Day 4 of the Food Lover’s Cleanse started off with a tasty smoothie, with leftovers for lunch, and a nice dinner. And what a different dinner menu from the day before! Like night and day.
Breakfast: Raspberry milk smoothie. Originally it was supposed to be an almond-banana smoothie, but I somehow forgot to buy bananas, so I used frozen organic raspberries instead. I also used whole milk in place of almond milk. The original recipe also included a little brown sugar, but I chose to sweeten it with 2 medjool dates. It was very good – not very sweet, but that was perfect for me post-run (2 miles this morning!).
(oops, I forgot to take a shot before I took a drink or two)
Lunch: Leftover couscous; leftover celeriac-apple salad. Again, substitutions. I ate all the vegetables last night, so I had no lefovers. I did, however, have the last of the couscous, and I had forgotten all about that cleriac-apple salad! So, I had some of that. Mizuna has been hard to find, so I simply chose to forgo the mizuna salad.
My snack today is a cup of genmaicha, green tea with toasted brown rice.
Dinner: Pan-roasted chicken with persillade; endives, apples and grapes; roasted sweet potatoes. This was an amazing meal (I’m sorry I didn’t make the salad, though). The chicken was perfectly cooked and that parsley-garlic mix gave great flavor. Next time I’ll plan further ahead and do it with a chicken breast on the bone with the skin (all I could find was boneless skinless breasts). The endives roasted with apples and grapes in butter with rosemary was simply amazing. Rich and succulent, it seemed the embodiment of a winter meal. Along with it was roasted sweet potatoes, one of my favorite winter foods.
I’ll be away from the cleanse for dinner tomorrow due to the business meeting. Friday night may also be a bust, but we’ll see.
I have to say, the food has been amazing and I’ve been having a great time with this program!
Ah, I’ve tried to post a comment in the past and it hasn’t worked from this location. This is a suprise!
I’m very awed by your dedication to this cleanse. From what I’ve read so far I haven’t even heard of half of the stuff you’ve cooked 🙂 Your expertise around a kitchen/shopping is inspiring.
I am not sure that you have an answer but as a single parent, attending school, two small children, working full time, I just don’t know how to make the transition to eating differently when I need food with little or no prep and I can’t afford foods that I might make that I don’t care for. I have not reached the point of kitchen prowess to make substitutions and also the paring down of quantities for what amounts to serving barely 2 adults.
hennifer, thank you so much for your kinds words. To be honest, some of the things I’ve cooked I hadn’t heard of before, either! The Japanese recipes (except miso soup) were especially foreign to me, and it took some concentration to understand the recipe. I studied the recipes at lunch while eating at my desk.
Since, I’m not a parent (T and I are kitty mom and dad, but that’s it), I don’t want to even imply that I can relate to the demands of parenthood. I know it takes a lot of mental along with physical energy, though, to raise a kid, and it can be very tiring. The closest thing I’ve been to that is 4 years of grad school with 12-14 hour days.
I think as far as transitioning to a different – whatever your ideal is – way of eating is baby steps. I started really cooking in earnest in the late 90s, so I have many years under my belt of trying stuff, one thing at a time. Trying things – flavors and techniques – is good, of course within your budget. There will be some things that bomb, there’s no getting around it, but you learn from that. I was also very poor when I started cooking – I gave myself $25/week as a budget for food. I definitely learned how to be creative!
Loving leftovers is also key – I ate that couscous dish for like 4 meals this week, and that was ok, plus it was a super time saver. Also, your freezer can be your friend – when you do have time, you can cook up a batch of stuff, freeze and then defrost, which is easy and a time saver. So, that means paring down quantities isn’t always necessary. But when you do want to pare down, simply halving a recipe works.
As for the recipes in this cleanse so far, the easiest ones have been the smoothies, miso soup, roasted sweet potatoes, the endive-apple-grape dish, the chicken and the crudites. I was shocked at how delicious the raw veggies dipped in that vinaigrette was. Plus that vinaigrette was made in a jar, so just dump in the ingredients and shake! The chicken was also shockingly easy – salt and pepper the breasts, brown them in a pan, shove it in the oven, then sprinkle with chopped parley and garlic when it comes out. Let it cool for a couple of minutes. Eat.
As far as the shopping, I had to break it up into 4-5 different shopping trips, which was not my ideal. If I had a car it would be different, but I don’t. I can only carry so much.
One way to start on the path of transitioning to a different way of eating, is noting what flavors you like. Do you like bitter, sweet, salty, or sour tastes? Textures, too – do you like soft, firm, fibrous, or creamy? There is a book called The Flavor Bible, which basically lists flavors/ingredients that go well together. Like butternut squash and thyme; tomatoes and basil; potatoes and rosemary; broccoli and lemon; beef and onions; chocolate and orange, that kind of thing. That way, you can actually make up recipes based on the flavors you want to eat!
Feel free to email me if you want to discuss this in more depth, or you we can have a public discussion here, too – I’m open. 🙂