Week three of the Whole Living Detox has come and gone and it was pretty darn delicious! As a recap, this detox is full of healthy, nutritious foods but it does completely exclude dairy, gluten, sugar, meat, alcohol, coffee, and all processed foods from your diet. While the first week is the most strict the second week you get to add back non-gluten grains and fish and during this last week we added back soy and eggs. To be honest, I wasn’t really missing soy as a regular part of my diet but I was definitely excited to see the return of eggs!
So this first dish, above, was a simple dish of Poached Eggs with Rice and Edamame. So straight-forward and wholesome but really satisfying. The sautéed kale and red cabbage give it a nice crunch and the runny yolk of the egg brings it all together perfectly…although we did also add a bit of red chili paste to spice it up a bit.
This next dish sounded pretty bland, but was surprisingly good. Spinach, Brown Rice & Baked Tofu. I think the genius of this dish comes from the great texture and flavor of the baked tofu. It’s really easy to make, but you can make it a couple of days in advance and refrigerate it until you’re ready to use it. Nice umami…perfect for a cold winter night without getting weighted down by traditional “comfort” food (that often ends up making you feel the opposite of comfortable!)
Up next…Stuffed Acorn Squash. Lots more kale in this one, but the filling is rounded out nicely with onions, white beans and quinoa. The touch of acid from squeezing lemon on top and the sprinkle of hazelnuts to add crunch make this quite tasty. I found that it needed quite a bit of salt and pepper, and if I was being perfectly honest some crumbled sausage would transform this dish from good to great! Oh, right…meatless detox.
For breakfast this week we totally fell in love with this Museli. I don’t think we’ve ever made our own museli before and Christian really loves cereal (but always tries to give it up) so this was a really nice surprise and something that I know we’ll keep eating well into the future. It’s so super easy and healthy and needs no sweetener at all (unlike oatmeal when we make it). I strongly encourage you to try it if you never have!
Last, and admittedly least for this week was this Halibut with Roasted Beets dinner. In theory it sounded good and Christian claimed to really like it but I found it pretty bland. I think I would sauté the chard and beets instead of roast them next time and cook the fish separately. I did like the Dijon glaze on the halibut though so I would do that again, maybe just add some seasonings like dill or parsley and a bit more pepper.
Week three is behind us and we’ve officially survived the 2013 Whole Living Detox. Not only did we survive, but we are both feeling happier, healthier and more well rested…and that’s coming from people who were never too severely lacking in those areas to begin with. Next week I’ll write a full post on our reflections of the detox and what we’re hoping our long-term commitments will be coming out of this…but at a high level I can confidently say that we’re looking forward to the 2014 Whole Living Detox next year!