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Food Lover’s Cleanse Day 4

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!

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Food Lover’s Cleanse Day 2

Day 2 of the Food Lover’s Cleanse started out great and ended especially deliciously. I learned some new cooking techniques and flavor combinations, which was one of my main goals in following this program.

Breakfast: Warm and Nutty Cinnamon Quinoa; kefir. This was really good and I look forward to eating the other half in the morning. I halved the recipe and that amount was perfect.  I also used black quinoa – new to me, as I usually eat red quinoa – which had a nuttier texture.  I replaced the frozen blackberries with frozen blueberries, as the blueberries were more sustainably grown than the blackberries.

Fortunately, I had some raw kefir on hand – it’s quite sour, so I added a little maple syrup to it.  I enjoyed it today moreso than in other times, so I think I’ll be drinking kefir regularly.

Lunch: Leftover couscous and vegetables, celery root and apple salad. I have so much leftover couscous that it made sense to eat it for lunch.  The celery root salad was really good, but I’m a huge fan of celery root, nom.  The mixture of the mild celery flavor, sweet-tart apples, and nutty walnuts was a total winning combination.

Snack: yogurt with tangerines and shaved chocolate. Was very busy and didn’t find time to snack this afternoon!  My loss because this combo sounds very tasty.

Dinner: Salmon in a bengali mustard sauce, black-eyed pea curry, roasted butternut squash with curry leaves and mustard seed. The salmon and curry were both amazing, the squash was good but didn’t blow me away.  The salmon came from my salmon CSA, so it’s incredibly nourishing. The curry got super rave reviews in my household, so I will definitely make it again.  I loved how easy the execution of these dishes was, and I think that’s because my mise-en-place was in order.  Lots of spices and ingredients in these recipes!

After Dinner Snack: 1 ounce of dark chocolate and rooibos tea with honey. I had some raw chocolate that I got in Washington (I’d put it in the freezer when I got home), so that’s what I ate. It is so tasty, and contains coconut (dark chocolate and coconut is a great combo).  No tea for me, just not in the mood.

It will be interesting to see how I’ll manage this cleanse program with my work schedule (read: less hours in the day to cook) starting tomorrow.  Thank goodness for the dishwasher, too – it has made the cleanup part of this so easy!

And last, it’s been fun to see what other people are doing with this cleanse.  I’m keeping an eye on both the progress of Shauna from Gluten Free Girl and the Chef, and Lexi from after apple-picking.  You should check them out, too!

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Food Lover’s Cleanse Day 1

Today (Sunday, January 2) was the first day of Bon Appétit’s “Food Lover’s Cleanse“, which I’ve decided to follow (more or less) for the next couple of weeks. And while I’m pretty psyched about this program, I have created some ground rules that make the dishes more compatible with my way of eating:

  1. Raw, grass-fed milk in place of almond milk. I do not believe that raw milk has deleterious effects on the digestive tract, and I believe it’s extremely nutritious, so I’m keeping the milk.  If I can’t get ahold of raw milk, there are some good options in my area for grass-fed, lightly pasteurized milk.
  2. No unfermented soy. Fermented soy – like miso and tempeh – are ok.  I feel better since I’ve kicked out the fresh soy from my diet, since I don’t seem to digest it very well.
  3. Grass-fed butter in place of olive oil, when appropriate.  This would include recipes that use eggs (omelet) or dairy.  If extra virgin olive oil is appropriate, I’ll use that.
  4. No refined industrial vegetable oils. I’ll use extra virgin olive oil, unrefined coconut oil, or grass-fed butter.  I’ll use expeller-pressed nut/seed oils for flavor, which means I’ll use only a small amount each time.

Here are my notes for Day 1:

Breakfast: 2-egg omelet with mushrooms, thyme, and caramelized onions; 1 piece of whole grain toast. This was delicious!  I think it’s the second time I’ve been able to actually make an omelet look like an omelet (usually it devolves into a scramble).  The use of 2 eggs over 3, along with a well lubricated cast iron pan seems to have made a difference.  Instead of simple whole grain toast, I had a slice of real sourdough from my buying club.

Lunch: avocado tartine; winter vegetable crudités: raw endive, cauliflower, and carrots with basic citrus-shallot vinaigrette as dip. I’m not a fan of raw cauliflower, so I replaced it with celery.  I also couldn’t get ahold of a ripe avocado soon enough, so I made a cheese toasty (toasted bread topped with cheese, open face) with local raw smoked cheddar on sourdough, which was so tasty.  I found the shallot vinaigrette to be a delightful dipping sauce for the vegetables.

Snack: vanilla-date smoothie. I delayed this until after dinner, essentially eating it as dessert. Anyway, I loved it so much!!!  Absolutely delicious – sweet (but not too sweet), a bit tangy from the yogurt, with a lovely vanilla-date flavor.

Dinner: The Ultimate Winter Couscous; green salad with basic citrus-shallot vinaigrette. Wow, what a stunning dish! Beautifully spiced roasted vegetables and chickpeas over couscous and topped with cilantro.  Especially notable were the flavors of star anise, harissa, and preserved lemon (I had preserved some lemons last winter, so it was great to have them so easily on hand).  I have a lot left over and will eat it for lunch tomorrow, in place of the canned tuna (which I’m not that fond of). I have a large amount of mache, so that served as my salad green tonight.

An evening snack of oranges with pomegranate molasses and honey is on the menu, but I opted out of that because I simply wasn’t hungry enough to justify eating anything else.

I’ve got preparations for tomorrow sitting out on the counter – black quinoa is soaking in water and whey, and black eyed peas are soaking as well.  I bought the black quinoa – which I’d never seen before – in Washington in November and I’m very curious to see what they taste like.  They smelled slightly spicy when I opened the bag and took a whiff.

So, I would say that the first day was a success!

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Food-Lover’s Cleanse

While on twitter the other day, I came across a link (via @glutenfreegirl) about a “food lover’s cleanse.”  There was something about it that intrigued me – a cleanse that focuses on actual food, rather than just juice or some strange concoction of disparate ingredients. Sounds like it has potential.

I took a look and was really pleased with what I saw – 14 days of essentially whole foods eating, with lots of variety.  Makes sense to create something like that, as the holidays often focus on fractured foods – sugar, white flour, an excess in caffeine and/or alcohol.  I’ll admit I boarded that train from time to time during the holidays.  Time to hop back on the real foods wagon!

This cleanse has been put together by Bon Appétit (aside: I adore how easy it is to type accents on a Mac!)  magazine and the introduction is as follows:

Forget juice fasts and calorie counting. Start the year with a resolution you’ll actually want to keep: a fresh, healthful approach to cooking.

Amen!  Although my idea of healthful and their idea of healthful does diverge at certain points – the use of soy and low fat dairy, which I don’t partake in.  Still, I am encouraged by the use of whole grains, seasonal vegetables, grass fed meats, and eggs.  Apparently most of the dishes are gluten-free, too.  There’s even one recipe where they acknowledge that one might actually want to eat the chicken skin!  Nice.

I’m seriously considering trying this out, as I mentioned on twitter, but adjusting some of the recipes to be NT-friendly: use of raw, full fat dairy, and soaking grains (I handle grains ok), to start.  Oh, and eschewing all that canola oil.

I’d also probably not do everything in order – one of the dinner recipes takes hours to prepare (close to 4) and is slated for a weekday evening.  With my work schedule, that’s just not practical.  Dinner on one of the following days looks like it takes much less time, so I’d likely switch them.  I also have meetings some nights where I just won’t be able to cook; though one of those nights I’ll be at a chicken carving and bone broth making workshop!

What are some of the recipes?  Here are some examples (breakfast, lunch, dinner), which sound delicious:

  • Breakfast: omelet with mushrooms, thyme, and caramelized onions
  • Lunch: black-eyed pea curry; spinach salad with apples, sunflower seeds and vinaigrette
  • Dinner: five spice beets soup; seared grass-fed hanger steak; warm escarole salad with mustard vinaigrette

I’ll need to put in my orders with my CSA and buying club in the next day or so if I want to do this.  Thankfully, BA put together a shopping list (warning: pdf) with all ingredients on it, so that part is easy – just print and go.

I’ll definitely chronicle my experience with this cleanse if I decide to follow it!  But I’d love to know, have you ever done a cleanse before?