Menu Plan Monday: Whole 30 Cleanse

First off, carb withdrawal after a mind-blowing cruise sucks sweaty monkey balls.

Oddly enough, Sunday and yesterday weren't too bad, I think I was just too dehydrated, exhausted and sunburnt to notice. Today is my first day back in the office and I have had more mood swings than a pre-menstrual teenager (Gawd, I hated those days).

Last night's dinner actually hit the spot, but that's probably because I hate a whole avocado instead of caving to the cravings.

So, what do you do when 4-course dinners are not being served to you each night and you realize you really do want to fit into your jeans again? Because you gained at least 8lbs on vacation?

I haven't weighed this much in at least three months

Go back on a strict paleo cleanse, also known as Whole 30. I actually gained over 8, but 8 is a lot easier to lose than 10. At least in my mind. I'm starting with hydration. Between the sunburn and alcohol consumption and just not drinking enough water period, I am parched. I think on Sunday and Monday alone I drank about a gallon of water. I can't seem to get enough, or green tea (thank you Panera for your delicious green tea).

This Week's Menu

Monday:  Improv Kitchen Caribbean Surf-n-Turf Salad
Tuesday: Improv Kitchen Primal Jambalaya (recipe adapted from Mark's Daily Apple)
Wednesday: Improv Kitchen Chile Verde
Thursday: B.L.A.S.T.
Friday: Stuffed Peppers - adapted to be Whole 30 compliant.

Why "Improv Kitchen"? Those are the days when the recipe is just a guideline or I seriously make something up based on ingredients I have on hand.

1 comment Menu Plan Monday, Paleo Friendly, weight loss, Whole 30

Do You Believe in Magic?

7-Day Western Carribean Cruise on the Disney Magic

It's the night before our latest Disney Cruise and this time we are hitting some new destinations. This makes me very excited. What am I most excited about? Probably the first day at sea where I plan on going on full introvert mode. I haven't had any serious downtime in over a year and the stress of it is showing to those who know how to look. After that, I will probably have enough energy to deal with all the Disney Magic ... on the Magic.

We will be exploring ruins in Cozumel, viewing sea life in Grand Cayman, pretending to be the Jamaican Bobsled team in Jamaica, and then enjoying the day at Castaway Cay. I might need a vacation from my vacation!

Tonight we are just chilling at the Hyatt in MCO. It's an awesome hotel, you don't even hear the airplanes even though we can see them taking off and landing.

View of the control tower from our room

After we had all settled into the room, we headed down to McCoy's for some dinner. Steak, burgers, and sushi. Winning all around. 

Our waiter was Fantabulous! The kitchen got Joy's order either wrong or mixed up with someone else's meal and caught it right before her plate was set down. She's been testing the limits of her intolerances, but we both know she can't have both cheese and chocolate milk in the same sitting. Lactaid just isn't that powerful.

After dinner, we did some window shopping on the concourse, got dessert, and then back to the room for the resultant food coma. First one in ... like forever. I can't believe I used to feel like this all of the time. Joy recovered first, but she had the motivation of the outdoor pool. So off we trooped to the pool. I watched Hank, Joy, and the lightning show (incredibly hard to get decent photos of, by the way). Cold water and I don't get along.

Last, but not least, what's the point in staying in a good hotel if you can't sample the room service. Apparently swimming had reawakened everyone's appetite.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Stack

Crab cake in corn chowder

Flourless Chocolate Tort

And now for the next food coma. I need like a gallon of water. Stat. We have an early morning ahead of us.

Leave a Comment Caribbean, Disney Cruise, Disney Cruise Line, Disney Magic, family vacation, Hyatt, Joy, Orlando, travel

Menu Plan Monday: Paleo Basics Challenge

Why Paleo works for me:
This week's PaleoLeap newsletter caught my eye and made it even easier to theme this week's menu.

Enter the Paleo Basics challenge.
For 7 days, starting on Monday, April 13, your mission is to get back to the heart of what eating Paleo is:

• Prepare every meal at home from fresh ingredients. Batch cooking and reheating leftovers is fine. Tossing a can of tuna over lettuce and drizzling it with oil and vinegar is fine. Grabbing a Larabar on the way out the door and calling it “breakfast” is not fine.
• Fill 80-100% of your plate space with animal protein and vegetables every single time you eat something. Yes, including breakfast and snacks.
• No Paleo imitation junk food, whether you buy it or make it at home. You can live without Paleo brownies and nacho “cheese” kale chips for one week.

Here is the quick-and-dirty Paleo 101, if you want to review."

My daughter has been fighting her food intolerances and has declared that she's tired of Everything. But a trip to the grocery store showed that she's willing to eat a little bit more like her guinea pigs (lots of Vitamin C rich fruits and veggies).

Menu Plan Monday hosted by Orgjunkie.com

Monday: Vegetable Soup and Chicken Avocado Cobb Salad (inspired by Panera)
Tuesday:  Blackened Chicken with Zoodles and avocado sauce (or I might just make guac) (anyone want to get me this little kitchen gadget?)

Wednesday: Grilled Salmon with pineapple/mango salsa
Thursday: Stuffed Sweet Potatoes (using turkey bacon)
Friday: Pecan Crusted Chicken (no breadcrumbs or egg white, ghee instead) with a spinach and cranberry salad. Or this modified Avocado Spinach Strawberry Salad.

Chicken Avocado Spinach Strawberry Salad

Leave a Comment Menu Plan Monday, Paleo Friendly

App Review: Unclouded

Description

The revolutionary tool to explore, analyse and clean your cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and BOX).

With this app you will be able to:

1 - See which files or folders are using most of your storage

2 - Know which categories you have the most (images, videos, etc)

3 - Find duplicates

4 - Know which files have been changed and when

5 - Search for files

6 - And much more..

You can also use Unclouded as a regular cloud file explorer.

All of this you can do while offline! You just have to sync the file list, and you're good to go.

Thank you, thank you, thank you +Tony Fleming  for introducing me to Unclouded! My Google Drive thanks you, and I will probably pay and use it on all of my cloud services. I've already freed up a few GBs of space and now that Google+ Photos are being (ever so slowly!) imported into Drive, I will be using it often to clear out dupes...if I can.

I just discovered that G+ renames photos if/when I add them to posts, so not only do I have the original from Auto Backup, but a renamed version from posts. Doing this visually is going to suck monkey balls. Thanks so much +Google Drive and +Google+ Photos . Guess I'll keep using my convoluted way using the desktop version of Picasa.

How do you keep duplicate photos and files under control in cloud storage?

Leave a Comment

Throwback Thursday: Easter 2007

I found this gem while trying to clean up photos.

Before it was uncool to be in a photo with Mom

Leave a Comment family, Josh, Throwback Thursday