Final words from a detoxee

So the detox is over, what an experience. Something I believe that will change my dietary habits for life.

I thought to help sum up this blog, I will give you the meals that were eaten, just to give some ideas on what is detox friendly and what isn't. Halfway through the detox I thought it probably would have been great to keep a food diary, but it was a bit late for that now!

Breakfasts:

• Spelt toast with avocado, hommus, olive oil and cracked pepper
• Muesli with yoghurt and banana
• Berry porridge with soy milk
• Dr. Karg crispbread (100% spelt and 100% delicious) with avocado or hommus
• Fruit: apple, pear, mandarin, banana
• Protein smoothies - soy milk with either (or mix of) berries, yoghurt, banana, raw chocolate, agave syrup, LSA and chia seeds

Lunches:

• Dr. Karg crispbread with tuna, hommus, avocado and olive oil
• Leftover salads (see below to what salads I made) with hard-boiled eggs or tuna
• Homemade soups - I made a huge batch of soup in the first week (sorry I didn't take any photos to blog it!). I made two soups - Vegetable (sweet potato, carrot, cauliflower, cabbage, onion, zucchini, celery) with lentils and beans and Mushroom (swiss brown mushrooms, onion, carrot, celery and parsley). Both were made with a vegetable stock base. For those who haven't made soup before, this doesn't even require a recipe. Just bung all the ingredients together in a pot with stock, allow to boil then simmer. Once all the vegies are tender, whizz it up with a blender. Too easy and cheap meals a plenty!
• Soft boiled eggs on spelt toast
• Fruit

Dinners:

• Chicken or turkey: grilled in thai marinade
• Chicken crockpot in soy & honey (Thank you for dinner Sal!)
• Chicken pizza (on spelt base) with vegetables
• Pasta with tomato, bean, onion and grated vegetable (zucchini, carrot and capsicum) sauce
• Omelette with mushrooms, onion and capsicum
• Calamari cooked in chilli, pepper, Chinese 5-spice and salt
•  Fish: Cooked plenty of fish! So what did I cook and how?
• Salmon: thai marinaded; cooked in soy, ginger & garlic; homemade parmesan-less pesto (spinach, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, basil) & breadcrumbs (spelt bread)
•  Barramundi: Nut-crusted, fish curry (I used my vegie soup as a curry base, then added the fish, coconut cream, chilli, garam marsala and vegies to make a mild curry); lime juice & cracked pepper

• Most meals had a side dish of steamed or roasted vegetables, or a salad. I grew up with lifeless salads which had no heart, so have taken to making my own with a bit of love and a lot of flavour (no strong dressings needed on these!)
• Rainbow salad: Spinach, rocket and kale with sundried tomatoes, grated beetroot and lightly fried sweet potato cubes, red onion and broccoli. Drizzle of olive oil and cracked pepper. (pictured below)
• Quinoa salad: Quinoa with grated carrot, capsicum, onion, cucumber and corn. Drizzled with olive oil and black pepper.
• Simple salad: Spinach and rocket with sliced carrot, capsicum, diced onion and sundried tomatoes. Drizzled with splash of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
• Rocket & quinoa salad: Recipe is on a previous blog entry.
• Random salad: Small amount of quinoa with chopped kale, lemon juice and sundried tomatoes. Drizzle of olive oil.

Rainbow salad: its pretty badass full of flavour.

Snacks:

• Popcorn with salt and pepper (pepper is awesome on popcorn!!)
• Fruit
• Raw nut mix: almonds, walnuts, cashews, macadamias
• Soy milk with raw chocolate drinking chocolate
• Conscious chocolate blocks yummmmmmmmmmm

Drinks:

• Water (naturally) and heaps of it!!
• Herbal teas: chamomile, licorice, rooibos, peppermint, detox blend (nettle, fennel, caraway, dandelion leaf), green tea, lemon balm, dandelion root
• Juices: we each had a juice every day. Some days we couldn't buy fresh, so we had Emma & Toms juices, which although are pre-packaged, they are the freshest packaged juice you can get. If you look at the use by date, its always a week or two away due to the lack of preservatives, rather than other juices which give you 3 years to drink your juice! On days we bought fresh / made our own, we had a mix of apple, orange, celery, mint, carrot, beetroot and lemon. Its amazing how a fresh juice can give you the same awake buzz as the morning coffee usually does!

Eating out:

So we ate out a couple of times. We're human, but still very conscious of the detox! 

• Gopals: I went out with my bestie Sim to a Hare Krishna restaurant in the city for a vegetarian feast. We both had a beetroot salad, lentil something and tofu curry. Sim had to eat my buttery custard dessert, damn!
• Lentil as Anything: I had a beetroot curry here. Very tasty!!
• Blue Chillies Restaurant: Happy 30th Erin! Jarod had assam fish curry with tamarind & lemongrass, while I had king prawns wrapped in crispy rice noodles in a thick pineapple & chilli sauce... yum!! 
• Nostralis wholemeal pizza: A vegetarian pizza shop. I had a mushroom pizza with soy cheese and Jarod had a mexican pizza. It was nice, but not as good as my usual pizza :)
• Soulfood cafe: I had satay tofy roti wrap (delish!!!) and Jarod had the lentil burger. Really good!
• Oriental teahouse: Prawn and vegetable dumplings
• Korean food houses: Korean restaurants have this awesome thing called Bi bim bab (Which I call Bim Bam Bop because its easier to say), which is a mix of rice, assorted vegetables and a choice of tofu or meat, topped with a fried egg and served in a hot stone bowl. The bowl crispifies the rice and cooks the vegies.

A friend of mine gave me this wekbsite: http://www.veganeasy.org/Victoria which lists vegan friendly restaurants in Victoria. Fantastic website and the places on here look awesome!

An epiblog moment.

Monday was the unofficial last day of the detox, however Jarod was in Malaysia until Tuesday, so I wanted to wait for him to get back so we could celebrate together. I did however, cook mushrooms in butter on Monday night. My god, it was liquid gold. Oh butter, how I missed your salty goodness! It was a pure blissful food experience, like I had never tasted before! This blissful butter moment only lasted for that first bite unfortunately, each additional bite was just like eating normally again. Damn!

To celebrate the first night off the detox, I opened a bottle of Rekorderlig winter cider which had been waiting patiently in my fridge for a month. I felt the joys of dizzy drunkness after one sip. ONE SIP. My poor re-virginised liver just couldn't hack it. And it tasted so alcoholic!! This didn't stop me enjoying the rest of it though! By the end it was my old friend again. Foodwise, we made a household favourite, nachos with homemade salsa (blended tomatoes, garlic, coriander, basil, capsicum and onion) with sour cream. This is my soul food, or at least it was... The sour cream tasted like a glob of tasteless fat in my mouth and didn't give me any love. The globs of cheese stuck to the nachos provided no love either. Have my taste buds changed so much?? Very unfulfilling!! :(

I feel a little like I'm in detox Stockholm Syndrome - I feel wrong deviating from the detox diet! Who knows what my new dietary habits will now entail. The idea of eating red meat still urks me and now sour cream wants nothing to do with me. Maybe I needed to do this diet to wipe off some of the remainders of my junk food diet. On a positive note, I am happy with my weight again, which is something I haven't been happy with for the past 8 months. I still haven't weighed myself, but I don't need to - I can fit into my old clothes again and I feel good about how I look. This means more to me than a number on scales.

So this is the end of the blog. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it! I hope some of you out there are feeling inspired even to make small changes in a diet, try a new recipe or switch your skin care brand. One month is really just a small fraction of your life, and may even end up giving you more life to live through dietary changes.

Thank you and good luck on your own journey.

xxoo