Easy Like Sunday Mornin'

As I prepare for my cooking marathon tomorrow, some have asked me why I devote an entire day to cooking.  And what it's like to plan and prepare an entire week's worth of food.

Why Sunday?
Well, usually I have nothing going on during Sundays, except for Football.  There are the occasional weeks when I need to be flexible and do more on Saturday or throughout the week, but Sunday is traditionally the start of the week and it just makes sense for me to start the week on this task.  Lots of times, I'll be cleaning while I cook and even doing homework while things are happening that allow me to multitask (like when something's in the crockpot for 8 hours - I'm not going to run errands, but I'm not going to stare at it the whole time either).

So, who does the menu planning?  And for whom do you prepare the food?
Well, I plan the menu and I cook for both myself and my husband.  He and I should both be eating a diet filled with as many nutrients as possible, but he's still eating SAD (Standard American Diet).  Sometimes, he'll give feedback about a certain food, but usually he just eats what's available.

How do you do it?  I don't know where to start...
So, for me, it's all about organization.  You can use a meal planner like the one available at SparkPeople to get you started.  Otherwise, I just have a word document that sorts out the following: Breakfast, Morning snack, Lunch, afternoon snack, Dinner, dessert.  Now, you don't have to have all 6 of those "meals", but dividing it as such keeps me on track.  And rewarding yourself with a healthy dessert at the end of the day gives me something to look forward to.

I start with the easy stuff.  My morning snack is always bone broth.  Whether I make it myself or buy it, it's static on my menu.  It's important to drink at least 16oz of bone broth every day for me because it has healing qualities.

My afternoon snack is always a fermented food (I like kombucha) and something snack-y (like plantain chips or sweet potato chips or toasted coconut).  Not sweet, because you only get 20g of fructose with AIP, but something nice that takes the place of whatever you would normally grab for an afternoon snack.

Dessert is the fun-nest part.  I swear, most of my AIP Recipe Pinterest board is made of desserts.  Some would call it sad, but for me, it's all about finding joy in what I can eat... even if a Three Musketeers bar will never again pass through my lips.

Then comes the hard part: the REAL meals.
1) I always throw my sweet potato in somewhere.  Every day, I have a sweet potato.  It's my starch.
2) Leafy greens are super important.  Make sure they're a part of at least one meal, preferably two.  For us right now, my husband and I are hoping to conceive in the next couple months.  Leafy greens are important for both of us.
3) Proteins for lunch and dinner are easy.  One should be a healthy portion of meat, the other should either be fish or organ meat.  Again, because my husband and I are hoping to conceive, salmon is supposed to be super wonderful for that process... so we'll probably have salmon every day for the next year.  Hah!  Time to invest some time in getting to know the local fish markets.
4) Now, add some more vegetables in to the meals.  You should be getting 8-10 servings of vegetables a day.  AIP rules out nightshades and beans, but everything else is fair game.  Cooked, steamed, mashed, baked, raw, etc.  My favorite thing to stock up on are those bags of "steam in the microwave" veggies.  I can eat an entire bag myself and it's like 2-4 servings.  Pair it with an AIP sauce and it's like you are just eating healthy.  No one would know the restrictions you have, maybe not even yourself!
5) the hardest step (at least for me) is breakfast.  I don't have time to make plantain waffles every morning.  I also need to make sure that I eat breakfast, since it's so easy to drink breakfast with a smoothie or green tea.  and sure, smoothies are okay sometimes, but remember that 20g of fructose rule.  It adds up.  Here's a helpful chart.



Here's my menu for the week:

Breakfast: Morning Glory Muffins (1-2 pcs) + green tea

Morning Snack: Bone Broth

Lunch: Salmon + Cauliflower mash + sauteed greens (kale and/or spinach)

Afternoon Snack: kombucha + plantain chips

Dinner: Sweet potato + steamed broccoli and "cheese sauce" + creamy cilantro lime chicken

Dessert: truffles (2pcs)



Some of these things are subject to change.  For example, we've been invited to an election night party which will feature pizza and beer.  I'll probably save my kombucha and drink that... and stop to get a bison burger at the nearby restaurant so that I can 'eat out' with my friends but not throw my efforts down the drain.  And that's the key - be flexible.  Be aware that sometimes our best laid plans will fail.  And when you fall/fail/lose sight of what you're doing, don't fret.  Just get back up.  Get back on the horse.  Don't wait to start over until the next month/week/day... start right away with the next meal or even the next bite.  You got this!