Monday, December 5, 2016

Week Ten Recap (Thanksgiving Special)

I'm a little behind on my recaps.  2 weeks ago I completed week #10.  I tried to be extra good leading up to Thanksgiving because I wanted to indulge in a little bit of the yummy food.  I LOVE Thanksgiving foods!!
I did really well Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  I had one piece of homemade bread on Wednesday.  The kids were telling me how delicious it was all week and I couldn't resist but have one slice before it was gone.  It was really good!
On Thursday, we had a sick boy and ended up not being able to go to Thanksgiving with Jeremy's family.  We were sooooo bummed, but decided to make the most of it.  I ran to Pinterest to find yummy looking recipes that didn't have all the sugar or white flour that some traditional Thanksgiving foods had.  I figured this was a great chance to see how we can lighten up or health-ify some of the traditional foods we love without making anyone else suffer if they turn out bad.
Jeremy ran to the store with the list and the kids and I got to work prepping whatever I could before he returned.
Jeremy survived the madness of the grocery store and returned with everything we needed.  I was surprised the store hadn't sold out of some of the stuff we needed.  Hooray for that!
He smoked a turkey breast and I made mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato casserole, cranberries, whole wheat biscuits, brussels sprouts, and pumpkin pie.  Everything turned out soooooo good!  Here's what I made and everything was sweetened with honey or coconut sugar and I used whole wheat flour in the gravy:
Smoked Turkey Breast: Jeremy used a rub made up of different dry herbs and spices. He's the grill master and this turned out so yummy!  Well worth the wait for it to be done.
Mashed potatoes: I made them with real butter and whole milk.
Gravy: I used this recipe from 100 Days of Real Food: http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2014/11/17/video-make-homemade-gravy-3-easy-steps/.  I used chicken stock because I didn't have any drippings from the smoked turkey breast.
Whole Wheat Biscuits: this is also from 100 Days of Real Food (I made these ALL THE TIME before I started this 12 week challenge): http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2010/04/08/super-easy-recipe-whole-wheat-biscuits/.
Cranberry Sauce: I got this recipe from the Fixate cooking show on Beachbody on Demand (so many GREAT recipes I want to try from that show...).  It's fresh cranberries, water, orange peel, fresh ginger, ground cloves, and raw honey.  They were delicious!!
Sweet Potato Casserole: Also from the Fixate show.  I will be making this over and over and over again.  I want some right now actually... Ingredients were sweet potatoes, butter, honey, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, fresh grated ginger and chopped pecans.
The show is found here if you'd like to set up a 30 day free trial (there's also TONS of Beachbody workouts for free, as well): http://club.teambeachbody.com/.
Brussels Sprouts: We just roasted these in the oven with butter, salt and pepper.  Yummy!!
And the icing on the cake (or rather the coconut whipped cream on the pumpkin pie) was our dessert:
Food Babe's Healthy Pumpkin Pie with Coconut Whipped Creamhttp://foodbabe.com/2014/11/25/easy-healthy-pumpkin-pie/.  The filling tasted really good, like regular pumpkin pie.  The almond flour crust took me a little while to get used to.  I actually had one piece Thursday, Friday and Saturday and by Saturday I was loving it.  I preferred the pie cold (Thursday we had it at room temperature).  The coconut whipped cream was delicious, but again, it took me until Friday/Saturday to adjust to the combo of coconut with pumpkin.  I'd definitely make this again, but probably with a whole wheat crust and regular homemade whipped cream.
We had leftovers for lunch on Friday and Saturday and then it was gone and I went back to my normal no sugar/no grain meals.
I also had a couple glasses of Moscato on Thursday and one on Friday to finish the bottle and get rid of it.  =)
It was so nice to enjoy the food and get right back on track on Sunday.  I didn't have much guilt over the food either, because I was so careful about finding pretty clean recipes.
I hope you're able to try these recipes.  Let me know if you do and what you think.
Love, Kara

No comments:

Post a Comment