Um, so, yeah.

So here’s the thing.  I have been feeling not exactly my level best lately, and I’ve been indulging quite a bit in things like lemon pound cake and red velvet cupcakes and the multi-course extravaganza of cook club, and using my wonderful ice cream maker 5 times in one month.  Also, I’m nursing a shoulder injury and therefore not going to aikido, so I have no good way of working off the consumption of all that wonderful sugar and butter.  All of which added up to the thought that it might be a good idea to reset my baseline as far as food is concerned.  Meaning another round of detoxing.  And it’s imperative to get this done before things like eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes (aka “nightshades” with their damned inflammatory properties) start showing up in the box.  Or the first of the fruit share, which I will undoubtedly be compelled to turn into pies, muffins, and ice cream.

Point being: I have no interesting recipes to share this week.  Though, currently on day 4, I’m pleased to report that the overall effects of a gluten-, sugar-, dairy-, etc.-free diet are proving equally welcome.  I’m not following the strict plan this time, which in some ways makes things easier.  Even though day 2 came with a wretched headache (I blame caffeine withdrawal) and I slept away the afternoon on day 3.

Truth be told, 4 heads of lettuce was going to add up to a lot of salads, anyway, and I’m just not going to write about throwing together a salad, no matter how many interesting ingredients go in it (garlic scapes, wild rice, navy beans, the last of my pickled ramps, loads of fresh herbs).  I’ve also made a batch of the stellar miso soup, which is wonderful, it turns out, with a leaf or two of Chinese cabbage sliced up and added to the other veggies.  Oh, and my favorite white bean/garlic scape dip from last summer (which is detox friendly! as long as you only dip in veggies, not crackers).

In any case, let this serve as an explanation for why it might seem like my veggies are going to waste.  I assure you they are not.  And this week, I’ve got my eye on an Orangette recipe for spinach soup with garlic, which will be veganized, and therefore probably dinner tonight.  And also a recipe for whole wheat sage bread, which, in a move of dubious legality, I photographed from a cookbook in the awesome used bookstore around the corner from my office.  The bread, though, will have to wait until Friday. 

Detox, day 6

I am in the home stretch on this detox week, and here are my two big takeaways so far:

-the miso soup recipe is amazing

-I crave sugar more than I crave coffee, bread, or cheese (seriously, I want a cookie right now. I might make a batch Friday night just so I can have one waiting for me for breakfast Saturday.)

On the whole, the week has been very good. Days 2 & 3 I was exhausted, but there may have been outside factors in that situation. By day 4, I felt really, legitimately good. I have only felt hungry/deprived once (the menu for day 5 does not include a lot of what I would normally consider actual meals, and I could have eaten twice the amount of avocado/cucumber soup for dinner). I still don’t really care for salmon, but steaming fish over a big handful of fresh herbs is an excellent preparation method. And I have absolutely lost weight, but that was of course not the motivation for this detox, and I fully expect to gain the bulk of it back with one indulgent dinner plan or another on Saturday. Which will follow my cookies-for-breakfast plan. And then I’m going to Seattle next week, which is one of my favorite eating cities…

Miso Soup recipe
adapted Goop.com
SERVES: 4
TIME: 30 minutes

7 1/4 cups water
60 grams dried bonito flakes (the packages at Whole Foods are 30g each)
3-4 dried shitake mushrooms
5″ piece of dried wakame or kombu
1 cup julienned carrots
1 cup sliced mushrooms
6 tablespoons miso paste
2 cups watercress leaves

Heat the water in a small soup pot and when bubbles form around the edge, add the bonito. Turn the heat down and simmer for two minutes. Turn off the heat and let the broth sit for five minutes. Strain the broth into a clean pot, discarding the bonito. Add the shitakes and wakame/kombu to the broth and simmer over low heat for 20 minutes. Remove the wakame and mushrooms. Discard the thick stems from the mushrooms, thinly slice the caps and slip them back into the soup. Chop the wakame into small pieces, discarding any thick pieces of stem, and return to the pot over low heat. Add the carrots and fresh mushrooms.

In a small bowl, combine the miso paste with a bit of the broth and whisk to combine. Pour the mixture back into the pot and let the soup simmer, being careful not to let it boil. Add the watercress at the last minute, just to wilt it, and serve.

Detox

As I think I mentioned, I was talked into doing a week-long detox with my friend E. But then due to circumstances beyond our control, it turned out to be harder than we’d guessed to find a week that would work for both of us, and now she is moving way the hell across the country. So I’ve decided to do it on my own.

First a few thoughts on why this sounded like such a good idea. Partly, I’ve decided that 2010 is the year of trying new things and getting outside my comfort zone. And the idea of a week without gluten, sugar, caffeine, dairy, or nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers…) was definitely enough to freak me out.

Then as I started to think about it, the detox reminded me of the reading deprivation week from the Artist’s Way, which I did this past fall. It’s not a way you could live even if you wanted to, but it was an interesting experiment and definitely a worthwhile one. And since reading and food are pretty much my two biggest loves in life, doing a detox sort of makes sense. Reading deprivation went a long way towards showing me why I love to read, and made me think carefully about how I prioritize my time. So aside from any actual health benefits, I anticipate that I’ll get something similar out of this week.

And finally, the past month has unintentionally been a month of total self-indulgence. As I said to E., if you can drink it, eat it, or buy it, I’ve done it this month. Waffles for lunch? Check. Slivovitz? Check. Knee-high suede boots? Pedicure? Mocha rum cake? Check, check, check. I think in part, knowing that at SOME point in the future I would be detoxing made it easier to just keeping saying “yes, of course!” to everything I even sort of kind of wanted.

So now that has come to an end. (At least a temporary one.) The coffee maker is unplugged for the week, and the blender is going into overdrive.

Today is day 2, and I am thrilled to report that I do NOT have the caffeine addiction I thought I did. I really like coffee. For years I said that it was the ritual of morning coffee more than caffeine that woke me up in the morning, to which at least one person said, “Well, then why don’t you just drink decaf?” That is a silly question that doesn’t even warrant an answer. But eventually, I started noticing that if I didn’t have coffee in the morning for whatever reason, by 1pm, I’d have a raging headache. There are worse addictions to have, but on principle, it bothered me. But now here it is, 50+ hours since my last cup of coffee and going strong.

That is not to say that I’m out of the woods, however. I fully anticipate that I’ll have a different kind of headache sometime tomorrow, as these “toxins” (I really have a hard time thinking of wheat or tomatoes as a toxin) start getting worked out of my system. But this is not a master cleanse, or even a juice diet–there is actual food involved–so I am optimistic that I’ll last the week. The other thing that helps is that the menu is completely spelled out, down to afternoon snacks, so I don’t have to sit here wondering, “Wait, is there gluten in corn?”

And now, time for lunch: grilled teriyaki chicken and steamed chard.