My Whole 30 Recipes

I don't know if there is anybody out there {besides Veronica} who cares about my Whole 30 journey, but I'm still blogging about it! 

I mentioned on Monday that I enjoyed 'bad' eating a little longer than I intended after our weekend away, and that was largely due to poor meal planning when we got home. The most important thing for me {and sometimes the most annoying part} is the meal prep. But I can tell you that I've noticed a big difference in how I feel when I'm eating clean vs. when I'm not, so I'm so excited to get back on track!

I used the Whole 30 book and Pinterest a lot accumulating recipes. I am a pretty picky eater, so a lot of recipes I found were immediately vetoed. Luckily there are hundreds, if not thousands, of recipes out there, so I've gathered a lot that worked for me and our family. My goal is to get a month's worth of recipes, I'm not there yet, but I'm still searching and saving! I thought I'd put all the recipes I've liked in 1 place in case anyone out there is looking for healthy recipes or even contemplating Whole 30!

I am not a huge mayonnaise person, but man, Whole 30 mayo is amazing. I eat it on food, as a veggie dip, in recipes. It literally takes less than 5 minutes to make, has only a few ingredients, and is delicious. The mayo is an easy way to get a healthy fat with your meals. It's also the base for Whole 30 ranch, but I haven't made that yet {although I intend to}. Here's a link for a ton of Whole 30 sauces. I am a huge sauce person!

This meatloaf was super easy and good. Next time I might blend up some spinach to get some more veggies in it. The only things I did differently were I only used 2 pounds of meat {3 seemed a little excessive} and omitted the onions {I hate them and used onion powder instead}, and I made it in cupcake tins to have individual servings - it cooked faster and made it easy to serve.

I crave this pan-fried lemon chicken. It was a little too tart for the kids, but I think I ate it for 3 or 4 meals during my Whole 30.

I found this recipe for chicken baked with potatoes and green beans before Whole 30, but it's easy to make compliant by subbing ghee for the butter. I also use fresh green beans instead of canned. The whole family loves this one.

I have 2 pork recipes from the Whole 30 book - one is for pork carnitas in the crock pot and the other was for walnut-encrusted pork tenderloin. Both were AMAZING, but I can't find online links. I can email those to anyone who might like the sound of them. {grin}

My boss recommended chicken zucchini poppers. I liked these but the rest of the family wasn't wild about them. You could too easily see the shredded zucchini, so Brent and Trent wouldn't try it. Grrrr. Next time I try this, I might try puree-ing the zucchini?

As a kid, my mom would fry salmon cakes, and it was one of the few fish dishes I would eat. I am still not a fan of fish, but when I found this recipe for Whole 30 salmon cakes, I had to try it. And they were awesome! I will admit it was kind of gross touching the fish because I had to dig around to make sure there weren't any bones, and I almost couldn't finish, but I'm so glad I did. This one is a keeper!

I will admit I haven't made these buffalo ranch chicken meatballs, but they are up next on my 'to try' list. I love buffalo chicken wings with ranch, so I'm hopeful these will be similar.

I follow @whole30recipes on Instagram. There are only a few recipes I've tried from there, but bacon wrapped chicken was a winner. I salted and peppered chicken tenders and then wrapped each tender with bacon. Then I baked at 350* for about 60 minutes in a baking dish. {I actually put on a cookie sheet and smoked out the house because the bacon grease dripped, so don't make my same mistake.} Easy, simple ingredients and delicious.

For a take on chicken nuggets, try these zesty chicken bites! Again a little too spicy for the kids, so next time, I'll cut down on the cayenne pepper, but the breading turned out so good.

There were also a lot of meals I ate that we ate before Whole 30 - I just modified.

• Spaghetti on Zoodles - I made spaghetti like normal for everyone and just ate mine on sauteed zucchini noodles. {Just make sure the sauce you use doesn't have added sugar.}
• Tacos - I ate mine as a wrap inside big pieces of lettuce.
• Hamburgers - Just ate without a bun. The Whole 30 website has a whole blog post about things you can use instead of buns, I didn't try any but I think a sweet potato bun would be yummy! You can also make your own french fries - just slice up a potato really thin, put on a baking sheet, salt and pepper, and coat with olive oil. Bake at 350* until soft.
• Chicken salad - I made this pretty much every week and ate it as breakfast or lunch a lot {including yesterday and probably today}. Canned chicken, mayo, apples, grapes, pecans, and celery - yum! I would usually eat it on spinach with a little bit of balsamic vinaigrette. Delish!

I also had plenty of lazy meals too. Planning is important, but you can't cook 3 meals a day every day without going a little crazy!

• Chicken apple sausage - there are several brands you can buy {Aidell's, Applegate, Coleman's} - I would just grill it and then eat with mayo, a fruit, and a veggie. Super easy!
• Applegate turkey pepperoni
• Lunch meat - this is tricky because a lot of them have carrageenan {a Whole 30 no-no} or added sugar, but you can find it.
• Bacon - again be careful with added sugar - I've only been able to find one brand without added sugar, Pederson's, and I've only found it at Whole Foods and Natural Grocer.

Hopefully this was helpful to someone out there! If you find anything you think I might like, I'd love some new recipes to work on my list of 30!