Meal Plan April 23

Today is the first day back to school after spring break. If anything ever makes me contemplate homeschooling its this day. I miss my big sassy, little sas misses her, life is not as silly or unpredictable when she is gone.

This weeks menu is using 90% foods already in our home. Chicken was on crazy sale last week and so were a lot of other odds and ends. And since Mr.Sassy was shopping with me, we stocked up, he loves a good deal and doesn't feel like he fully takes advantage of it unless the pantry and freezer is full!

Has anyone made any whole food eating changes this month? I feel like a failure but am trying to bolster my spirits, the whole 30 did not go well for us. I blame Mr.Sassy, he always manages to talk me into dessert. FAIL, majorly on my part since my 2 worst eating times are after noon after big sassy is home from school and after the girls are in bed. I cannot resist Ben or Jerry, its just not possible. Thankfully it was not everyday only occasionally. I feel more involved in my choices though and I am definitely trying to make them consciously. If I am going to eat a dessert I want it to be the best, most delicious dessert. Not just an Oreo cookie, that is NOT worth it anymore.

This week I am trying Bulletproof Coffee for breakfast so we shall see how that goes. (check it out here) Its the big thing right now in primal eating and since I am looking for some change I'm all in. Today is so far so good, the girls had breakfast and I abstained and after dropping big sas at school I came home and whipped up my first batch. Since I usually add sugar to my coffee I did add in a bit of maple syrup and honey I probably always will. So breakfast today is bulletproof coffee for mommy, we shall see how this goes over. I am hoping to last through the week but if all doesn't go well I have no problem jumping ship. It tastes amazing so why not?

Monday
B-Sunny Eggs
L-Leftover tuna and sweet potatoes (quite the combo right?)
D-Pulled pork, Broccoli, pineapple coleslaw

Tuesday
B-Pizza Eggs (this is the girls new absolute favorite)
L-Pulled pork salad
D-BBQ roasted Chicken (bone in skin on), oven potato fries

Wednesday
B-Scrambled eggs and cheese
L-Leftovers and salad
D-Creamy Chicken and Ham Soup

Thursday
B-Fried eggs
L-Leftovers and salad
D-Brats, BBQ carrots

Friday
B-Fried eggs
L-Leftovers and salad
D-Grilled chicken legs, some veggie (not really sure what yet)

Saturday
B-Coconut Flour Pancakes
L-Leftovers and Salad
D-Steak, Potato and veggies

Sunday
B-Crispy potatoes, veggies and eggs (skillet)
L-Leftovers
D-Mr. Sassy pick, sometimes I just have no creativity. Plus usually once a week we don't have whats planned and I have the extra fixings for a full meal.

Alright people, plan a meal this week. Maybe just plan a dinner or plan dinners for the whole week, even if that means you write it down on a napkin and plan in eating out, just DO IT. Make conscious decisions, over 1/3 of all food Americans buy is wasted. If you spend $200 a week on groceries that means every week you throw out $60 in food. It seems like a lot of work (it is) and a hassle (it is) but once you have all the things planned and the food bought it is such a relief to not have to worry every day about what to do.

Eating Primal

So this whole primal thing can be confusing. You might say well I don't eat grains or sugars or processed foods. You are cutting out bad fats. Which is FANTASTIC but what do you do to take that a step further, to really embrace primal eating? Mark over at Marks Daily Apple has a great article on this, plus about a thousand other articles and a book covering all this. So I will sum it up for you this best I can to help break it down and tell you what we do. Tomorrow I will break down the non food parts of this lifestyle.

Step 1: Avoid grains, sugars, processed and unhealthy foods. Even if its a "real" food like dairy and you don't feel good after eating it, AVOID IT!

Step 2: Stop being scared of real foods, butter, oils, red meat, eggs. You get the point, almost every food in history has been demonized for one reason or another. The simplest thing you can do for yourself is to eat real food, the closer it is to the way it grew the better. Eat fat, eat meat enjoy and experiment.

Step 3: Eat more protein. The average American eating an average diet tends to not meet their daily protein needs often enough. " At a minimum you need .5 grams of protein per pound of lean mass/per day on average to maintain your “structure”. If you are moderately active you need .7 or .8, and if you are an active athlete you need as much as 1 gram of protein per pound of lean mass. That’s at a minimum, but it’s on a daily average. So a 155 lb moderately active woman who has 25% body fat (and thus) has 116 lb of lean body mass needs 93 grams of protein on average per day (116 x .8). If she gets 60 or 80 some days and 110 on others, she’ll still be in a healthy average range. And even if she exceeds the 110, it’s no problem if she’s eating low carb because the excess protein will convert to glucose, which will reduce her effective carbohydrate needs (see below). At 4 calories per gram, that’s between 320 and 440 calories per day in protein. It’s not that much"
Step 4: Be wary of carbs. By not eating sugars and grains it is really hard to even come close to eating over 150 grams of carbs a day. Eating under 150 and closer to 80 is a sure fire way to keep insulin levels low and help our bodies burn protein, fat and stored fat as fuel. Sure potatoes and starchy root vegetables have a good amount of carbs and so does fruit. A medium potato has 31g carbs, an apple has 17g of carbs, 1 cup of blueberries is 21g of carbs. Even if you ate all of that its only 69 grams of carbs. The problem with carbs is twofold, one they increase our insulin levels. With the outlook being that in the next 10 years 1 in every 3 Americans will be diabetic or prediabetic this is serious. Two, our bodies will use carbs as fuel first every single time, our bodies can easily access and break down carbs and use them quickly while storing all the fat and protein we eat. Which means an hour or so later we are hungry again AND you stored away the fat and protein you just ate. That equals out to weight gain. Our bodies do not do well being overweight, we are programmed to be lean and fit. That is how we thrive and prevent disease by being healthy, ironically enough when you eat healthy your body follow suits and looks healthy.

Step 5: Do not fear fat, saturated fat and learn about cholesterol. Do run scared from bad fats. Bad? Canola, corn, peanut, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, soybean and all trans fat anything hydrogenated fats are pretty scary too. Whats left? Olive, fish, coconut, palm, avocado, walnut, macadamia, sesame seed I will add here butter and animal fats as well. Fats are an amazing source of energy for our bodies. Our bodies are made and designed to use fat as fuel.

Step 6: Try to eat more of the animal. Make your own broth or stock from animal bones. Eat liver, heart, etc. We need the vitamins and minerals associated with these pieces of the animal we usually discard. The good thing is they are generally really cheap. The bad thing is, it takes a lot of nerve to start trying it.

Step 7: Eat more seafood, all types. Avoiding the higher mercury seafood and eating not much of the medium mercury.

I think that covers the basics, I also think it helps address the "what now" when you stop eating the grains, sugars and processed foods. Start small and change one thing at a time. It can seem really overwhelming to address this all at once so start with not eating processed foods. Then move on to avoiding sugars and grains. You get the idea, do what works for you or your family. The most encouraging part of eating this way is the immediate result of feeling so much better.

Pink Slime Lunch

Love school lunches? The ease of just handing your child a few dollars, they get fed and you don't have to deal with it? Or perhaps like me you would prefer to send a home lunch but your child begs every day for hot lunch. In this day and age there is a huge "Lunch Revolution" lead by our first lady Michelle Obama, as well as one of my personal favorite people, Jamie Oliver. Standing firmly behind his idea that the American "hot lunch" is contributing to obesity and the fact that as it stands now my children's generation will be the first one to ever live a shorter life span then the generation before. They want to change this, and so do at least 700,000 other people. Check out this teacher who ate school lunch every day and blogged it.

Why though? Why are so many people speaking out against school lunch? How did this become a push button issue? Because the hot lunch program is government funded. Schools have to provide a lunch containing a magical formula of protein, vegetable, whole grains, etc. All within a very strict budget, while attempting to get children to eat it.

Its long been an American joke that the lunch line is full of "mystery meat" but in this day and age its actually true.
"The U.S. Department of Agriculture is purchasing 7 million pounds of the "slime" for school lunches, The Daily reports. Officially termed "Lean Beef Trimmings," the product is a ground-up combination of beef scraps, cow connective tissues and other beef trimmings that are treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill pathogens like salmonella and E. coli. It's then blended into traditional meat products like ground beef and hamburger patties." source .

Lovely right? This is only the beginning, think of all of those white meat chicken nuggets/patties your child consumes. that have at least 20 ingredients, some schools use nuggets with over 30. Pretty wholesome right? Good thing they count for a protein and whole grain.

How about the chocolate milk that the kids love and drink daily? Sugar, food coloring and at minimum it contains 5 added ingredients. Healthier then soda you say? Not so much, chocolate milk and sodas have almost the same amount of sugar per serving.

I have made a choice, consciously in the last four years. At first we eliminated processed foods and excess sugar, slowly this led us to primal eating. Eating primal is actually keeping Mr.Sassy off of nexium, and has all of us feeling a ton better health wise. I do not expect a school lunch to cater to this, nor do I expect restaurants I frequent to cater to my life style. What I do expect is whole REAL food that is simple enough for children to recognize and want to eat. This means no more processed food. It means more cooking and less reheating. It means standing up for our kids and choosing healthy foods that help them concentrate and learn and make their bodies feel good.

These next few weeks I am going to delve deeper into the mystery of school lunch and really try to understand what it takes to make a change. Starting with Jamie Oliver's food revolution, I want to know the details, the cost differences. Are the kids actually eating this real food? Or is it a waste of a lot of time?

Some schools -- like several in California -- have taken the matter into their own hands, and have found ways to profit from those efforts. Umpteen school districts have taken part in a decade-long initiative, supported by a philanthropic organization, that provides schools with equipments and chefs who teach cafeteria workers to cook from scratch and produce fresh meals.

Stay tuned, I think this is going to be an interesting research project!