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.

1.  

The last meal... tartiflette

Having fallen of both the paleo and exercise wagon in November and December I am coming at it with a new zeal now and we are kicking off the year with a Whole 30. 

I’m relatively new to this way of eating having completed a Whole 30 in July last year and then kept about 80% paleo (with dairy). I started crossfit at about the same time, and was managing an average of three classes a week with some running, swimming and yoga thrown in until this healthful existence was derailed by a family visit at the end of October.  When one falls off the wagon at that time of year it doesn’t seem worth restarting everything, what with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up…

The result is not pretty; but rather than share my ‘before photo’ with you, at the risk of putting you off the thought of food, or the numbers from this morning’s weigh-in, which frankly put me off the thought of food, I thought I’d share a recipe which epitomises how we’ve been eating for the past couple of months and which we cooked last night as our final pre-Whole 30 meal. As long as you’re doing dairy and cooking with alcohol the recipe is actually relatively paleo though as the main ingredient is white potatoes it’s not something I’d eat often*. That makes it a bad choice for a pre-Whole 30 meal, but one of the other key ingredients is reblochon which we can’t get in Dubai so had bought at a market in Chamonix the week before and brought all the way home, the reblochon could not possibly sit in the fridge for the next 30 days without causing a public health crisis and so tartiflette it was.

Tartiflette

(serves six, allow about one potato per person)

• 6 medium potatoes peeled and cut into 1cm cubes
• 2 onions roughly chopped (though I’m very lazy and normally but the pre-chopped ones which are finely diced)
• 300g smoked lardons
• 1 reblochon cheese cut in two to give two full circles of cheese each with a rind side and a gooey side (you can substitute camembert if you can’t get reblochon)
• glass of white wine
• 100ml crème fraiche (I used Russian sour cream last night as I couldn’t get the crème fraiche, there were no complaints)

1. Preheat the oven to about 200 degrees Celsius
2. Par boil the potatoes until softened at the edges
3. Fry the lardons, no extra oil needed, when they are nearly cooked add the onions and continue frying until they are starting to brown
4. Drain the potatoes and add the cooked bacon and onion mixture to the pan
5. Stir in the white wine and crème fraiche and pour the whole mixture into an ovenproof dish
6. Put the reblochon (gooey side down) on the top and cover with tinfoil
7. Bake for 45 minutes with the tinfoil on and an additional 15 minutes with the tinfoil off. If you like you can remove the cheese rinds (keep them – they’re delicious!) and flash under the grill for five minutes at the end. At any rate, remove the rinds before serving

You could serve with a side salad. Last night I did a quick starter of pate and charcuterie and asked our dinner guest to bring an appropriately French dessert which she did magnificently!

* In its defence it comes from the French Alps where all the skiing, hiking and cold air make all those carbs seem so much more justified