nicole lee

It’s currently Day 13 of my Whole 30 diet, and I’m feeling quite confident that I’ll be able to complete it. Considering the range and richness of the items I’m eating, it’s really not that hard. I do miss indulging in the occasional cookie or cracker, but then I have a big bite of pulled pork, and that craving goes away pretty quickly.

Even though the idea behind the diet is not to lose weight, I did weigh myself this morning just to see if it has any effect. According to my admittedly rather inaccurate scale, it looks like I lost about 2 lbs. Which isn’t that much, really, but considering I haven’t been working out at all (except for my 3-hour long farmer’s market trips on Saturdays), it’s not that bad. I think if I eliminated the fruit and nuts from the diet, I would probably do much better.

Saturday
I got up bright and early on Saturday, and after a brief breakfast of scrambled eggs in leftover meat sauce (try it!), I headed out to the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market yet again. I spent close to three hours walking around the place because after an hour, my bags were so heavy that I had to go back to the car and unload them. And then I went back to buy more items! Next time, I’m definitely bringing a cart.

What did I get? Well, all manner of vegetables (leeks, cucumbers, zucchini, cabbage, etc.), a small basket of the sweetest strawberries ever, a couple of beef cross shanks, a whole chicken, two dozen eggs, and a quarter-pound of coffee from Blue Bottle. I also bought some glass jars from Sur La Table as food storage. So yeah, it was quite a haul.

When I got home, it was still only 11:30 a.m., so I whipped up a quick brunch for Brandon and myself with some of the fresh market items. It was scrambled eggs with salsa and spinach, Prather Ranch bacon, and some fresh strawberries.

Saturday brunch

We then visited our friends Chris and Vanessa who gave birth to a baby boy on July 4th (Independence baby!). We cooed over the cute little baby, and chatted with the tired new parents. They offered us dinner, so we stuck around for a few hours. I was going to decline since I didn’t know if the food would be Whole30-compliant, but they assured me that it was simply chicken soup with seaweed, with some salt as seasoning. Apparently it’s a Korean soup called Miyeok Guk that’s often fed to new mothers.

Chicken and seaweed soup (Miyeok Guk)

It was pretty good. I had two helpings.

After heading home, I was still a little hungry, so I combined the pork, cabbage, and a bit of leftover pork jus and made it into a soup.

Kalua pork and cabbage soup

It really hit the spot on a cold Saturday evening.

Sunday meals

I slept in on Sunday after the long day yesterday. I had more of the Kalua pork soup for brunch, and didn’t do much the whole day except watch sports and trashy TV.

For dinner, I combined a can of tuna with a bit of mayo, and rolled it up along with avocado and some lettuce leaves in a curry-flavored Pure Wrap.

Tuna and avocado wrap

I’m running out of wraps. Maybe I should order the 12-pack next time.

After that, I whipped up a batch of beef stock with the pressure cooker. I seared a couple of beef shanks, added carrots, onions, garlic, thyme, and bay leaves, added enough water to cover everything, and let it sit on high pressure for 50 minutes. Here’s what it looked like afterward:

Beef stock

Nice and beefy. I think the pressure cooker probably saved me around 4-5 hours, which is great since I made this at 8pm. I’ll use the beef stock in a few recipes this week.