“Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’”

I have a confession to make; since leaving the blessed strictures of the Whole 30 I’ve been cheating way too much.

The irony that the ‘riding yourown bike’ phase of the programme (as they call finishing the Whole 30 and maintaining healthy eating patterns) has been turning into a car crash for the girl who gave up competing in triathlons because she hated the bike riding part will, I hope, not be lost on anyone.

So this week I’m going to let my conscience be my blog, as Jiminy Cricket never said, and attempt to log a week where it all goes to plan. Over the first few days of the past week these things made me deviate from my good intentions:

• Sunday – I took the leftover brownies from Valentine’s Day into work, which was wise, but ate one, which was not – I’d forgotten that for at least a few hours I’d still have to resist them
•  Sunday – I ate a bowl of risotto- also Valentine’s leftovers before dinner, and then ate dinner to add insult to injury
• Monday – After my compliant lunch I ate another slice of the savoury cheesecake I’d had for breakfast (probably not in itself the best breakfast - -but another Valentine's day leftover) and some chocolate that I’d been given for my birthday – working from home boredom eating
• Wednesday, I skipped the gym and the run I was going to do to replace the gym as I was still so stiff from Monday’s squats, I then ate a cheese toastie and chips for dinner, drank too much whiskey and at about midnight cancelled the next morning’s gym class. I’m pretty sure that skipping the gym is legit here, I ordered the toastie as I’d been planning to cook at home and was persuaded into eating at the club instead, the club doesn’t have many healthy choices and I hadn’t prepared myself to choose one (because I was going to eat at home because the club doesn’t have many healthy choices)

The lessons I’m going to take from this are:

• Don’t cook off plan stuff at home, eat it out instead. If it is going to be cooked at home, it must all leave the house as soon as possible.
• If working from home plan out rigorously what you’re going to eat
• Don’t eat out without adequate planning and preparation; try not to eat at places where you know the options aren’t there unless you’ve made a positive choice to have a cheat meal

Food planning

Breakfasts: Sarah’s homemade hash browns with a fried egg on Friday, banana ‘pancakes’ on Saturday, on week days:  egg and sausage not-Mc muffins, egg and bacon cups, boiled eggs if I run out of time

Lunches: Friday leftovers, Saturday… I‘m spending the day at a yoga festival – hopefully there’ll be something…, salads from Freshii, every week day, thankfully I’m good with repetitious lunches

Dinners: 

• Thursday – Lemon chicken over cauliflower rice
• Friday: Crab Shack for a friend’s birthday
• Saturday – Chinese food to celebrate CNY
• Sunday – Roast chicken with parsnips and carrots
• Monday – Shepherd’s pie
• Tuesday – Pork chops with roasted beetroot with orange and goats cheese
• Wednesday – Eat at the club for pub quiz
• Thursday – steak with sweet potato fries and béarnaise sauce

Exercise planning

• Thursday - CrossFit
• Friday - Run
• Saturday – Yoga fest where I’m planning on doing a Bikram class and a Vinyassa class
• Sunday – CrossFit
• Monday – CrossFit
• Tuesday - Rest
• Wednesday – CrossFit
• Thursday – Run

 

Cheat planning

Cheats for the week will be – Chinese food on Saturday, eating at the club on Wednesday (where I will order the fajitas rather than anything worse though :-))

Updates to follow...

Duck hash with sweet potatoes

It seems this blogging malarkey is harder than I thought! One not only has to cook food – which I do most nights – but also to take pictures of it, and make sure you have a written recipe. I’ve now lost track of the times that I’ve thought of writing up dinner only to realise that either, I failed to take any photos or, that the recipe is entirely in my head and ‘add just the right amount of ingredient X’ isn’t truly useful. 

There is also the question of finding the time to write as well of course. Since I last posted we’ve:

• Finished the Whole 30 (feel great, but scales and, more gallingly, body composition barely shifted)
• Done the Standard Chartered 10km (time not horrendous, but the race but would have benefited from a staggered start, and can I suggest that if you’re going to be walking five metres over the start line you might want to consider registering for the fun run instead)
• Done Wadi Bih (fabulous, the race much less stressful than co-ordinating three teams and accommodation for five teams)



Wadi Bih - at the top

• Got a year older (less said the better, but did have a lovely birthday dinner at Rhodes W1 at Grosvenor House)

I have also been specifically wanting to post about the below recipe which is one of my favourite paleo dinners since our previous Whole 30 in July last year but haven’t been able to make it as explained below. 

We discovered this dish when I put corned beef hash into a meal plan one week, intending to substitute the white for sweet potatoes; corned beef hash with HP reduction being a favourite dish at Mr. Tom’s Chophouse in Manchester. However when we bought the corned beef – surprise- added sugar (why, why, why, why?). American house mate suggested duck hash instead which I initially resisted as I think of duck either as a pan-seared breast on in pancakes with hoi sin sauce, once I finally looked up the recipe and saw that most suggested making it with duck confit I was sold and haven’t looked back since.

For the last month though I’ve not been able to get duck confit anywhere, one of those mysterious Dubai absences which drive one bonkers (I know, I know : #firstworldproblems #icantfindduckconfit) making tonight’s meal particularly longed for. :-)

Ingredients

• Two large sweet potatoes
• Coconut oil
• One medium onion
• Leaves of a couple of sprigs of thyme
• Two confit duck legs
• A splash of sherry (omit for Whole 30 compliance)
• Eggs – one per person*
• Ketchup to serve

* Serves four, but I often make it for two or three and have the leftovers with Alika’s microwave poached eggs

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven
2. Dice the sweet potatoes – I leave the skin on because I’m lazy and like the taste
3. Roast the diced sweet potatoes in coconut oil for 40/60 minutes
4. Whilst the sweet potatoes are roasting shred the duck meat (reserve the fat for roast potatoes!) and
5. Roughtly dice the onion* (you'll see in the pictures that I've sliced it, but I think diced would be better)
6. Use some of the duck fat, or ghee if you didn’t get much of it off the duck to fry up the sliced onions with the thyme leaves until they start to brown
7. Once the sweet potatoes are roasted stir the potatoes, duck meat and fried onions together in a large sauté pan and add a splash of sherry
8. Stir for a couple of minutes until most of the liquid has gone, then press the mixture down
9. Break your eggs onto the top of the mixture
10. Cover and cook on low heat for five-ten minutes until the eggs are cooked.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

*If you are planning on going for a run whilst the potatoes are roasting and this necessitates putting in your contact lenses, don't do this bit yet :-(

Day 11 of the Whole 30 today, where does the time go?

Days ten and 11 are meant to be the hardest days to get through, but I had my grump on day nine (largely inspired by the tiredness I’m blaming on the meal described below) and am now rocking it again; interestingly I didn’t feel the crazy tiredness in the early days anywhere near as much this time around, instead I felt better almost immediately which may account for my chipper outlook!

Food for last week:

Breakfast – sweet potato frittata, boiled eggs, grapefruit, melon, various hashes from leftovers

Lunches – Salads all week, but a successful barbeque after our Wadi Bih training session, potato salad, coleslaw and spare ribs in BBQ sauce

Dinners - Duck and sweet potato hash, fesenjan with eggplant salad, braised red cabbage with sausages, lamb and apricot stew with Moroccan carrots

In addition to super clean eating I’ve been back hitting the gym again; not quite as much as I’d like yet, but a vast improvement on what I had been doing. I did three crossfit sessions and one cross-country running session this week (training for Wadi Bih), including my first morning crossfit class this morning. The classes are hard, but I’m enjoying being back. We have a 10km road race next weekend, so I must fit in a long run this weekend!

At the end of last week I bought The Paleo Slow Cooker:Healthy, Gluten-free Meals the Easy Way, and a slow cooker. Two of this week’s suppers came from the book, the one I got my act together to take photos of was the fesenjan which sadly wasn’t the best for a number of reasons. Let me say first that I love the dish! I’ve had it before from a Persian restaurant and have previously recreated it at home without the benefit of the slow cooker, however let me list the things that went wrong this time:

• I forgot to buy pomegranate juice when I did the weekly shop, our small supermarket had pomegranate juice, but only the one with sugar in, so I made an executive decision to substitute grape juice
• I bought a slow cooker without a timer and have so far failed to source a plug adaptor with a timer, I did not factor this in when planning what to cook when
• I shredded the chicken in the stand mixer (it was 12.30 at night, see above) my husband thinks it was shredded the right amount, I think I need to order it from a restaurant as soon as whole 30 is over to confirm this, and remind myself what the dish is meant to taste like…

The result wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t right either; honestly, the worst thing was how resentful I was towards the dish was for depriving me of sleep by the time it came to eat it. I’m pretty confident that this would be awesome done properly, and the lam and apricot stew recipe worked beautifully!

Serves 6
Ingredients

• 3½ lbs bone-in, skinless chicken thigh, breasts and legs
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 large onion, thinly sliced
• 4 tbsp ghee
• ½ tsp cardamom
• ¼ tsp cinnamon
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2½ cups water
• 4 cups walnuts, coarsely ground
• 2 cups pomegranate juice
• 1 tbsp honey
• ¼ tsp, ground saffron
• Salt and pepper to taste just before serving
• Garnish with fresh pomegranate seeds

Cooking Instructions

1.  Pat the chicken with the salt.
2. In a large heavy-bottomed pan, heat 1 tablespoons of ghee over medium heat, brown the chicken on all sides in batches about 5 minutes a batch and set aside.
3. Melt the remaining ghee, and sauté onions until translucent about 5 minutes.
4. Add the cardamom, cinnamon and garlic, and cook another 3 minutes.
5. Add the water, bring to a boil and simmer for 8-10 minutes on low.
6. Add the ground walnuts to pan forming a thick paste.
7. Mix in the chicken add pomegranate juice and honey and mix well.
8. 9Place mixture from pan and saffron in slow cooker.
9. Cook on low for 4 hours, remove chicken, debone, shred with 2 forks and place back in slow-cooker on high with lid removed for 30 minutes to thicken the sauce.
10. Salt and pepper to taste, then serve.

 

Chef's snack - pate on sausage

This is our friend Sarah's amazing eggplant salad recipe that we had with the stew.

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