Coming Clean

We’re in a pretty dangerous place right now.  It’s a food rut.  That’s right, we are in a rut with our food menu, and the side effects are starting to show.  We’re being unfaithful to our usually healthy diet, instead grabbing peanut butter on GF toast, GF mac and cheese (mommy food), and other questionable items that are not staples in our diet.  It’s a symptom of a food rut.  You start stepping out on the one you’re usually faithful to.

Though we have by no means reached extreme measures, we know what happens when we get tired of the same old recipes but do nothing to change it: we crave other foods, naughty foods, foods that are less nourishing and more just addictive and something to shove into our faces.  Thankfully, our kids can’t have 90% of these foods, so D and I are way farther off the deep end than they are.  But we are sinking, snacking on gluten-free junk and aiding each other in our addictions.  I could go into a million reasons why this has happened, some which sound extremely valid, but I’m going to skip to what we’re trying to do to fix it:

New recipes:  This is the best way out of the rut.  Find new recipes that look yummy and are good for you.  This week D created a deep dish Mexican casserole that was AMAZING.  I’ll post the recipe and pictures this week.  We are trying this from PaleOMG this week. 

Cookie cutter shaped chicken:  Cookie cutters are not made for chicken.  However, when my kids started rolling their eyes at every chicken cutlet they saw, I took extreme measures.  Chicken shaped like a heart, star, or flower topped with bacon, mushrooms, broccoli, and spinach and called a sandwich?  Everyone got on board with that chicken.

New good GF products:  A very enthusiastic sample woman at Whole Foods attacked us trying to get us to buy Royitos salsa that boasted only four ingredients.  Upon closer inspection, it was actually gluten free.  And it is DELICIOUS.  It’s also very hot and you will need to have water very close at hand when you eat it.  We put the salsa on Dennis’ Mexican casserole creation, and greatness was born.  Sometimes to curb a sweet teeth, you just need to eat something so hot you can’t taste anything else for two days.  And I mean that in a good way.

The doctors are praising me for eating so much and gaining so much weight, and I am honestly doing a lot of that by means I don’t love.  I know it will stop when the girls are born and I no longer have to get grilled at every appointment about if I’m placing any unnecessary dietary restrictions on myself because, just a reminder, your kids are kind of tiny.  And I am honestly looking forward to food being a bit more straight and narrow.  The recipes and products we’re trying so far don’t make me worry that giving up dairy and GF grains and sugar (always the stinking sugar) again will be a hassle.  They are making me look forward to it.