Clean Eating Detox: Day 5

We are almost out of fennel! Oh, and we have survived five days of our two-week clean eating challenge! For info on Days 0-4 click here or use the "Clean Eats" label to the far right.

Each day of the detox features a breakfast, lunch, daytime snack, dinner and nighttime snack. On today's docket, we had:

A cauliflower omelet for breakfast. This was delicious. The cauliflower was very hearty and added an interesting texture to the omelet. And if you didn't know, paprika is great with any cauliflower or egg dish. I thought I would miss the ever-present cheese, but I actually didn't - there were enough rich flavors. I will say though this is a huge amount of cauliflower (and it's dependent upon the size of the cauliflower used in Day 3's dinner) and if you expect this to look like a pretty folded omelet, I'm sorry. The cauliflower adds nothing to the structural integrity of the omelet. And like yesterday, this isn't a good traveling meal, you have to make it and eat it at home so despite it being huge, you will probably be hungry earlier.

Lunch consisted of a chickpea, blueberry and kale (was supposed to be roasted fennel) salad with mint, pistachios and lime juice. Even though we subbed in the kale instead of fennel, this salad sucked. The trio of toppings - chick peas, blue berries and pistachios - was delightful and a beautiful flavor and texture combination. However, the kale was somewhat bland and its texture fell flat which made for mushy on mushy on mushy. And even though we've loved most of the citrus dressings, just squeezing a lime over a salad is not sufficient - it makes for uneven flavor and the flavor that is there is way too sharp.

Our daytime snack was 4 medium carrots and a 1/4 c of hummus. Always a winner - and you get such a huge quantity that we didn't actually pack all of the carrots (only 3) and I split my snack into before- and after-lunch installments.

Dinner was roasted salmon with green beans and lentils. I have been looking forward to this all week. We've never cooked salmon together, so I was psyched and this dinner did not disappoint! J doesn't like green beans but was actually pleased with the texture these had from only a few quick minutes of simmering. This meal had what all meals strive for - well-balanced flavors that compliment each other, and a variety of textures to keep your mouth guessing. A shining moment of this whole experience was J saying "Even with the green beans, I'd eat this again!" Although this is a totally different bean preparation than I've ever done, it gave my little Southern-green-bean-canning-woman heart hope.

For our evening snack we had 1/4 of blueberries and 2 T (surprisingly a lot) of raw, unsalted almonds. This was wonderfully simple but still flavorful and interesting. This is not something I would ever pick by myself, but it works!

Day 5 synopsis: I was disappointed through the afternoon at being hungry due to the crappy salad, but overall, this was a successful day of food. Because of being sleepy and hungry, I quickly became hangry and began thinking about all of the things I could be getting out of the vending machine at work - but I powered through. And it made me think about how do-able this is long term. I thought about all of the meals we've eaten and how it's shaped our eating schedule and it works. I think we would want to incorporate some of our old favorites but the majority of these recipes, skills and schedules work for our lifestyle.

My clean eating observation of the day is that if you choose to start a clean eating lifestyle, you need to absolutely consider composting. Our trash can is absurdly heavy just from all of the peelings, rinds, seeds, pits and cores, and with all of the eggshells we're going to be tossing next week (15+ apiece) you'd have a great start to an at home compost pile. There are great odor-blocking, indoor cans for composting that are reasonably priced. You could go from clean eating to clean living.

P.S. We got a "clean care package" today from my best friend - a bag of quinoa from his local farmer's market!