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Final Thoughts on the Food Lover’s Cleanse

As I mentioned in my last post regarding the Food Lover’s Cleanse, I’d write some final thoughts, so here they are.  Overall, the first week was definitely more satisfying for me.  The recipes were more engaging on an intellectual, technical, and visceral level, but that’s not to say that week two’s dishes were bad or anything.  I just preferred the first week’s menus to the second.

Pros: I had a very positive experience with the cleanse during its two weeks. I thought for the most part the recipes were excellent in concept, well-written (there were only a couple exceptions) and I discovered some real keepers that will go into the regular rotation.  I’ve made a couple of the things twice now: the Ottolenghi couscous and the black eyed pea curry.  These were real hits at our house. I also loved the smoothies, especially the vanilla date shake.  It’s just fabulous.

Cons: Not many, but complex dishes scheduled on weeknights – not to mention during weekday lunches – simply were not feasible for me as a working person. A lack of clarity in the directions for the steak recipe was the beginning of the problem for me with that dish.  That being said, failing at cooking a steak did provide the impetus to learn more and now I’m much better equipped to cook slabs of meat in the future.

Most challenging dish: No, not the steak – it was the Japanese vegetable dish, mostly because of the unfamiliar terminology and new-to-me terchmique.  I really had to concentrate while making it, and read the directions over and over.  I even took the recipe with me to work to study it during lunch.  I did enjoy the end result, though. And I discovered the beauty of mirin from that dish.

Surprisingly easiest dish:   Endives, apples, and grapes.  It was one of my most joyous discoveries of the cleanse.  The flavors were incredible, especially for how easy it was to make.  I learned to love endive.

Biggest flop: The steak, because of my unfamiliarity at that time with cooking grass fed beef.

Quickest meal: Roasted salmon with a grapefruit-avocado salad from Day 8.  20 minutes from start to finish and dinner was on the table.  And so delicious!

My Top 5 Favorite Dishes in the Food Lover’s Cleanse

The Ultimate Winter Couscous
Black Eyed Pea Curry
Vanilla Date Smoothie
Muesli
Endive, Apples and Grapes

I’m really glad I did this cleanse – it was an excellent way to start 2011!

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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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Food Lover’s Cleanse Days 9 and 10

For this post, I’m going to combine days 9 and 10 of the Food Lover’s Cleanse, mainly because today (day 10) was basically a day of eating leftovers.  Breakfast did not match up with what was indicated, either.  More on that later in the post.

Day 9 breakfast was muesli, made from scratch – not from a box.  I mixed oats, nuts, fruit, and dairy products together the night before and let it all soak overnight in the fridge.  It soaked in raw yogurt (with raw milk), which means the whole grains soaked in an acidic medium, which further means it was far more digestible that morning than if I hadn’t soaked it.

The recipe asked for all fresh fruit, but I chose to add a handful of currants to the mix, along with chopped apple and orange segments.  I thought it was simply delicious and I will definitely be making this again.  And by the way, old fashioned rolled oats work just fine in place of quick oats (which I do not care for at all).

Lunch was leftovers – sweet potato hash and curried lentil soup.  I would have loved to have been able to be home to roast the butternut squash, but it wasn’t possible as a working person.  Plus, I like leftovers.

Dinner was a lot of fun to make – I made two of the things on the menu, and did one experiment.  The vegetables a la grecque were truly awesome – vegetables simmered in a broth of white wine, olive oil, water, and spices.  They came out mildly pickled, and totally delicious.  I can’t wait to make this next summer, when all the summer veggies are in season.

I also made a salad of quinoa, pomegranate, apples, and scallions.  I think I added a little to much lemon, as it was quite tart. I enjoyed it regardless, though it wasn’t the most stellar recipe of the cleanse.

When I put my CSA order in last week, I neglected to order any pork tenderloin, so that was out.  Instead, I decided to play around with the technique used in the chicken persillade. But in place of the parsley-garlic combo, I used za’atar, a middle eastern spice mixture. Well, it worked out great!  After the chicken came out of the oven, I poured a little extra virgin olive oil over it and sprinkled the chicken breasts with za’atar.  It worked very well!  I was pleased.

It was a really nice meal all together.

As I mentioned earlier, Day 10 was really a day of leftovers, and I also made an error. I neglected to soak my oats the night before, so I chose to eat something else, in the form of two pastured eggs fried in butter. Dang, they were tasty.  And quite healthy.

Lunch was a variety of things – some chicken, quinoa salad, and vegetables from last night, plus a little bit of fresh mozzarella and a few slices of sopresatta from the local Italian deli.  I also finished up the bulgur pilaf from the weekend.

Dinner was a simple affair – leftover curried lentil soup with some raw yogurt in it; some diced chicken breast from last night; and a glass of kombucha.  Really nice and tasty, and just what I needed after a long, complicated day.

Tomorrow I am looking forward to beef!

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Food Lover’s Cleanse Day 8

Day 8 of the Food Lover’s Cleanse gave me the opportunity to be successful in cooking potatoes for breakfast.  So often I cook them and they still taste raw, yuck.  I learned some tricks this morning (peel and boil the potatoes for 5 minutes), and I’m so pleased.  Cooking this hash also brought back many happy memories of sitting at the counter at the Homemade Cafe in Berkeley, CA and watching the cooks prepare the home fries. Mmm…

It was sweet potato hash and fried eggs this morning.  I was pleased to be able to alter the dish to include more saturated fat, in the form of healthy virgin expeller-pressed coconut oil and grass-fed butter.

The potatoes were seasoned with cinnamon and a little brown sugar.  Really good and a nice accompaniment to the fried eggs (topped with chipotle Tabasco).  Had some coffee (Stumptown) with raw milk.  Was so happy to receive my raw milk yesterday, I can’t even tell you.

Lunch was leftover curried lentil soup with a glass of raw milk.  Shortly after that I made a date shake (with raw milk and raw yogurt), which was a great afternoon treat.

Dinner was so, so, so simple: roasted salmon with a grapefruit-avocado salad. Took about 20 minutes to prepare total. Gotta love it.

This sockeye salmon is part of my salmon CSA stash.  It continues to be such a taste treat, though with only two filets left I’m starting to feel a little melancholy about its impending absence.  So, I was happy to have been able to stretch this last filet for two meals. Gorgeous fatty fish.

As for the salad, again I used mâche for the greens, and put the grapefruit-avocado combo on top, dressed with a shallot vinaigrette.  It called for walnut oil, which adds such a good, nutty flavor.  I will use walnut oil more often in the future.

Tonight was the first real deal dessert on the menu – trail mix cookies.  However, I had a log of korova (aka “world peace”) cookies in the freezer, so I thought why not use them!  These are incredible cookies – made with grass-fed butter, organic cocoa, and Scharffenberger bittersweet chocolate.  I sliced up a half dozen and baked them tonight, and was reminded just how chocolatey, melt-in-your mouth good they are.

Looking ahead to the coming week, I’m going to have to leave a number of recipes out.  As a working person, it’s just not possible for me to make, for instance, soup from scratch at lunch.  My hope is that making the full recipe for dinners will allow me to have leftovers the next day. The lunch recipes look good, though, so I plan to make some of them for dinner the following week.

All in all, this first week was highly successful.  I learned some new techniques, new flavor combinations, and was introduced to some new ingredients that really thrilled me.  Here’s hoping the second week is just as impressive!

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Food Lover’s Cleanse Day 7

Day 7 of the Food Lover’s Cleanse started with a delicious combination of raw yogurt, half a pear (diced), roasted pecans, chia seeds, and maple syrup.  It was an incredible combination – tasted a bit like dessert, actually.  Pecans and maple syrup are a winning combination, and I think that those were flavors that really made this dish.

This was the first time I’d tried chia seeds, and I really liked them.  The recipe originally called for flax. Chia has a similar nutritional profile as flax, but contains a little more ALA (alpha linoleic acid, an omega-3 fatty acid).

Lunch was leftover roasted broccoli with apples and walnuts added.  Not very pretty, but very tasty.  I ate it with leftover bulgur pilaf.

I snacked on marcona almonds and a couple of dates in the afternoon.

Dinner consisted of a delicious curried lentil soup and some salmon cakes which contained the new-to-me kaffir lime leaves.

They have the most incredible aroma and taste.  I found it was easier to work with them by soaking them in hot water for 5 minutes or so.  If you don’t, they’ll just shatter and turn into a kind of dry leaf dust, but that might be something appealing in certain cases.  I just couldn’t get over how amazing these leaves smelled.  They really did add something different to the salmon.

The lentil soup was really good and I am going to enjoy eating it for the next few days.  The resident picky eater did not like it, though.  The most unusual element in it was the chickpea puree and butter added toward the end of the cooking time.  It makes the soup creamy without adding cream; it adds a nice richness that I like very much. It also tastes great with extra lemon juice squeezed into it.

I rounded out the meal with a mâche salad with shallot vinaigrette. Dessert consisted of a tangerine and an ounce of dark chocolate with almonds and sea salt. Love that combination.  Fruit and chocolate for dessert is much more satisfying these days.

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Food Lover’s Cleanse Day 6

Day 6 of the Food Lover’s Cleanse started out in a very familiar way – a bowl of oatmeal (soaked with water and whey) topped with fruit. I replaced the banana with organic blueberries and raspberries. I added cinnamon but forgot to add the nuts.  Oh well.

Lunch was very interesting – I had no leftovers, which was too bad, so I bought lunch out (at a place I regularly go).  The food was completely unremarkable and frankly, tasted a little gross.  I’m not going to say what I ate or where I bought it, it was so meh.

Dinner was a different story altogether. It featured Itamar’s Bulgur Pilaf, oven-roasted broccoli, and 2 fried eggs in grass-fed butter. I also added a mâche salad with the shallot dressing. So delicious! The pilaf comes from Yotam Ottolenghi again, and was simply fantastic. It was very easy to put together, and by soaking the bulgur all day in water and raw apple cider vinegar, that greatly sped up the most substantial step. Plus, it makes wheat more digestible. I was thrilled to be able to use the red peppers from the CSA that I froze this summer, and the coriander seeds I saved from the cilantro I grew this summer. Loved the pink peppercorns in it as well – just so fun!

Originally, I was to include cauliflower with the roasted broccoli, but I just haven’t been feeling the cauliflower lately. I do love broccoli, and had not roasted it before, and I loved the outcome! It really transforms the broccoli. I tossed the florets with both olive oil and a little walnut oil (broccoli and walnuts go well together, so I thought, why not?!), a little kosher salt, then sprinkled on a bit of fleur de sel after they came out of the oven.

Poached eggs were on the original menu, and while I love poached eggs, I really wanted to up the fat content of this meal, so I fried (sunny-side up) two pastured eggs in grass-fed butter. NOM. So good.

The mâche salad with shallot vinaigrette rounded off the meal, and was simple and fantastic.

I loved how quick this meal came together. I started at about 6pm, and sat down to eat at 6:40pm. This is a meal worth repeating, as it is both highly delicious with the bonus of being relatively quick to prepare.

And good thing that it was quick, as I had to scoot out of there to attend a meetup with the Queens Community Kitchen folks for a viewing of Food, Inc.  I’ve seen this movie before, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to be reminded of that which is discussed within.  Some of the images are really hard to watch, but seeing such things just reinforces my desire to continue buying as much food as I can from my CSA, buying club, and the greenmarkets.

It was a really nice group of folks and I look forward to more QCP meetups this year.

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Food Lover’s Cleanse Day 5

For Day 5 of the Food Lover’s Cleanse, I basically adhered to the suggested breakfast, while eating leftovers for lunch.  I had a business meeting at night, so I was away from the cleanse for dinner.  My dinner was a bit more indulgent, and quite tasty.

Breakfast consisted of slices of orange and grapefruit with mint and Ak-Mak crackers topped with raw yogurt, chives, and smoked sockeye salmon.  So delicious!  I loved the citrus and mint together (classic combination) and the salmon with the yogurt and chives was outstanding.  Love those Ak-Mak crackers, too. I really enjoyed this breakfast and would totally eat it again.

I had leftover cleriac-apple salad, endives, apples, and grapes, and the roasted sweet potatoes for lunch.  A very nice meal of beautiful food.

Dinner was out and consisted of an iceberg lettuce salad with buttermilk dressing and bacon, and then a quesadilla with skirt steak, cheese, and mushrooms.

One thing I’ve noticed is that my sugar cravings have gone way down.  Whole, real foods will do that to me.  I’m really pleased with this development.