Lyndsie Clark

Dreams – Both Ruined & Realized

Lyndsie Clark

Whole 30 Month – Day 9, 10 & 11

The other day, James looked at the ingredients on a bag of chili pistachios that both Eric and I vetted while at Costco. He’s all, “Guys, these have sugar in them.”

“No they don’t.”

“Yeah, says right here…third ingredient…”

DAMMIT. Why you gotta ruin our dreams, JAMES? No wonder they were soo good. Well, I guess you live and learn–no more chili pistachios for a few more weeks.

And then there’s the “Unsweetened” Coconut Milk Latte from Starbucks that I got to kill for everyone. Amanda Gleeson asserted that it said unsweetened on the menu so it must be OK right? NOPE! Turns out, Starbucks uses “unsweetened” coconut milk that still has sugar in it. WTAF, Starfucks? Can you not put sugar in something for 10 seconds please?

So, I mean, I guess technically if they don’t put one of the 50 million diabetes syrups in it, then they are not sweetening it further. But also if there is little enough sugar in the coconut milk to where it doesn’t even taste sweet, then what’s the point? Poor America…you’re being played and lied to.

Back to black coffee when we’re out!

The TLDR Version

Tuesday Dinner

Wednesday Dinner

Whole30 Instant Pot Butter Chicken

Thursday Dinner

ThWhole30 Bang Bang Shrimp

The Whole (30) Story

Well aside from our dreams being ruined on a daily basis, I have been doing pretty good on this diet. Overall I feel good (except still gassy) and not overly hungry. I did have weird, bad insomnia for the past two nights but who knows what that’s from. Bodies are weird.

Day 9 (Jan 19)

We made the burrito breakfast bake early in the week so we could have leftovers for breakfast & lunch during the week and served it with salad.

And TBH there’s barely anything breakfasty about this except that it uses egg as a binder…

…like all casseroles…

…which I’m sure many casserole enthusiasts would argue are also breakfast food…IDK, I didn’t grow up in the casserole generation though I do love me a good dinner bake.

Eric’s review is that it needed some additional texture in it, like corn chips. I’m not a huge lover of the “chip crunch” texture so I thought it was fine. Though some fire-roasted corn would probably be pretty tasty in it. We also topped it with a very dilly W30 ranch.

I liked it w/o the ranch b/c James and I are meh on the condiment, preferring bleu cheese dressing which is pretty much never gonna be W30 approved. However, you could say that finding W30 ranch was a pretty big DILL to our ranch-loving roomies. YUK YUK YUK.

Day 10 (Jan 20)

I might start a fight here, but I’m still not sold on the Instapot. Yeah, it cooks things FAST which is good if you are incapable of planning dinner more than a couple hours before it’s time, but it’s also kinda unpredictable and limited on tweaking once it starts.

Also the steam release sound…yeah it’s like nails on a chalkboard to me.

However, it made fairly decent butter chicken. The sauce was a little more liquidy than I’d like, though we used arrowroot flower rather than tapioca starch so that may be why. The flavor was good even though we couldn’t use our Costco-bought butter chicken seasoning (sugar in it, I think). And the chicken breast was still dry (as I’ll always say forever. THIGH MEAT FOR LIFE, BAY-BEE!).

But I did enjoy it served over cauliflower rice which is beginning to become quite the staple around here. I miss the stickiness of regular rice, but not the bloaty feeling I get after I eat it, so…I’m hoping cauliflower rice sticks around after this month is over.

Also since today was Inauguration Day (Woo & yay!) we made fancy mocktails:

Here’s to a new, more hopeful, less racist and more environmentally-friendly future!

Day 11 (Jan 21)

If anyone tells you that you can’t have fried food on the Whole 30, tell them to go to hell. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life. But you probably do have to make it yourself so you can control what oil is in it.

We battered the skrimps in almond flour, since our local store was out of coconut flour, and fried them in avocado oil. We also added Pika Pika seasoning we got from Bonaire (man, I miss that place…) to the batter.

The potato chips we fried in canola oil which the W30 says to “limit your use of” and they were pretty good. Though, I think I’d like to try light olive oil next time as you could kinda taste the oil.

While the recipe says to coat the skrimps in the sauce, we decided to dip for a few reasons, but mostly VARIETY! (The other one was that we were not sure the breading would stay on and since James spent like an hour frying those little shits, we didn’t want to risk ruining them). We’re frying newbs, OK?

I adapted the spicy sauce in the recipe and used chipotle mayo instead of reg, no hot sauce, and added lime juice. OMG it was good, though. We also added the dilly ranch which again was “meh” in my opinion. Amanda Gleeson loved the chips though…apparently that was the crunchy texture she was craving!

The other thing we learned from frying (since we are frying NEWBs) is that after being fried, you should really spread them out on paper towels rather than piling them in a casserole dish. This way, the breading has a chance to leach out the excess oil and really crisp up.

I’ve also been super into lunch salads lately with a protein. They’re cheerful, easy, refreshing and filling. Then I can add nuts or a bar if I get snacky an hour after.

The Menu

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

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