Cleanse This: My So-called Cleanse Experience

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Who out there has tried a cleanse?

(I’ll bet a few of you nodded yes)

Who out there has THOUGHT about trying a cleanse?

(I bet many of you nodded yes and raised your hands to that question)

Green juice – not so appetizing

Cleansing has been an on and off topic in our household for at least a few years. We have fanatical friends who go on radical juice cleanses once a month (or so it seems) and family members who have committed to month-long “gentler” cleanses that include solid food and  smoothies galore, not to mention that a raw foods & fresh juice retailer opened  around the corner last year,  taunting us on a daily basis to give starvation a shot for the low price of $60 per day. All participants claim to feel fabulous afterwards: clearer skin, leaner waist lines, higher energy levels. And despite all this, I’ve shied away from it. Until…

I read about Bon Appetit’s Food Lover’s Cleanse. I fell for it hook, line and sinker over the winter holidays as I overindulged meal after meal, and gluttonously flipped through the magazine in my limited time away from the table. The principles are simple: tons of fruit and vegetables, lots of whole grains and healthy fats,   limited caffeine and alcohol, and only natural sweeteners. 3 square meals + 2 snacks per day. It’s a non-cleanser’s cleanse. Sounds pretty good for 2 weeks, right? Here’s the tough part: no dairy, no refined bread, no pasta. For 2 weeks. Ouch. But, still, a heck of a lot better than all liquid, all the time for a week, right? That green juice scares me.

Black Cod with Swiss Chard, Olives, and Lemon with Red Quinoa on the side (photo courtesy of Bon Appetit)

The magazine hooked me on Day #1’s recipe for Cod with Swiss Chard and Red Quinoa with Pistachios.  Doesn’t sound like a painful meal to consume to me. The rest of the recipes were online, along with a shopping list to help plan your meals. Hubs and I discussed, and he agreed to commit. We decided to give it a whirl, and roughly followed the plan for about 2 weeks. I know, that sounds pretty loosy-goosy, but it was a start. I probably prepared about a dozen recipes altogether from the 14 day Cleanse (thank you author Sara Dickerman), several of which I have repeated (voluntarily) since, and a few that are now permanent additions to my repertoire. I’ll be writing about these new additions in upcoming posts.

Few other comments on the Cleanse: This is not a raid-your-pantry undertaking. Quite a bit of shopping was required, which I found to be a pro and con. The cleanse took me out of my comfort zone cooking-wise, incorporating quite a few new ingredients like harissa, red quinoa, hazelnuts (who buys hazelnuts on a regular basis?), but that was also fun. From a time investment, many of the dinner recipes were time-consuming. As a huge fan of the Minimalist, Mark Bittman, I like simple meals and some of the dinner recommendations were complex, and took a lot of prep. Hubs reminded me that the plan didn’t portend to be “fast and easy weeknight recipes,” but I still thought it worth mentioning.

In the meantime, a few words about the teaser recipe that got me hooked – Black Cod with Swiss Chard and Red Quinoa.  Delicious! What a satisfying and flavorful meal – Hubs even tasted the swiss chard. I tried a few substitutes for black cod, since it is hard to come by – regular cod, sea bass. All worked fine. And the Red Quinoa with Pistachios recipe is just delicious. Red quinoa does taste different from your standard quinoa – it’s also more expensive and harder to find. This was my first dish with it and it’s worth a try.  I’ll post the recipe below for you as well. Hubs loved it, too,

Red Quinoa with Pistachios (adapted from Bon Appetit)

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 shallot, finely chopped
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 cup red quinoa, rinsed well in a fine-mesh sieve
  • 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth or water
  • 1/4 cup unsalted, shelled raw pistachios, chopped
  • 3 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint (I omitted as I didn’t have any on hand, and was delicious nonetheless)

Preparation

  • Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add shallot, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, about 5 minutes. Add quinoa and cook, stirring frequently, until quinoa starts to toast and smell nutty, about 5 minutes. Add chicken broth and bring to a boil.
  • Stir in quinoa, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer gently until quinoa is tender, 25-30 minutes (15 if using white quinoa). Remove pan from heat, fluff quinoa with a fork. Cover; let stand for 5 minutes.
  • Fold pistachios, parsley, and mint into quinoa. Season with salt and pepper.

Yield: 4 servings, or as a side dish for 2 with leftovers

 

Fermentation Frenzy

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With the new year, I’ve been motivated to try a few new things: fermenting, healthy cleansing (read: no juices or starvation), and taking real food cooking to a new level. I’ll start on fermentation and why it’s piqued my interest.

Hubs and I started taking a liquid probiotic supplement every morning last fall. We both agreed that we felt better after taking it – helped to keep us balanced and the digestive tract functioning more smoothly. I became a fan and a repeat customer.  Two issues: it’s hard to find and pricey. Well, what’s in this magic elixir but the extract of fermented real foods? 

I found inspiration from many fellow bloggers in the real food community about fermenting:

And so I began last week. I started with lacto-fermentation, straining a container of whole milk plain yogurt and reserving the liquid that resulted (whey). Thanks to OhLardy! for the step-by-step instructions here. A fun by-product of this was ultra-rich homemade Greek yogurt, which I had for breakfast this week. With my homemade whey, I tried making sparkling orange juice – add a few tablespoons of whey to OJ for a probiotic rich drink. And then, I moved on to fermented coleslaw.

Red Cabbage Fermented Slaw

Red Cabbage Fermented Slaw

Red Cabbage Fermented Slaw

Red Cabbage Fermented Slaw

Roughly following the Fermenting Vegetables recipe from Feedmelikeyoumeanit, I made my first batch of slaw using salt as my fermenting agent. Super exciting. I used my Cuisinart to shred 1/2 head of purple cabbage and slice 1 whole yellow onion, grated 1 carrot by hand, and then used the equivalent of 1 sliced red bell pepper that I had “put up” over the summer from Wolfe Spring Farm‘s CSA. Felt like a regular homesteader, I did.

The recipe filled 2 – 1 pint Mason jars. After 2 days of rest, I carefully opened one jar to test it and tamp it down. As forewarned, open carefully! There are live cultures inside and pressure builds. The concoction bubbled up and spilled ruby-colored juice on the counter, but it needed a few more days to “cook.” I sealed the jars back up and left them alone. By day 5, we were ready. Shifted to the fridge, my fermented slaw was ready to go. Crunchy, salty, savory, I ate several forkfuls with my dinner last night and loved it. I can’t say that the digestive benefits were felt as immediately as with taking a supplement, but I knew I was eating something real and homemade.

Taste the goodness

Taste the goodness

Have you ever fermented?

Coconut Oil is for Eating. Butternut Squash, too.

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That’s a declarative statement, recently transformed from a question.

Solid state

Solid state

I found it hard to believe when I started reading  about the health benefits of cooking with coconut oil. It was difficult to comprehend. Firstly, because I still have memories of slathering coconut oil on my body while suntanning in high school (speaking of difficult things to comprehend – did I really do that?), and secondly, isn’t it a  highly processed/hydrogenated fat? Well, turns out I was wrong on both account. I doubt it was real coconut oil I was using back in the day – likely something scented with coconut oil – and coconut oil is really, really good for you. There are people who claim it does everything from reducing inflammation to reversing food allergies. I am not about to make any of those claims here, but I was excited to cook with it because it supposedly tastes great. Incidentally, if you do want to read more on the health benefits, check out Dr. Joseph Mercola’s thoughts on coconut oil’s health benefits from the Huffington Post and fellow food blogger Coconut Mama’s post.

I had read that coconut oil adds secondary flavors of sweetness and nuttiness when used in cooking. That’s what really intrigued me (more so than the health benefits), and it didn’t disappoint. I prepared a simple dish of roasted butternut squash and was super excited to crack open my jar of Trader Joe’s Coconut Oil. I was a little alarmed at first to see the coconut oil in a solid state, looking more like marshmallow fluff than a fat to roast my veggies with. But it scooped out easily and started softening within seconds, without any supplemental heating. And, oh, the scent. My kitchen and entire apartment smell heavenly – even luscious – while we await the snowstorm of the season. Here’s my simple recipe testing out the new wonder ingredient – coconut oil.

Butternut Squash Roasted in Coconut Oil, with Roasted Red Onion

Butternut Squash Roasted in Coconut Oil, with Roasted Red Onion

Butternut Squash Roasted in Coconut Oil

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Ready for the oven. Dab of coconut oil, salt and a sprinkle of cheyenne pepper

1 medium butternut squash, peeled and roughly cubed into 1″ cubes (save the seeds for roasting, too)
1 Tbsp coconut oil
1 red onion, peeled, quartered, and cut into large chunks (optional)
large dash of kosher salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss butternut squash and onion, if using, with coconut oil in 9X11 baking dish. Sprinkle salt and toss again. Place in oven and roast for 30 – 40 minutes, shaking pan every 10 minutes or so. Check for doneness – the squash should be tender and you should be able to easily spear it with a fork.

I used the onion because I actually had 1/2 an onion hanging around in my fridge. It is not essential, but added some nice color. Enjoy the tastes and aromas!

Healthy, homemade snack

Healthy, homemade snack

Sunchokes, Anyone?

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Sunchokes courtesy of TheKitchn

I am mildly obsessed with this late fall tuber – the sunchoke, aka Jersusalem artichoke. Sunchokes are super tasty, easy to prepare, contain protein (!!) and low in starch. They could easily be mistaken for ginger root in appearance, but have a consistency more like celeriac or a potato (with a much better nutritional profile). And, they are available now in the Northeast, so local+seasonal. I guess I commented one too many times during dinner on my affection for this veg.  Said Hubs, ” Yeah, I got it,” all the while scraping his plate clean. This is one in a series on the lovely sunchoke.

Last Monday night’s meal consisted of Pan Seared Halibut with Oven Roasted Sunchokes and a mixed green salad to finish. It was a hit.

Pan Seared Halibut and Oven Roasted Sunchokes

I wanted a simple recipe for the halibut, and I got my inspiration from the the King Estate Winery’s website. I cracked a handful of peppercorns, and then pressed them into each side of 6 ounce halibut fillets, along with a sprinkle of kosher salt. I heated up a splash of olive oil in my cast iron pan on medium heat, and then seared the fillets for about 2 minutes on each side. Done.  I had previously prepared the sunchokes, so dinner was basically ready to go in less than 10 minutes. Here is my recipe for the sunchokes. Must try

Oven Roasted Sunchokes for 2

Oven Roasted Sunchokes

1/2 to 3/4 pound of sunchokes, scrubbed and slice 1/4 inch thick. Do not peel
2 or 3 tablespoons olive oil
5 or 6 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
1 teaspoon dried rosemary, or a small sprig of fresh rosemary, if you have it
Kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper

Heat oven to 425F. Toss sunchokes in a mixing bowl with olive oil, garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper. Place in a 9X13 roasting pan and cook for 15 minutes. Shake the pan once or twice. The sunchokes are ready when they are softened and lightly browned. You can keep them in the oven longer if you’d like to get them a little crispier. Enjoy!

Reliving the Glory of Summer – Pasta al Pesto Genovese in the Fall

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Post-Thanksgiving Pasta – Sounds like a bad idea, right? I am a few weeks late with this post, but I hope you will still find it entertaining.

Pretty Purple Taters and Green Beans Ready to go

Pasta al Pesto was great excuse to reminisce about the summer’s bounty.  And required no additional shopping – a bonus after hitting the grocery store multiple times while prepping for Thanksgiving. I pulled a glass jar of pesto out of the freezer Saturday morning to defrost, excited for my resourceful quasi-pantry meal. We had purple potatoes leftover from the last CSA pick-ups (remember, potatoes do last), and the green beans, while neither local or seasonal at the moment, were leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner. We cleaned and sliced them up, and boiled the potatoes first, then the green beans, using the same water.

Boiled potatoes and green beans, awaiting their turn

Set aside the veggies, then cook the pasta in the same water. While the pasta cooked, I thinned out my frozen pesto with some additional olive oil, and added 1/2 cup of grated parmiggiano to the pesto. If you prepare pesto for the freezer, don’t add the cheese until you are ready to use it.

Add the spaghetti, steaming, straight from the pot

Add the pasta to a large bowl with the green beans, potatoes, pesto and a splash of pasta water. Toss well.

Fabulous Fall Meal: Spaghetti al Pesto Genovese

Tutti a tavola! Spaghetti al Pesto Genovese on a chilly November night. I loved dipping into my pantry to pull out previously prepared treats.

Tell me what you’ve used from  your pantry lately.

Weston Price, Paleo, GAPS: Word jumble or meaningful diets?

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There are many theories and philosophies on healthy eating, some of them seemingly contradictory: eat meat, don’t eat meat, eat lots of fish, go vegan, use lots of healthy oils, low-fat, consume probiotics, don’t and the list goes on. There is also a lot of “new” vocabulary out there  like Paleo, Weston Price, and GAPS. In my opinion, it’s important to find a lifestyle, not a diet per se, that fits you and your family. At the same time, it’s good to be aware of what’s out there. I have curated a few links to posts about these philosophies that I hope you’ll find informative and will help you make healthy choices

Parker House Rolls Are a Hit

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Epilogue on Parker House Rolls. Just what we needed for Thanksgiving dinner, another carb on the table, I thought to myself repeatedly, and voiced out loud  at least 1 or 2 times. But I am not too big to give credit where it is due and compliment Hubs on this last minute addition to the menu. The rolls created a few last minute scrambles like a missing 9X13 dish (had to swap out the homemade stuffing) and the equipment fumble (had to use Vodka bottle instead of rolling pin), but it was worth it. I was a doubter, and now I am a believer.

The rolls were rich and delicious and downright addictive. The Parker House rolls recipe we followed is from Bon Appetit. The good thing about having others help in the kitchen is that I can also capture their handiwork. Here is a video of Hubs lining up the individual rolls in the baking dish.  Did I mention that these make great leftovers, too?

Preparing Parker House Rolls

I Dream of Camping?

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Words I rarely utter, trust me. But this camping trip to Chaffin Family Orchards in Oroville, California by fellow food blogger Cheeseslave looked awesome. It is the epitome of California Dreamin’ – u-pick ’em mandarin oranges, pomegranates, olives.

Pomegranates@ Chaffin Farm courtesy of Cheeselave

And the accommodations are more cabin-like than pup-tent. Sign me up, Cheeseslave.

Thanksgiving Kitchen Crisis Averted: Vodka to the rescue

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Thank you, Grey Goose. Parker House rolls saved!

Rolling Pin Substitute courtesy of Epicurious

Hubs realized that our kitchen lacks a wooden rolling pin, which is needed for the Parker House Rolls. After a quick Google search, found this great idea on Epicurious’s blog to use a 1.75 liter vodka bottle in place of a wooden rolling pin.  Our kitchen does NOT lack vodka.