Becky's Chicken Paleo Style (Delicious!)

Becky's Chicken Paleo Style

Any time I combine the flavors of garlic, tomato, artichokes and chicken, I think of my sister-in-law Becky (the best cook I know) and I reminisce about days when I used to go over to her house and she would make this amazing sauce usually served over pasta. I would eat until stuffed then have some coffee and yummy dessert! It was amazing and if we were to ever leave the military, these memories would figure largely in that decision :) Luckily we are close enough now that I can occasionally enjoy those days again.

* 1.5 lbs chicken thighs
* 2 cans fire roasted chopped tomatoes OR regular, but I think the fire roasted added something
* 1 can artichoke hearts, I used ones in water, but I bet marinated would be even better!
* 1/2 can coconut milk (skip if you want more of a tomato sauce, but I was craving cream sauce. Use full fat otherwise you will have to thicken with something like arrowroot powder)
* 1 Tbsp oregano
*1 Tbsp (or more!!) garlic powder
* Salt and pepper (I was generous with both)

Cut up chicken thighs and pan fry in their own fat until cooked through on medium heat. Season with salt, pepper, oregano and garlic. Add tomatoes and artichoke hearts and bring to simmer. Add coconut milk and stir until heated. I tasted and decided to add a bit more salt.

Serve over riced cauliflower

Riced Cauliflower
1 head cauliflower
Salt, pepper
2tsp or so coconut oil or butter (I prefer butter when not on a whole 30)

Chop off the cauliflower florets and with small batches at a time place in food processor and process until a rice-y consistency. Transfer to pan and fry until the cauliflower starts to change to more of a yellow than white. Season with salt and pepper.

Whole 30 Day 8

Today was a freaking delicious day. I came up with two original recipes and they were both hits. I am hoping to do a little more physical activity to augment my fat loss soon, but so far this challenge is going great!

Breakfast:



2 Eggs over easy (fried in a tsp of coconut oil)
The last of the leftover shredded cabbage (I was getting sick of this but it needed to go and I don't like to waste money)
1/2 grapefruit

Lunch:
A helping of chicken thighs cut up and pan fried by themselves. Chicken thighs are fatty enough that they don't need oil to cook in. Salt, pepper and a generous splash of balsamic vinegar

EGG SALAD (YUMMM)
4 Hard boiled eggs, cooled, peeled and chopped
1/2 large or one small cucumber peeled and chopped
1/2 bell pepper chopped
2 Tbsp Spicy Brown Mustard
2Tbsp lemon juice
Salt & Pepper to taste
~ 1 Tbsp dill

Dinner was a creamy chicken sauce served over riced cauliflower. Cauliflower was pan fried in a small amount of coconut oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. I will be posting the chicken recipe soon!!

Not pictured: 8 dates and several cups of herbal tea

Whole 30 Day 7

Wahoo!! I made it to day 7. This is the longest I've gone so far since my 12 day stint last summer. Here's what I ate, + an unsweetened passion tea from Starbucks:

The Workout I did today was:
1.5 Mile Run

8minute AMRAP
1 deadlift
9 front squat
3 push jerk
5 burpees
5 pullups

I did three rounds minus 5 pullups. Sorry for the short post, busy day and I wanted to get this up before I forgot things!

Whole 30 Day 6

Today was probably one of my most challenging days as far as stress goes. It involved the doctor's office, two toddlers, D.C. traffic and some other things. I was very thankful that I was not on day one or two of this challenge, because I totally would have gone through the Krispy Kreme drive through on my way to or from all the things I had to do.
I had to be out the door early so I just hard boiled a bunch of eggs, sauteed some green cabbage in coconut oil and here's what I ate.


Unpictured is the 1 hard boiled egg and 6 dates I ate between breakfast and dinner.

I was very hungry by the time dinner rolled around packed my plate with a ton of food. I knew I hadn't taken in enough calories for the day and even though I was stuffed before I finished the plate, I kept eating. All in all dinner was probably:

1 whole sweet potato cut up into fries and baked in the oven with coconut oil, salt and cinnamon
2 burgers together making up about 1/2 lb of 96% lean ground beef
Steamfresh broccoli & cauliflower
2 Tbsp or so of Wholly Guacamole
Red onions for garnish

I had a bunch of chamomile tea to try to calm down and just deep breathed alot. My two sons are going through a destructive phase and fight with each other constantly. I actually cried when the youngest purposefully ripped apart one of his sippy cups and dumped apple cider all over the floor while I was starving and about to start cooking dinner. Just another reason to stop giving them juice.

After tomorrow it'll be a whole week! Wahoo!

Whole 30 Day 5

Didn't have too much of a problem with cravings today and I'm starting to get into the swing of things so nothing new to report. This was a lazy leftover and recreated leftover day. This morning I hard boiled eggs for breakfast, some of which I ate later in the day.

Breakfast:

2 Hard Boiled Eggs

Almost a whole zucchini and 4 baby bella mushrooms sauteed in 1tsp coconut oil

Green tea

 Lunch came from a recreated recipe from Sarah Fragoso's Everyday Paleo. The original recipe was Shrimp Flying Saucers. I didn't want to cook anything so I looked in my fridge and here's what I made:

1 large cooked chicken breast (leftover from last night) cut up
2 hard boiled eggs chopped (from this morning leftover)
1 small cucumber peeled and chopped
1/4 cup of chopped red onion (already chopped for mornings)
3 or 4 cherry tomatoes halved
1 Tbsp spicy brown mustard
1-2tsp dill
2 Tbsp lemon juice

This was so yummy. I halved it and saved the rest for dinner, had the other half of my grapefruit and some tea.

I was getting the munchies in the afternoon so I ate a hard boiled egg. Then decided I should do a workout since I did absolutely nothing yesterday but laze around the house and play on the playground very little.

WOD:

‎50 Sit-ups
10 Jump Squats
20 Push-ups
25 Jumping Jacks
30 Lunges
45 Burpees
30 Lunges
25 Jumping Jacks
20 Pushups
10 Jump Squats
50 Sit-ups

Did it in 14:20. I felt strong during the pushups and was surprised at how fast I was able to do the burpees. I broke them down doing 10 at a time and then resting for 10-20 seconds or so and going again.

Post workout was a 1/2 a sweet potato with a tsp of coconut oil.

 Then I went for a walk outside with my babies. One of them (the 25 pounder) is on my back in a baby backpack. L rode his scooter :) . We walked probably half a mile and enjoyed the first snowfall of the year! I walked earlier this morning as well about a mile or mile and a half so a total of 1.5-2 miles of walking to add to the activity today.

Dinner: The other half of that awesome chicken/egg salad and the other half of the nuked sweet potato with another tsp of coconut oil!


I am really getting excited for my day 30 results because I feel like my clothes might be starting to get looser. It's probably in my head though :)

Whole 30 Day 4

Today I didn't have enough eggs for everyone and I really wasn't feeling eggs for breakfast anyway so I had the rest of the leftover chicken chili soup. And it was good!

I had to drop Justin off at the train station around lunch time and though I wasn't hungry, I wasn't sure what traffic was going to be like so I ate one of the sardines out of the can he opened for himself and had 1/2 a grapefruit with some chamomile tea.

I ate lunch around 1. It was a leftover cilantro lime chicken thigh, which I almost ate all of before I remembered to take a picture. I was feeling really lazy today and didn't want to cook. Can you tell from all my leftovers? I also ate the other half of the grapefruit.

One of the planned dinners I had was chicken fajitas, but I didn't want those flavors tonight and I didn't have Justin to cook for. So I threw the chicken breasts I had into a bowl of extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Half an hour later I put them on the grill with one of the peppers from planned fajita night and two of the zucchini I never cooked from cilantro lime chicken thigh night. I ate just about all of the large chicken breast, pepper and zucchini. The boys helped just a tiny bit. Dinner was around 6 and I wasn't hungry the rest of the night even though I didn't go to sleep until around 11.. I hope this means my body is finally switched to fat burning. Or maybe that my blood sugar levels are getting normalized.

The thing with my meal plans is that I switch around vegetables and sometimes change the meals entirely based on what is already cooked in my fridge, but I try to use what is on hand and avoid going back to the grocery store early. The temptation to get fast food was really high tonight since Justin was gone, but thankfully this challenged forced me to save money and eat in.

Whole 30 Day 3

 Today was a rough day with sugar withdrawal. Check out this post if you're not sure what I'm talking about. Princeton researchers have found that sugar can be as addictive as "drugs of abuse." Pretty interesting to think that sugar does to our brains what things like dopamine or heroine do. Anyway, today all I could think about was PIZZAAA and ICE CREAM!! There were a couple points during the day that I couldn't fully participate in a conversation because my mind kept drifting to junk food.

Besides the distraction, I had some fatigue and a headache. Doing a Whole 30 means giving up cream and my coffee has to be black. I think black coffee is pretty disgusting, so forgoing my 2-3 cups of coffee each day hits me with a bit of caffeine withdrawal as well. I am looking forward to functioning like a normal person again soon.

Breakfast was 2 eggs fried in 1tsp coconut oil and leftover cabbage fried in coconut oil. Yum.

By the time lunch came I was ravenous, so I had a gigantic bowl of chicken chili soup and about half an avocado. I polished that off with 1/2C applesauce.

This afternoon I took a couple hours to myself away from the kids before Justin leaves and walked around Barnes and Noble. I usually grab an Americano with heavy cream at the in house Starbucks, but instead I had a medium unsweeted passion tea.

While dinner was in the oven I decided to do a workout. Just felt like I needed to do something! So, I took the workout idea that my sister-in-law posted on her facebook and went into my garage-gym.

10 rounds

15 deadlifts (95lbs)

15 pushups

About halfway through I started crying and told Justin I hated working out. I was emotional from lack of sugar and frustrated that I had to keep taking breaks.. Justin looked at me, said that everyone hates it while they are in it and kept telling me that my deadlifts looked great and that I was doing a great job. After sniffing a bit, I got back into it and finished around 23:40. That time will definitely not win my any prizes, but I ended with a sense of accomplishment rather than failure and that is something to me.

Dinner was steamfresh brussels sprouts, a cilantro lime chicken thigh, and sweet potato fries sprinkled with salt and cinnamon (freaking heavenly). I also had 3 or 4 dates today and a couple cups of herbal tea. I usually drink green tea during the day and chamomile at night.