Day 8: Smells of Bacon and Turkey

I would like to start by saying, “THANK YOU!” to all you wonderful people who have been following this little series here! The Journey is here because of you. If you weren’t here, we’d just be talking to ourselves. It’s been fun to read your encouraging comments and see new people sign up to follow our blog. Please contact Jessica or myself anytime if you have a question or comment or just to say, “Hey!”

And I wanted to give a special shout out to Sarah at All Manner of Inspiration. She’s doing a series called 31 Days of Favorites. Today she highlighted her favorite 31 Day series, and she mentioned this one! How sweet is that?! So, y’all need to go over to her page and say hello and see what kind of inspiration you can find. 🙂

So, today was Day 8, which means I survived a whole week of eating Paleo! And I haven’t even cheated! Wow! It’s also the day people report getting over the tiredness, crabbiness and feeling weird. I do feel like I have more energy during the day, and I didn’t feel like crashing today after lunch, which normally I do. The skin on my face seems softer. I do have one complaint, so far. And well, let’s just say that bombarding your body with fiber can be as troubling as not getting enough fiber, if you know what I mean. Hopefully this issue resolves soon.  I also noticed today how sweet my salad at lunch tasted. It was lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes and a bit of dressing with olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. (Thank you to Rhonda who shared her dressing recipe in the comments on Day 2! It’s delish!) I had some sweet potatoes at supper tonight, and they were super sweet also. Maybe food DOES taste better when we aren’t so used to the sugary stuff.

Today was about bacon, bacon, who has the bacon? OK, not really. But! If you’ve read the Whole30 guidelines, you will know that bacon is OK … IF … and only if, it does not have sugar in it. Most bacon does. I can’t say I’m a huge bacon fan myself, but I’m interested in a few more options at breakfast. I was happy to find some bacon without added sugar! It still has lots of other nasty nitrates and stuff, but since there is no sugar, it’s OK. So, I fried some bacon this morning and stunk up the house. I also over-fried the bacon, so hopefully future bacon adventures will be a little less crisp.

My other adventure today was cooking a turkey! I was feeling very domestic. We had a turkey in our freezer from one of those “buy this item, get a free turkey” promotions at a local grocery store. I like turkey, so I was happy to have some and also have some on hand and ready to go for more meals this month. I was also happy to let the turkey smell fill the house. My kids wondered what was up. “It’s not Thanksgiving!!” they all said.

I have to mention my sweet potatoes, too. They were soooo tasty! I used a recipe from Transformed by Food. It said cinnamon was an optional addition, so I sprinkled a little on about one-third of my potatoes. I liked both ways. I will caution you, however, if you add cinnamon. It will smell a little like cinnamon rolls are baking in your oven!

Today:

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, bacon and banana.

Lunch: Salad, as described above. A few almonds and some random raisins.

Supper: Turkey, sweet potatoes and green beans.