And So It Begins...

I'm Lauren.  I also blog over at www.chigallauren.com.  I'm starting a Whole30 challenge tomorrow and I decided to start a new blog to keep a record of this little endeavor.  I'm also starting CrossFit next Saturday so I thought it wouldn't hurt to document that here as well.  I've got a long story about how I ended up embarking on the Whole30 challenge and CrossFit and maybe if I keep this blog going I'll write about it someday.  For now, I'll be writing about what I eat, what I do, how I feel, and the like.  If you're interested, follow along!

I've been prepping for the challenge for a few weeks now.  I read It Starts With Food, I've been reading Paleo blogs like Nom Nom Paleo and The Clothes Make The Girl, and I bought a couple Paleo cookbooks to get me started-Well Fed and Practical Paleo.  I've been reading the Whole30 forums.  I've converted my kitchen and pantry into a Paleo-friendly area.  I've planned, I've cooked, and I think I'm ready to go.  Think being the key word.  Being prepared is going to be the key to my success, so if I can stay on the ball and do my best to be prepared, I think I'm going to do ok.

I highly recommend the cookbook Well Fed, by the author of the blog The Clothes Make The Girl, Melissa Joulwan.  She has a ton of tasty, simple recipes and advice on how to do a "weekly cook up" where you cook a bunch of stuff on the weekend so you're all ready to go come Monday.  Today I did my first true "weekly cook up", here's what I cooked:

*2 batches of Well Fed's Chocolate Chili, froze 1 batch for future use

*Roasted 2 medium sweet potatoes

*Roasted Brussels Sprouts in coconut oil then sautéed with balsamic vinegar because they were too bitter straight from the oven  

*Cut carrots and celery and bagged them in individual small plastic bags

*Diced 1 organic yellow bell pepper to throw in my eggs in the mornings (peppers are in the Dirty Dozen™, always buy organic if you can)

*Sautéed mushrooms in balsamic vinegar

*Caramelized 3 diced onions to add to meals

*Made homemade mayo, recipe from Well Fed

*Rinsed and chopped organic red lettuce for salads for the week (same thing as the peppers-go organic whenever possible)

*Made Kale chips (Nom Nom Paleo has an easy method here)

*Made pork breakfast sausage patties (recipe from the Biggest Loser Cookbook-these are spicy and the seasoning is a little off, I think they need more salt.  I'll tweak it next time I make them and report back)

*Bought 1.5lbs Applegate Farms Oven Roasted Turkey from the deli to have on hand for lunches (Applegate Farms turkey in the pre-sliced packages contains Carrageenan, a no-no on the Whole30.  The kind sliced fresh at the deli does not contain this)

*I also bought other things like pastured eggs, organic grape tomatoes, avocados, etc but I'm not going to list my whole grocery list here-maybe another week.  For now, you'll see everything I've purchased in my posts throughout the course of the week.

So that's it for my first post here at Chi Gal Paleo, I've got to get plenty of beauty sleep to keep me at my best!  Until tomorrow...