Day 5

 I'm always a little sad on Sunday nights because I so enjoy getting to spend weekends with my hubby. We spent all morning in bed, until it was finally time for me to head to my first meeting of the day. For breakfast I made our usual breakfast cakes and I want to encourage you to experiment with the ingredients the way I have. The "batter" should be just slightly thinker than pancake batter (see above). If you use applesauce instead of banana, you have to compensate for the extra moisture. This is especially true if you use almond flour instead of coconut flour.The texture will also be different, depending on which ingredients you use, so play around with them. (The above cake was made with blanched almond flour and applesauce)

I got home around 3, starving, and had some hot carrots and chicken breast before my next meeting. 3 hours later, Chad and I were both more than ready for dinner. I decided to make meatloaf, sweet potato fries, and salad. I have a secret method to my meatloaf preparation that I'll let you in on... blend ALL the ingredients together. Yep! That includes the meat. It makes the texture really, really good, and even prevents you from needing to use anything (like breadcrumbs) as a binder. Here are my ingredients:

1 lb ground beef
1large egg
1 cup broccoli slaw mix or 1 large zucchini
1/2 med onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp cumin
1/4 ketchup (I use my homemade recipe)
2 tsp sea salt
fresh ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 350. I begin by blending up the slaw or zucchini, onions, and garlic. Then I add the egg, spices, and ketchup and blend again. Lastly, I add the beef. Once everything is well incorporated you almost have a meat paste. I remove the mixture from the blender and form into a loaf or individual patties. Then into the oven it/they go. I normally let it cook for about 15-20 minutes and then pull it out and top it/them with ketchup. The patties usually take about 25 minutes to cook.

While I was cooking the meatloaf I also made the fries and cooked up some chicken to use for the rest of the week. I decided not to go to the store today so I'll head there tomorrow. I'm happy to report that I over estimated the amount of meat we'd eat in a week so I can cut back a bit.