Day 8

Company holiday today. I blissfully slept in to just before lunch. After some insanity, and a jog with the dog, I heated up my leftover Moroccan chicken from yesterday. It was still just as good!!

Today was my first real grocery day. I copied the list out of the Day 1 - 5 of Everyday Paleo and headed off to Whole Foods. 1.5 hours and $166 later, I returned home with two bulging bags. I had already missed breakfast and lunch, so I jumped straight into dinner. Dinner was a slow cooked chicken rub, which required 5-6 hours of cooking in a slow cooker. Well, I didn't have either a slow cooker or the 5 hours to wait for it to cook. So once again, I improvised. This time, I added carrots and celery (in addition to the onions). Next, I added some spices to the suggested rub: a grocery-store-bought basil garlic mix that I have and a smoked chili salt that we got at the Ferry building farmer's market -- great stuff! I mixed up all the spices and rubbed the mix all over the chicken breast (about 1lb boneless). It still had the skin on it, so I peeled that back and rubbed some seasoning under the skin too.

I put the veggies in the bottom as instructed and placed the chicken on top in a 9 by 9 cooking pan. Then I put it in the oven at 450 and set the clock for 30 minutes. At 30 minutes, I added a halved tomato that I had slightly sea-salted and let it cook for another 10 minutes. The results were fantastic! I was only able to eat half of it, so I'm looking forward to "making time" to eat the rest =)

The breakfast for today sounded really good, but I need to get a muffin pan. It would be a bigger problem if I ate breakfast more often since I'm supposed to be eating the leftovers for the rest of the week, but I think I'll stick with my hard boiled egg and some of the blueberries until I get the pan.

Meals:

• Lunch: Left over Moroccan Chicken ($0)
• Dinner: Baked Chicken Breast with Rub Seasoning (weekly expense)

Cost Breakdown:

$166 grocery bill for the week!

Ready to go in the oven.

The smoked chili salt from the farmers' market.

All done! Can't wait to eat. Look at that crisp skin...

Looking Back:

So, this is the first day of my second week. So far, I'm happy about trying this. Saturday was a little rough with the tempting pizza and beer drinking, but it worked out. I feel ready to go when I wake up and I'm happy to also be feeling energetic and clear minded. I'm still not sure if any of this is the result of my diet or how I'd be feeling otherwise.

"When do I get to try paleo?"