Today marks the end of day 4 of this Whole30, and I'm a little peeved that I'm not miraculously over craving carbs and also 53 pounds lighter. Grrr. Are my hopes so unreasonable after so many excruciating hours? I think not.
Let's jump into the long, tedious part where I talk about the meals I've made. Last night I made some pretty good chicken burgers. I mixed ground chicken with mayo, lemon juice, and lots of Penzy's Fox Point seasoning mix. It was pretty good wrapped in lettuce and with a piece of bacon on top. The chicken burger made a repeat appearance at lunch today, but this time I tried a sweet potato "bun." I won't be making that mistake again.
Tomorrow for lunch I'm trying the portabello bun, and here's a weird thing I learned. The recipe for making the portabello cap more bun-like says, "remove the gills from the portabello cap." I never in my life thought of those things on the underside of a mushroom cap as "gills," but I will never unthink it now. I just hope I don't start thinking my mushroom buns taste fishy because of the whole gill thing. While I still have two chicken burgers left, they will be relegated to lunches for the rest of this weekend.
For dinner, I wanted something different. I was craving something savory and more like something a real adult would cook. I told myself when I started this that I was going to commit to making at least one new recipe a week that consisted of more than just cooking a piece of protein and some vegetables on the side. For this week I decided on chicken marsala, and I have a Whole30 compliant recipe from Unbound Wellness. A friend turned me on to that website, and she has tons and tons of great recipes. I really like her chicken lettuce wraps as well.
The reason I told myself that I had to make at least one recipe a week that was a tad more involved is because it's a delicate balance between being bored with the foods I make and my intense dislike of cooking. I really, truly, absolutely Dislike cooking with a capital D. I hate the chopping and the ingredients and the prep. Please don't make me measure and mix. I don't want to julienne. That's why I make a lot of basic protein with side of vegetable style meals. Ingredients? forget it. Taking out the cutting board? Lord, no.
I planned ahead and took out the frozen chicken I had so it would thaw in time for dinner tonight. I got out the cutting board and knife and prepped my baby bella mushrooms. There was so much chopping, but I finally got through the carton of mushrooms so they were ready to pop into the skillet after I made the chicken. I was really on a roll, and then I opened the chicken. Uh oh. What are those thick white lines on my chicken? What is that weird white film? Why is my chicken already like rubber? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
If you guessed that half of the chicken breasts were clearly woody chicken, you guess right. I immediately knew I wouldn't be able to eat any of the chicken I opened because it was all guilty by association. I purchased this chicken from an online meat purveyor in the early days of the COVID pandemic when people panic-purchased all the food and toilet paper. I won't be using that company ever again because that's the second time I've had woody chicken from them. Ah, Fudgecicle! Now what do I eat?
Time to pop over to my neighborhood market to get some non-woody chicken, which they were out of. I looked around and saw that they had a bunch of their ready-made meals in the meat case. Ooooo, chicken fettuchini! That has dairy and carbs! Salmon with rice! Steak with buttery, creamy, dairy-rich mashed potatoes. I thought, "Well, shucks, I've been dealt the woody chicken blow. Maybe I just get a ready-made meal even though none of them are Whole30." I picked up the steak and buttery mashed potato meal. I was ready to say to hell with it, I'm eating mashed potatoes, and then I thought, "If you're so willing to give up so easily now, how far will you really get with all this?" So, I walked the meal back to the meat case, and then I bought some ground beef to make real, beefy, delicious bunless burgers. I also cooked the mushrooms and sliced half an avocado. All in all, it was a decent meal. It was no chicken marsala but it was good. And that's how things went for Days 3 and 4.
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