Dinner meal plan - August - weeks 1 and 2

Fried rice from leftovers 
Preservative free sausages with sweet potato fries and veges
Mum's rissoles with cauli mash and greens
Quirky Jo's stroganoff with cabbage noodles
Skinnymixers all in one chicken dinner
Pizza
Pulled beef burgers 
Tacos
Lasagne and salad
Beef kebabs with wholemeal cous cous salad
Beef and broccoli stir fry

Real Food, Real Life

I've been thinking a lot lately about my real food philosophy and incorporating it into my everyday life. While JERF in June was a great way to kick start optimising our family's approach to eating more real food, I'm not kidding myself that processed and packaged food won't creep back into the mix.

I am far from perfect, and motivation and organisation waxes and wanes. But remembering to eat more real food and appreciate my body instead of trashing it with too many numbers and fake foods should be part of everyday life. I'm not going to say I'll never eat processed food because, for me, that's not sustainable. I'm not, however, going to let processed food creep in to the extent it was before.

It's all about Real Food in Real Life and that's why I'll be renaming my blog. Life can't be one big challenge, but it can be a series of everyday steps to increase real food and decrease processed food in our lives. 

I hope you'll keep following Real Food, Real Life and the journey we're on to improve our lifestyle. 

Meal plans #2 and #3 from JERF in June

In wrapping up JERF in June, I realised I'd been a bit remiss in not sharing the second and third fortnight meal plans with you all, so here are my main meals below for more meal inspiration. 

Dinner:

• pumpkin soup with spelt challah
• popcorn chicken, sweet potato chips and salad
• ricotta gnocchi (I replaced bakers flour with wholemeal) with bacon tomato sauce (a recipe I made up to use up our haul of cherry tomatoes, but essentially I fried up some diced bacon and garlic, added a heap of cherry tomatoes to roast and the a squeeze of half and lemon and a handful of torn basil leaves)
• burgers on lettuce buns (spelt challah buns for the kids) with homemade chips 
• slow cooker beef korma with steamed greens
• chicken kiev with salad
• pizza and salad
• grainfree lasagne (from Quirky Cooking Cookbook)
• beef and onion pie and salad (Save with Jamie)
• sausage casserole and greens
• roast chicken and veges with homemade gravy
• leftover chicken with nyonya sauce, brown rice and steamed greens
• stroganoff with cabbage noodles (Quirky Cooking Cookbook)
• silverside with mashed potatoes and vegetables
• nachos (from mountain bread) with mexican mince, homemade salsa and guacamole 
• goulash
• butter chicken

The end of June, the start of something new

Well, that's it. June is done. We've JERFed throughout June and we've made it to this point. I'm so proud of the efforts of everyone who has participated in JERF in June. Whether it's been sticking to a completely real food diet or just introducing more real foods into their family's meals. Well done everyone and thanks for joining in the ride. 

For me personally, JERF in June has been a challenge in more ways than one. First was making it through the cravings and sugar withdrawals in the first week, second was the sudden upswing in work that saw me working 10+ hour days, then the added interstate travel and finally the challenge of managing not only sticking to real food, but also blogging about it.

But, I made it through. And I'm happy to say that our family are much better for it. A and I are both, without a doubt feeling the positive effects of sticking to real food. 

We've both seen improvements in our digestive systems, my skin has cleared up and I've lost 2.5kgs, and we both have more energy day to day. The added bonus is that we've easily saved over $100 by taking our own snacks places, eating homemade and avoiding takeaway.

One of the things I noticed post week one was that my physical cravings for chocolate and junk had gone, but my mental cravings were still there. I am an emotional eater. Name an emotion and I'll eat for it. It has been a constant fight with myself this month to not eat my feelings. I think it will be a struggle that lasts a lot longer than this challenge. But by challenging myself I've been able to resist the urge to gorge myself on chocolate or placate myself with greasy food. This is a definite win for me.

So, June is over. What happens now? For us the JERF challenge continues and my family and I will continue to JERF in July. I'll also try to keep blogging (hopefully more voraciously now that the work crisis has been sorted) and sharing tips, ideas and recipes with you. 

What does post June look like for you in terms of JERF? I'd love it if some of my readers wanted to share your experiences with JERF in June and what happens now for you.

Thanks everyone. I look forward to continuing to JERF in July with you all. x

JERF peppermint chocolate

So, I may or may not been writing this post with my mouth stuffed full of the delicious peppermint chocolate I made today. Seriously, it is so tasty. So here's the recipe to try for yourself.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup almonds
6 tbs coconut oil
4 tbs raw cacao
4 tbs almond butter*
1-2 tbs honey or maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp peppermint oil or essence
Pinch of Himalayan salt
Shredded coconut

*I made my own almond butter by whizzing up 225g of raw almonds with 1 tsp rapadura and a pinch of salt (Thermomix sp  9 for 5 minutes, stopping every 30 secs-1 minute to scrape down the sides), then adding macadamia oil (on sp 5) until it's the right consistency.

Method (thermie):
Chop almonds in the thermie  until you reach desired consistency (finely chopped, but not made into almond meal...), then empty into a dry bowl. Wipe out the jug with paper towel.

Heat up the coconut oil, cacao, almond butter, honey, vanilla, peppermint and salt - 50 degrees, 3 minutes, sp 3.

Add chopped almonds and shredded coconut and mix on reverse, sp 2 for 5-10 seconds.

Pour into a (baking paper) lined tray and pop into the freezer until set. Cut into desired size. Store in the fridge or freezer.


Method (non thermie):
Chop almonds in the food processor until you reach desired consistency (finely chopped, but not made into almond meal...).

Heat up the coconut oil, cacao, almond butter, honey, vanilla, peppermint and salt on low heat, stirring continuously until combined.
.

Add chopped almonds and shredded coconut and mix until combined.

Pour into a (baking paper) lined tray and pop into the freezer until set. Cut into desired size. Store in the fridge or freezer.

Experimenting with chicken kiev

As promised - this week I added healthy chicken kiev to my meal plan and did some experimenting to figure out a delicious JERF recipe to share with you all. So, here it is...

Ingredients

2-4 chicken breasts

Coconut oil to fry

Herb butter

100g butter

Handful of fresh parsley leaves (finely chopped)

2 cloves of garlic (crushed)

Salt 

Pepper

"Crumb"

2 eggs (beaten)

3 tbs coconut milk

75g coconut flour/arrowroot flour/cornflour

1/2 tsp garlic powder

**1 cup almond meal (optional)

Mix the butter, herbs, salt and pepper until well combined and then wrap into a log with baking paper/cling wrap and pop into the freezer to harden.

 

Pound the chicken breasts between two pieces of baking paper with a rolling pin until 1/2cm thick. (I also cut the breasts into smaller sizes to make bite sized kievs for the kids.)

Slice the butter into enough equal parts to fill your kievs and pop into the middle of the flattened breast pieces. Fold the shorter ends of the chicken in and then roll the chicken around the butter.

 

Once you've rolled your kiev, cover it in plastic wrap to help hold its shape and pop into the fridge for 1-2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees. Pull the chicken out of the fridge, unwrap and dip into the egg/coconut milk mixture, then into the flour combined with the garlic powder. Make sure it has a good coating to really get the "crumb" texture. 

**(I made mine nut free so the leftovers were daycare friendly, but if you don't need to do that, almond meal makes a really good crumb in place of the flour.)

Shallow fry the kievs in coconut oil in a frypan to brown them and then pop into the preheated oven for 20-30 minutes to cook.

Lauren's nutty toasted muesli

120g walnuts

100g macadamias

100g hazelnuts

150g almonds

250g oats

60g pepitas

70g sunflower seeds

20g linseed

20g sesame seeds

50g shredded coconut

50g sultanas

50g dried cranberries 

50g maple syrup

50g coconut oil

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Cover oven trays with baking paper. 

Place nuts in Thermomix bowl and turbo x3 (or until you reach your preferred consistency). 

Add everything else except the syrup and oil and mix for 15 seconds, reverse, speed 2. 

Add syrup and oil and mix at 37 degrees, reverse, sp 2 for 45 seconds. (If it's winter and your coconut oil is really solid, you may need to mix for longer.)

10 minutes in 180 degree oven until golden. 

You can make this in a food processor by melting the oil in the microwave first and mixing it through.

This works well with any combination of nuts, I've just highlighted our favourite combination above.