IT'S SERENDIPITY DAY

It's finally here...the day I've been anticipating for 32 days. I have had the option to eat non-paleo foods since finishing my Whole30, but I've saved myself for this evening. I even took the kids to the movies and smelled the delicious popcorn, I have opened the bag containing the left over salty-caramel dark chocolate bar from TJ's for just a sniff, and I have been tempted by gooey brownies sitting at work...but I've persevered and it's all be worth it because today is "Serendipity Day." This morning I received a text from my husband that contained this picture:

In case you can't see it...the first post on Serendipity's Facebook page states that they're closed tonight...I originally was furious...I've waited a LONG time to eat this amazing, perfectly balanced salty caramel ice cream. Then I wondered why I didn't see this on Serendipity's page when I was perusing Facebook this morning so I pulled up there page and noticed it wasn't on there...and that's when I looked closer, the post below (that the date isn't strategically cut off on) says Dec 12, 2013. I am not surprised he tried to ruffle my feathers, but I am surprised he went to so much trouble to do it! 

The last two days I've tried three new recipes that I have been VERY impressed by. 

1.) Crispy Grain Free Waffles from Health Starts in the Kitchen.  I used 1/8 cup of Palm sugar instead of the 1/4 and it was plenty sweet for me sans maple syrup and for sure plenty sweet with the syrup for the kids/hubs. I may try no sugar next time to see how those go. I also used canned coconut milk, but I am wondering if she meant to use the boxed kind. My batter was not thin AT ALL. It was way more thick so I added more canned coconut milk. They turned out delicious and super crispy. I would warn you to liberally butter your waffle iron. I don't have a fancy ceramic one (but yes, now I'm lusting after one...) and my first batch stuck pretty bad, but once I added more butter the remaining waffles had no problems. The kids tried them cold and still liked them so this was their special Friday lunch for today.

2.) Paleo Chicken Nuggets from Our Savory Life The only sub I did with this was taking out the "heavy cream" and replacing it with canned coconut milk...oh and I didn't use an egg because there wasn't one left out of the 7 dozen I bought a week ago...These were SOOO good. The boy kept saying, "mom these are better than McDonald's" so I'm going to consider this a win. I chopped up my chicken the night before which was a huge time saver. I also mixed up my spice mixture the night before so that was already taken care of. I only had about 45 min to marinate my chicken in the pickle juice (you read that right...) so I would like to see how marinating longer would change the flavor! Make sure you have some bacon grease for these, it makes them that much better. I paired this with roasted broccoli and it was a great meal that was on the table in 30 min after we got home. 

3.) Spicy Sausage and Sweet Potato Soup from Peace, Love, and Low Carb I love having close friends to enjoy life with and thankfully some of our best friends also eat Paleo and share recipes with us all the time. This is one of those and I am so glad we found it. I put this in the crock pot last night so when I got up before the sun this morning it was ready to go. I hadn't planned on it, but when I was getting my lunch out to leave for work I realized I had nothing packed for breakfast so a few ladles of soup later I was ready to go. I got lots of weird looks for eating soup for breakfast, but with a temp of 7 degrees when I got to work it was a great warm way to start the day. It'll be dinner tonight too. I would suggest to make sure you pay attention to the "drain excess grease off sausage" step. I did not and it's a little greasy. I am hoping after sitting in the fridge all day I can scrape some of it off the top before we eat it. 

Enjoy!