My friend Amy has a cooking show on the local public access TV station, and last month she invited me to be the guest. What fun! The guests get to choose what to make and it didn’t take me long to decide to do my “3 Meals at Once” using real food based on the Whole30 way of eating.
As I talk about in the intro, I ate “Whole30” leading up to my TEDx Battenkill talk last September at the suggestion of another friend named Hadley. She asked me if I wanted to try this thing where you just eat real food for 30 days. No junk. No preservative. No crap. I said yes. I had about 30 days before my upcoming presentation at TEDx where I was going to “de-mystify the bra.” An audience of 100 people and 3 cameras were part of the deal. The rest, as they say, is history.
Whole30 (yes, there’s no space) in a nutshell is eating whole and real foods for 30 days. Give it a google. It’s not that hard. It really isn’t.
THREE MEALS AT ONCE. COOKING WHOLE30 ON LIFE OF THE PARTY
The recipe and meal plan follows. (as does the link to my TEDx Talk on YouTube…) If you want to watch the full episode of Life of the Party and come back to the recipe later, just click here.
One of my main reasons for wanting to do this show was to show that real food doesn’t have to take a lot of time. Chopping in batches and using ingredients in different ways in different meals is efficient and nourishing. This is a plan for making Three Meals at Once. Some days, I just make two in the morning and worry about dinner when I get home. There’s a lot of flexibility in cooking this way.
As I said on the show, I try to think about what I CAN eat on the Whole30 vs. what I cannot. Basically, I eat as much meat, vegetables, fruit, and nuts as I want. (with some very few exceptions that there are “rules” on like certain beans)
All I can say is that eating this way has made me feel a whole lot better. I have less aches and pains, I feel more alert, and I’m sleeping better – talk about joy…
We are so fortunate to have local farmers who produce real food here in southern Vermont. Real ingredients are more accessible than ever via CSAs, Farmers Markets, and health food stores. These ingredient suggestions are from the dead of winter as I did Amy’s show in January. Use what is in season or what has been stored well. One of the best things about eating this way is the flexibility. You really can’t go wrong using any combination of real food.
I’d estimate this takes about 45 minutes. You are worth it.
INGREDIENTS: Local and/or organic are best, but get what you can.
Meat – your choice – ground beef or pork, shredded or pulled pork or chicken. Bacon. Chirizo.
Chopped vegetables – potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, kale, onions (always), leeks, beets, celery, etc. Again, your choice.
Ingredients for the Kale and Potato Soup recipe below adapted from The Greens Cookbook * (kale, red pepper flakes, potato, onion, garlic, stock)
Local Eggs
Ghee/Clarified Butter. (buy Ghee by the jar or melt butter and pour in a jar. The solids will go to the bottom)
Extra virgin olive oil
Herbs. Salt. Pepper.
Skillet. Soup pot. Roasting pan.
Baggies or a container to put in the freezer for your stems and such to make stock.
Heat oven to 425
Place a couple of handfuls of chopped vegetables to roast on the roasting pan. Choose whatever you are in the mood for – vegetables in the same season usually taste great together. Top with salt, pepper, and herbs. Drizzle with olive oil and mix it all up. Place in pre-heated oven. This will be lunch – roasted vegetables. (just like Barefoot Contessa makes!)
Now onto breakfast and dinner….Cook your meat in the skillet – I love using a cast iron pan. LOVE IT. Put some ghee in the pan if you need to, but some meat has enough fat on its own. Vegetarian? Not in the mood for meat? Don’t have any meat? Just skip it and go right to the onions and breakfast veggies.
In the soup pot, get the onions going for the Potato and Kale soup per the recipe below.* Follow the soup recipe while you are making the breakfast in that cast iron pan.
Take the meat out of the skillet and fry up your onion and your pick of what to include in your eggs. I happen to love sweet potatoes and kale in mine.
Add some ghee to the breakfast skillet and crack open however many eggs you want. I usually have two, but some mornings I just feel like I need three. I suggest scramble, but if you want to fry around the vegetables, that works too. Scramble the meat back in or have it on the side.
The soup dinner is pretty much on it’s way if you’ve been following the directions. It’s probably to the point now where you really don’t have to tend to it too much.
Eat breakfast. Enjoy it. Take a shower.
Remove the roasted vegetables from the oven and pack it up for lunch.
Turn the heat off of the soup pot and leave it right on the stove for when you get home.
Put those stems and trimmings in a bag or container in the freezer.
Do the dishes.
Go to work.
Rock the day.
Kale and Potato Soup with Red Chili *
(adapted from Deborah Madison’s Greens Cookbook)
One bunch of kale
3 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
½ tsp red chili flakes
1 tsp salt
1 bay leaf
4 medium potatoes, diced into ½ in chunks
7 cups water or stock
Salt and Pepper
De-stem kale and cut up leaves and set aside. Heat olive oil in a soup pot, add onion, garlic, chili, and 1 tsp salt, and cook over medium-high heat for 3 or 4 minutes stirring often. Add potatoes and a cup of stock or water. Stir together, cover and cook for about 5 minutes.
Add kale, cover, and steam until wilted stirring occasionally. Pour in the rest of the water or stock, bring to a boil and simmer slowly under a cover until the potatoes are soft, about 30-40 minutes. Add salt and a lot of black pepper to taste. Use an immersion blender or mash some of the potatoes right there in the pot with the back of a wooden spoon.
Cover the pot and let it sit there for the day on the top of the stove. (flame off, of course) The flavors will blend together. Heat it up when you get home. This soup is hearty as it is, but if you have some meat left over from the morning and want to throw it in, why the heck not?
Amy Chamberlain is chef/owner of the Perfect Wife Restaurant and Tavern in Manchester, Vermont. She’s appeared on the Food Network five times and has won numerous culinary awards including Vermont Chef of the Year. Joy Slusarek is bra fitter/owner of JOY all things underthings, in Manchester Center, Vermont. Her presentation at TEDx Battenkill was a first for the topic of bra-fitting.
