What I Eat

Food. Food has been a big thing for me these last few years...

What to eat. What not to eat.

Without going into every detail right now, I will just say that I do not eat gluten, dairy, or soy. I limit nightshades (white potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, etc.) and eggs to some extent as well. I eat mostly Paleo, but I would not say "I'm on a paleo diet."

I eat the way I do for health issues and have seen a huge difference in the way I feel and how quickly I recover when eating this way. I know how sugar affects my body now, and avoid refined cane sugar, using honey, maple syrup, coconut sugar, and I recently started using molasses as well.

I love to experiment in the kitchen! And I am so grateful for the way my new diet has opened me up to new foods...once you start eating healthier, your tastes change and you might just like something you would not have liked before.. Like sweet potatoes; my husband and I tried them more than once and hated them. And now we eat them almost every day and we love them! Funny how that works.

Cooking comes naturally to me and I enjoy it. It has been hard, doing things like the Elimination Diet, which tests for food you are reacting negatively to, to find joy in eating and cooking  at times, but now that we have a lot of it figured out and my family I used to our new diet, it is an exciting challenge to see what delicious thing I can make out of "safe" foods.

This is a sample of my diet from this week so far. I highly recommend batch cooking so that you always have healthy leftovers on hand. It makes everything much less stressful (and messy!)

1. Breakfast- Salad with homemade honey mustard vinaigrette and garlic salt, two duck eggs scrambled, and "soup" made by sauteing zucchini and diced turkey, and then pouring in some bone broth and adding spices (Onion, garlic, dill)I do my best to eat at least one vegetable at breakfast.

2. Dinner- Roasted sweet potato wedges, salad with honey mustard vinaigrette, broccoli, and salmon (seasoned with garlic, onion, dill and parsley)

3. Dinner- Broccoli, mashed white sweet potato, and salmon cakes with a Dijon mustard, mayo and touch of honey sauce. These fish cakes were SUPER good. I will post the recipe after making it one more time to be sure of measurements.

4. Evening snack/dessert- Chamomile tea and paleo mug cake. I mixed this cake up without a recipe...working on creating my own recipe that's not too dry. I have a recipe for a chocolate one I love, but I cant have much chocolate in the evenings or ill be up all night, so this cake was a spice cake and it was really yummy.

5. Breakfast- sautéed zucchini with a crispy fried egg, small bowl of oatmeal. I add cashew butter (or almond), coconut oil, almond milk (or coconut), butter, cinnamon, and honey or maple syrup and salt. My whole family loves it this way. Other additions I sometimes do are pecans, flax seed, raisins for my husband and son, sub coconut sugar for other sweeteners, or berries if you like them.

6. Dinner-Half of a baked sweet potato, green beans, roasted rainbow carrots, cauliflower puree, and brisket. The brisket was from a cow that was raised on our property, delicious!