Since Just Be Kitchen opened in the spring of 2017, I’ve been so envious. At that time, we didn’t know that we’d be moving and becoming residents of Denver three short months later. However, we planned to visit JBK while in Denver for my birthday in August. Needless to say, now that we are full blown residents, I forced the hubs to come with me to JBK for our first weekend brunch.
Growing up in the middle of siblings made celebrating personal milestones hard because of the lack of recognition. So when I was finally old enough to drive, I gas’d up my car and decided to make a celebration of my own, Birthday-palooza. Instead of celebrating my birthday for one night, why not celebrate it for an entire month? Whether it means traveling somewhere, going out to dinners, bar crawling, trying new things – the options were endless. As long as I was surrounded with my people, I felt special and celebrated.
PSA ALERT FOR ALL PALEO/AIP’ers: A dairy free-clean ingredient ice cream shop exists!!!!!! Stumbling onto this ice cream shop was seriously the BEST thing that happened our last California trip.
As you know, we live in a world where using shit ingredients like canola oil (in almost EVERY good on the shelves) , aspartame (in gum), food dyes, sodium nitrates (in normal bacon, sausages, etc.), and man-made ingredients is socially accepted. Why? A part of society doesn’t 1. read the ingredients, 2. doesn’t care about the ingredients, or (and the worst) 3. can’t afford to eat better. Sure, all of these foods in grocery stores AND in the majority of restaurants have super tasty food, but are they beneficial for our current and future health? EFF NO. Okay, I’m done ranting about the foods in our country (for now) and am veering back to the true purpose….
Although Chicago has started to jump on the clean-sustainable-ingredient-restaurant wagon, the gears are still slowly turning. The main struggle I (and everyone else with food issues) have is finding places to eat out where you can trust the quality. Unfortunately, I can count the places where I can “safely” eat in Chicago on one hand — which is extremely sad. However, after much research, I learned that I can now add Range Chicago in Lincoln Park to my inventory.
Are you drooling yet? Well due to this weekend’s jet lag and major head cold, my goals for this weekend hit the dust. That also includes getting motivated to do some grocery shopping. The best I could do is whip up my meal prep for the week using most of my ingredients from the pantry and freezer. Side note, I miss eating WHATEVER I freeking wanted in Italia and NOT breaking out/getting tummy aches. America Food Industry, get your ish together !!!
Between puppy issues and being overwhelmed at work –I’ve definitely been off the grid lately. However, one thing that I have been doing is eating. A lot. Sigh. When I’m stressed, I rarely ever resort to food, it’s the opposite. However, my body has been just craving anything and everything lately. So I’ve given in.
I definitely am one of those people who say when she overdoes it, “well, it’s AIP or Paleo.” However, as we all know, too much of a good thing is not good, even if it is clean. Sigh. That’s how it’s been for me and my week long love affair with almonds. I’ve somehow managed to sneak almond products in my daily intake for the last 14 days and my skin looks like absolute hell because of it. Eczema patches on my legs, arms, and now stomach (which has never happened). Sadly, I knew right then and there that it was time to pull back on the reigns and get back on being strict AIP.
Although I love eating my liver nuggets, I decided to venture out on my organ meat excursion and try something new, beef heart. I’ve dabbled in chicken heart before at a restaurant, but never beef. After ordering it and seeing it in the actual package, it looked disgusting. So I shoved it in our freezer and ate the other proteins I fancied. However, once I bought more food to freeze, the big ole frozen beef heart stuck out like a sore thumb. I gathered my courage and let the heart thaw out….
