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Little House on the Whole30 Prairie


kirkor

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As some of you know, I'm working in Wyoming over the winter.  It's a very rural area.  I've done several "theme" Whole30's (see links in my signature below) and I got to thinking I'd like to do one that addresses some of the specific issues that can crop up for small town folks.

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Unique features of this Whole30:

Around here it's pretty common for families to live far outside of town on ranches, and they shop in bulk when they come in to town since it's just not feasible or economical to make frequent trips to the store.  So that set me up for the first big quirk of this "little house on the prairie" edition of my Whole30 --- a SINGLE SHOPPING TRIP FOR THE ENTIRE 30 DAYS!

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I'll be cooking and eating breakfast every day.  Yes, I, the vocal intermittent fasting proponent will be eating regular breakfast per W30 recommendations.  I start work at 7, and I usually wake up around 6, so this should still fit in with my schedule.
I will be eating the same breakfast each day.  So this breakfast feature accomplishes a few things: addresses concerns about repetitive meals, especially eggs, addresses the time/convenience concern of a "real" breakfast for a early morning worker, and satisfies the W30 rec of breakfast within an hour of waking as a test of lifestyle change for someone who hasn't regularly eaten breakfast in many years due to IF.

Menu will be repeated on a weekly basis.  I've always like the idea of "Tuesday is pot roast night", for example, and this is a great opportunity to see how that plays out.  The weekly menu will help make the single shopping trip more feasible, it will alleviate any concern of "what's for dinner" for a busy working person, it will make batch cooking easy to plan for, it will make to-go lunches easy, it will utilize leftovers fully, it will help "ladder" food across meals: roast chicken to cold chicken to chicken soup (not sure what this process is actually called? Seems like it's a separate concept from just "using leftovers")

Kitchen gadgets and utensils will be kept to a simple minimum.  Part of the Little House theme ... I'll be using a cast iron dutch oven and skillet and probably not much else.  Might do a crock pot but I'm not 100% decided yet.  No Instapot, no stick blender, no microwave.

Food will be simple and scratch made.  Related to the single shopping trip, and also related to the limited availability of specialty items that rural areas often experience, even in the age of Amazon.  No Tessamae's, no coconut aminos, no Larabars, no avocados, no Sunbutter, etc etc. Price will also be considered and I'm sure I'll end up at similar pricing to my budget-friendly Cheapskate W30.

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I'll be starting this Sunday, January 7th. Doing my big shopping trip on Saturday, and yes I'll take pictures of all the food and the receipt.

I'll update this thread with my menus and of course will keep up with photos, issues that arise, funny stories, etc. :)

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Okey dokey, menu has been tweaked!  Shopping list is made! #fingerscrossed

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Some other random thoughts:

Managing freezer space and keeping things thawed in good order might be challenging ... don't want stuff to spoil but also don't want to have a block of ice staring at me when it's time for dinner.

It's winter time here so I can't keep stuff in the garage since it's uninsulated ... might keep extra eggs in a cooler in the garage, as a compromise between refrigeration and freezing.

Did a test run of whole chicken to soup, and hopefully the quantities pan out in a similar fashion as the month progresses.  Planning on that soup for 3 lunches each week, so if it ends up being only 2 ...............??

I think I will end up using the crock pot for the roast.  Michael Landon had Karen Grassle at home to have a hot meal ready for him and so the crock pot will do the same for me :lol: (aka "Karen the Krock Pot" --- I have a history of anthropomorphizing certain useful items in my life)

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3 hours ago, kirkor said:

Okey dokey, menu has been tweaked!  Shopping list is made! #fingerscrossed

VpKgz3a.jpg

534qdJi.png

Some other random thoughts:

Managing freezer space and keeping things thawed in good order might be challenging ... don't want stuff to spoil but also don't want to have a block of ice staring at me when it's time for dinner.

It's winter time here so I can't keep stuff in the garage since it's uninsulated ... might keep extra eggs in a cooler in the garage, as a compromise between refrigeration and freezing.

Did a test run of whole chicken to soup, and hopefully the quantities pan out in a similar fashion as the month progresses.  Planning on that soup for 3 lunches each week, so if it ends up being only 2 ...............??

I think I will end up using the crock pot for the roast.  Michael Landon had Karen Grassle at home to have a hot meal ready for him and so the crock pot will do the same for me :lol: (aka "Karen the Krock Pot" --- I have a history of anthropomorphizing certain useful items in my life)

I love Karen the Krock Pot... @ladyshanny and I both name a LOT of things in our homes/lives.... sounds like we're in good company :)

Just to confirm, you're buying butter so you can make Ghee right homesteader? ;)

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1 hour ago, SugarcubeOD said:

Just to confirm, you're buying butter so you can make Ghee right homesteader? ;)

Wait for the pics, sheesh :ph34r:....................:lol:

But ya, making ghee.  The labor of that seemed more akin to churning butter or whatever they did back in the day, vs. just buying coconut or avocado oil.

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Anyways, got the shopping trip done this evening!

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Well ok that's Henry Cavill ... but you get the idea B)

 

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Couple notes from shopping yesterday:

* drumsticks were on sale, so instead of all chicken thighs as I originally planned, I got some of each. I got green peppers instead of my planned tomatoes since the tomatoes didn't look that great for what they cost.  Also I got a couple less cans of olives than I'd planned on since it seemed like too much money for the food value.

* I dunno if a delivery truck didn't arrive or what, but the veggie section was bare!! Basically nothing but peas & carrots. Well, in the store brand at least.  No cauliflower to be had though, so I got all broccoli.  Good thing I like it :)

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* Chatted with the cashier about what I was doing.  She was pleasant about it, said her daughter does a week at a time.  Couple people in the next line heard and had some nice things to say, mainly from a planning/budget perspective.

* re: keeping my eggs in the garage:

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* My haul! Yes, that's everything. Doesn't seem like much right?? Box at lower right is ziploc baggies, going to separate the chicken pieces and ground beef before I freeze it.  

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* Receipt! Yes, only $205!! And, that includes $5.50 for baggies, I got a larger-than-needed package of salmon since it was a better value, and I think I probably over bought butter for ghee (although maybe not since my yield wasn't great) ... 

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* Three of the roaster chickens were bigger than I expected, so that should work well for making soup down the line as intended.

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kirkor ~ the kids and I watched the LHOP series long ago.  

It always cracked us up when Pa comes in from a long, hard day of work, gets in bed, and Ma says, "you want some coffee?"    He sits there in bed, drinks his coffee while they chat... then they blow the candle out & go right to sleep.  

Will this be part of your LHOP Whole 30?   :D 

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So, dang, a problem with making good food is that you want to eat more of it!  It was a weird feeling last night @ dinner and this morning when I was packing my lunch --- I am eating off this roast chicken, but I'm also planning on using it in soup, and I want to make sure I have enough meat left on the bones to get 3 lunch meals out of it ... but, since it's tasty, I want to eat more! lol oh well ... this week will be the real first test, and so next week's roast chicken should be more predictable.

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So an interesting problem (challenge) you've created for yourself with the "one trip" rule!  I am almost the antithesis of that, I sort of do a cookup every weekend, but I am fond of winging it and if I get an inspiration on Wednesday, I'll go to the store, pick up any missing ingredients, and make it that night, leftovers be damned! :)  Overall I do a decent job of not getting too far ahead of myself, so I don't often have to throw out food that I couldn't eat, but I love having the freedom to modify the plan I made.  Of course, the fact that I'm willing to be a little daring with how long food will keep (as we discussed on another thread haha) also helps.

Good fun, keep us posted!

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Went 7.5 hours between breakfast and lunch today, and definitely was getting "hangry" which is something I haven't felt in a while.  Not sure if it's eating breakfast (some IF fans report that eating breakfast kind of "flips a switch" re: hunger), or perhaps I'm still coming down off too many holiday indulgences, or I'm starting to feel the lack of coffee ... likely some combination of all 3 factors.

Definitely felt like Pa after a hard day in the field!

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I kinda "knew" I was going to be out in the truck longer and elected to leave my lunch at the office, so then I reaped the whirlwind!

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Well Whole30, this morning it was a choice between SHOWER or BREAKFAST!  Aaannnnddd I chose BREAKFAST!

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Excuse the potato-quality pic, but that's a lovely egg/spinach/ghee frittata in the workhorse cast iron skillet.  Jar of ghee off to the side.

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Loving this. $205 for whole month is impressive. I've been a bit shocked at how much my grocery bills have gone up but I'm still in the experimenting with new recipes and ways to cook stage. I expect it will settle down soon but not to $205/month. 

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3 hours ago, kirkor said:

Well Whole30, this morning it was a choice between SHOWER or BREAKFAST!  Aaannnnddd I chose BREAKFAST!

UzdfLhw.jpg?1

Excuse the potato-quality pic, but that's a lovely egg/spinach/ghee frittata in the workhorse cast iron skillet.  Jar of ghee off to the side.

Good things there's a lot of open space up there no-shower boy! :P   

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3 hours ago, kirkor said:

Well Whole30, this morning it was a choice between SHOWER or BREAKFAST!  Aaannnnddd I chose BREAKFAST!

UzdfLhw.jpg?1

Excuse the potato-quality pic, but that's a lovely egg/spinach/ghee frittata in the workhorse cast iron skillet.  Jar of ghee off to the side.

Wait wait wait... shouldn't you be cooking this on a wood stove?

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4 hours ago, Vee716 said:

 $205 for whole month is impressive. 

Wait 'til we get to the end -- maybe I forgot something!! :P

 

1 hour ago, Jim4884 said:

Good things there's a lot of open space up there no-shower boy! :P 

lol ya for sure -- I was going to make a joke about how it's a good thing I work around propane since it's stinky.

 

1 hour ago, SugarcubeOD said:

Wait wait wait... shouldn't you be cooking this on a wood stove?

Should I just go full-on hunter gatherer style?

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Ok, so day begins the 2nd week, so my fixed meal plan will now be repeated!  First week worked out well.  My roast chicken for tonight is a little bigger than last week's, so we'll see how that shakes out.  Might just make larger portions.

Eggs every day for breakfast is going well.  I usually put in a splash of water and whisk them up a bit for volume.

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No planned tweaks to make. (good thing, since my shopping is already done ;) )

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On 1/14/2018 at 8:38 AM, kirkor said:

Eggs every day for breakfast is going well.  I usually put in a splash of water and whisk them up a bit for volume.

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I've been thinking about this, and I honestly think I have had eggs for breakfast every day since July 1, when I started my first Whole 30.  I haven't really been keeping track, so I've probably missed one or two somewhere along the line, but more or less.  That's a lot of eggs, but I don't get tired of them thankfully.

I can juggle, and I've been known to juggle produce, but I'm not arrogant enough to try it with eggs.  A bruised orange I can live with, cleaning eggs off of the floor is a PITA :lol: 

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On 1/4/2018 at 6:01 PM, kirkor said:

I'll be using a cast iron dutch oven and skillet and probably not much else.

Well, I'm pretty much "over" cast iron.  It's great for frying and baking and that kind of thing, but for cooking eggs? It sucks.  And for using on a glass top range? 

Double suck.

Every morning I'm dealing with this baked on residue on the glass from the pan, and dealing with stuck/burned egg leavings.  I'm not using high heat, and I'm using plenty of ghee (1.5 Tbsp!!).  This is a old well-used pan so the surface is nice and smooth, unlike some of the newer ones with the sand-type texture. But man, it's annoying.

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I think I might try keeping the heat even lower and let it cook more slowly?  My window to cook and eat is already pretty tight since I'm out the door by 6:50.

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