the fun news of the day is that i wore a pair of pants today that, in december, i had put up high on a shelf in the closet because they felt too uncomfortable to wear.  today, they felt fine.  that’s worth something!

i went grocery shopping again this afternoon during a break at work and found the elusive chickpea miso, some “cashew cacao raw hempbutter” which i actually think will be more appealing than its name might imply, and some “clean” chicken sausages that i’m very excited to try.

we started the day off with “peach apple cobbler” (smoothie) and… i have to say that i was actually a little overwhelmed by the vanilla and cinnamon in this one.  if i try something similar again, i’ll dial back on both of those.  moderation, people!  but maybe i shouldn’t have had two such similar smoothies on consecutive days.  the recipe also didn’t make a whole lot of smoothie.  these recipes would reallllly benefit from a note at the top, indicating the number of servings they make.

(sorry about the iphone photo…didn’t have my fancy camera at work.)

lunch was a re-vamping of a family favorite we like to call, “yummy bean and chicken burritos.”  i’ll add the original recipe at the bottom of this post, with notes for how to eat it “clean.”  we also tried eating the filling with lettuce wraps, but they weren’t very satisfying as wraps and it tasted better just mixing it up on the plate.  especially with the addition of the avocado (on my plate.  poor mr. h-s doesn’t care for avocados.  lucky me!). i can’t remember where i originally got this recipe (and i’m fairly certain it had a different name), but it’s really served us well over the years.  the rice was still crunchy (rice cooker fail.  gonna try the baking method again, with a few modifications next time.), but other than that, this was quite delicious and one i’m sure we’ll eat again.

since i’d finally found the chickpea miso, i had to try the “soup-n-go” recipe from the book.  i’ve never had miso soup, so i wasn’t sure what i was getting myself into, but i was just so excited to find it for sale locally instead of having to mail order it that i had to buy it.  (although it might take me a looooong time to finish up this jar.  anyone else want to share it?)  the recipe called for mushrooms and sunflower sprouts, neither of which i had, so i just used the other ingredients and got this bright green soup as a result.  sadly, the ginger root and sesame oil pretty much overpowered the miso, so i’m still not certain what it tastes like.  good thing i have more!  i gave mr. happy stuff a sip and he immediately detected the miso without me even saying anything (how does he do that??) and he decided he’d rather have a fruity smoothie.  tonight’s was pineapple, blueberries (frozen), coconut water and spinach (yeah, that last one’s not really a fruit, but mr. happy stuff said he didn’t mind).

happy toddler was not so happy tonight and has been on a bit of a food strike (he hasn’t even touched his milk bottle the last two nights as we’ve put him to bed–those of you who know him will realize how bizarre that is) and i don’t know if it’s illness, pain, or just being weirded out by mama and daddy’s new eating patterns.

here’s the recipe i mentioned above:

Yummy Bean and Chicken Burritos

1 can black beans, rinsed         1 lb. chicken

2 chopped green onions          ¼ t. chili powder

1 T. lemon or lime juice          ¼ t. pepper

¼ t. cumin

½ t. salt (divided)                    2 c. cooked rice

4-6 large flour tortillas            ½ lb. pepper jack cheese, grated

Cook the rice.  Combine beans, green onions, lemon juice cumin and ¼ t. salt in a small bowl.  Set aside.  Rub the chicken with chili powder, pepper and remaining salt.  Cook the chicken, let cool and slice.  Wrap beans, chicken, cheese and rice in tortillas.  Wrap tortillas in foil.  Bake at 350º until the cheese melts – about 15 minutes.  Can also be assembled ahead of time and cooked when needed.

to make this recipe “clean” just eliminate the tortillas and cheese and make brown rice instead of white.

last night, this morning, and now again tonight (as well as intermittently throughout the day), my nose has quite suddenly tried to do its best impression of a water faucet.  the clean book talks about all the “mucus” that’s built up in your body and that the cleanse is working to get rid of, but i didn’t really think it meant it would literally all come out of my nose.  so maybe it’s a cold?  what fun.  freaky food and i can’t smell or taste anything.  hmm… maybe that’s for the best.

actually, this morning’s smoothie (or “smoooozie” as the happy toddler calls them) was surprisingly delicious.  way better than i’d thought it might be. it’s called “cinnamon rolls for breakfast” and  i found it on the website.  i had some pretty serious doubts about it.  if the recipe calls for their powders and i don’t have them, and also calls for protein powder which i don’t have, will it still taste “right”?  will it still keep me satiated until it’s time for morning snack?  and biggest of all, as mr. happy stuff pointed out, “if it’s not really a cinnamon roll (oh man, that sounds really good right now), you can’t call it a cinnamon roll.” but i wanted to give it a try anyway.  it’s not much to look at:

but the vanilla and cinnamon are genius additions and the dates aren’t half-bad either.  mr. happy stuff chose to go the pink smoothie route again since this one was almond-milk-based.  i’ve learned that in the same way he doesn’t like a “milk” based smoothie (or one with nuts in it), i’m really not fond of smoothies with teeny little chunks of unblended food.  like coconut shreds or chopped pecans that are too small for the blender to catch, or if i don’t blend it long enough.  i like my smoozies smoooooth.

since lunch for me was leftover buckwheat noodles and veggies and lunch for mr. h-s was leftover quinoa, and since we both ate them at work, there’s no photos of that.  i also took dried fruit and nuts for snacking (and some avocado and radish, but i never got around to eating that today) and mr. h-s took some carrots and hummus, rice crackers and an apple for his snacks.  oh, and i also ate a pear for my “dessert” at lunch and it was amaaaaaazing.  i had to apologize for the slurping.  i do love a comice pear!

i thought i’d try a dinner smoothie that i’d hoped would be a “comfort” food for mr. h-s after a long day–“warm apple smoothie” (see recipe at end of post if you’re interested).  he loves baked apple desserts, but this one was a bit disappointing.  he did manage to drink a glass of it, but i obliged him with a pink smoothie chaser.

first of all, two tan smoothies in one day is a little visually uninspiring.  secondly, this apple smoothie was extremely frothy.  sort of similar to drinking the foam on the top of a latte, but apple flavored and it was the whole cup full, not just on the top.  i forgot to ask mr. happy stuff if his was this frothy too (he got the bottom half of the blender), so maybe if i try it again, i won’t blend it quite so thoroughly.  the flavor was nice and it was comforting to have a warm, sweet smoothie.  maybe i’ll try it with pears and apple cider and pie spices and we’ll see how that turns out.

tonight i had the pleasure of cooking a (somewhat) familiar meal with a few alterations and omissions, so we’ll see how that goes for lunch tomorrow.  i must remember to photograph it!  i also got that turkey roasted, so now we should be pretty well set for quicker “slab o’ chicken + a green salad” type lunches when mama oversleeps.  i feel much less frantic now that we’ve got an “emergency backup plan.”  we also now have the default, “if this tastes like crap, we’ll just make a pink smoothie” agreement (similar to the more usual, “if this tastes like crap, we can order a pizza” agreement) which has helped us get through my experimental cooking tendencies.  i have no idea if mr. happy stuff is getting sufficient nutrients from his pink smoothies, but i figure there’s always snacks and lunch to fill in the gaps.

yeesh.  i gotta get to bed!

warm apple smoothie

1 apple, cut into chunks, skins on

1/4 c. water or unpasteurized cider

1/4 t. cinnamon

pinch sea salt

1/8 t. nutmeg

1/8 t. ground cloves

1 c. almond milk

1/4 c. walnuts (optional)

combine first six ingredients (through cloves) in a small saucepan and simmer until the apples are soft.  add the almond milk until it is warm, then carefully transfer all of the ingredients (including the walnuts) into a blender.  blend til smooth.

seriously.  this cleanse should come with a warning.  i completely forgot not one, but two different work obligations today.  as in, i thought i had the day off, but in fact, i was supposed to do an outreach storytime this morning and i had my beloved needlereads class at the library tonight and i completely spaced on both of them.  and it wasn’t until late yesterday that i realized i had to go to class this afternoon!  is this a normal side effect?  or is it enhanced by worry about your kid’s burned fingers?  (by the way, in case you were concerned about them too, we went to the doctor today and they said he’s healing nicely and gave us some white goop to put on them to help the healing and eliminate scarring.  we are on the road to recovery!  but we have to skip swimming class tomorrow night.)  speaking of exercise…. remember me saying that i thought i’d get all this exercise in?  ha!  well, i didn’t take into account how much extra time it takes to cook unfamiliar foods.  you have to keep reading the recipe the whole time you’re cooking to figure out the next step and it takes forever to find some of the new ingredients and when you have to read the labels on all of the packaged foods in your cart, it takes especially forever, so….. exercise has not happened so far, but i’m really okay with that.

mr. happy stuff discovered a new and unexpected side effect of caffeine withdrawal today–ache-y hips and lower back!  who knew?  but he looked it up online and apparently, it’s a common reaction.  hopefully it will pass soon.  he’s already past the headaches and foggy noggin stage.  hooray!

okay, i’m sure you’re all dying to know what we ate today, so here’s the rundown:

breakfast was the “tropical smoothie” from the book (with passion fruit puree!) except i used coconut water instead of almond milk to make mr. happy stuff happy.

lunch was honey agave syrup baked lentils, baked brown rice and roasted butternut squash.  this lentil recipe was one my friends had raved about, so we had to try it.  i thought it was pretty tasty, but now i’m curious to try it with red lentils to see how it would be different.  sadly, the rice was still a bit crunchy (maybe i should have covered the container it baked in?).  happily, there’s enough leftovers that this will make an easy lunch sometime this week!

supper was double green soup from chop chop magazine (i left out the tomatoes, but added a little beauty heart radish garnish for the photo.  garnish!  the secret to an attractive pureed soup photograph!).  have you seen chop chop magazine?  i pick up freebie copies at my doctor’s office and it’s fantastic!  it’s a healthy cooking magazine for kids and is very well done.  there are actually several soup recipes i’d like to try from this issue, but since the rest aren’t blended soups (and wouldn’t lend themselves well to blending) mr. happy stuff and i decided maybe those should wait until after the cleanse.  drinking breakfast and supper leaves little appeal for a soupy lunch.  the verdict on this soup?  i actually loved it way more than i thought i would.  broccoli is definitely the stand-out flavor, but it’s very creamy and rich tasting.  (note:  i used only 4 cups of broth* instead of 7 and it was plenty of liquid.  i also only used one really large clove of garlic instead of 4.)  it would have been even better with some crackers or a thick slice of bread.  (note to post-cleanse self…)  mr. happy stuff was not as big a fan of the soup and commented tonight, “why does everything have to taste so healthy?” he was a good sport though, and ate a bowl full of it and we finished the meal off with a small sweet smoothie:

i just pulled from my professional smoothie-maker background to create this one (coconut water, shredded coconut, frozen pineapple and raspberries).  i enjoyed drinking both my morning and evening sweet smoothies from the “glassybaby” i got as a very sweet gift from a friend a few years ago.  i love it!

today i had a weird realization–the kind that you were pretty sure you’ve known your whole life, but suddenly it’s like it’s a new “aha!” moment.  today i made a solid connection with the fact that we can change our bodies just by changing the food we put into our bodies.  i know, that sounds pretty commonsense, but it’s like today i could finally see past my tongue’s desires to realize that i really “am what i eat.”  deep thoughts.  another side effect of the cleanse–beware!

*i hadn’t yet made any more homemade chicken broth, so i was forced to use the box of broth i picked up at trader joe’s yesterday.  it was definitely the “clean”-est box of chicken broth i’d seen for sale (no gluten, no sugar, no unpronounceable ingredients) and the only thing i wasn’t sure about was the ingredient called “natural chicken flavoring” which the box listed as containing “natural chicken broth, natural chicken flavoring, salt” or something like that.  i actually forget what the third ingredient was because i was so taken aback by the second one.  how can something be the ingredient for itself?  unless maybe it’s a culture, like yogurt….

we started the day off with a “cashew cream” smoothie that included cashews, frozen blueberries and raspberries, and a fresh mango.  i’m intrigued by the variety in volume these recipes make.  although they’re all supposed to be portioned for two people, they can make drastically different amounts.  mr. happy stuff finally realized that he really doesn’t care for nuts in his smoothies–we’re learning more each day about what it is we do and don’t like on this cleanse.  that’s a good thing!

for lunch today, we decided to try a recipe for tabbouleh from one of our own cookbooks.  we chose the quinoa option and left out the tomato.  i got a little frustrated with the rinsing part of prepping quinoa, but i didn’t want to shortchange that process since the last time i’d tried to make quinoa it turned out soooo bitter and i read later that it was because of insufficient rinsing.  but i swear i spent half an hour rinsing my quinoa to try to get the run-off water “crystal clear” like i’d read to do.  hopefully it doesn’t take that long every time.  anyone have a suggested shortcut method?  anyway, we topped the quinoa with some roasted chicken and i sprinkled some za’atar spice on top and it was quite tasty!  i’m curious now to see how different the red quinoa tastes.

although mr. happy stuff had suggested this particular recipe, when it was made, he was disappointed to realize that it wasn’t the salad he’d been thinking of.  the one he remembered had red beans (maybe three kinds?) and some quinoa, maybe in approximately equal proportions.  anyone know of common bean/quinoa salad that might be the one he’s thinking of?

i feel like i’ve spent all of my spare time (and some of my not-so-spare time) this weekend in the kitchen.  either prepping the current meal or doing pre-prep for meals this week.  today, i made hummus and left half of it plain, and added spinach and pea sprouts to the other half.  it’s pretty! (good flavor, but a wee bit fibrous.  i don’t think it will be noticeable.)
i also roasted a whole chicken and yesterday i roasted two butternut squashes.  tonight, i made another batch of homemade coconut “milk” (soaking shredded coconut in water for 15 minutes, then straining it–that’s the base for many of their smoothie recipes).  i also spent more time shopping for groceries.  i finally found the elusive passion fruit puree!  it’s goya brand and i found it at my favorite local international food store.  now if i can only find that smoothie recipe that called for it….

late supper and we wanted to be careful of the “don’t eat for 12 hours” rule, so i just threw together some ingredients in the blender.  mr. happy stuff got a fruity pink smoothie and i added spinach, pecans and almond milk to that same base for a weird, lumpy brown smoothie. (although i didn’t blend the nuts long enough, the flavor of this was lovely.)

worry stuff:  not sure how this whole “big meal at lunch” thing will play out during a work week.  i’m also a bit concerned that our son has shown zero interest in trying any new foods…. will he subsist on mac and cheese for three weeks?  yikes!

happy stuff:  i haven’t felt that “heavy belly” feeling in a few days and that’s kind of nice.  i may have lost 3 pounds?  but then again, who wouldn’t drop a few pounds by basically removing one meal a day?  all that “gunk” in my throat every morning during the winter?  the kind that makes me hack and cough?  90% gone.  after just two milk-free days!  hmmm….

goals n’ stuff:  drink more water.  find more “familiar” recipes that fit the plan.  i think some curry is definitely in our near future.

although i was up three times with the happy toddler last night, the last time i crawled back into bed, i felt oddly awake, as though i could have gotten up and done some homework or something.  and yet, i chose to luxuriate in just snuggling in bed a little while longer.  then, i heard the pitter patter of little awake feet as our boy crawled into bed with us.  i love it when this happens, but this morning, it ended badly with a slightly too energetic boy who accidentally body slammed his skull into my be-spectacled nose.  crunch.  i’m still bruised and sometimes chewing food hurts my nose, but it’s not broken, thank goodness.  poor mr. happy stuff woke up with the same headache from yesterday, so a sure-win smoothie was called for.  i chose to try the smoothie one of my “clean” experienced friends had named as her favorite–the almond butter/frozen peach/cardamom combo.  it reminded me subtly of oatmeal and was much easier for me to drink than yesterday’s.

lunch today was a bit late and scattered.  the short version is, i didn’t get to eat until 2:00 and since i’d only had half an apple and a handful of cashews for my snack, i was a bit…. fragile while putting the boy down for his nap.  but since he was more fragile (he usually goes down for naps between 12:30 and 1:00), he won and i pulled patience reserves from somewhere deep inside of myself.  luckily, he fell asleep super fast, and i knew i had this plate of deliciousness waiting for me:

stir-fried veggies with chicken and buckwheat noodles.  yum!  it was a huge plate of food (neither mr. happy stuff nor i actually finished our portions, so there’s even enough for leftovers!) and while i thought it was extremely tasty, mr. happy stuff felt it was too…. much.  the ginger and sesame oil tasted overwhelming to him, but we both agreed that the all-buckwheat pasta had a really nice texture and flavor for a gluten-free pasta.  in our discussion, i also realized one more reason that cooking from these recipes feels so foreign to me.  it’s not just that they’re wheat/dairy/etc. free, it’s also that many of the menu suggestions are the typical “piece of meat +two sides” that seems to be so common in cookbooks and cooking magazines.  we don’t generally cook that way!  we are a casserole & soup sort of family, with sandwiches and pasta thrown into the rotation for variety.  but it’s extremely rare for me to prepare a “side dish” of any kind (except maybe a salad).  is that my more with less mennonite heritage?  or is it a midwest thing?  either way, i think i’m going to search out some new recipes with that knowledge of what will feel more familiar in mind.  not that we don’t like trying new things, but this is a lot of “new” to take in all at once.

supper was a comfort food option for mr. h-s and me–black bean & butternut squash soup:

i added a dollop of avocado puree to mine (it is really difficult to take an appetizing picture of pureed soup!) and we both agreed that this was a soup we could eat more than once.  i’ll try to be more mindful of the proportions next time and i’ll put together an actual recipe as this was one i just made up using approved ingredients and i haven’t seen anyone else posting bean soups.  are we unusual for loving beans so much?

overall, i experienced more feelings of hunger today and my patience was lower (did my son always screech that much before?  maybe all the wheat and dairy foods provided more of a buffer for me.  or perhaps he’s just chosen a poor time to take up really loud, annoying behavior?) and i’m a bit alarmed by the section in the book describing typical experiences of week 2, where the author says that your body will be adapting to the changes in your diet and he recommends “accomodate your adapting body.  meanwhile, don’t overly accommodate other people if you can avoid it.”  right.  ever tried not accommodating a toddler?  all day?  we’ll see how this develops.

hoo boy.  it’s not quite 10:00 here in the happy household on day 1 of the cleanse.  both of my guys are already in bed, snoring away.  i’ll probably be joining them as soon as i’m done writing this post.  that is earrrrrrly for the grown-ups in this house to be down for the night.  it was a bit of a rough day.

we started off the day with a green smoothie:

on the advice of friends who did this program last summer, i added pineapple (they’d actually suggested apple, but the pineapple was easier to get to.  i didn’t add a lot.) and lime juice to the recipe in the book.  although it wasn’t something i could see myself ever craving, it wasn’t terrible.  mr. happy stuff said he expected it to be a lot worse since it includes kale.

i sent mr. h-s off to work with an apple and some almond butter for a morning snack, packed some cheerios for the little boy to munch on (he’s not doing the cleanse with us), and headed out to whole foods in search of the last few elusive ingredients.  we found most of what we were looking for (still no passion fruit puree, oh well) and a few things we weren’t looking for, but which fit within the guidelines (hooray for a few “clean” fruit/nut bars we can use for easy snacking! and black bean spaghetti!) and then headed to yoga class.  back in the car, i realized that i’d forgotten to pack a mid-morning snack for myself, so i raided our recent purchase and ate a few cashews and some freeze-dried mango.  delicious!

after yoga and back home for lunch, i was working on prepping the warm salmon with pesto asparagus and teaching myself how to use the broil function on our stove.  i’ve never really tried it before, so i read the oven instruction manual and it says you should keep the door propped open about 5 inches (the door sort of props itself open at that spot, you don’t have to put a stick in it or anything) while broiling.  i put together the asparagus and the salmon (a little olive oil, salt and pepper) and put them in to broil, then worked on the simple salad dressing (lemon juice, salt and olive oil) and right about the time for me to flip the salmon over, the happy toddler grabbed the top of the stove door and shut it. with his fingers stuck inside.  he burned all four fingers pretty badly (they have huge blisters), and he’s been eerily nonchalant about them the rest of the day.  i mean, yes, he screamed right when it happened and for a few minutes afterward, and now that they have bandaids on them, he sort of floats that hand around, treating it gingerly, occasionally trying to poke at the bandaids and two or three times, he’s sort of acted like he might be in pain (i did give him tylenol) for a few seconds (whiny, nose scrunched all up), but it usually passes quickly.  i feel terrible every time i see his poor little hand (especially tonight when i was changing the bandages), but i keep reminding myself that accidents happen and that this will likely not be the last time he gets hurt and that he will survive just fine.  but… still.  ouchy!! *shudder*

but back to lunch… it was actually quite delicious (despite the disaster), although mr. happy stuff thought the mesclun dressing was a little too lemony (he was right.  it was, unless you ate it with a bite of salmon or asparagus) and although i totally forgot to put the pesto on, until he’d already finished eating and i was a quarter of the way through mine.  i sent him back to work with one of the clean snack bars for an afternoon snack and then took the boy upstairs for a nap.

supper tonight was definitely the worst meal of the day.  i realized as evening drew near that a liquid supper was going to be the most challenging part of this regimen for us.  i sort of knew that going in to this (i’ve had smoothies for breakfast before, so that was familiar.  big lunch?  bring it on!  but drinking my supper?  hmmm….), but it became crystal clear this evening.  i’d sort of had this idea that eating soup instead of a smoothie might feel more like supper, so i chose one of the “soup” recipes from the book.  here’s the thing–mr. happy stuff really is not fond of butternut squash soup (and i can usually only eat it in small quantities myself) and that was pretty much the only kind of soup that the book lists with the option to serve it warm.  the rest of the soups sound like weird, blender gazpachos (without tomatoes or peppers, of course).  i’m hoping to try making some recipes just using the yes/no list, but i thought for the first day, we should stick with their recipes to get a feel for how big the portions should be and to see if their recipes were more “effective” at cleansing than mine.  so, with mr. happy stuff’s input, we chose to make the zucchini and basil soup.  here’s what it looks like:

let’s just say… it was a learning experience.  here are the things i learned from this soup:

1.  tepid + savory = blech.

2.  just because you’re eating with a spoon doesn’t make it feel more like soup. just chug it down.

3  super watery soups = blech.

4.  when you drink this much tepid soup and one of the ingredients is onion, you spend the whole evening wishing you could brush your teeth every five minutes.

5.  when you have to force yourself to finish your food, you spend the rest of the evening feeling just a little sick.  blech.

i made the executive decision that mr. happy stuff and i deserved small glasses of a sweet smoothie to chase that nasty green stuff down, so i mixed up another recipe from the book (it only made a small portion and we didn’t drink all of it) that consisted of mostly pineapple, mango and coconut.  it tasted amazing!

i also chewed on a mint leaf and that also helped a little bit.  i began fantasizing about a pinapple mojito smoothie that may be in our future…

the happy baby got his favorite (mac & cheese) for dinner and also got to watch a few extra episodes of “thomas sodor” and “sheep!” because of his ouchy fingers.

mr. happy stuff suffered a headache for most of the day and went to bed before the happy toddler, feeling kind of sick.

i’m still in a pretty good mood because i still have that, “this is a fun, new adventure!” feeling, but let’s hope tomorrow is better for my boys.

today i went to the co-op and bought more weird foods.  here’s a list of the foods i got today that i’ve never purchased before:

coconut water

agave syrup

baby bok choy

hazelnuts

gluten-free flour

forbidden rice (a short-grained, black rice.  i’m intrigued by this!)

red quinoa

agave/ginger roasted cashews (a splurge, but i got a sample and they are soooooo tasty, and they’re on the “yes” list!)

frozen wild salmon

french green lentils

whole dried figs

wild rice (okay, i’ve probably purchased this at some point in my life, but i don’t think it was from the bulk section before.  probably from a box.  maybe even a mix…)

i did not find:

frozen passion fruit puree

wheat-free buckwheat noodles

i chose not to purchase:

yerba mate (couldn’t remember if it was on the yes or no list)

acai powder

mangosteen syrup

(both of these last two were in the “supplements” area of the store and both were above $15 a container for waaaaay more than i needed.  i’ll poke around for other recipes.)

although it was time-consuming (the store is not that large and it took me over an hour to pick out the ingredients i needed) and a bit overwhelming (so many labels to read!), i found myself excited to have an “excuse” to try out some new foods.  especially from the bulk foods area.  instead of thinking, “forbidden rice?  we’ll never eat that.” i thought, “forbidden rice?  once served only to emperors?  it’s not on the “no” list?  we should definitely try this!”

also, tonight during dinner, mr. happy stuff and i were talking more about what’s actually on these yes/no lists (apparently, i haven’t really gone into detail before.), and he suggested a few recipe ideas to add to the list.  hooray!