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Food Lover’s Cleanse – The Final Days

The last days of the Food Lover’s Cleanse were scattered, but such is life.  I was able to prepare some of the dishes despite the demands of the week, and for that I’m happy.

Day 11 started not with the compote, but steel cut oats.

I took some cues from similar previous breakfast dishes, and added chopped pecans, currants, cinnamon and chia seeds to the oats, topped with raw milk.  It was pretty good!  I eat a lot of oatmeal in the winter, so I’ll definitely be doing more creative things with it.

Dinner was actually the content of Day 5, and the results were… disappointing.  The menu was beet soup, warm escarole salad, and hanger steak.  This was probably the least successful menu of the cleanse for me.

First, I left out the ginger in the soup, thinking one of my dinner guests hated ginger, but I was wrong – she is ok with it, so without it, it tasted a bit lackluster.  I doctored it up with five times the 5 spice powder, a tablespoon of butter, and a few tablespoons of red wine.  It turned out ok, but not great.

I’d definitely add the ginger next time.

The escarole salad was probably the most successful element of the dinner – I loved the addition of the dijon mustard to the shallot vinaigrette I already had on hand.  It helped ameliorate the bitterness of the escarole, too.  It’s not a very pretty dish, and I forgot to take a picture.

Cooking the hanger steak also proved quite daunting – my first go around yielded a very rare steak.  We cooked it a couple times more to get it to medium, a process which is just too funky.  I have a lot to learn about cooking a steak, and blame my 13 years as a vegetarian for the lack of skills in this area.

So, after asking for steak cooking tips (I got some great ones!) on Facebook, a friend invited me into their home on Friday and taught me how to do it right.  I learned a lot and look forward to the next time I have the opportunity to cook one.  I will say – both times, the hanger steak had great beefy flavor.  Definitely one of my favorite cuts of beef.

Thursday and Friday were kind of off as far as the cleanse goes, but I did manage to have a healthy smoked salmon and chevre omelet on Thursday night, and as I mentioned above, my friend taught me how to cook a steak Friday night.

Oh, and Thursday morning I prepared the coconut oat pilaf, which I just did not care for – savory oatmeal, to me, is just the oddest thing, and I find it hard to get my head around the concept.  To me, oatmeal is always on the sweet side.  I ended up eating it with a little maple syrup and raw cream.  Odd, but it made the whole thing more palatable.

Saturday morning, I prepared the garam masala tofu dish for brunch, but substituted pastured eggs for the tofu.  It worked out really well!  I was dubious at first – dried cranberries in eggs?  It worked, and worked well.

I split Day 14‘s dinner into two meals.  Saturday night I made the curry – substituting sweet potatoes (I have a ton of them right now) for the squash, as well as using full fat coconut milk and coconut oil.  Really great dish, and raw yogurt on top is a perfect accompaniment.  The recipe made a lot of food, so I was able to have it again tonight along with the cumin cilantro chicken, which was fabulous.  Marinating boneless skinless chicken breasts for an extended time in yogurt seems to work really well as a tenderizer.

I also loved that I shared the final meal of the cleanse with friends.  I definitely want to cook more for friends this year.

So this is the end of the Food Lover’s Cleanse!  I’ve really enjoyed these past couple of weeks, and have learned a lot along the way.  I’ll write a wrap up in the next couple of days, with my sentiments and observations on the whole process.

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Omelet – a Quick and Delicious Dinner

omelette

I don’t remember how I came up with this dish, but it was probably inspired by having a bunch of leftovers combined with my love of eggs. Basically, “omelet”, as I call it, is vegetables and meat sauteed in a pan, topped with uncooked scrambled eggs and cheese, and steamed until the eggs are cooked through. It doesn’t sound exotic or fancy, and isn’t the prettiest thing around, but it is tasty, nourishing, and easy to prepare. It’s an excellent dish to cook when you have little time or are just plain tired and want something to eat fairly fast. It’s also a great canvas for improvisation.

I mentioned leftovers above – it’s a great dish for leftovers – greens work especially well, as do onions, potatoes, carrots, summer squash, and tomatoes. You can mix in some pesto with the eggs, add diced or ground meat, sausage, or cured meats. You can also make it very simple with just onions, potato, egg, and cheese. You can even add a sauce you like at the end. This dish is incredibly flexible, which is one of the things I like about it.

Last night, I used half a white onion, leftover garlic lemon greens, chopped cooked chicken, pesto ricotta, eggs, and grated Locatelli (a salty hard cheese). In this case, everything but the eggs and cheese were leftovers from last week. It was a very tasty combination.

So, what I did was:

  • Diced up the onions and sautéed them in olive oil (about 1 T) until they became translucent.
  • Added the chicken and cooked that a little bit.
  • Then came the greens, and I cooked everything together until it was heated through.
  • I also made sure that the pan was completely covered with this mixture, so that eggs would not leak through to the pan surface; it’s best if they sit atop the vegetables.
  • Scrambled the eggs and poured them on top (I used 5 eggs this time, which was perfect)
  • I then put small dollops of pesto ricotta across the top of the mixture, and sprinkled on the grated cheese.
  • I put a lid on it, turned the heat down to low and let it steam. I’d check on it from time to time to make sure the eggs were cooked through. It took about 10-15 minutes for the eggs to cook and the dish to come together.
  • I only salted the onions a little bit, as the leftovers had all be seasoned when I cooked them originally, so extra salt was not needed.

If I were skipping the pesto ricotta, I’d probably use a sharp cheddar in place of the Locatelli and eat it with hot sauce!

So, in general, the order of ingredients would go as follows:

  • aromatics (e.g. onion, garlic, bacon)
  • ground/chopped meat (if using)
  • hard veggies (e.g. carrots, potatoes)
  • soft veggies (e.g. greens, summer squash, tomatoes, sauce)
  • herbs
  • eggs (solo, or combined with sauce like pesto, tomato, or salsa)
  • cheese
  • The order of things can even be re-arranged if it works better for you.

Like I said, there is room for improvisation and the dish is extremely customizable.

It’s been a quick and delicious dinner staple in my household and has provided us with delicious and nutritious meals numerous times. I hope you find it a useful and enjoyable dish as well.

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.