Hello, everyone! My name is Leslie, and I'm the blogger over at The Whole Life Balance. You can check out my blog at www.thewholelifebalance.com. My blog focuses on trying to find the balance between life and diet, specifically Paleo and the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP).

I want to give you a little background about myself before getting into the real meat of the post, so bear with me. When I was 18 years old, just about to graduate high school, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease. I “managed” it for about seven years by taking Synthroid and intermittently exercising here and there. Fast forward a few years to when I discovered the Paleo diet in December 2013. After reading up about it a bit, I thought it could help my Hashimoto's, so I tried it. I loved the peace of mind I got from following the guidelines, knowing that I was (mostly) no longer eating processed, chemical-filled junk. I eventually learned about AIP, but I didn't want to try it because it seemed so restrictive. After more than a year following Paleo with no noticeable changes to my health, I decided back in March that it was finally time to give AIP a shot and have been strictly adhering to the elimination phase since mid-April.

Strange as it may seem, my biggest dietary concern when transitioning to AIP was breakfast. What on earth was I going to have for breakfast?! At least with Paleo, I could have eggs in various ways (normally as a frittata), and I could occasionally make treats like Paleo pancakes. When I was transitioning to AIP, I was just really at a loss here. I had no idea how to replace my daily eggs.

So, when the time came to eliminate eggs from my diet, I browsed the blogosphere for AIP-friendly breakfast recipes. At that time, I only had one AIP cookbook—The Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook by Mickey Trescott. While it's a fantastic cookbook that I use frequently in my meal planning, there are no true “breakfast” recipes in it. I found some blogs with posts about breakfast recipes, and something I started doing initially was a breakfast hash. I think the first week that I had to eliminate eggs, that was what I did each morning for breakfast. I prepped some of the ingredients the night before so that the next morning, I could just plop it into the skillet and be on my merry way. While I learned that I didn't like this process for busy weekday mornings before work, I do enjoy making breakfast hashes on the weekends. Thankfully, I decided to bite the bullet one day and ordered three other AIP cookbooks, and I now have a better breakfast option to prepare for my weekday mornings.

Let's get into the breakfast hash. Really, it's a pretty quick and easy way to get yourself a satisfying meal with a variety of nutrients. At first thought, you might think it seems challenging to vary what you get while on AIP, because so many veggies seem to be eliminated—mainly nightshades (think tomatoes, peppers, white potatoes, eggplant)--but it's not too hard to find some variety. I have a fairly standard hash to which I normally conform, but I try to push myself beyond that each week. It's important to get many different nutrients from quality sources to make sure you're sustaining your body and your health. This is also an excellent opportunity to shop seasonally; whatever veggies are fresh and current to the season are perfect candidates to go right in that tasty hash.

Let me lay a foundation for you:

• Cooking fat (I love to use bacon grease...of course, from the bacon that I just cooked up for the hash)
• Meat
• Veggies
• Leafy greens

How easy is that?! You can really pull in lots of different foods while sticking to this foundation. Next, I'm going to list out all of the fun veggies and leafy greens I've included in my breakfast hashes, as well as others that I can think of AND different meats that you can pull in. But, I'll be honest: I'm in a committed relationship with bacon, as far as my breakfast hashes are concerned.

• Zucchini
• Yellow squash
• Calabaza squash
• Butternut squash
• Sweet potato
• White sweet potato
• Purple sweet potato
• White mushrooms
• Baby bella mushrooms
• Yellow onions
• White onions
• Sweet onions
• Shallots
• Garlic
• Beets
• Golden beets
• Green kale
• Red kale
• Lacinato kale
• Red swiss chard
• Rainbow chard
• Collard greens
• Spinach
• Shaved Brussels sprouts
• Bacon
• Ground pork
• Ground beef
• Ground turkey
• Ground bison
• AIP-friendly sausage
• Chicken thighs
• Stir-fry beef

There are even other things that I 1) probably don't even know about or 2) that I just haven't thought of to add to the list! Even with this list, you can see how many different combinations can be created! Just think of all of the yumminess to be had!

Following is a recipe for one of the many breakfast hashes I've created since I went AIP. I also have another recipe for a breakfast hash on my blog, which you can find in the recipe index. If you're struggling to find a path through the AIP jungle, I hope this is a starting place for you. Lifestyle changes like this seem totally crazy; I get it, I really do. But there's always a light at the end of the tunnel, and in this case, the “light” is a breakfast hash with bacon. Mmmm, bacon!

In health,

Leslie

Brussels Sprouts, Squash, and Bacon Hash {AIP}

Prep time: 15 minutes   Cook time: 8 minutes   Total time: 23 minutes

Yields: 1 hash

Ingredients

4 slices thick-cut bacon

½ cup butternut squash, cubed

1 shallot, diced

½ cup baby bella mushrooms

1 calabaza squash, cubed and de-seeded

1 cup shaved Brussels sprouts

½ tsp sea salt