It Starts (with Food) Today!

It's finally here!  Day 1 of my first Whole30.  I am so very grateful to have others doing this with me, I think the support will be much needed :)

I spent a lot of time preparing over the weekend.  I started out by cleaning out my pantries.  There are some items that, while not Whole30 compliant, I will not throw out (tomato sauce that has sugar in it, flavored almonds...etc.), so those items went to the top cabinet and all W30 compliant items went in the lower cabinet.  I was shocked at how little was left in the cabinet.

You can almost hear it echo...

This one looks more full, but is really almost all inedible!

After that, I cleaned out the fridge and poured out any dressings/condiments that were in glass jars.  I washed the jars and lids and they are now taking space in the newly emptied pantry cabinet :)

I needed to go shopping (obviously).  So, I stopped at the Farmer's Market and got this:

I went back on Saturday for Tomatoes, Cucumbers & Bacon,
but forgot to take a pic.

Then I headed to two different Kroger locations.  First I got all of this:

Larabars are my new obsession!
The Ziploc containers were a must because I plan to have several
lunches/dinners available to be reheated at any given time.
The VitaCoco Coconut Water with Pineapple was ok, but the
plain coconut water was awful.
SCORE!  Ground turkey marked down
Finally found canned coconut milk

I seriously prowl around Kroger every chance I get looking for marked down items.  Did well at my next stop:

The bagged veggies last at least a week past their freshness date,
but Kroger always marks them down (about 50%) when they are getting
close to their date.  These are easy to carry to work and toss in the microwave
or even just eat raw.

Next it was time to prepare!  I made another batch of mayo and then turned it into ranch dressing!

Holy Exciting!  I fricken' LOVE ranch dressing!

I also clarified all of the butter in my house, but again, forgot to take pix.  Sorry!

Yesterday (Sunday), I got to work putting meat and veggies in BOTH of my crockpots!  Can you say efficient?!  First I put carrots, onions, celery and tomatoes in one of them.  I seasoned and browned my beef roast in coconut oil and then put it on top with just a splash of water in the bottom and turned it on.

Then I put carrots, onions and celery in the next crockpot and Husband cut up a whole chicken into quarters, seasoned it and dropped it in (no water needed).  Cutting it up first made it SO much easier to clean off the bone when it was done.  Also, it made a better stock.  Here's a picture of our 5 "chicken dinners" and my big pickle jar full of stock for future use:

I plan to use the "stock" from the beef roast to make a chili sometime in the next week.  I am keeping a journal each day of what I eat and how I feel.  I will probably share 5 days at a time on here.