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Health Quest – Crockpot Saves The Day

Health Quest – Crockpot Saves The Day

April 30, 2015 2:26 pm2 comments

axioWe are nearly done with our Whole30 challenge!  Wahoo!!! Gosh a lot has changed in our lives in the last few weeks.  I have learned so much and am so thankful that our family took on this challenge! In 23 days we have changed a lot of eating habits and learned that I can live without sugar (but I do miss it).  I have somehow managed to survive without eating a slice of artisan bread. and besides brownies, I LOVE a good slice of crusty sourdough bread slathered with some real butter.  Now, that’s a treat to me!

And, I have managed to go without for 24 days – as well as my beloved cup of cream and sugar + coffee.  Yes you read that right, cream and sugar plus some coffee!  I truly love cream and sugar a little bit more than the actual coffee!  I really miss that cup of warm coffee first thing in the morning while I do my Bible Study, but I don’t miss the caffeine and sugar crash a few hours later.  I also read somewhere that caffeine is an appetite suppressant.  I had no idea!  No wonder that first cup of coffee each morning kept me from feeling very hungry, I would usually eat breakfast, but not for an hour or so later once the sugar rush was starting to wear off and I needed more than caffeine to keep me going.  I realize now that the very first things I put in my body  each morning were a horrible way to get my system going each day.  It’s like I was starting off on the wrongcrockpot_horizontal foot every single day.

I sure miss coffee, but at the moment I’m loving having my all natural/sugar free energy drink, Axio, to get me going and it gives me that boost that my coffee did without the sugar/caffeine crash!  I’m still trying to decide what I’m going to do about coffee after our challenge is over, but I had a good friend tell me I should just save it for a special treat every now and then.  I like that idea!  Or I should just learn how to love black coffee as much as I love cream and sugar!  If you are trying to kick the coffee habit, then give AXIO a try – it’s guilt-free energy for sure!  The cool thing about AXIO is that all yfoodprocessorou need is water, and they come in these cool packets that you can take on the go with you!  Gosh, as I write this, I think I must be a little hungry, I sound like I’m starving!  It’s funny when I read this because, 23 days is not very long at all in the grand scheme of life, but it feels like an eternity when you are in the middle of it!

Still the hardest part is amount of cooking that I’m doing.  I’m cooking or prepping food all the time!  In fact, I was talking on the phone with my mom just this morning and she asked what I was doing and I told her that I was cooking. She laughed and said that was all I seemed to do these days!  Which is very true, I feel like I’m constantly cooking, but I am getting the hang of anticipating what we will need or when we will run out of something.  I like to have things done ahead of time (one of my silly nuances), so I tend to plan ahead and I’m getting a lot better at planning meals and snacks ahead of time and making whatever I can to have on hand mandolinbefore we need it.  The key to a successful Whole30 Challenge is planning, for sure, and not allowing yourself to stress out if you mess something up!  Planning ahead is huge – making breakfast the night before or making part of your dinner at lunchtime so you don’t have so much to do later on.

Cooking from scratch just takes longer – the prepping and the actual cook times – so planning ahead as much as possible is key!  I like that I’m getting the hang of it, because it all becomes so much faster and more fluid and a lot less stressful.  A perfect example is that I had a little bit of extra time this morning, and because the weather is so gorgeous right now, I knew that we were going to try to go to the park after school today.  Usually I have a good hour or two of cooking to do each evening for dinner – so playing at the park has not been an option for the last few weeks.  This morning I whipped out my amazing crockpot and got dinner going.  I cooked up some scrambled eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast, and then hard-boiled a dozen eggs for quick snacks.  My crockpot has been a lifesaver!  I’ll use it to cook up some extra chicken for our lunches during the week, etc.  I also love a few other kitchen appliances – I would not have survived this Whole30 challenge without my crockpot, mandolin, and food processor.  These 3 things have cut down on my prep time so much!

Well, better get to work!  So much to do now that I have all this extra energy and no food/sugar crashes. Hugs to you all!

By the way, what is your favorite kitchen gadget?

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2 Comments

  • During our Paleo challenge I too felt like all I did was cook. We did a lot of prep cooking on Sunday. Would grill extra batches of meats and veggies, bake extra chicken/beef veggie dishes. I still use that method to this day – We grilled extra veggies this weekend, I baked extra chicken one evening, made a casserole during the morning to use as dinner when needed, and even bought a rotisserie chicken to help make a quick dinner for later in the week. You are doing a great job and I’m proud of you for sticking with it!! :) Oh, and one of my favorite kitchen gadgets other than those you mentioned is my veggie spiral cutter. :)

    • Katrina

      what veggie spiral cutter do you have? I’d love one of those as well! I read on another blog to just get a Julianne Peeler and try that for making noodles out of veggies…I’ve yet to find one, but have not looked at too many places yet. I’m going to try making veggie noodles using my mandolin, but have not tried as of yet. I do have an apple peeler/slicer/corer and was hoping that I could use that for some veggies, but so far it’s not worked well. Thanks for all the info and support! You are such an encouragement to me!

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