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.