Day 3

Breakfast: Quick meal of eggs and peppers, makes mornings on the Whole 30 easy since eggs are simple and fast.  Though just to get the veggie mass I want for the day, I added an entire green pepper and numerous smaller and hotter ones as well.

It's Saturday here, which means it is shopping day, and a great day to buy beef, and chicken and pork and I got all three. Here in lies another way in which my Whole 30 experience will depart from the typical since buying meat for me is more like stepping onto a scene in the hit-movie Alien vs Bovine (rated EBP Extreme Bovine Peril).  Due to the ubiquitous bone shards scattered throughout the meat, we are fairly certain, though we have never witnessed this, that the slaughtering process involves dynamite.

Lunch:  Chicken, cabbage, eggs, and a rocking cilantro clavored Thai sauce that Bethany made minus the soy sauce and peanut butter (which is forbidden... what in the world).

.................dream sequence...
Dinner:  A Snickers bar, ice cream and a peanut butter birthday cake...mmm

.................dream sequence...

Dinner:  Beef Barley Soup minus the barley and corn with hot peppers (I may stop mentioning this...let's just assume I'm always having a few of these), and an entire avocado which are in season now...yes...  My magical spouse has once again conjured amazing food out of the thin air of Kalimpong.  And as usual, having three small boys in the house, I am never more than two feet away from a "sano ghadi" small car.

I almost lost it today when... I got a text advertising buy one pizza get one free deal today at Dominos.   Just so you get the picture, getting this pizza would have required 5.5 hours round trip in the car on a bumpy, monsoon struck mountain road... and I almost went. Now if a dominos opens in Kalimpong...I'm a gonner...but it's more likely that I will get my son a pet narwhal.

Day 2

Hi's and Lows:  There's a little twist to my particular trip through the Whole 30.  I live in rural India.  Now eating healthy in India should be easy.  It's vegetarian right...mostly?  Most people eat rice and lentils twice a day and drink a couple cups of chia (local pronunciation of "chai").  But there are problems.  Though the twice a week vegetable market is bigger than a football field, the variety of vegetables is actually rather small, subtract kale, sweet potatoes and add half a dozen unrecognizable items and you get the picture.  

Insights:  At the end of the day Bethany (my wonderful wife and resident kitchen magician) asked me how I was doing...good question.   I am really fine.  I am not stuffed, and not hungry.  The biggest difference I notice is not a loss of food, and but a loss of entertainment.  I think I usually eat for fun.  And let's just say I am used to having... a lot of fun.

Breakfast:  Eggs and peppers and salsa...

Lunch: pork and veggie left overs from the previous day a little less salty thank goodness

Snack:  Two little bags of roasted peanuts, an apple, a banana...and... ok that's all

Dinner: Omelet with a whole tomato lots of hot peppers with carrots and an avocado.

I almost lost it today when: I woke up in the middle of the night, and headed into the kitchen for the peanut butter and cereal out of habit... when it hit me... I was not hungry, just bored... what better to do when you're bored than eat?  Answer:  go to sleep (at 2:45 am anyway).

Day 1

Hi's & Lows:  It was a kiddy ride today as I barely noticed that anything was different.  The LOW arrived in the form of a mild craving for cereal.  The HIGH was realizing that I can and should have as many Dali Korsanis (stupefyingly hot <but not the hottest> local hot peppers) as I want.  So I bought 1/2 a kg which was probably not very clever because I can only eat one or two per meal, chalk it up to a good day for the shop keeper who is now thinking "stupid foreigner..."

dhal bhat and dali korsanis

Breakfast:  Eggs and Peppers, that was easy, I would eat that anyway.  Wanted to top it all off with a glass a milk, but didn't.

Lunch:  This was harder because I am so used to dhal bhat (rice and lentils) for lunch that I really wanted some, however this day I had pork and greens.  The only mistake was salting the pork, because the greens had been cooked by Sharmila our house helper and when she cooks, global salt prices go up.  So I think in fact it was triple salted.  Tasty... a little bit too tasty because I ate it with four peppers and paid for it with fire-mouth for two hours.

Snack:  Local roasted peanuts.  And a bananna, and an apple, and a pomegranate. 

Dinner:  Thai Chicken Salad Cabbage Burritos.  Just use your imagination.  Cabbage instead of tortillas, the thai sauce minus the soy sauce and ground peanuts instead of peanut butter, and voila.

Today, I almost lost it when:  I came across a tupperware full of muffins in the kitchen...