The Hospital Corpsman Ball (On Whole30)

If you are just getting into Whole30, I would really sit and look at the calendar and see what you have coming up over the next 30-45 days (45 allowing for reintroduction). If you have a wedding, a big event like a huge family reunion, your birthday, graduation, anything of the sort coming up, you might want to think twice about doing a Whole30 during those times. (The Whole30 books are great resources for more information on this.) We have the opportunity to go to about two or three military balls a year, and so I don't consider those events big enough, "once in a lifetime" events to stop a Whole30 for (and let's be honest, the food is never that good at a military ball). In all honesty, I did contemplate waiting until after the ball to start this round of Whole30, but in the end, I knew it wasn't a big enough deal and that I would be able to overcome the obstacles a seated dinner event would bring up!


We didn't have enough insider information on the event, so I ran through various scenarios in my head:

• There's probably going to be shrimp cocktail. I can eat my shrimp, and maybe Gene will give me some of his.
• There's going to be salad, maybe I can ask them to grab me one without dressing if they're dressed!
• The side will probably be steamed veggies and potatoes. If there's too much sauce on the meat, or if the meat is sitting in sauce, I'll give mine to Gene and take a Chomps stick with me!
• I will stay away from the bread basket! I will decline dessert or pass it to someone at the table!

I had a plan and I was ready to dominate! Just in case, though, I asked Gene if he would be too embarrassed if I took an avocado with me in my clutch! He said it was ok, and let me tell you, I crammed a can of La Croix, Larabar, a Chomps stick, an avocado, and dump ranch into my clutch. I wanted to be prepared in case there was nothing I could eat.

A note about the avocado: I sliced it, removed the pit, and scooped the avocado out of the shell. Then I put everything back together, closed the avocado up, and wrapped it in aluminum foil before leaving the house. It was easy to pop out at the ball.

Everything fit nicely into my clutch! Luckily, I travel to balls light, so there wasn't much else that needed to fit in there!

Luckily, when we got to the event, there was a spread out for cocktail hour with a veggie platter (and fruit, and cheese, and bread). The salads were already on the tables, and they already had dressing on them, so I filled an appetizer plate with cucumber, celery, and carrot sticks to dip in my dump ranch. Honestly, the salad on the tables looked pitiful anyway: iceberg lettuce with the worst looking ranch drizzled over top! I just sat there dipping my veggie sticks into my little jar of dump ranch and nobody said a word!


There never was shrimp or any appetizer course that came around, I suppose since they had the cocktail hour bar set up. While eating my veggies the bread baskets were brought out, and I wasn't even tempted by them. Bread baskets are my weakness and I usually want to ask if anyone is going to have any of the extra bread in them, but I was so set on my goals that I easily ignored their existence!

Dinner came around, and Gene signed us both up for beef. It was a big slab of prime rib, I guess? It came with a little bit of gravy on it that I was easily able to wipe off, steamed veggies, and three little pieces of potato. If you were hardcore Whole30, admittedly, you would have probably skipped the beef because of the gravy. Wiping it off with a napkin was good enough for me, though. I ate my veggies and popped out my avocado to enjoy with this course so I would be fully satisfied for the evening.

How the beef dish came to the table. Pretty good luck for having zero control over the dish!

I wiped down the beef one more time before cutting into it. 

In my mind, I was overwhelmingly succeeding at this whole event! I just kept repeating to myself that when dessert came out, I would decline or pass mine over to my husband. At military balls there is a cake, which is ceremoniously sliced and served to the oldest and youngest Active Duty person in the room. We watched all of that happen, but there was never any cake passed around to the guests! I didn't even have to worry about cake or dessert, and I wasn't even mad about it!

The ceremony cake!

I came home so proud of myself for staying on goal, for remaining compliant, for having a good time, and for not caring at all what anyone was going to think when I busted that avocado out of my clutch! Here's the thing: nobody is that interested in what you've got going on that they're up in your clutch business! Nobody had anything to say about me using my own dip for my veggies. One person made a comment when I pulled my avocado out- he said "ooooh! Watchyu got over there?!" in a joking manner, not at all expecting it to be an avocado. Nobody cared that I was doing Whole30- I didn't have to explain why I was being weird.

If you have to go to an event, be prepared! Have a mini-meal before and stuff some complaint things in your pockets or purse. Trust me, if you have to pull them out it won't even be a scary thing!