Greek Style Layered Meat and Potatoes, by Diane

This week's dinners for week 2 of Whole30 was also found on Instagram from @thenourishinghome. Instead of using a traditional meat sauce, I used my recipe (well, our Greek friend's recipe) for Greek Meat Sauce because I have had a traditional Greek dish similar to this as a version of moussaka with potatoes instead of eggplant and I loved it. Also, this sauce could be served in a shoe and I would still eat it all, so really you can't go wrong with it. I used a mandolin for slicing the potatoes which made this come together fairly quickly. THIS WAS AWESOME. Just a good, hearty, awesome can't wait for leftovers kinda meal. Like if Cheryl and I still lived close by and had another round of Best Of this would be the entree. Make it!!

Ingredients:

4 1/2 cups meaty marinara sauce
8-10 medium Yukon gold potatoes
Dried parsley, garlic powder and sea salt for sprinkling
Extra virgin olive oil


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Lightly oil a 9"x9" baking dish (I used a 9x13). Set aside.

2. Thinly slice the potatoes using a food processor with slicing blade attachment, or carefully use a mandoline.

3. Add 1 1/2 cups of meat sauce to the bottom of the baking dish. Layer with potato slices in a single layer with the edges overlapping.

4. Sprinkle the potatoes with salt, dried parsley and garlic powder. Repeat these steps (sauce, potatoes, seasonings) to form a total of 3 layers, making sure to sprinkle each layer of potatoes with seasonings.

5. Lightly brush olive oil evenly across the final (top) layer of potato slices. Then lightly sprinkle with the seasonings.

6. Bake uncovered about 55-65 minutes, or until the potatoes are fork tender. Allow to rest 5 minutes before slicing.

Homemade Mayo, by Diane

I didn't take a photo of this because too many emotions were happening, so here's one from the blog.

This is week 2 of the Whole30 lyfe, and I decided to make a trio of chicken, egg, and tuna salads (bonus points, the chicken salad was Cheryl's Curried Chicken Salad!!). However, mayo isn't Whole30 complaint because it has sugar in it, and also soybean oil which isn't super healthy for you. So after some research I found a few recipes for homemade mayo, most claiming that theirs tasted better than storebought! The vast majority of the recipes called for avocado oil as it is supposed to make the best tasting mayo, so even though it's approximately one million dollars an once I bought it for this recipe.

As it turns out, avocado oil tastes disgusting ergo does this mayo. Which is unfortunate because it's a key player in my lunches this week. I used it anyway, and seasoned the hell out of all the salads. But, I gotta say, don't make this. Yeah.


Ingredients:

1 large egg
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon dried mustard
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup neutral-tasting oil, such as light avocado, olive, or safflower

Directions:

Add everything but the oil into a wide mouth mason jar, then add 1/2 cup oil. Let the egg settle to the bottom, then use an immersion blender until thick and blended. Add in the remaining oil bit by bit until it's the texture you want. 

Creamy Sundried Tomato and Basil Chicken, by Diane

I chose this as my dinner for week 1 of Whole 30. While the sauce was good, I had a few problems with the recipe. I didn't have a cast iron skillet, so that may have been part of it, but I had to bake the chicken significantly longer than the recipe stated (about 30 minutes more), and by the time it cooked through it was chewy and a bit dried out despite roasting in the sauce. I also had to add more salt and then some italian seasoning, and then burst the cherry tomatoes so they could add to the sauce too. Overall, this was a nice concept but the recipe didn't really come together.

Recipe by @everylastbite1


Ingredients:

1/3 cup almond flour 
1/4 tsp salt 
1/2 tsp pepper 
4 chicken breasts 
1 tbsp olive oil 
1 onion finely diced 
2 cloves garlic 
2/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes roughly chopped 
1 cup cherry tomatoes 
1 cup almond milk 
1 cup chicken stock 
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350.

2. Combine the almond flour, salt and pepper in a bowl and dredge the chicken breasts in the flour, making sure to evenly coat on all sides.

3. Heat the olive oil in a large cast iron skillet. On medium high heat, sear the chicken breasts until golden on both sides and then transfer to a plate.
 
4. Add the chopped onion and garlic to the skillet and cook for 3 minutes until the onion begins to soften. 

5. Add in the sundried tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, almond milk and chicken stock, bring to a boil and let cook for about 5 minutes so that the sauce begins to thicken.

 
6. Return the chicken breasts to the pan and place the entire skillet in the oven to bake for approximately 15 minutes until the chicken breasts are completely cooked through.

7. Once the chicken is cooked, remove the skillet from the oven and stir in the chopped basil. Enjoy!

Roasted Green Beans with Almonds, by Diane

I made these as my side dish this week for lunches on Whole30. While the ingredients here seem pretty basic, I've never thought to roast green beans (I usually have them steamed or sauteed with almonds). I was curious to try this and see how the flavors changed with roasting them- and it totally worked! These were 1000% more flavorful, and addictive! The only critiques are that they had too much garlic in them so I would use only one clove rather than 2, and that they burned in the first 15 min so I would reduce the oven to 375.


Recipe by @thewholecook

Ingredients:

1 lb fresh green beans, trimmed 
2 tbsp olive oil 
salt & pepper to taste 
1/4 cup slivered almonds 
2 tsp minced garlic

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
 
2. Spread green beans in a single layer on baking sheet, and drizzle with olive oil. Roll the green beans in the oil so each one is nicely coated. Liberally salt and pepper.

3. Bake for 15 minutes.


4. Remove from oven, flip green beans, and spread the minced garlic and slivered almonds over top.

5. Bake for an additional 5 to 7 minutes. (Keep an eye on the almond slivers. You want them browned but not blackened.)

Sweet Potato Beef Meatballs, by Diane

Get ready, because I'm about to make up for all of my barely-there posting of 2018 in the next 30 days! I'm starting Whole30, which is a program with a lot of restrictions (no dairy, alcohol, grains, legumes, processed sugars, or caffeine to name a few). This is not TOO far off from what I normally cook, but I've been so inspired by the Instagram accounts for Whole30 recipes that I'm going to try and use a lot of new recipes this month instead of my own.

This week's lunches were these Sweet Potato Meatballs. While any of my regular go-to meatball recipes are Whole30 compliant, I was intrigued by using mashed sweet potato as the binder for the meatballs. This recipe is from @wholedailylife, and it seemed fairly easy to throw together, aside from the extra steps of cooking and then mashing the sweet potatoes. I doubled the recipe so it would last all week long, and used grass fed beef to kick the flavor up. These were the most tender meatballs I've ever eaten, and the combo of spices and sweet potato kind of made them taste like thanksgiving! I will say you need a lot more salt than the recipe calls for, but these were good!

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef (or any ground meat will do) 
1/3 cup mashed sweet potato 
1 tsp each salt, dried rosemary, ground sage, garlic powder

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 425.
2. In a large bowl, combine all the seasonings with the sweet potato, then add in the ground beef and mix until combined.
3. Use a 1 oz scoop (or your hands) to make approximately 16 meatballs and place on a lined baking sheet.
4. Bake at 425 for 12 minutes until internal temperature reaches 165.

Mango Avocado Salsa, by Cheryl

What a great salsa! I made this with shrimp tacos and it added the perfect amount of sweetness and spice to an already delicious dish. Yum!

Ingredients (recipe from here):

1 avocado, pitted and diced
1 lime, juiced
1 mango, pitted and diced
1 small onion, chopped
1 habanero pepper, seeded and chopped
1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
salt to taste

Directions:

Place the avocado in a serving bowl and mix with lime juice. Mix in everything else.