Paleo Shepherd's Pie - Yes, I'm doing Whole 30 again

Happy June. It's hard to believe that it's already June. We've had so much rain and so many stormy days this spring, I thought we'd never have sunshine and heat. Not that I'm looking forward to 100+ degree weather, but cold and rainy is strange for May in Texas.

So, I have gotten a bit off track with my eating recently. Yeah, right. I totally have derailed. My hip is better, thank goodness, so I'm not in pain all of the time anymore. The Airrosti doctor did a fantastic job on my hip and hamstrings. Not a painless treatment method, by any stretch of the imagination, and I was left with some interesting bruises after my sessions, but I'm not in chronic pain anymore. Yay!  The pain did a number on me mentally. I couldn't work out, I couldn't run, even sitting became painful after a while. Did I watch what I ate? No. Unless you counted watching it disappear in to my mouth. I have no excuses for what was available to eat. I do the grocery shopping and the cooking, after all. If there are Doritos in the house, I let them in. When The Sisterhood mentioned that they were starting a Whole 30 on June 1st, I took it as a sign to get back on track. This thought was reinforced by seeing how round I look in pictures. (We got our picture taken with two of the guys from Firefly at a recent fan con.) That's life. Time to move on.

Back to the Whole 30. When I tried this a couple of years ago, I went a bit crazy on the coconut oil wagon. Bad mistake. It does not agree with me in the slightest. I had so many strange reactions that I quit halfway through the 30. I am committed to following this at least through Fitbloggin. Hopefully I'll be back on track enough by then that I don't get too crazy.

Part of following this plan is thinking about what I'm eating. I can't rely on having some cheese when I get hungry or having a sandwich for lunch. I can't even rely on sauces or salad dressings to spruce things up because so many commercial foods have sugars and starches in them. That leaves me with a bunch of whole food ingredients, standing in my kitchen, trying to figure out what to make to eat that will make me happy. Today, it's shepherd's pie.  I was going to call this post "everything but the kitchen sink..." shepherd's pie, but then I thought, no, if the kitchen sink is paleo, it's going in there, too. It was more of a clean out the fridge shepherd's pie. I had half of a large box of mushrooms that needed to be used, a head of cauliflower, a partial bag of green beans, part of an onion... you get the picture. I think the only vegetables I didn't use were the beets, zucchini and the clam shell box of "power greens."

Paleo Shepherd's Pie (serves 6 generously)

1 T olive oil

8 oz mushrooms, sliced

2 carrots, peeled and diced

4 celery ribs, sliced

¼ cup diced onion

1 cup fresh green beans, chopped

1 20 oz package lean ground turkey

1 T garlic powder

1 t ground thyme

3 T tomato paste

1/2 c chicken stock

1/4 t cayenne pepper

1 T no-salt seasoning mix

1 T parsley

1 t marjoram

salt/pepper to taste

Thickener: 

1 T kudzu (you can use cornstarch if you aren't making this paleo)

1/4 c chicken stock

Topping:

1 head of cauliflower, chopped and steamed

1 sweet potato, chopped and steamed

1 T ghee

salt/pepper to taste

drizzle of olive oil

parsley flakes

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Heat a medium sized skillet over medium high heat. When pan is hot, drizzle in the olive oil. Saute the mushrooms until soft. Add in the ground turkey, using a spoon to break it in to small pieces. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until meat is no longer translucent. Add in the carrots, celery, onion, green beans, tomato paste, spices and chicken stock, stirring well to combine. 

In a small bowl, combine the kudzu and chicken stock, stirring until there are no lumps. Add this to the mixture in the skillet and stir. 

Let mixture simmer for 15 minutes to let the vegetables soften. While this is happening, chop your cauliflower in to florets and peel and dice the sweet potato. I use Ziploc steamer bags to cook my veggies in the microwave. Follow cooking times on the bags. When these are cooked, place the cauliflower and sweet potato in bowl, add the ghee and salt and pepper. Mash with fork or use a stick blender until fairly smooth.

Spoon turkey mixture in to an 8x8 baking dish, making sure the vegetables are evenly distributed and that the ground turkey doesn't have any large chunks.

Spread the mashed cauliflower/sweet potato mixture on top, smoothing the surface with the back of a spoon. Top with parsley, black pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. 

When it's piping hot and lightly browned on top, it's done! This really hit the spot today. I wanted something creamy, but I couldn't rely on dairy. It's meaty, but not too meaty, and it's full of really tasty vegetables.  This is so good, I'm kind of glad The Aussie isn't a turkey or veggie eater! More for me!

The Whole 30 hasn't been pretty

From reading people's accounts of how they felt while doing the Whole 30, I expected great energy, sleeping well, clear skin, overall, feeling pretty good. My energy has been good, I've been sleeping okay, but clear skin and feeling good? Nope. It could be anything from a sensitivity to coconut oil, yeast overgrowth die-off, toxins leaving the body like rats leaving a sinking ship. I don't know.  All I know is that my eczema went from moderate to horrible in two weeks, and I'm miserable. I've gotten it on my face before, but only on one eyelid. Certainly not all over it. I look like I've been in a brawl. My eyes are puffy and red, I've got itchy patches under my eyes, and on my jawline, and my lips are terribly cracked at the corners, are chapped, and they burn. It's worse on my hands, too. The section on my middle finger is so bad that the skin over my knuckle has split.

 

So, I've decided to not continue restricting what I'm eating so severely. I will continue to eat whole foods, no junk food, no sugars, but I will be adding back in some whole grain products and some dairy. If Whole 30 works for you, great. It's helped me get off of a plateau, but I'm suffering in other ways. I need to be healthy on the outside as well as the inside.

Let's do this.

Let's see if I can't get back below my 10% level, shall we?

Starting weight:

This paleo/Whole30 thing seems to be working already.

Whole30 Day 1 Wrap Up - Well that sucked.

So, yesterday was day 1 of #Whole30. I ate well. I had my egg foo yung for breakfast, black coffee. For lunch I had two Applegate Farms organic (no nitrites, uncured, grass fed, etc) hot dogs and kale sautéed in coconut oil w/garlic. For dinner I had steamed chicken and broccoli, with coconut aminos and cayenne pepper. I had a peach as a morning snack and a handful of raw pistachios in the afternoon. Aside from the black coffee, I just drank water yesterday. When I plugged everything in to my eTools on Weight Watchers, I found out that I underestimated the points value for the hot dogs and was actually under my daily points. Well, that never happens. Since I couldn't make a meeting last night I went and weighed in during my lunch hour. Up from 167.7 in the a.m. to 171. This morning I was 169.9. (Yes, I know we aren't supposed to be weighing ourselves all the time, I just wanted some positive feedback after one day of clean eating and a crappy sleepless night. Didn't get any.)

I went to bed early (for me if I'm not falling asleep on the sofa, only to wake up at 2am and head to bed) so that I could get up early and take the dogs for walks before the sun came up. Didn't happen. That was one of the WORST nights sleep I can recall having in a long time. It was one of those "I'm lying here, in the dark, with my eyes closed, but I know I'm not asleep" kind of nights. When I did get some sleep, or what passed as sleep, I had these really weird dreams.

Needless to say, I'm really dragging today. Since it will be over 100 again today, I won't take dogs out until the sun sets. I just might be napping during lunch today. Or menu planning.

Whole 30 Day 1 - Dear Diary, I said I'd do what??

Dear Diary:

Today is my first day of doing #Whole30. This might not be pretty. I warned The Aussie that I was cutting a bunch of stuff out and that the first few days might be a bit rough. He's been warned. Today I'm having my coffee black. It's not too bad. I haven't used Splenda in my coffee for a month or so, so I have a head start.  I made a big egg foo yung type frittata for breakfast. Mushrooms, celery, bean sprouts (canned, because Kroger didn't have fresh), carrots, bell pepper, scallions and onion, 5 eggs, cooked in a little coconut oil.

It was humongous. I ate half of it, kind of wishing there was cheese in there, and it tasted pretty good. The Aussie even came sniffing towards my plate. "I thought I smelled omelet." The other half is being saved for breakfast tomorrow. 

I weighed myself first thing this morning. 167.7. Meh. Could be worse. I can't make it to my WW meeting tonight, but I'll go during lunch to weigh in. We'll see how this goes. I have a snapper filet in the fridge that needs to be used up. Might be good grilled. That could be lunch today. Not sure about dinner yet. Maybe baked chicken. I'll have sweet potato and The Aussie can have regular potato. I bought a bunch of broccoli the other day, planning on using it for a beef and broccoli stir fry, but maybe I'll use that for dinner tonight instead.  I'll keep you posted.  Bye for now.

Kyra