ingredients
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1 Whole Chicken
1 Lemon
1 Head of Garlic
Salt
Pepper
Dry Mustard
Garlic Powder
Olive Oil
3 Sweet Potatoes, chopped
4 Carrots, chopped
1 Head of Broccoli, chopped
1 Red Onion, cut into wedges
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees F
- While the oven is preheating, prepare the chicken and chop all vegetables. Taking into account how long the individual vegetable takes to cook through, the vegetables should be roughly the same size.
- To prepare the chicken start by taking out any giblets and filling the chicken with lemon wedges and garlic cloves. You may want to truss the chicken too, but I didn't.
- In a small bowl mix together a few glugs of olive oil, some mustard, garlic powder, salt and pepper. The amount is different every time I make this. You will have to adjust to your liking-- but my advice is to go a bit heavier on the spices then you think you should.
- Once everything is mixed cover the chicken with the mixture. Make sure to cover the whole thing and even a bit inside the opening of the cave. Cave, yes. I don't like to use actual body part terms because well, I get too grossed out.
- Place the chicken in a roasting pan along with all of the vegetables. Sprinkle a bit of seasoning on the vegetables and stick in the preheated oven.
- After 15 minutes turn the heat down to 350 degrees F and roast for 20 minutes per pound.
- Serve over brown rice.
Despite the wonderful meal, the evening brought some irritable feelings effecting all of us, but by the next morning we were back at it. Mike was off to work and the kids and I discussed how the day before went for us. We openly expressed how hard it was and how we were sad and frustrated at times. I asked them if they wanted to continue on (mostly Judah) and they said yes. In that moment, I was so proud of their determination and I already felt better about Day #2-- we had learned so much the previous day. I decided on something different for breakfast, set specific snack times to avoid the constant asking for food (and the possibility of running out!) and I spent the morning making large batches of our new staples.
For breakfast we each had banana boats and a half of an apple. The kids LOVED the banana boats! Morning snack consisted of black olives, almonds and a choice of carrots or celery. For lunch we had leftovers of the salmon salad over quinoa with a side of black beans and sweet potato. Afternoon snack was a 1/2 cup of frozen berries and for dinner I served leftovers of the yummy chicken (with absolutely no complaints)!
Banana Boats with almond butter, hemp seed and coconut flakes.
Banana Boats
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Ingredients (Serves 1)
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Half of a banana
Almond butter; unsweetened (we used chunky)
Ground flax seed, hemp seed, chia seed --whatever you prefer
Unsweetened coconut flakes
Pecans
- Slice the banana lengthwise.
- Smooth on some almond butter, sprinkle some flax, coconut flakes and pecans.
- Eat!
Here is my FIRST WEEK RECAP!
- Making a shopping list takes a massive amount of time. I need to plan ahead for this.
- Pasta is my BEST FRIEND. We found a brown rice and quinoa pasta at Trader Joe's that is not only delicious but meets the criteria for our diet. Although processed foods are frowned upon, the pasta has saved my sanity for when I need to make something fast, or when we have nothing left and shopping is not an option. Hallelujah!
- Making large batches of things like quinoa, brown rice and sweet potatoes is a GAME CHANGER.
- Setting snack times and sticking by them is super important for all of us. The kids are crazy if I don't do this and that makes ME crazy. It was interesting to see how much eating we all do out of boredom, having set snack times has pushed us past that into CREATIVITY.
- Oh, and Mike and the kids are sick. Interestingly enough this is often a sign that the body is detoxing! Yahoo!
- AND!! We got our apartment! Looks like PVD doula is moving back to PVD!
- Husband says that he's "not hungry, he's just not satisfied." Our addiction to flour and sugar is really coming out, eeek! But, we survived the first week and we are mostly smiling. This is good.