Whole30 Fried Sweet Potatoes-A Leftover Creation

Sweet Potatoes are my go to veggie when I need some more carbs in my meals. We typically cut them up into fries and eat them with steak. I was to tired to cut them up last night so I ended up just rubbing some EVOO and Salt on them, wrapped them in tin foil and baked at 400 degrees for 45 minutes. They were good and satisfying. I wrapped the leftovers back up with the plan to reheat them in the microwave.

Obviously Fried sweet potatoes are already an established side dish. And not really all that hard to make Whole30 approved. But what would I be here for if I didn't tell you how to do it?

Fried Sweet Potatoes 

I sliced the sweet potato up into even slices

Had some coconut oil over medium high heat and added the sweet potato slices. Added some salt to both sides

Fried until the started to turn brown. I had to turn the heat up to high at the end because I was hungry and impatient. 

Variations:

Add sauteed onions

Sprinkle cinnamon on top

Low Carb and Whole30 Almond Fried Shrimp

Nothing beats fried shrimp, crispy french fries, sweet creamy coleslaw and hush puppies with a long island ice tea all on a Florida beach watching a sunset.

Hi! Welcome back to the real world. Living in West Texas is the driest place that I can think of. When we had a prediction of rain storms and one guy laughed and said "Rain in West Texas? That can't be right" Sadly, he was right. We had clouds but no rain actually fell. 

Balmorhea Texas State Park

Growing up in Florida and spending my college years in Alabama, beach trips were a common event. Now we are 12+ hours from the Gulf of Mexico. I'm going to have to settle with swimming pools and an occasional spring fed water hole. 

Seafood is obviously best at the beach, but thanks to trucks and airplanes we are able to have it delivered semi fresh to our stores. When Pacific Northwest Salmon is on Sale watch out at Albertsons. That stuff goes in hours! Thankfully we can still get frozen shrimp and cod year round to get us through the off season. 

Now this is an actual recipe I did purely on my own. Usually I read recipes and then tweak them to how I like it, but I felt like a real chef winging it. It was so good the first time, I had to make it again to write the recipe down to share with you!

Almond Fried Shrimp

15-20 Large Shrimp, Deveined and Peeled

1 large egg, scrambled

1/2 cup Almond flour

2 tea. Garlic Powder

1 tea. Onion Powder

2 tea. Dried Parsley

Pinch of Cayenne Pepper

Beat your egg in one bowl. Mix all your dry ingredients in another. Take shrimp and dip into the egg and then toss in dry ingredients until coated. Almond Flour doesn't stick like regular flour so the less movement the better it sticks. 

Heat some coconut oil over medium high and add shrimp into pan. Make sure not to over crowd the pan and flip after 2 minutes. If they aren't browned cook for an additional minute on each side.

I served mine up with some dill garlic mayo.

 It was delicious!

Another Whole30 Catch up: Days 23, 24, 25,26, 27, 28 and 29

Well we have already planned out our 2nd Whole30 and I'm already doing recipe planning for it so please forgive the lack of blogging and originality in this post.  I'm determined to make Bora Bora Fireballs next time, so if you try them out let me know how they were!

Also, I'm packing up to go to Mj's wedding so I did a preview for today (28) and tomorrow (29). Traveling on day 30 will be a challenge so I'll write a post when I get to my final destination to let you know how it goes :)


23
Breakfast: Coffee and Orange
Lunch: Leftover Beef and Broccoli
Dinner: Chicken Legs with Italian Seasoning

24

Breakfast: Bullet Coffee and fried eggs
Lunch : Leftover Chicken Legs
Dinner: Pork Chops with sauteed Squash and bell peppers


25

Breakfast: Coffee and veggie omelet
Lunch: Leftover Pork Chops and Squash
Dinner: Steak and Eggs


26

Breakfast:Eggs and Salsa
Lunch: Leftover Steak and Salad
Dinner: Spaghetti with grey squash


27

Breakfast: Eggs and Salsa in bed for mother's day
Lunch: Leftover spaghetti
Dinner: Steak and baked sweet potatoes

28
Breakfast: Eggs and Strawberries
Lunch: Leftover Steak and Sweet Potatoes
Dinner: Really Good Chicken and Asparagus

29
Breakfast: TBD
Lunch: Leftover Chicken
Dinner: Pork Chops with baked squash and zucchini (attempting a Paleo squash casserole)

Getting Ready to Fly with Two Kids by Myself 

Catch Up: Whole30 Days 18,19,20,21 and 22

Day 18
Breakfast: Eggs and Coffee
Lunch: Test run of shrimp
Dinner Almond Shrimp with veggie stir fry (Recipe to come in another post)

Day 19
Breakfast: Omelet with leftover stir fry
Lunch: skipped
Dinner: Spaghetti with zucchini and calabacita (grey squash)

Day 20

Breakfast:Orange
Lunch: Leftover Spaghetti
Dinner:Chicken Breast and Roasted Asparagus

Day 21

Breakfast: Eggs and Salsa
Lunch: Leftover Chicken
Dinner: Cod with peppers and onions and broccoli. (Changed the spices to dill, dried parsley, garlic powder, salt and pepper).

This is not the picture you are looking for

Day 22
Breakfast: Banana and Green Peppers
Lunch : Leftover Cod and Sweet Potato Fries
Dinner: Beef and Broccoli 

Whole30 Days 16 & 17 and a Little Bit about Salt

Day 16
Breakfast-Grapefruit, eggs and Coffee
Lunch-Leftover Chicken and Broccoli
Dinner-Grilled Pork Chops with Onions and Bell Peppers and Green Beans

Day 17
Breakfast- Leftover Sweet Potato Fries and Coffee
Lunch-Leftover Pork Chops & sides
Dinner-Steak and Broccoli

Evolution of My Salt Usage 

You know those people that can eat peanut butter straight out of the jar? You either are one of those people or disgusted by them. Well, I am one of those people but that isn't the point. I would eat salt straight out of the shaker. Just lick your finger and roll...

Publix Thanksgiving Shakers 

Well due to a variety of reasons I don't do that any more. And since I got married to a guy with blood pressure issues we limited our salt pretty strictly. It didn't really help.

Starting last year after following the low carb/paleo diets I have gotten much more adventurous with dumping a whole bunch of spices on meat at random. Husband has noticed that I have all of sudden seasoned everything perfectly. Turns out I wasn't using enough salt! I used to be worried about our salt intake but there hasn't been a raise in blood pressure since I stopped measuring. I guess I could be doing horrible damage and not know it but I imagine our sodium intake has dropped by dropping all processed foods.

I now have 3 kinds of salt in my spice cabinet. Regular Ionized Salt, Coarse Sea Salt and Fine Sea Salt.

I keep the Morton salt in my shaker and use sea salt when cooking. I love the Tones Sea Salt because its this perfect size between super fine and coarse. The Morton's fine sea salt is way to fine and it ends up making everything to salty for me. I have Morton's course sea salt but I really only use it on roasted veggies and sweet potato fries. 

The whole iodine in salt is something I prefer not to debate. I just use ionized salt 1/2 of the time and use sea salt the rest of the time. There is sugar in the Morton salt which is why I originally changed over to sea salt for the Whole30. But it isn't going to send you on a sweet beige because you used it.

I originally started to dry brine with steaks because of this article. I don't follow it exactly but we do let meat sit for about 20 minutes or longer if it is a really tough piece of meat. I usually don't wash it off because I don't use as much salt as they do in the pictures. Just take the shaker and shake until covered, you don't have to have a ton of salt piled on it for the brine to work. I pretty much do it to all red meat and pork chops. For chicken I do a wet brine. You can also do pork chops in a wet brine but I find the dry brine works well.  

Fleur de Sel

As far as fancy salt goes, I haven't ever tried any. I wouldn't be opposed to buying some but I don't think it is sold at the local HEB. Infused EVOO is my next gourmet item to try so fancy salt will just have to wait. 

Some Real Cowgirl Boots and West Texas Style

So now that I am a Texan it is time to start dressing like one right? 

Rhinestone Jeans

Before you worry, rhinestone jeans shall never touch my butt. Just so so wrong. Here in West Texas pretty much anything goes because 1. Its hot, 2. Its hotter and 3. There are people from all over the country working the oil fields so the "Texas Fashion" gets diluted. I also live in a metropolitan area of 200,000 people so its not like I'm really all that country. So long story short I'm going to wear whatever I want and what Dillard's has on sale.

Mother/ Daughter New Cowgirl Boots 

That being said, I had to buy cowgirl boots because I needed them for a friend's wedding. We are wearing these navy blue lace dresses with boots.

This whole look was not made for my mother of two build, but we do what we need to do for our friends. Even if I never wear the dress again, I will wear the boots again. I got Ariat boots since they came highly recommend by everyone I talked to. Plus they were some of the cheapest I came across so win win. While out shopping I came across some kids boots on sale. Green Beans tried them on and wouldn't take them off. She had outgrown her Payless boots so I went ahead and got her some real leather boots. Turtles will be able to wear them next so I feel like it was worth the investment of $39. Plus they will look super cute with the outfits my mom picked out for Auntie MJ's Bonanza rehearsal dinner.

Poor Turtles will be wearing something other than boots since her foot is so hard to size.

Welcome to the Fred Flintstones Foot Club Turtles

Whole30 Day 15 (Halfway!)

So day 15 was pretty uneventful because I honestly forgot it was day 15. I would have lost track a long time ago had it not been for the blog.

Brekfast-Coffee, hard boiled egg and a pear
Lunch- Leftover Cod and Veggies
Dinner-Chicken Drumsticks with Italian seasoning and Broccoli with Ghee

Southern Meat and Three

I haven't closely read the reintroduction part of the It Starts With Food, so I need to do that in the next week. But yesterday on the Facebook page of Whole30 someone talked about how to end their Whole30. Like eat a special dinner with off limit foods.

This spurred a conversation between Husband and I what would we like to add back in when we are done. The only thing I could think of was dairy products like cheese, cream and butter on occasion. I don't really miss any of that but I really don't see me never making Alfredo sauce or wedge salad again. But for day to day operations I don't see much changing. I have the paleo cookbook Well Fed and there are plenty of recipes I haven't tried yet. Everything has been really good although I have been known to tweak the spices since I'm not as big on the Middle Eastern flavors. There are also several recipes in ISWF that I haven't tried. And there are 100s of blogs devoted to Whole30 meals. Chowstalker is a good place to start. So as I get the itch to make something new I'm sure I can find something that will satisfy the itch. My goal next week it to make some chicken salad with my homemade mayo.

Birmingham's O'Carr's Chicken Salad  (the best hands down)