Days 5 and 6…exhaustion

Day 5 was Sunday.

Sundays are always busy, somewhat chaotic, days. Such is life in ministry.

Sundays are not our Sabbath day. They are usually too full of work things that need to happen, meetings, or visits, so that is not a rest day for us. We try (and often fail) to make Saturdays our family Sabbath day, and try to do something fun. Although, in this season when I’m doing farmers markets on Saturday mornings, we really only get a half day of rest. It really has been a struggle to balance “part-time” ministry, the bakery gig as part-time, and then get in all the other parts of life that need to happen…and have a Sabbath day. It is something we struggle with, but we understand that we need to make Sabbath rest as much of a priority as the work that we do. Our entire family– and our congregations— will be the better for it, if we do.

Sunday consisted of a cup 3 cups of coffee for breakfast. I need my morning jolt of caffeine, but try to avoid eating before worship in the mornings. We’ll call it “fasting”…but really, it is just to avoid bad timing for bathroom visits.

I got home a little after noon, and was HuNgrY.  Happily, there were plenty of leftovers in the fridge and it only took a few moments to get them heated up and stuck in my belly. I was glad for the leftovers, otherwise it would have been a challenge to stay on track. I am lazy some days, and when I’m hungry, I want to go for the easy, not the healthy.  Hence, a lot of gas station pizza happens in our home.

The children are delighted by this. My waist-line is not.

And I know I’m not alone in this. Quick and easy is the downfall of many people in the quest of healthy eating. And “quick and easy” and Whole30 don’t usually go together. Planning and prep-work help….as does making enough to have leftovers.

So, leftovers were for lunch, then a quick nap…because, well….Sunday.

After naptime, I headed to the store to pick up more supplies for the week. I made the mistake choice to bring our youngest grocery shopping with me. My list was about 30 items, pretty short compared to most weeks. 2 stores to visit. Aldi’s and Walmart. Mainly fresh veggies and fruit and meat to get.

4 hours later….

Back home after the adventure of grocery shopping with a 6 year old, I made dinner. We had steak fajitas over a bed of greens and a side of sweet potato sticks. (Okay, the sweet potatoes were supposed to be like french fries—because you can’t take away all my vices—but some were crispy, some weren’t. Some were mushy and some were burnt. But all of them still tasted dang good anyway. Just need to tweak that recipe a bit when I try it again.)

The fajitas were a new recipe and dang, they were good! The hubs and I gobbled it right up. And because I don’t know what I’m doing when I buy steak, I got lucky and bought a good cut. It melted in your mouth. So. Dang. Good. You can find the recipe here.

Day 6…Monday.  Do I need to say more than that?

According to the Whole30 timeline, days 6 and 7 are the ones where you feel exhausted. Drained. Wiped out.

Mine started on day 5, but yesterday wasn’t any better. I felt like I could have napped all day.

But I didn’t. The hubs and I had some quick scrambled eggs for breakfast, then headed, with children in tow, to the larger city about 30 minutes away. He had a meeting, I needed to go to Sam’s Club. He dropped the kiddos and I off at Sams. He then returned….3 hours later.

Now, I don’t have a problem spending an hour, even close to two, in Sam’s Club. Much like Walmart or Kohl’s, time is different within these stores. It passes quickly, differently, than in the outside world. We can wander around aimlessly, touching everything, thinking about how fun it would be to have that playground set, or the giant floating peacock that seats 10.

But 3 hours was too much.

And it was lunchtime.

I fed the kiddos at the cafe, and ate the Larabar I had in my purse. It would tide me over for a few more hours, because we had a few more spots to shop at before heading home.

We got home around 3, and I ate a couple of leftover chicken strips.

We then grilled chicken sausages for dinner, along with a large salad and riced cauliflower.  Walmart has a brand that has no sugar or other junk added, and they are the most inexpensive of chicken sausages I have found.

I usually try to have a package or two of these on hand at all times during a round of Whole30. They help with making a quick meal when I am feeling lazy or am short on time.

Sorry this got long. I guess that is what happens when I skip a day of writing!

 

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Day 4…Other people’s bragging

Hubs: I have something to tell you. But it might make you mad.

Me: um, okay. What?

Hubs: I got on the scale and already lost 4 lbs.

Me: …….

Seriously, how do men do that?

Meanwhile, I’m avoiding even looking in the direction of the scale because I feel bloated and icky. Probably the effects of eating so many dang veggies…

And, no, if we were sticklers for the rules of Whole30, he should not have weighed himself. But rules, shmules. If it works for him, and keeps him motivated, I say go for it! Me…not so much.

I managed to get through today without any slip-ups, and avoided temptation as I tried to avoid the food area after a funeral today. By staying away from the fellowship hall, I had the opportunity to pray with someone, which I would have missed had I been hanging around the food. It was a blessing to be present for this person, and to pray for them. So much of ministry is just these little moments of being present, being in the right place and the right time, being willing to risk discomfort in order to offer love and peace to another.

I avoided breakfast this morning, and only had coffee and a Larabar. (Which are delicious and as close to sugary yumminess as one can get on this program.)

Lunch was scrambled eggs, which I assume you all know what those look like.

Supper was Italian Chicken Tenders over a bed of spiralized zucchini noodles with marinara sauce. I also found cherries on sale at Aldi’s and had about a cup of those. Finding sauces is always tricky, as so many of them have sugar in their ingredients. I found this one at Walmart, and it was delicious. Chunky and full of veggies, it also made a good dipping sauce for the tenders.

I’m telling you, these chicken tenders are one of my favorite recipes. They are so dang good. Even the kids will tolerate them. (And every time I serve them, they complain less about them, so I know they must be good!)  Of course, the kids ate theirs with angel hair pasta and not the zoodles the adults had, but hey, I know where to pick my battles!

Look at these babies, bubbling away in their bathtub of oil….

And the final product:

So. Dang. Good.

Yeah, I know my photography skills need some help. What can I say? I want to eat the food when it’s hot, so the phone camera is as good as it gets. I’m not monkeying with grabbing the Nikon and letting this goodness grow cold!

I can’t find the original link to this recipe, so I will give it to you here. And you will thank me for it, after you try these bad boys.

Italian Chicken Fingers

2 lbs. chicken tenders

1 cup almond flour

3 TBSP tapioca starch

1 1/2 tsp garlic salt

1 tsp salt

2 tsp Italian seasoning

1/4 tsp black pepper

2 eggs, whisked

1/4 Cup coconut oil

Heat oil until very hot in large fry pan.

Mix together flour, tapioca starch, garlic salt, salt, Italian seasoning and black pepper together in a bowl.

In another bowl, whisk two eggs.

Dip chicken tender into egg. Roll in flour mix, and place in hot pan. Repeat with other tenders until pan is full,

Fry chicken until golden on bottom. Flip, and allow to fry on other side.

Once cooked, put on plate lined with paper towels to absorb any excess oil. Repeat cooking process until all chicken in cooked. You may need to add more oil to your pan.

Serve with marinara or spaghetti sauce. Great with zoodles or spaghetti squash.

Enjoy!

 

Day 3…the Hangover

Whole30 has a great timeline on their site, describing different phases of the month. The first round I did, it was spot on. Perfectly nailed each day and stage and emotion. Day one, no big deal. Day 2 and 3 are “hangover” days, as your body begins the process of detoxing.  You know, those sugar withdrawals are a real thing. My favorite days are 4 and 5, which they title “Kill all the things.”  And, yeah, I totally went through that in round one!

Today, I am battling a bit of a headache. Not bad enough for medication, but scratching at the edges of my brain, just threatening to blow up. I’m not sure if it is food related or hormonal or just the fact that I’ve been working in front of the computer all day. Over the past few months, I’ve had to battle more headaches than usual, and I’m wondering if there is something out of whack with my body.   *sigh*

Because I’ve been working, I haven’t gotten any real exercise today. I was doing bakery work until 1 a.m., so I didn’t get out of bed early enough to run this morning, and it was too dang hot this afternoon. Now, at almost 8 p.m., I’m wondering if I should head out before it is too dark out. Lucky for me, the dog likes to go with me, so at least I don’t go out alone.  But I might just be lazy today….

I did eat well today. Breakfast was a couple of fried eggs, alongside leftover buffalo chicken on a bed of greens.

Lunch was grilled hamburgers over spiralized carrots, with a mixed green salad.

I found this chipotle mayo at Hy-Vee and is is the bomb-dot-com. (Did I just age myself with that phrase?)  Seriously, get yourself some of this. I don’t even like mayo normally but this….ooohhh momma! (I only wish it wasn’t so dang expensive!)  I slapped some of that delicousness on top of the burgers and it was aaaahhhhhmmmmaazzinnngg!

Dinner was shrimp and sausage skillet meal over a bed of cauliflower rice. It’s good, a little spicy, and full of veggies. And it made plenty for leftovers, which is always fabulous.

The kids ate frozen pizza. I didn’t take a picture of that.

Of course, now with all that savoriness, I am craving something sweet. I’ll probably see if having a cup of tea helps with that.  And it probably won’t. Tea can’t compete with.. oh, let’s see…a brownie. Or fudge. Or ice cream.  But since all that is not an option, I guess I’ll see what tea does for me.

With day 4 looming tomorrow, and a full weekend of ministry with a funeral tomorrow and worship Sunday, let’s hope I can avoid the “kill-all-the-things” mood….

Until tomorrow, friends…