Master Cleanse Day 3

So, since the first three days have been going so swimmingly, Mom and I are thinking that the real trouble is going to start this week.
Not from hunger pain.
Not from irritability.
Not from a lack of energy as we teach at Ball High all day.
From boredom.

Let’s face it, the calories and nutrition you get from this cleanse are perfectly suitable for a short term cleanse. Despite the comments I’ve gotten worried about my immanent death, I feel great! And according to all sources, we’ll just feel better for the rest of the week! The hard part is the monotony of a liquid diet. I’ve found that smelling other people’s food goes a long way in satisfying my need for sensory variety. Sounds counter-intuitive, but it works.

Today mom and I faced our hardest challenge yet: procrastination snacking. Sunday is the day we do our planning for the school week, and since admitting that the weekend is over as we get to work is the last thing we want to do, we often meet in the kitchen to chat and munch.

We passed the test again today with flying colors (I’m telling you, that lemonade mix is actually REALLY tasty), but I’ve begun to think about how and what I’d like to eat when we return to the land of the feeding.

Some thoughts:

-Get back to menu planning

-Raw food for at least 2 days after our cleanse goes without saying, but after the fried foods I justified after my last detox (because I’d been so well behaved, ha) I’d better structure some long term plans so I don’t go overboard this time

-Green smoothies in the morning, of course

-Big lunches to super power my days

-Practice the eating till you’re 80% full rule that keeps the Okinawans living well into their 100s

-Ooooh how I miss my ginseng and fish oil. (Although my skin is looking great from this detox, even without my oh-so-yummy and amazing Barlean’s Fish Oil in Pina Colada. Tastes INCREDIBLE.)

-All in all the plan is to eat less, but enjoy what I do eat more. Quality over quantity.

Thanks for joining my brainstorming session. Tomorrow, we’ll see if the promised upsurge of super clean energy arrives! Until then, good health to you!

30 Dates with my Liver #22: Doing Something Scary Together

So, I have this inexplicable fear of menu planning…My liver, being quite attached to me, has sympathy pangs of horror when even considering the logistics of figuring out how to…i dunno, do all those…menu planny things.

Aha! I think I’ve just gotten to the root of the problem. My list-making food-loving brain apparently turns off at the mere mention of the term…But! For the love of my liver, who will most definitely benefit from me planning some liver-friendly meals after our dates are up, I’m jumping in headfirst. Ugh.

This friendly site seems to know I’m approaching this idea with precaution, and like a bikini-waxer soothing a first time client, they’ve given these benefits of menu planning:

Save money by reducing wasted food!

Save time that would be spent running out to buy missing ingredients, or going more often to the store

Improve nutrition by heeding your brain’s previous wise choices than your belly’s immediate hunger for cheeseburgers when it’s time for dinner

That last site was really calming-they were cheering you on each step of the way. One look at this lady’s menu-planning advice scares the crap out of me. Still, this organizing junkie knows her stuff. When it comes to list making, I’m like Pee-Wee Herman standing next to the Governor of Cali. Here’s her sage advice on How To Menu Plan:

“Here is what I do and if I can do it anyone can! Every Sunday night I sit down for about half an hour with my menu planning pad (soon to be whiteboard) and pencil, a pile of cookbooks, the grocery store flyer and my laptop (so I can access the recipe favorites I have saved on my computer). The first thing I do is rough in what meat I’m eating on which days. For instance it might be beef on Monday, chicken on Tuesday etc. I try not to serve the same type of meat twice in one week. I’ll often go by what is on sale for meat that week too. Once I have that figured out I go to the cookbooks to find coordinating quick, easy and preferrably lower in fat recipes to go with it. I make sure to jot down where I can find the recipe right on my menu pad under the corresponding day. Thursday is easy because that is the day I always schedule for leftovers. I will purposely cook a little bit extra on the days before this in order to give me a nice break from cooking
Once my menu is created I then make up my grocery list from the chosen recipes. This allows me to only buy ingredients I’m actually going to use for the week, reducing waste and saving money. I, without fail, go grocery shopping every Monday morning. This is essential for my plan to work. Rarely do I let anything stand in my way of this happening.”

Man I would not want to get in the way of her shopping on Mondays. But I’d love to have a kitchen like hers where the meals for the week are posted though, so it’s time to face my fears and take a crack at it!

1) So since I’m starting in the middle of the week, first I’m going to take inventory of what’s in the kitchen.
DANG we have a bunch of food. This is actually not bad so far-there are some sauce mixes and fun items in there I’d forgotten about, like vermicelli noodles! Bout time we used this stuff up before it goes bad!

2) Ok. Now that I know that we’re totally stocked (and have enough olives to feed a small Greek family for a month for some strange reason), I’m going to flip through the web and my veggie cookbooks for some recipes for the next few days. I got some great seasonal recipes from the latest Vegetarian Times, so let’s see what we’ve got…

Saturday
Breakfast: Green Smoothie!
Lunch: falafel
Dinner: Eating out in Houston!

Sunday
Breakfast: Green Smoothie!
Lunch: Family outing
Dinner: Spicy Borscht (recipe from Vegetarian Cooking)

Monday
Breakfast: Green Smoothie!
Lunch: Salmon salad
Dinner: Spring Rolls with egg-drop soup

Tuesday
Breakfast: Green Smoothie!
Lunch: Grietchka (aka Kasha, a Russian grain) with roasted veggies
Dinner: Smoked Oysters on Herb Crackers

Whew! Ok, now I get why I’ve been avoiding this. It was inordinately time consuming to pick out what I want to eat and check that I’d have the right ingredients. But I can tell that this is the kind of thing that just takes a tiny bit of practice, and will save time later. A ton of time since I just realized I don’t need to go shopping. Heck, it was only 2 steps! And I’ll try cooking out of my comfort zone!

Ok, menu planning, you’re all right. We’ll still have to take a few days to see how this all pans out before you’re allowed into any conversations outside of this blog, though. Don’t want to scare anybody.