Monday, January 30, 2012

The First Day of Freedom

Thursday, January 26

We started our first day of being done with the cleanse with a super delicious smoothie that had not been in the set of recipes from Whole Living. It did, however, only use "cleanse-friendly" ingredients. That was partly because we already had them on hand, and partly because we like them!

The deliciousness was in the form of a Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie, the recipe for which a friend had pinned on Pinterest. 

We used 2 ripe bananas, 3 Tbsp. peanut butter, 3 Tbsp. cocoa powder, 1 1/2 c. almond milk, and about a cup of ice. HEAVEN! In fact, just writing about it makes me want to make it for breakfast tomorrow!

We also made COFFEE for the first time in three whole weeks! It was a delicious morning.

For lunch, we ate at the cafeteria, but I still mostly ate veggies and such, with just a little chicken salad and a few tortilla chips as "new" foods.

I didn't feel too different after lunch, but after school things changed. I tutor a boy every Thursday afternoon, and his dad always offeres me some sore of snack, which I have had to turn down the past few weeks. This week, he knew I'd be done with the cleanse, so he had a brownie and ice cream ready for me, which was very thoughtful. I asked for just a small amount, because I wasn't sure how my system would react, ans so I had a small brownie with a scoop of ice cream.

It was yummy.

An hour later, I was shaky, flushed, sweating, and overall feeling pretty strange. I did not like it! I guzzled some water, and as soon as we got home I scarfed down a handful of walnuts for energy...

We had decided to make the Rice Noodles with Broccoli Pesto for dinner, since we had the ingredients, and it was so yummy, even though we didn't "have" to eat the "cleanse food" anymore. It's just so darn tasty! 

Anyways, as soon as it was done, I dug into mine, hoping that the "real food" would settle my system down a bit. I felt much better after having dinner and more water, but the brownie experience shook me up a bit!

Dinner: Rice Noodles with Broccoli Pesto:

Dessert: Cookie Dough

We were having friends over for dessert on Thursday night, so I decided that would be a good time to test out a new recipe that I had been wanting to try. I had found a recipe for healthy chocolate chip cookie dough on a blog recently, and it looked both intriguing and promising, so I figured it was worth a shot!  =)

Basically, you blend chick peas, vanilla extract, nut butter, soaked pitted dates, and a little almond milk (and a few other minor things) in a food processor until really smooth, then stir in chocolate chips! It's SO yummy!
We served it with apple slices, but it's also good with graham crackers, and I'm sure many other things (Toast? Pancakes? Pretzels?)...it's also good just by the spoonful!


I've been having a lot of fun searching through a variety of blogs and on Pinterest, gathering a collection of yummy-looking treats and such that are either vegan, sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, or all of the above. Some of my favorites so far include:

chocolatecoveredkatie.com
loveveggiesandyoga.com
spoonfulofsugarfree.com
glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com

Some of the things I've made so far since we've been done are:

All  of them have been SO good! We also made up a soup with leftover veggies that we had lying around...it was pretty good! We called it "Purple Soup" for obvious reasons....=)

Purple Soup

In a pot of water, I added 1 yukon gold potato, scrubbed & cubed, and leftover white beans (cooked), about 1.5 cups
I boiled the potatoes until they were soft (10 min.).
In a skillet, I sauteed 2 small onions, 2 cloves of garlic, and fresh ginger.
On top of that I added shredded red cabbage (as much as we had leftover...maybe 2 c.?)


I ladled about half of the cooked potato and beans into a blender, with some of the cooking water, then added about half of the sauteed veggies. 

 I blended it until smooth. That's when I noticed it become a cool light purple color! Mmm!
 

Once the mixture is smooth, add it back into the pot, and stir in the rest of the sauteed veggies. I wasn't sure what spices to add, so I tried cumin and a dash of cinnamon. I decided that some lemon juice would help the overall flavor, but then when I squeezed it in, the acid turned the purple soup pink! Another color surprise!
I think that it needed some other flavors, maybe more salt, but hey, it was a fun experiment!
I hope you go out and pick up some interesting ingredients, and enjoy being creative with your fruits, veggies, and all the amazing tastes and textures that God has blessed us with! We are so blessed to live on a planet packed with so many colors, flavors, textures, etc. that are so fun to experiment with!

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Detox Wrap-up: Finishing Strong

Before I begin this post, I really need to mention one thing. Thinking about "finishing strong" with this cleanse makes me think of the verse that says "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." (1 Timothy 4:7). In light of that, I am reminded that finishing this cleanse well is only a shadow in comparison to my desire to finish my life well, keeping the faith and standing firm in the hope that we have in Christ. I want to fight the good fight til the end!

So, my last post was on Saturday, and now it's Saturday again. I'm trying to think back to what we had on Sunday....

Oh, yes. Sunday was Football day.

Sunday, January 22
I don't remember what we had for breakfast...probably the Toasted Coconut Muesli (because I LOVE it),
but after church I made a batch of Kale, White Bean, and Potato Stew to bring to a friend's house to watch the Pats beat the Ravens(!).

I forgot to take pictures of it. Oops.
It looked kind of like this though:

We also brought apple rings, almonds, carrot sticks, and cherry tomatoes to munch on while our friends had their chips and chicken wings.

The stew was ok, although it was a little bland. If I make it again, I'll add more spices and garlic.

The stew recipe made enough to be our lunch for Monday, and half of our dinner on Tuesday. (It claimed to make 6 servings, but I must have served us generous bowl-fuls, because it was more like 5 servings)

Monday, January 23
Monday night we had the Quinoa with Poached Egg, Spinach, and Cucumber, because 1.) we hadn't made it yet, and 2.) it looked quick and easy to make.

I had a meeting at 7, and I also wanted to get a quick 15-minute run in (we had a soccer game coming up on Wednesday, and we hadn't played since the day before we began the detox--so I wanted to get my heart-rate up once before Wed.).

All you can see in the pictures are the spinach, egg, and carrots (I forgot to add the sliced cucumbers!), but somewhere under all that is the quinoa...
Mike's (left) was way better than mine-he's a poaching genius!
We really liked the Quinoa dinner--it was simple, filling, and tasty! Neither of us had ever poached an egg before, and we decided that they're really good in a dish like this, where the runny yolk can get mixed in with the grains like a sauce.

*Note: For egg-poaching beginner, like us, here are some tips for how to make them. =)


After my meeting on Monday, I made lunch for Tuesday and Wednesday, along with dinner for at least Tuesday.

Tuesday & Wednesday's lunches were going to be Chickpea-Brown Rice Veggie Burgers (one batch makes 4 patties). I was surprised at how easy they were to make, and I appreciated the fact that they produced nicely-sized patties. (I was a little afraid they'd be wimpy...)

I will definitely make these again!
Mash 2c. cooked chick peas with 1c. cooked brown rice until pasty. I used a food processor, because my chick peas weren't mushy enough.

Stir in 1-2 minced garlic cloves, 1 minced shallot, and 2 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley.

Season with salt & pepper

Mix in 1 egg, beaten, to bind it all together.
Form the mixture into four patties (to do this, I smoothed out the mixture in the bowl, cut it into quadrants, and made a ball out of each quadrant, trying to keep them as equal as possible.) 
In a large skillet, heat 2 Tbsp. olive oil, and cook patties for 4 minutes on each side. 

Top with whole grain dijon mustard, roasted red pepper, and sliced red onion (I also added sliced cucumber, because I forgot to put them on the Quinoa dinner)

I'm guessing that you could use this same method using any type of bean.

In fact, I am envisioning many black-bean burgers in our future! Oh, the possibilities!

mmmmmm.... =)

Since these are gluten-free, we couldn't use buns, so the recipe calls for wrapping them in lettuce. This proved to be a difficult way to eat them, so I ended up breaking off chunks and wrapping the chunks in lettuce.

On the second day, I came up with a new strategy:
I cut the the burger in half, and wrapped each half in lettuce. Much easier!

This method was much easier to handle -- kind of like a lettuce wrap.


The flavors and textures were really nice-the Dijon kicked up the flavor, and the red pepper added a nice sweet and creamy quality. For the future, I think that these would be great in a pita pocket or on Bagel Thins.

The other meal that I made on Monday night was the roasted beets and edamame salad. This recipe supposedly served 4, but I thought that it seemed fairly unsubstantial. The plan was to have it for dinner at school on Tuesday, but since it seemed pretty dinky for a dinner, I also packed us the leftover White Bean-Kale-Potato Stew (we had enough left for half a serving each).

I wanted to take pictures of the beets for the salad, because they were so pretty and yellow =)

Pre-roasting:

Post-roasting and peeling:

Sliced up...so pretty!

better picture of the avo-vanilla smoothie
 than the first time we made it!
Tuesday, January 24
Breakfast: Avocado Vanilla Smoothie (because we love them)
Lunch: the first round of veggie burgers
Dinner: Beet/edamame/arugula salad plus the leftover soup (we also had fried plantains that were served for dinner at school, because they looked SO good, and they were just cooked in vegetable oil, so I figured they were ok...)

Wednesday, January 25 (final day of cleanse!!!)
Breakfast: Antioxidant Smoothie (I think...)
Lunch: round two of veggie burgers
Dinner: For our final meal of the cleanse, we needed an energizing (but not weighty) meal because we had a soccer game, so I saved the Baked Haddock with Sweet Potato Fries and Lime dinner for Wednesday.

It was perfect!

I also divided up one of the two leftover Beet & Edamame Salads, using lettuce we had gotten for wrapping the veggie burgers, and we had that on the side. Delish!

Super easy dinner:
1. Scrub two sweet potatoes and cut them into 1-in. wedges. Toss with olive oil and salt & pepper on a baking sheet, and bake for 20 min. at 425 degrees.
2. Place fish on a second baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt & pepper. When the potatoes have 10 minutes left to cook, put the fish in the oven too, and they'll both be done at the same time!

Now you can see what the roasted edamame salad looked like too!


This dinner was super easy, tasty, filling, and gave us plenty of energy for our game! We will definitely make dinners like this again in the future.

Thus ends our three-week adventure in detoxing. *Whew*! 

Now comes my biggest question: what now??? I will continue posting a few more posts about how things go transitioning back into the world of no food rules, so you can get a feel for what that process was like for us.

I have to say, I do feel really good at this point--I feel healthy, I have energy, and I feel very motivated to continue eating more healthily. I am curious to see how things go from here on out. Some of my biggest questions are:
  • How will my body react when I eat foods that I haven't eaten for three weeks? 
  • What parts of the cleanse should I maintain, and what should I not worry about?
So, hopefully some of these questions will be answered soon! Thanks for reading!

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Week #3: The beginning of the end!

Thursday, January 19
This past Thursday marked the first day of Week #3, which is the LAST (official) WEEK of the cleanse! YES!

The recipes this week now incorporate grains (still gluten-free, such as oats, rice, and quinoa), almond milk, and eggs.

I am really happy to be eating grains again.

Thursday morning we tried the new smoothie of the week, which sounded intriguing.
Avocado-Vanilla Smoothie. Weird. However, it was supremely creamy, and the pear nectar (thank you, Ocean State Job Lot!) gave it just the right amount of sweetness. We liked it!
I had a hard time taking a good picture of it in the car...but it was a nice light green color. =)

For lunch (enough for Thursday and Friday), we made Rice Noodles with Broccoli-Almond Pesto. It was very tasty and much more filling than the black bean salad had been. This meal was pretty easy to make, but I forgot to take pictures. Here's basically what you do:
  1. Briefly boil a head of broccoli in salted water. 
  2. You will use the water again to soften the rice noodles, and then to add to pesto to make it creamy.
  3. Set aside 1c. of florets, chopped, to sprinkle on top.
  4. Blend broccoli in a food processor with:
  • 1/4 c. (or more) fresh basil
  • 6 Tbsp. toasted sliced almonds
  • 1 garlic clove (I used 2)
  • 2 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 6 Tbsp. olive oil. 
Toss together with rice noodles (after they're softened), adding in the extra water until creamy.

For dinner Thursday, we made Mushrooms and Brown Rice En Papillote (in parchment paper packets--say that five times fast!) 

The recipe called for Shiitake mushrooms, which I bet are higher in nutritional value than what we used, but they were also about as much per pound as our salmon from last week, so instead we used a pack of regular mushrooms that were in the reduced produce rack (score!).

This one was really easy to make too! I had made the brown rice the night before, since it takes so long, which I was really happy about. 
On each parchment sheet, add:
 1/2 c. brown rice, 1 c. thinly sliced mushrooms, 
2 sprigs of thyme, salt, pepper, and olive oil.

wrap up, like so, and bake for 20 min. at 425 degrees.

Serve with fresh greens and lemon wedges:


Open packet, mix in greens, and squirt all over with lemon! Yum! 

It wasn't the most filling meal, but it was tasty, and smelled really good. Later, I made some homemade apple-pear sauce as a special treat to enjoy while catching up on The New Girl.

Quick & Easy Apple-Pear Sauce:
  1. Peel and core an apple and pear (or don't peel...I peeled the apple but not the pear)
  2. Roughly chop (1 inch pieces?)
  3. Add to small saucepan with a little water (2-3 Tbsp.?) over medium heat.
  4. Sprinkle in spices, such as cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg
  5. Simmer for about 10 minutes, until fruit is soft.
  6. Mash with a potato masher (blend with an immersion blender, if you want it to be smoother)
  7. Spoon into two small bowls and enjoy!
Friday, January 20
On Friday, we tried the Toasted Coconut Muesli for breakfast. It was delish! Next time we make it, I'll cut the apples up smaller, so they're easier to eat in the car, but the meal itself was really yummy.
It was especially good with fresh blackberries that were on sale at Market Basket!

Lunch on Friday was part 2 of the Rice Noodles with Broccoli Pesto, and we were going to make the mushroom and rice dinner again, but instead we made the Roasted Winter Veggies and Cannellini Beans from last week, since we still had enough ingredients. Also, that way, Mike could pack it for lunch on his ski trip that he decided to help chaperone. 

It was a little tricky figuring out what to pack him for his ski trip, since he wouldn't be able to heat anything up (i.e. soup) and he would need some filling options. We decided that Baked Sweet Potato with Citrus would make a good hearty breakfast, and that the Roasted Veggies (I made a BIG batch with extra veggies!) would make a nice satisfying lunch, plus a little extra for after skiing, and then I packed him with plenty of snacks. 


Earlier in the week, Mike had made dried apples (after being annoyed that store prices for dried fruit were so high!) 
So I made him a trail mix with almonds, raisins, pumpkin seeds, and chopped up dried apple rings. I thought it looked pretty darn good!
I also tried my hand at one of the snacks from the Whole Living website for the first time. It was Roasted Spiced Chickpeas. I think they turned out pretty well, although I put the cover on their container too soon and they turned out to be a little more chewy than crunchy, but they're still good. I can't stop eating them.

Saturday, January 21
Since I was making the Sweet Potato breakfast for Mike, I figured I might as well make it for myself too! I realized that I had made the same breakfast for last Saturday too. Apparently it's a good Saturday morning breakfast. =) Last time I didn't take pictures of the finished product, so I did this morning.

I added shredded coconut to the topping mixture, since we had some...it was a good addition!



I liked the combination of the oranges and browns and the sweet-spicy flavors...
even the tea matched the theme!

I had to get a shot of the steam coming up from the mug! So cozy! 
I tried to get the snow in the background, too, but you can't really see it.

Today's lunch, for me, was leftover roasted veggies and beet soup. And the roasted chickpeas that I can't stop eating. =)

Now it's time to get off my butt and start getting my to-do list done (update blog, check!).

Week #2: That's more like it!

Many people have been asking us how the cleanse is going (thanks, by the way!) and I have to say that this past week (Week 2) was WAY better than the first week. During the first week, we were basically just trying to survive it. I felt kind of like a zombie all week. This past week, however, I had much more energy and felt like myself again. We got to enjoy more protein, new tasty recipes, and weren't craving the things we were giving up as much as before.

To start where I left off in the last update post, I'll cover Sunday-Wednesday.
Sunday, we had an early morning at church, but we decided that we'd try the Tofu Scramble. The recipe called for collard greens, but I decided to get spinach instead.



We decided two things: 1) it was ok*. 2) it didn't taste like scrambled eggs.

*Note: We made this recipe again on Tuesday morning, adding lemon zest, lemon juice, and a little more salt, and it was MUCH better.

Sunday for lunch, we had the second half of the Sweet Potato Apple salad that we had made on Saturday, then for dinner we had Baked Haddock with Broccoli, Apple, and Fennel Slaw (the recipe was for trout, but we didn't find any so we got haddock instead).


 I thought the shallot was so pretty all sliced up--
delicate swirls of lavender and white.

Haddock fresh from Gloucester!

Topped with salt & pepper, thinly sliced shallot, thinly sliced lemon, 
and an olive oil drizzle:

Baked in foil packets for 12-14 min. at 400 degrees.

Voila!

It really was delicious!

Monday was a holiday (no school!!!!) so we had a nice relaxing morning, and we really wanted to go ice skating, because it had been so cold. We made an Antioxidant Smoothie for breakfast, since we had more frozen strawberries and pomegranate juice, and I made butternut squash soup for lunch. I figured that it would make a good post-skating warm-you-up lunch.
It was. =)

I didn't take pictures of the full butternut-squash-soup-making process last time I made it, so I made sure to take more pictures this time:





I also made beet soup so that we could take both to school the next day for lunch and mix the colors. =)

For dinner on Monday, we made the Baked Trout (Haddock) again, since the slaw recipe made enough for two meals. That made for THREE fish dinners in one week! Yum!

Tuesday and Wednesday weren't that exciting...BUT they were the end of week two!

Tuesday
Breakfast: Tofu Scramble (improved), Lunch: Spicy Black Bean Salad*, Dinner: swirled soups 
Wednesday
Breakfast: Green Smoothie, Lunch: Spicy Black Bean Salad (part 2), Dinner: Beet Soup

*Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the black bean salad....both days. It was good, though! Zesty and fresh.

Wednesday afternoon I went shopping for the Week 3 recipes!