Whole 30 Breakfast Sausage

After doing strength for the last couple days, I woke up a bit sore yesterday morning.  So I turned to my DVR and did 30 minutes of Classical Stretch and I felt AMAZING when I was done.  I sometimes wake up with shoulder pain and after that 30 minutes of stretching, it was completely gone.  The woman who does the shoe kind of annoys me with some of her sayings during the stretching, so I normally listen to it with the sound off.

You would think after all these years of trying to diet and lose weight that I would be an expert at reading ingredient labels.  But truth be told, I really only look at the numbers – calories, fat, fiber, protein and carbs.  Carbs is #1 on my checklist because that’s how I manage how much insulin to take.

So with the Whole 30 you can’t have any sugar or added sugar or artificial sweetener to your food for 30 days.  I loves me some Jimmy Dean sausage – the sage one is my favorite.  But I thought I’d try to buy their all natural sausage to see if it was Whole 30 complaint.  Well, the answer to that is – no.  I forgot to take a picture of it at the store, so I had to google image it – didn’t want you to think I was trying to buy sausage that expired in 2010.

Like most store bought sausages, sugar is almost always an ingredient.  So I decided to make my own.  I had 12 ounces of ground pork leftover from the Whole 30 meatballs I made.

I hadn’t figured out how many calories the sausage patties were before I took this pic – turns out one was plenty at around 100 calories.  And while this plate is a calorie bomb at 483 calories and 32 grams of fat, this kept me full for hours – and it was delicious.  Sweet/salty – I ended up melting almond butter in the microwave and drizzled it over the top of the sliced honey crisp apple (.99 cents a pound!) and then sprinkled a couple tablespoons of pecans.  This is definitely going to be high on the breakfast rotation when I get tired of eating eggs.

I got my walking shoes on at lunch – another gorgeous day – 57 degrees and sunny.  I ended up having more Whole 30 meatballs over spaghetti squash for lunch.

When I got back to my office I saw that I had a message in my inbox in Instagram – I don’t see that very often, but was happy to see this message about my chicken legs from the night before last.  I have to laugh because this photo is taken in my awful fluorescent lighted kitchen and I used my iPhone.

I stopped on my way home to pick up some unsweetened cashew milk for my coffee.  I have to admit, so far that’s about the only thing I am missing is my flavored creamer, but I am hoping this cashew milk will be a good substitute – only 25 calories for a whole cup!

I was excited because I had premade my dinner before work in the crock pot.  I had pinned Kevin of Closet Cooking’s chicken carnitas.  Whole 30 friendly with the juice from oranges and limes.  But I forgot one important thing about my crock pot.  It tends to run pretty hot, even when I up it on 10 hours.  Suddenly around 3:30 I texted both the kids to see if either of them were home to check on the chicken.  Nope – neither of them was home.  Fuck.  Sure enough I walked in the back door and I could smell the chicken and I went straight to the crock pot and found that all of my liquid had completely evaporated (even though I doubled the amount) and I nearly burned the chicken.  How the hell do you burn chicken in a crock pot??!!

So the flavor was excellent, but it was super dry.  Bummer.  But I made a quick batch of Rick Bayless’s raw tomatillo salsa – love that you just throw everything into a food processor and you are good to go.

Not only was Hannah home by the time I was making dinner, she also was my food stylist, photographer and all around sous chef.  We listened to music on Spotify and danced around the kitchen and sang while we cooked.  I love that girl.

I ended up using the chicken to make a huge ass salad – I sautéed multi-colored peppers, and topped the chicken and peppers over chopped romaine and added cucumbers, carrots, avocado and jalapeno.  I used the salsa verde as my dressing.  I did miss my usual ranch dressing/salsa combo for salad dressing, but after I added a bit more salsa after Hannah took this picture, it was delicious and I ended up eating every single bite.  So while my day started out calorie and fat high, you can see it evened out throughout the day. 

Guess what I got in the mail yesterday??  CHEESE!  I missed an email from Cabot Cheese that they were shipping me cheese and King Arthur flour loot in honor of KAF 225th anniversary.   The theme of the loot I got is “quiche” and I got a cute note from them: “Biz, Happy Fall from Cabot Cheese and King Arthur Flour – we’re looking forward to seeing your #quichefeast creations!”

So a couple things that are not Whole 30 friendly?  CHEESE AND FLOUR!  But no worries – Jacob and Hannah said they would be more than happy to try out any quiche recipe I come up with.  I think I am going to use the same pie dough as when I made Tony the peach pie that we never got to ate.  My neighbor said it was the best pie crust he’d ever tasted.  And I know they will want onions in there too. 

Alright, time to get this show on the road – I have sweet potato pancakes for breakfast – yum!   Make it a great day!  Bring on Day 4 of Whole 30!