Clean Eating Detox: Day 2

On to day 2 of our two-week clean eating challenge! For info on Day 1 click here.

Each day of the detox features a breakfast, lunch, daytime snack, dinner and nighttime snack. Monday's menu featured:

Overnight oats made with rolled oats (duh), almond milk, Greek yogurt, chia seeds, honey and blueberries for breakfast. Admittedly, this dish looked and tasted equally weird. First, it doesn't take a lot of oatmeal to fill you up, so a pint mason jar full of oats is a bit much - especially when the flavor is...off. Pairing tangy plain Greek yogurt with fairly tart blueberries and the remaining bland ingredients makes for a very bitter breakfast. The texture was great but the flavor was cloyingly tart with the blueberries being the only (minimal) burst of sweetness. We're making this again on Day 13 with strawberries and that may be better and sweeter. I'd also be willing to tinker with this recipe using a flavored Greek yogurt and maybe vanilla and/or sweetened almond milk after our detox.

For lunch we utilized leftovers from Day 1's dinner to make a fennel, steamed kale, quinoa, chickpea and mint salad with orange vinaigrette and a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. First things first, I think fennel is a vile vegetable. I despise licorice and can't believe that the disgusting flavor is not a man-made atrocity but actually natural in fennel and star anise. So eating a salad that includes half of a bulb of fennel wasn't my cup of tea. However, picking out the majority of the fennel left a great (substantial) salad. The cold quinoa and kale made a had a great texture and the orange-garlic vinaigrette added a lot of bold flavors. I think using a different green - like cabbage - instead of the fennel would be delicious.

Today's snack was an artsy take on the fairly common caprese salad with tomatoes, basil, feta (instead of traditional mozzarella) and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. I've mentioned before that I'm really texture conscious and because of that, raw tomatoes are not my thing. But, if i spoon the "guts" out, I don't mind them too much. This was a pretty delicious snack. It's my first real foray into balsamic and I must say it's a little funky. I liked the bites with less, or no, vinegar than the ones that did.

At dinner, we used the left over "big batch roasted chicken" in napa cabbage cups with mangoes, tomatoes and avocados with lime vinaigrette and a side salad of arugula and tomatoes using the same vinaigrette. I found two major flaws with this dish. Napa cabbage leaves have big "stems" at the bottom of each, yet we were instructed to serve the leaves whole - which made them gigantic and impossible to fold into wrap form - so we broke the stems off. Secondly, six leaves of basil is entirely too much for one person to eat in one dish. Ick! I picked all of mine out because I couldn't taste anything but herbaceous flavor. With those two edits, the chicken cups were great. The avocado was creamy and smooth almost like a mayo, and the mango brightened everything. The "salad" was a flop for us though - J hates arugula and you know about me and tomatoes. We were supposed to both eat a whole tomato again with dinner, but screw that.

For our evening snack we were allowed two clementines or one large orange. Those tiny oranges aren't available here year-round, only in the winter, so we each had a navel orange. An orange is an orange, what can I say.

Day 2 synopsis: We had to make more "edits" to our meals today to accommodate our favorite (or not-so-favorite) flavors, but I'm still satisfied over-all.

I know it's too early to tell if this is cleaning our systems or to feel any health improvements. However, I have been really aware of how full I've felt throughout the day. And I think that the menu plans do include a lot of food, but preparing everything from scratch, at home has made us eat more mindfully. We're eating at the table together and taking our time, rather than blindly eating on the couch. And whether that's physically more healthy, I really think it will be a great way to spend time together and be relaxing bookends for our days.

As I mentioned yesterday, we are realizing how often we normally eat sugar-y things and that absence is somewhat off-putting. So far, our only "sweets" have been at our night time snack and for the most part that's okay. But like in our breakfast this morning, I am thinking about how sugar - even natural sugars - in moderation enhance flavors. Too much of a good thing (sugar) is bad, but avoiding it entirely doesn't fully utilize our palates. I can live without candy bars for two weeks, but damnit can we add more honey to the oats and yogurt? And from the research I've done,this desire for sweetness isn't unnatural. It's actually an instinct developed eons ago to help us search out good fruits/veggies to eat that had calories to support their daily activities - killing mammoths, and the like - and that we still see it today in how babies gravitate to sweet purees, like banana, before more savory flavors, like green beans. We have as a culture taken this to the extreme what with our Coke and Twinkies but I can feel my tongue aching for something sweet, and I'm convinced that's not entirely a bad thing.

And  because they're too funny to ignore, here's Buzzfeed's gif of the day demonstrating our pride in completing two days of clean eating.