Day 3: Last Day of the Cleanse

Back on the wagon this morning.  Weighed 174.7 (back to where I began).

Breakfast

Had to go to my daughter’s daycare for a couple hours this morning so skipped the extra water and dandelion tea in favour of 3 cups of coffee with 10% cream and sugar.  Still had to pee three times in two hours while I was there.

I finished off the flax granola.  I ate it with blueberries, Silk True Coconut Original milk and a tablespoon of honey. (The honey is key!)  When I got back from my daughter’s daycare, I made another double batch.  This is a photo of batch #2.  I went heavier on the cinnamon this time.  Like last time, I added chopped dried apricots (on the theory that they must be okay if apricots appear later in week 1), raisins (hoping for the best), and this time, slivered almonds.  I am not crazy about all-flax granola. I don’t mind eating it, but it is just okay.  I will say, it certainly does cleanse as promised.  Recitas recommends using half dark and half golden flax for the best taste.  I used just golden, but will try this combo next time.

Lunch

Yesterday, I made the Spicy Vegetarian Soup.  The good news: like the Carrot Ginger Soup, it is pretty tasty, more than I expected with no salt and all that kale.  You could serve this to anyone (in fact, I did serve it to my mother for lunch) and they would just think they were having a tasty vegetarian soup.  As you can see, I pureed mine (fast work with an immersion blender).  I also added a few shakes of Maine Coast Seasonings Organic Kelp Granules.  I am really enjoying this salt substitute.  You can use it liberally as a serving is 1/4 tsp.  I think I like the Carrot Ginger Soup slightly better, of the two, but both are good.

Now for the bad news: I found the proportions in the recipe way off.  I tried to make the soup in the pot I used for the Carrot Ginger Soup but realized it was way too small and had to go for my lobster pot – the biggest one I have.  Then I had to add an additional 4-6 cups of water just to cover the vegetables in the pot to simmer them.  I also added five extra Spicy Coco Sauce ice cubes for flavour, but with the liquid that far off, it wasn’t a spicy soup.  I ended up with at least 10-12 cups of soup and I have no idea what to do with all of it as we only have a small freezer.  If I made this again, I would start with half a squash, half a head of broccoli, half a head of kale and maybe only one or two zucchini and a couple of carrots, but leave the spices the same.  Probably my least favourite thing about this soup is that it came out an unfortunate brown colour, due to the poultry seasoning.

The other part of the lunch was the Day 3 salad.  I used organic baby spinach for the greens (apparently non-organic spinach is 85% reactive), plus shredded carrot, avocado, toasted pumpkin seeds (toasting makes them even better) and on a whim, I included a handful of blueberries.  I dressed the salad with some Orange Oil and a squeeze of lemon and it was delicious.  I am looking forward to trying it with goat cheese tomorrow.

With lunch I drank 16 oz water (I know drinking with meals isn’t recommended, but I had to get it in) and finished with a cup of strong dandelion tea.

Snack

I toasted some raw almonds and snacked on a handful only an hour or so after lunch, as I was still a bit hungry.  The almonds didn’t help much – I was hungry right through the afternoon and until dinner.

Dinner

Today’s dinner was Chicken with Italian Herbs and Orange Zest on a bed of greens, plus Roasted Italian Winter Vegetables.  I was hungry all afternoon so I started supper at 5:00 p.m. and we ate just before 6:00 p.m.

My husband was not totally happy about the idea of cooking for himself for three weeks so we struck a deal: I would tell him what was on The Plan for dinner and if he wanted some, I would make enough for both of us.  Tonight was the first night he ate the same dinner as I did, though he augmented his dinner with some buttered pasta as well.

I used all of my zucchini in the Spicy Vegetable Soup so I just did roasted carrots, broccoli and onions.  I drizzled them with Tuscan Herb-infused olive oil and they were lovely.  I roasted them on the same pan with the chicken but they probably needed an extra 10 minutes.  If I did Day 3 again, I’d put the veg in first and follow with the chicken 10 minutes later.  The chicken was done perfectly in 30 minutes and was simple and tasty.  (Sorry for the pic – I forgot to take one until part-way through dinner.)

I had a glass of water with dinner (I know, not ideal) and chugged four more after dinner.  Three to go.  I had three cups of coffee this morning but I know I can’t count those, even though the latest trend has been to count coffee toward one’s fluid intake.  I wonder why the coconut milk doesn’t count toward the daily liquid?

While I was making the chicken and roasted veg, I decided to make some Blueberry Pear Compote, an alternate breakfast with chia seeds.  This recipe is not in the book but is offered on Recitas’s website as part of The Plan Cookbook 2012 – you can find the link to download it on the far right side of the home page, almost all the way down.  The cookbook is a substantial 50+ pages.

I found myself hungry again around 9:00 p.m. and went rooting for a snack.  I settled on toasted almonds with chocolate chips (on the shaky logic that it’s ALMOST Day 4 and chocolate is allowed on Day 4.)  Finished a big handful and also ate a dozen or so low-salt potato chips while watching the Stanley Cup game.

Thoughts about Today

I am struggling to drink the required 11 glasses of water each day, though I finally did it today.  I think I really need to get three in first thing, three mid-day, two more at snack time, and three in the evening.  That’s a lot of water!

The other difficulty has been afternoon hunger.  I am fine in the AM and after dinner but on two of the three days I’ve done, I’ve been hungry after lunch, enough that I would have had a larger snack if possible.  I am quite active – I teach three indoor cycling classes a week, plus lift weights and walk 30-90 minutes per day, so I am wondering if maybe I should be following the food requirements for men?  Maybe just at lunch time?

Pre-Plan Part II: Groceries and Cooking

Groceries

The next step was getting groceries.  Recitas offers a helpful week 1 grocery list here.  I was able to find everything (even the Sriracha sauce – Lee Kum Kee brand) at my grocery store.  The only thing that was a little difficult to find was the salt-free potato chips.  I finally found Kettle brand low sodium potato chips with 10mg of sodium per 18-20 chips (40g).  They were at the grocery store, but in the health food section.  The Maine Coast Organic Kelp Seasoning was in stock at the health food store.

Cooking

I had all the groceries sitting around in my fridge for more than a week before I was able to find the time to do some cooking.  I started with the Carrot Beet Salad.  I think it would look lovely in ribbons but I only have an inexpensive food chopper so mine came out with a similar consistency to cole slaw.  It was only after I made it that I noticed there is no dressing for it.  My husband and I did try it plain but neither of us liked it much.  After a bit of Googling, I located this recipe for Carrot Beet Salad with a Ginger Vinaigrette.  It seems like it could be made Plan-friendly.  I left out the shallot as I didn’t have any on hand; you’d have to test for sesame and the sodium content might be high, but it was quite tasty on the carrot beet salad.  (Recitas warns on the website not to combine the carrot and beet or they’ll get “muddy” but mine has been in the fridge for two days and it is still vibrant.)

Fathers’ Day proved a perfect opportunity to do the rest of the preparation.  My husband slept in, my daughter was watching a bit of iPad on the sofa, and I had some time to cook.

First I got the Flax Granola started.  This involves mixing the flax (I used the lighter tasting golden flax seeds) with cinnamon and water and vanilla extract and letting it sit in the fridge all day or overnight.  It comes out solid and sticky, with the water absorbed.  I spooned it onto two cookie sheets (double batch) and tried to smooth it into a thin layer, then baked it at 275 degrees for 50 minutes.  I checked it and turned it every 10 minutes and added a dozen chopped dried apricots and two handfuls of raisins for the last 10 minutes.  I tried it with the Silk Coconut Milk Original flavour and a handful of blueberries and it was pretty good.  Not something I’d rush out to get, but definitely okay.

Then I made the Carrot Ginger Soup.  Now, I don’t make soup very often.  I always think it will be really time-consuming and I’ll end up with a dozen bowls of the stuff that I can’t use.  This soup was easy to make – I just chopped the vegetables and simmered them while I made the other things.  When they were done, I pureed them with an immersion blender and poured the soup into a mason jar.  I did add an extra 2 cups of water after pureeing it as it was too thick.

Then I made the Orange Oil.  I zested the organic orange (my microplane zester is one of my favourite kitchen tools) but the recipe confused me.  It says to zest the orange (check) then “soak in olive oil.”  Did that mean to soak the orange?  Or just the zest?  Or both?  In the end, I just put the zest in, and we ate the orange for breakfast.

Next was the Spicy Coco Sauce. Recitas says this is “legendary” among Plan followers, so I was eager to make it.  The toughest part of this recipe was chopping 8 cloves of garlic (double batch) as my garlic had sprouted and I knew from a previous cooking class that if you don’t dig out the green sprouts, the garlic will be bitter.  As with the Carrot Ginger Soup, I was frustrated that all the spices were listed without quantities, simply “to taste.”  This time I couldn’t Google an alternate recipe.  I added a 2″ knob of ginger, chopped, plus a pinch of cinnamon, cumin and turmeric.  I used one can of regular coconut milk and one can of “premium” coconut milk.  Turns out the difference is the “premium” one is all coconut cream (the part with the consistency of butter) while the regular one is about half cream and half coconut water.  I pureed this sauce as well when it was done.  It had a nice, thick consistency but due to the turmeric was a yellow-brown colour.  I saved 1.5 cups and froze the rest in an ice cube tray, then transferred the frozen cubes to a ziploc bag.

The last thing I did was get my food ready for Day 1 – Monday.  The flax granola is ready to go.  I will take some Carrot Ginger soup with me to work, plus I washed some broccoli to steam at the office and added a small container of orange oil, plus some mixed greens in another container with a pear and some pumpkin seeds, along with an apple.  I also washed the kale for tomorrow and bagged it in the fridge to go with the Spicy Coco Sauce.  The Atkins diet was really big on kale.  I know it’s a nutritional powerhouse, and all that, but I never did find a way to prepare it that I actually enjoyed.  It was always just okay, so maybe the Spicy Coco Sauce will be the thing.  (I did also pick up some baby kale to use as mixed greens – I’ve had those in a Caesar salad and they were good.)