+J.M.J.+
Ethan’s parents asked what I would like for my birthday last month, and without much deliberation I said I’d love to have the new Wellness Mama Cookbook by Katie Wells.
I’m sure this comes as a shock, given my unwavering devotion to the 100 Days of Real Food cookbooks, but this new one from Wellness Mama is grain free and dairy optional, which I have been wanting to try more of to see if it helps Philomena’s eczema. We also just thought it would be fun to enjoy some of the new recipes that I have been hearing great buzz about online.
As a fun experiment for one week we ate almost everything exclusively from this cookbook, except for lunches, which I kept to our usual basic taco bowl for the sake of ease.
(You can find the Wellness Mama Cookbook here on Amazon.)
The Menu
Friday –
Breakfast – Soaked oatmeal, fresh fruit
Lunch – Tuna Salad Sandwich, Peppers and Hummus
Dinner – French Onion Soup (pg. 155), Butter-baked Acorn Squash (pg. 92)
Saturday and Sunday
Breakfast – Simple Sausage Balls (pg. 70), Berry Chia Breakfast Crisp (pg. 82)
Lunch – Taco Bowls
Dinner – Ginger-orange Glazed Roast (pg. 197), Zucchini & Summer Squash (pg. 119), baked sweet potato with grass-fed butter
Monday and Tuesday
Breakfast – Simple Sausage Balls (pg. 70), Gorilla Green Smothie (pg. 78)
Lunch – Taco Bowls
Dinner – Caramelized French Onion Meatloaf (pg. 184), Roasted Sweet Potato Salad (pg 110)
Wednesday and Thursday
Breakfast -Simple Sausage Balls (pg. 70), Angel Food Cake Smoothie (pg. 79)
Lunch – Taco Bowls
Dinner – Chicken Piccata (pg. 139), Leftover sides
On the side:
Peppers, carrots, hummus, and Chai Coconut Granola (p. 56) for snacking
Basic Supermom Coffee (pg. 276)
The Grocery Haul
The Meals
Her French Onion Soup is the *best* I’ve ever tasted, and it’s made with bone broth so it is gut healing. The squash was also fantastic with a great smooth texture and tons of flavor from the fresh parsley. (I forgot, I did serve this with Whole Wheat Bread from the first 100 Days of Real Food cookbook.)
The Chai Coconut Granola is soooo good! It has a sweet, cinnamon flavor and nice crunch from the pecans. This could easily replace sugary boxed cereal in your pantry!
The Caramelized Onion Meatloaf and Roasted Sweet Potato Salad was probably my favorite dinner. Both are simply delicious – the meatloaf is moist and flavorful, and the salad was different with a really refreshing twist on classic potato salad. These two went well together.
The roast was moist and tender and Ethan said that he has never enjoyed any squash as much as her take on it in his life. I agree!
The berry crisp is divine and would make a great brunch menu addition. Her coffee recipe is essentially Bulletproof Coffee which I have always thought sounded awful but it is *amazing!* It’s my new favorite way to make coffee at home. The sausage balls were okay, but I feel like they were a bit dry and bland. Next time I’m going to make them with actual breakfast sausage instead of plain ground pork and I think they’ll be perfect. Finally, her smoothies were good, but I still prefer my own recipe here more.
The Chicken Picatta was Ethan’s favorite meal of the week. The chicken was moist, the white wine, caper, and butter sauce was divine, and it also paired well with the leftover squash from earlier in the week.
My Final Thoughts
Overall I like this cookbook a lot. Katie includes really interesting information on her own health journey and she imparts so much knowledge about food, how our bodies process it, what to look for when purchasing groceries, and her meal planning process.
I do feel like some of the recipes took a bit more time to prepare, but part of that is simply that everything was new to me. Once I have made something a couple times it goes quicker when I don’t need to keep going back to read the next direction.
Ethan and Philomena both liked the food a lot – toddler-friendly real food recipes are just fine by me! The flavor and texture of everything was great except those sausage balls (and like I mentioned above, I think that is a matter of using different pork.)
We will definitely be putting some of these menu items in to our regular rotation, and I can’t wait to try more!
Have you tried any new cookbooks lately?
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I have tried the Forks over Knives cook book as I move towards a whole food plant based way of eating. I will check out the wellness mama book too, food looks yummy.
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