Over the weekend at our Kaleidoscope retreat, we performed a grocery store challenge: two teams bought ingredients for dinner and dessert respectively, then we switched roles to prepare each part of the meal for the rest of the group. While this could have been a tame endeavor, each team took the creative license to provide a little bit of a challenge to the other. The rules: you have 10 minutes and $20 to purchase the groceries; you must use each ingredient, although you are not limited to only those and may supplement with any other ingredients in the house. The grocery lists for each meal are as follows:

Dinner (them buying, us cooking): sweet potatoes ; carrots ; sweet chili sauce ; ground turkey ; coconut milk ; & one packet of chicken flavored ramen.

Dessert (us buying, them cooking): caramel apple butter ; bacon ; cherry Jell-o ; sweet pickled beets ; matzo balls (to be fair we were not kind nor did we demonstrate a great appreciation for Jewish culture).

Long story short, we all turned out to be a bunch of amateur Master Chefs, and for dinner we had the most moist (moistest?) breaded meatballs with roasted root veggies, and dessert was matzo ball cinnamon pancakes with warm cinnamon blueberry compote (disguising the pureed beets) and Jell-o shots.

I started the Whole30 today. You can hear all of my reasoning and trepidation in this audio file, but basically, doing the Whole30 is like doing a grocery store challenge except the ingredients you can use are cashews, bacon, kale, eggs, and canned tuna. And don’t even think about supplementing those with all of the different kinds of honey and marshmallows you have in the house.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Whole30 (bless you, I am sorry to shatter your innocence), it is an elimination diet that lasts for 30 days and involves eating primarily “whole” foods, with a few additional restrictions. In essence, it involves:

• no dairy
• no grains
• no soy
• no legumes
• no added sugars or sweeteners

I believe the purpose of the regimen is to identify the foods that cause adverse reactions in your body. I’m just doing it because I hate myself. The good news is I’m doing it alongside my sister, friend, boss, and a woman I just met out in California as well. Together, we are a community of hungry women just on the prowl for a few healthy fats and a fruit that tricks your body into thinking it’s having a treat.

Other principles of the Whole30 include not weighing yourself, so you don’t get caught up in that struggle and can focus on how you feel; not mindlessly indulging in anything (so no smoked salmon for me, I guess?); and reintroduction, so that at the end of the 30 days, you add each of the above categories back in and pay close attention to the way that each affects you. I’m also interested in providing a few critiques of the diet, including those based on environmental, scientific, nutritional, and social reasons.

It’s currently the end of day one, and I feel totally fine, besides a deep hunger in my body and my soul. And also I just drank about a half a pint of homemade pickle juice.

Have you done it? If you have, tell me what you think, for better or worse!