Detox: Day Fifteen (Hyper Halloween Edition)

Breakfast: roasted pears sprinkled with Jamaican allspice
Snack: three mandarin oranges
Lunch: 5 oz tuna, one mackintosh
Snack: a few pieces of chicken breast, a handful of blueberries
Dinner: roasted butternut squash, onion, and carrots tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper (ridiculously delicious and autumnal)

Happy Halloween!

(of course, for some of you it's already All Hallow's.  Sorry about that mom...)

Ah yes, once again we return to my Mostest Favoritest Holiday.  Not being able to surreptitiously snack on candy had cast a bit of a pall on the day, but that pall was completely blown away once evening came.  And why is that, you might wonder?  Trick-or-treaters!  At long last, I had actual trick-or-treaters come to my door, and I got to give out candy, and it made me so happy I was making joyful squee-y noises every time I closed the door behind them.  Seriously, every time the doorbell rang I opened it with my heart in my throat until I heard the magic words-

"Trick or treat!"

-and spied the bevy of adorable little faces just waiting to get enough sugar to turn into little demons that I wouldn't have to deal with.  And my heart melted into a dribbly smile all over my face.  Awesome.

In fact, I made so many happy noises that Nathan said, "You like Halloween way too much."

"Pish tosh!" said I.  "It is impossible to like Halloween 'too much'," and then I went back to watching The Vampire Diaries.

What was particularly amusing to me was that not a single kid knew what I was, something that hadn't even occurred to me.  (My favorite response was from a little girl about six or so saying, "You're pretty!" pause "What are you?")  Quite a few parents got it,  however, so I was soothed by that.  Well, okay, to be completely honest they "got" that I was from Star Trek.  They did not get who I was, because I was missing my most important accessory:

Bold.

Yes, the Riker to my Troi had secluded himself on the holodeck, as it were.  But the man had already hosted a five+-hour HalloWarming party for me, so I gave him a buy for the Actual Evening.

And now for some of those promised photos of me carving the pumpkins:

Gutting "Nathan's" pumpking

Little did these seeds realize the horrible, non-edible fate that awaited them!

Why yes, I DO glow with a holy light during Creative Moments.

And the pumpkins themselves!

Also I learned that it doesn't matter WHERE you put the pumpkin- some kid WILL trip over it.

Hard to tell from this photo, but that leaf in the middle glowed, too.

Seeking out new civilizations!

 I also tried to get a shot of the paper mache pumpkins I set up in the window all lit up (they got a lot of, "Oh wow!  Look at all those pumpkins!" from the kids, which was pretty gratifying after all the time and effort I put into the damnable things) but my poor little phone just couldn't handle the dark, and so you must extrapolate from the Daytime Photo:

There are like twelve paper mache pumpkins in that window, and I ASSURE YOU, they looked awesome at night.

And finally?  Tribbles.

The sign we had up during the party.

Are Trouble.

And sassy.

Especially when they mutate into four-limbed critters.

"I'm sensing... great confusion!"

Detox: Day Fourteen (or: Couch Day)

I got up earlier than I thought I would this morning, and spent a couple of hours finishing the post-party clean up.  Then I sat down on the couch to play a video game... and stayed there the rest of the day.

I wasn't playing video games that whole time, mind you.  In fact I only played the game for about an hour, before Nathan came home and I turned it off so we could eat lunch.  But at that point my memories of the day's timeline start to get a little confused.  Suffice to say, I know I spent the next seven or so hours on the couch, and at various points I was either trying to read, or napping, or contemplating the structure within the space I could see outside our front window (or the fall of light in the crafting nook), or watching whatever movie Nathan put on.

I was not feeling my best.

On the upside, I have finally seen Strictly Ballroom, and I loved it.  And now?  A pre-nine-o'clock bedtime.  We'll see about work in the morning.

Breakfast: five pieces of bacon and three pieces of apple fried in bacon fat
Lunch: lamb burger on romaine
Dinner: roasted pear slices dusted with cinnamon, and roasted sweet potatoes with olive oil, salt, and pepepr

Detox: Day Thirteen (or: Jenny O is a Masochist)

(yeah yeah yeah- the party went past midnight so the time-stamp/tense on this entry is a lie, but whatever...)

Today was... dear holy stars, today was.

I can't break my menu down for you, because I didn't really divide my meals up into what anyone might consider "meals".  Instead I steadily grazed throughout the day on leftover strips of flank steak, baby carrots, and (once the party got started) entirely too many green apple slices.  Oh, and pears, because some of my lovely guests made it a point to bring something I could actually eat, the darlings.  I told people not to bother worrying about my diet (after all, I was one of like twenty people, and if I wasn't catering the party menu to myself- which I most adamantly was not- there was no need for anyone else to do so) but I must say it was nice to have a change from the apple slices...

Setting up for the party was torture.  Such torture.  I opened the bag of candy-corn and it was like I'd opened a portal to heaven and allowed its scent to come wafting out into the mortal realms.  And I'm not even a particularly big fan of candy corn!  The gummy worms, of which I am a huge fan, were even worse.  Warming up the caramel?  Which happens to be one of my most favorite things in the universe?  Yeah.  I wanted to lick the spoon so badly I was on the verge of tears.  But I persevered in the face of all these yummy things...

Of the things in this picture I think I can perhaps eat the toothpicks.

...and in those that came out later.  The sausages Nathan grilled?  My stomach started up a protest march that we weren't allowed to eat any.  "It's meat!  We're allowed meat!" yelled my stomach.  "Yeah, meat!  Gimmee!" cried my tongue.

"But its meat with stuff it.  Sugar stuff," I explained, partially wishing I hadn't read the ingredients.

"We don't care!  Give it!"

But "give it" I did not.  I remained strong throughout the entire evening, although I may have over-done it on the mulled cider... and really it was a lovely time, with more people coming than I had expected, and such clever costumes!  Here is a small sampling:

Watson, Holmes, The Lady, The Pirate

Unfortunately I did not get a lot of photos (I don't even have one of me and Nathan!) because I was too busy playing hostess.  Ah well... there's still Halloween itself!

Detox: Day Twelve (or: The Beef, and Where It Can Be Found [Hint: My Belly])

I gleefully cut out early from work today... so that I could come home and work on cleaning the house.  Ah, adulthood: such are your questionable pleasures.  I've gotten a good portion done- still need to scrub the upstairs bathroom and the kitchen counters, and then do all the floors (my biggest dirt-pet-peeve)... but I'm thinking the kitchen and floors can wait until tomorrow.

Nothing particularly interesting happened today, and I didn't have anything particularly remarkable in the way of food, which leaves me with a dilemma:

What to write about.

Hmmm...

 Fortunately, I remembered that I'd been wanting to talk about my recent uptick in bacon consumption.  Actually, more to the point, the uptick in my meat consumption in general.  I believe it is safe to say that in the past two weeks  I've eaten more animal flesh than I'd eaten in the entirety of the previous two months.

No, I am not a heavy consumer of animal proteins (or, at least, I wasn't).

See, I went mostly-vegetarian right not too long after college.  This decision was not born of any health or moral concerns- no, I stopped eating meat because I was poor and meat was expensive.  It wasn't a particularly huge sacrifice for me- there wasn't a lot of meat that I actively enjoyed, anyway (bacon being the obvious exception to this- but  I was too poor to eat out much and damned if I knew how to cook my own.)  Not to mention the fact that any time I have beef that's too fatty it... does unpleasant things to my digestion.

My meat-intake went up a bit once I moved to Birmingham and introduced Nathan to a grill.  In fact, once we were married it was very easy to tell who had cooked dinner by checking for whether or not it had meat in it (keeping in mind that that I don't like to handle raw meat).  But even so, I'd say we had meat no more than three times a week in an extravagant week (remember the part where it's expensive?)

So this meat-every-day, sometimes-twice-or-thrice-a-day thing is a bit overwhelming for me, and there are times when I feel pretty rebellious about (admittedly most of those times are when I get a gander at our butcher's bill.  Meat in general is expensive, yes, but the price of grass-fed beef makes my inner miser shriek in mortified agony) .  But it's important that I get protein, and right now meat is the only way I can get it.  In another nine days I can have eggs again, which will help (especially since I freaking love me some easy-to-prep eggs).

In the meantime, here's what my meat-thrice-a-day menu looked like:

Breakfast:  half an avocado mashed up with four strips of bacon (and I have to officially say that Trader Joe's, much as I love that store, sucks for avocados)
Lunch: 5 oz of tuna, mackintosh apple
Snack: baby carrots out the wazoo
Dinner: grilled flank steak with steamed broccoli.  A lot of broccoli.  Tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Detox: Day Eleven (or: I Miss Being Lazy)

Remember how yesterday I was all, "Oh blah blah blah, positive attitude, yay!"?

Yeeeeaaaaah.

Today I was a Crankasaurus Rex (or Regina, if you will), and although it had nothing to do with my diet restrictions, it sure did make me feel Put Upon in the Extreme.  I'm tired of not being able to be thoughtless with my food.  Everything is so planned out, and I can't just come home and go, "Snacking on whatever I feel like, la la la."  I came home starving for a snack, and the only thing available to me (without further prep) were some baby carrots.  Which, don't get me wrong- I am a person who enjoys baby carrots, but I'm getting a bit sick of them.

I don't know what my deal was today.  I was just irritable all around, and ridiculously hungry even tho' I was eating perfectly reasonable amounts of food.  Check it out:

Breakfast: bacon
Lunch: 5 oz tuna (for real in water this time), mackintosh, mandarin
Snack: baby carrots 
Dinner: grilled fish with fennel-and-avocado salad
Late Snack: more of my salad, and three pieces of bacon because I was craving it so badly

Salad Fixings

My strangely unsatisfying dinner.

My after-dinner activity of the day was to carve our pumpkins, and make pumpkin seeds for the party.  (Nathan took some photos of me carving, so you'll have to wait for him to process them- but it will be a nice change from all my phone-snapshots!)

I DID take a picture of the pumpkin guts.  Did you know white pumpkins have green guts?  And that they smell like honey dew melon?  Yeah, neither did I.

...now that I think about it, this little tableau is kind of twisted...

The pumpkin seeds were an utter failure, by the by.  It sucks not being able to be my own taste-tester.  It sucks even more that I spent several hours laboring over them.  Ah well- life goes on.

BURNED! (the spices, I mean- not the actual seeds)

Detox: Day Ten (or: Punching Temptation in the Throat)

I have to say that my naughty-food cravings have, by and large, disappeared.  What I mean to say is that they are not longer causing obsession.  Yes, I will still occasionally think, "Man, I could really go for a piece of dark chocolate right now," but then the thought passes and I'm fine.  So what better moment to really push my limits?!

This evening I made popcorn balls for my upcoming HalloWarming party.  There was not a single component of those balls that I could eat.  Not the popcorn,

It is shockingly difficult to find just PLAIN popcorn for the microwave.

not the butter, not the vanilla extract, and especially not any of what this guy was pushing:

Hello my old friend.

I came thisclose to automatically licking the honey from the jar-seal, but I remembered just in the nick of time, and was hyper-vigilant for the rest of the evening.  And let me tell you, this stuff smells so heavenly, vigilance was required.

Caramelized honey.  That's right.

 
But I did it!

Trying not to let any drool drip on them.

(Although to be completely honest, those were the only popcorn balls that got made.  The rest of it refused to go into ball form, so there will be a bowl of candied popcorn next to the bowl of candy corn...)

I'm pretty damned pleased with myself- not just for resisting completely The Naughty, but also because... I don't feel bitter about it.  Which means that my Attitude has become Correctly Aligned.

(now I just have to ignore the four bags of candy I bought... at least it's all gluten-free!)

Breakfast: 2.5 piece of fried ham, .5 cup blueberries
Lunch: leftover spaghetti squash with beef
Snack: two mandarin oranges, .5 cup blueberries
Dinner: fennel-encrusted pork with roasted sweet potatoes, carrots, and onions

(and no popcorn balls!)

Detox: Day Nine (or, How to Imbibe the Repulsive)

After much trial-and-error (and rinse-and-repeat, sometimes literally) I have finally settled on the best way to take my horrific medicine.

First, pour a teeny bit of orange juice in a shot glass.  Add the scoop of RepairVite (I'd say apx 1-2 tsp), then top with more orange juice and stir with a tiny implement.  Pour about four to six ounces of orange juice into a separate, untainted glass.  Inhale deeply, exhale fully, and throw the disgusto-shot back, quickly followed by a mouthful of pure orange juice to be swished around in the mouth and swallowed.  Then (still without breathing) take another mouthful of orange juice, swish and swallow again.  Allow oxygen to return, try to ignore the trace of gross aftertaste in your  mouth as you finish off the last of the orange juice from the glass.

Objects in the photo smaller than they appear...

I've got this down to a fine art, I tell you.  And I owe it all to my parents who, when I was a child, taught me the wisdom of taking medicine without breathing.  Thanks Mom and Dad!

Breakfast: half an avocado mashed up with lemon juice, salt, pepper, and fresh cilantro; apx one cup of fresh blueberries

I know, I know- there is a distinct lack of protein in this picture.

Lunch:  Leftover beef-and-spaghetti squash
Snack(s): one mackintosh, one mandarin, one piece of ham, about half a cup of leftover sprout slaw
Dinner:  gyro meat, bacon, and avocado on a bed of romaine and spinach.

Because my Katie is clever and chose a restaurant that I could get Approved Food from.  And dudes- it was so effin' good.

Detox Day Eight: (or, Pleasant Side Effects)

Remember what I wrote earlier about mental fogginess?  Apparently it was definitely going on last night, when I mis-titled my entry "Day Six".  But it's fixed now...

As you know, the reason I'm doing this gut-repair program is, in fact, to repair my gut.  And to tell the truth, I've started thinking of it less as a "detox" or a "cleanse" and more as a "reset".  I'm resetting my system to not-inflamed, which has some pretty major health benefits for me.  Lack of pain being chief among them.

However.

Oh however, Gentle Readers.  There are some other, less-lofty and pure-of-heart side effects to this little diet of mine, and by that I mean getting all svelte-ified.  Which is not to say I was particularly large before, but when three people (four if you count Nathan) comment in the space of two days that one has lost weight, and when one looks in the mirror and says, "Why hello there," and furthermore when one can wear the teeny-weeny t-shirt she used to wear as a little kid with only a minimal of gut-tightening...  well.

I know, I know- it's just that I'm less internally inflamed, and retaining less water, but hey- I'll take it!  Just imagine the results when I stop being so blase about my weight-resistance...

Breakfast: four slices of bacon (which I cooked myself, thank you very much) and half a honey crisp
Lunch: steak seasoned with salt, pepper, olive-oil (crafty Nathan made an extra one yesterday so I'd have it for lunch today)
Snack: one mackintosh, one mandarin, and a handful of baby carrots.
Dinner: brussel-sprout slaw

 Possibly you are looking at that dinner entry and going either, "Huh?" or even "Ew."  Oh Gentle Readers, allow me to enlighten you on the deliciousness of brussel-sprout slaw!  And I say this as a person who was firmly convinced, prior to my first experience with the slaw, that brussel sprouts were basically evil little slime balls sent from the future to break our spirits, thereby enabling a swifter conquering via our benevolent alien overlords...

::cough::

When Lara and Chris came to visit a few weeks back, one of the things they cooked for us was brussel sprout slaw.  I was (as you might have guessed, given the above passage) somewhat skeptical.  But then it turned out to be so fabulous that I begged her for the recipe- and she complied.

I had to modify what she sent me, since I can't have nuts right now (and anyway I didn't have any pecans on hand), and I'm not positive that the mustard we have is gluten-free (it says "vinegar" on the ingredients label, but doesn't specify what kind of vinegar), plus I totally wanted to add avocados, because why not?  So here is what I ended up doing!

First off I cooked me some bacon (I was eager to repeat this morning's success.  Thank you, Betty Crocker!).  Lara specified that it needed to be nice and crispy, so nice and crispy it was!  Rather than chop it up like a sissy-man, I crumbled it (and then licked the crumbs off my fingers, which might have just replaced "licking the cake batter off the spoon" as my favorite food-prep perk).

Tastes like candy!

While the bacon was doing its slow-cook thing, I threw some walnuts in a pan (because I am such a good wife) and toasted 'em over medium-high heat until I thought they looked good (or, as Lara more usefully put it, "until fragrant") and then set them aside.

Next I juiced a lemon and whisked it with a little shy of 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 tsp of apple cider vinegar, and salt and pepper.  Then came chopping up some scallions (I did three, but it's totally a personal preference thing), and subjecting my brussel sprouts to my food processor for some good old fashioned shredding.

Shreddin', and slicin', and wishin', and hopin'...

Also I sliced up the afore-mentioned avocado.

Technically I only used half.  I'll eat the other half tomorrow- perhaps for breakfast??

I used my bacon-frying-pan (after pouring off all but about 1tbsp of fat) to saute the shredded sprouts at a medium heat until they turned bright green...

Not yet a bright-enough green.  Also, naughty walnuts in the background.

 ...at which point I added the lemon-vinegar mix, bacon, avocado, and the other half of this morning's honey crisp apple (which I'd chopped via the food-processor while the sprouts were getting all bright green).  I stirred it about a bit longer, then decided it was dinner time.

And after this was gone I had seconds.

I served Nathan's with the walnuts because (as mentioned): good wife.

We both agreed it could have used more bacon (shocking, I know) but we'd only had five pieces to work with, so that was all that went in.  I think we could have doubled the bacon content and been fine.

Detox: Day Seven (or: Progress is Made)

Ladies and gentlemen!  I give you....

One Week.

Yes indeedy, I am one-week-down, two-weeks-to-go on the whole detox thing, and that realization (come upon me this evening) is making for some serious cheer.  Also making for some (lesser, but still decent) cheer?  My paper-mache pumpkins:

The one on the left looks weird because it's leaning backwards.

Oh wait, you can't really see them.  Here they are in the light:

Hey, yellow pumpkins happen in nature ALL THE TIME.

Aren't they so cute?  I've got about five done, and Katie helped me start five more today, and I may do a few more later in the week (she says optimistically).  But as I said to her (as I carefully cut out faces with a pair of scissors), when one compares the amount of labor involved in creating these bad boys to the amount of labor involved in carving out actual pumpkins... I'm not really sure which is less labor-intensive.

("The real pumpkins," came Katie's immediate and assured response.  She is probably correct.)

Speaking of Katie, since she was hanging out at Timaru she got to experience the joys of detox-diet- but I think we managed to refrain from scarring her.  She cleaned her plate at both lunch and dinner... plus she introduced Nathan to The Proper Way to Prepare Spaghetti Squash.  Useful girl,  my Katie.

Breakfast:  smoothie with coconut milk, frozen blueberries, half a cup of spinach, and frozen peaches.  (it tasted basically like ice to me, which was disappointing)
Snack: one strawberry, two slices of a peach, one mandarin orange (pretty much the sum of what I could eat at the church brunch buffet)
Lunch: small bowl of leftover butternut squash soup and a perfectly prepared steak (that would be Nathan's mad skills)
Dinner: spaghetti squash smothered in onions, garlic, and ground beef (spiced with salt, pepper, oregano, marjoram, and thyme) sauteed in olive oil.

Is that Safeway bag full of candy I mayn't eat?  Possibly...

Detox: Day Six (or: Spitting Out Perfectly Good Food)

It was a gorgeous day today, and I wanted more than anything to be out hiking in it... but I had obligations to keep that did not involve driving to the Gorge.

The first obligation (obviously) was to eat a delicious breakfast with my husband.  I do not handle raw meat if I can at all avoid it, so my portion of the prep involved slicing up a delicious honey crisp, while he cooked some delicious bacon (which he had himself brought home just the other day).

Nathan said, "Our bacon intake sure has gone up.  I guess that's because it's one of the few delicious things you can still eat."  Privately I've begun to consider bacon my own personal candy.

After that it was off to the market, to pick up the supplies for this next week.  I'd carefully made out my meal plan and shopping list, so we were in and out pretty quickly, our car loaded down with delightful vegetables (and the odd fruit).

The first real obligation was one I had made to myself: to begin working on my paper mache jack-o-lanterns.  I did a trial run the other day that came out less than stellar, but I learned a few things so I think these babies ought to come out better.  Here are some of them drying:

The best part about them is that they smell like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves!

I plan to make a few more tomorrow, with the help of my Katie.

After about three hours of carefully-mache-ing balloons, it was time for lunch.  Nathan made us lamb burgers and topped 'em with bacon, and it was so good I wanted to cry.  The romaine, while not quite so good as butter lettuce, was still definitely an excellent choice.

Candy burger!

Then it was back to pumpkin-making for another hour, and finally I had to wash off my hands and get gussied up for the wedding I was barista-ing at (the other real obligation, this one made to not-myself).  It was fun to sling shots again- and damn I'm good at banter.  But it was a special sort of torture not to be able to eat any of the food those sweet people offered me, and when they cut the cake I once again wanted to weep... but not from joy.

Cake, you guys.  Seriously.  It's like the Perfect Storm of currently-naughty-food: wheat, dairy, eggs, sugar.  ::sigh::

But since I'd anticipated such temptations, I just put another piece of honey crisp apple in my mouth and chewed.  (they really are my favorite of all the apples)

Once I got home I was more than ready for some real food, so I mashed up an avocado with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and cilantro.  It was so good that Nathan declared, "I'd eat that.  I'd spread it on a chip!"  And now I have a sweet potato in the oven, because I want something sweet.

Which brings us to me spitting out perfectly good food.  As I waited for the oven to pre-heat I thought to myself, "I could use just one more snacky thing before 'dessert'.  Ooo!  Edamame!"  Because, you see, I'd bought edamame earlier in the day because it's one of my favorite snacks, and hey, it's a veggie, right?  So I popped a few in my mouth and chewed exactly once when it suddenly came rushing back to me: 

Edamame is soy!

...and I cannot have soy right now.  So I spat my mouthful out in the sink and looked at it mournfully.  Man, I hate wasting food.

Breakfast:  about 1/4 of a honey crisp apple and three pieces of bacon
Lunch:  1/2 pound lamb burger made with salt, pepper, onion, garlic, oregano, rosemary, and basil, topped with bacon and enfolded in a leaf of romaine.  1/2 of a honey crisp apple
Snack: a honey crisp apple
Dinner: avocado mashed up with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and cilantro.  soon-to-be-sweet-potato

Detox: Day Five (or: So When Does This Start Working?)

First of all, here is a photo of some of the foods I am allowed to eat:

Clockwise, starting top left: honey crisp apples, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, RepairVite, sweet potatoes

Most of those things are delicious.  One of those things... not so much.  Ah well.

I've spoken with a handful of people who have cleansed themselves of gluten, and the general consensus is that they have never felt better, both physically and mentally.  And that sounds pretty good to me.  So my question is- when does that part start?  Because as of today I'm not feeling particularly "awesome" either in mind or body.

I don't want you to think that I feel bad: I don't.  In fact, I'm not feeling a lot of the swelling and aching I'd come to accept as part of my "now we are 30" life, but "absence of pain", while a huge relief, is not the same as "awesome".  And I don't feel like I've lifted any of the mental fog that I've descended into over the past year.  The worst part about it is that I can tell what's going on.  I know I'm not as sharp as I once was, and frankly it's pissing me off.

Anyway my point is I'm ready to be detoxed, now.

(Granted it might help if I didn't keep inadvertently cheating.  Hmmm...)

But on to today's menu!

Breakfast:  smoothie made with unsweetened coconut milk, raspberries, carrots, spinach, and peaches

I have to be honest- unsweetened coconut milk is not rocking my world.  This may be my last smoothie for the duration.  Or maybe I'll just switch to orange juice....

Lunch:  (I had to go into work early, which meant breakfast was early, which meant I had lunch at about 1050) left over pork loin and roasted veggies
Snack:  Two mackintosh apples and three mandarin oranges
Dinner:  pot roast with onions and carrots.  (something about this disagreed with me, because my system started protesting about an hour later... we think it may have been the fat content of the roast)

And now let's end with a picture of a typical morning's dosage:

clockwise, starting left: smoothie, fish oil, RepairVite concotion, vitamin D, vitamin B12+Folic Acid

Detox: Day Four (or: Damn I Want Some Baklava)

It started last night.

Honey, whispered my taste buds.  We want honey.

"No, taste buds.  Honey is very specifically on the NO list."

Ooo, yeah, honey!  Piped up my teeth and jaw.  But more specifically we want it in the form of baklava, with all its tender flaky squooshie goodness.

"Seriously, you guys?  It's day three.  Waaaay too early for this cravings business."

And yet.  Baklava has remained on my brain for the twenty-three hours between then and now. I even googled "gluten-free phyllo" at work (I was more than a little terrified that it would be one of those non-duplicate-able items, but I found a few recipes that I'll try out in two-and-a-half-weeks).

So I'm pretty sure that the first thing I'll be letting back into my diet will be honey.

One of the other things I was trying to figure out today was how to deal with the absolutely disgusting experience that is my consumption of the RepairVite supplement.  I mean it is foul.  Most especially so because it's supposedly "latte flavored" and I cannot stand the taste of coffee.  It's my own personal torture every morning and evening, and I hold my breath and repeat to myself (through gritted teeth):

"I can do anything for three weeks."

Anyway I searched "RepairVite is disgusting", and although I didn't find any solutions, I did find a new blog to read: Life Without Bread and Butter.  Very good stuff (her writing, I mean), and she went through this detox, too (she has way more sensitivities to deal with than I do, so it helps to shut up my whiny, baklava-craving taste buds) and she also reported on what she ate each day, which means lots of exciting new inspiration for me.  Huzzay!

Speaking of exciting food...

Breakfast:  Four strips of peppered bacon
Lunch:  Four tiny mackintosh apples and four mandarin oranges (I forgot my "real" lunch, so I had to make due with my office fruit)
Dinner:  Roasted butternut squash and garlic soup

When I was making up my meal plan over the weekend, I knew  I would want some sort of butternut squash dish (they are in season and delicious).  Trader Joe's didn't have any when we made our grocery run on Saturday, so last night I went out and bought some, and then today I scoured the internet for an appropriate jumping-off-recipe.  I found one over at The Picky Vegan, but we made some modifications.  Here's what we did:

Ingredients

1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cubed
1.5 heads of garlic, intact but with the top sliced off
several handfuls of baby carrots (probably around 3 cups?)
olive oil
 1/2 sweet onion, diced
1.5 tbsp fresh grated ginger
5 cups water
2 tsp curry powder
salt
pepper

Instructions

Heat oven to 400
add squash and olive oil to one pan, toss
create foil packet to put in another pan, add carrots and toss with olive oil, seal packet
create foil packet for garlic, drizzle with olive oil, seal
put all in oven, check at 30 min (garlic may be done)

Are you done, garlic??

stir squash chunks, leave in an additional 30 min or until tender, remove all

Nathan checking for tenderness

 spray dutch oven (we used our  new coconut cooking spray- so good!) over heat, saute onion until fragrant
add ginger and saute additional 15 seconds
add water
add roasted items and curry (note: we really like curry, so you may  not want to use as much as we did), salt, and pepper to taste
bring back to boil and simmer 15 min, stirring ocassionally

A moment of not-stirring

remove from heat, carefully add small amounts to blender and blend a little bit at a time, transferring to serving bowl as you go.

We are not kidding about the "careful" part

Serve and enjoy!

I might like it even better chilled...

Nathan wished he had some bread for his, and I wished I had some sour cream to dollop on top, but all in all it was a fantastic hit.  Of course, it did occur to me that possibly curry is on the NO list due to the presence of red pepper aka cayenne (I assume), so next time we make it (for our upcoming HalloWarming party) I will probably just go with turmeric or saffron...