Day 3 of the Food Lover’s Cleanse went well! I started out using the set schedule, with a two egg omelet with caramelized onions. I finished it with some of the wonderful paprika salt from my friends at Gardenfreude. I love this salt – it is my favorite of the herb salts they prepare. It has an earthy sweetness that I find irresistible.
I found this omelet to be pretty filling, so I wanted something light for lunch. So I chose to eat Day 2’s snack for lunch, along with half an avocado with meyer lemon juice. Pictured are CSA apples, AkMak crackers with VT chevre, kalamata olives, and slices of spicy pork sausage. It was perfect! I think my favorite flavor combination was the sausage and apple.
Dinner was the beet soup and the salmon from Day 2’s dinner. Now, I was hesitant when I saw the 5 Spice Beet Soup as part of the menu – last year it was there and I found it lacking in flavor. I had to doctor it up with extra spices and everything. Well, this year something changed – likely, it’s my taste buds. I loved the soup this year!
This is a dreamy shot taken over the cooking pot of the beets and onions (steam adds to the unfocused visual). It had plenty of ginger in it, too. I upped the 5 spice powder to 1/2 a tsp to make it a little spicier. It was perfect with some plain yogurt on top.
I also pan roasted salmon and topped it with an amazing pepita-cilantro pesto. This recipe is a total keeper, and the recipe can be found here. It went really well with the salmon, and it was so good I could eat it with a spoon (that’s just what I did, too).
The salmon is, of course, the beautiful sockeye fished by the Iliamna Fish Company, that I get via my salmon CSA each year. I’m sad that I only have one filet left! It’s really excellent fish.
Dessert was pomegranate seeds! I pulled apart an entire pomegranate, resulting in really red finger tips. I love pomegranate seeds.
As far as Day 4 of the Food Lover’s Cleanse goes, it didn’t. With the 80/20 approach in mind, it was a full on 20. However, I had great fun all day – met an old friend from grad school visiting from Berlin for breakfast at Astor Bake Shop (egg, cheese, and bacon on a house baked portuguese roll with coffee), then more coffee later at Martha’s (most of a small serving of banana pudding) with friends, where we talked about traditional foods, organ meats, raw dairy, and the like. So fun!
T brought home Chipotle that night, so I had a little brown rice-chicken-guacamole action for dinner. No dessert (I had that pudding earlier). Perhaps it wasn’t the healthiest day of food, but I was delighted to see how my desire and tolerance for sweets has already decreased substantially. Plus I chopped off my hair (so refreshing).
More on Day 5 in an upcoming post.
