Clean Eating Challenge: Day 1 & 2

A few weeks back I stumbled across an article on Buzzfeed about “clean eating”. A nutritionist formulated a two week long food plan that included no gluten, few carbs, and a lot of fresh produce intended as a detox of sorts. I read the article, skimmed the plan, and emailed the link to myself for later consideration. Since doing so it had nagged at the back of my mind. Each Saturday, the intended “start date” of the plan, the thought would cross my mind: “today is the day I go to the grocery store with this handy, all-inclusive list, and purchase large amounts of lovely food.” But, as you may know, I am a procrastinator extraordinaire. Excuse after excuse, I never quite made it out the front door with list in hand until at last, on a hot Sunday afternoon a tinge of motivation hit me and I ran with it! I ran all the way to Whole Foods (not literally, it is way too hot for that kind of physical exertion) where I filled my basket with pounds and pounds of fruits and greens. $225 and seven bags later, the back of my SUV was packed up and I was ready to get rolling!

Technically the shopping and prepping was supposed to be done on a Saturday but I’m a rule breaker and I do what I want. Follow along as I attempt to keep myself on the “clean” bandwagon while working in the middle of an active bakery/chocolate shop. *Cringe*

The Sunday menu included the following:

Day 1
Breakfast: Banana Coconut Green Smoothie
Snack: broiled Grapefruit with Honey & Coconut
Lunch: roasted Fennel, Asparagus & Red Onion Salad with Parmesan and Hardboiled Egg
Dinner: Salsa Verde Chicken with Cauliflower “Rice” and Green Beans
Snack: Dark Chocolate

I did not make the smoothie and did not eat the lunch; mainly because it was early evening when I was able to begin prepping things. The broiled grapefruit was not my favorite; my palate is not a fan of bitter things. When describing this snack to Sara I said “you know when you have thrown up all the food in your stomach and then that yellow bile stuff comes up? Yeah, it tasted like that.” That was a tough one to swallow, literally. 

As I roasted the vegetables I sampled a bite of each to make sure they were tasty, otherwise I put them away when they had cooled off. The Salsa Verde Chicken, made in a crock pot, was the easiest thing ever! Plop your raw chicken breasts in the cooker along with a cup of store-bought salsa, put the lid on, turn the heat on high and walk away. Three hours later, voila! To my pleasant surprise, I rather enjoyed the cauliflower “rice”. I would make that again.

I had a moment of childhood deja vu when snapping the green beans before cooking them. Many a summer evening was spent on the back porch snapping green beans freshly picked from our garden. I used to sulk when asked to help with this chore, but now, in my older and wiser years, I can see how the simple task of removing the ends from beans can be comforting and almost therapeutic after a long day of pulling them from the ground. 

I finished out my first day when a little less chocolate than allotted, but boy oh boy did I savor it :)

Thoughts: Not so bad. The food I ate, excluding the grapefruit, was quite flavorful. I am exhausted from all of the kitchen work, but I think that I have things in order for the next few days!

Day 2
Breakfast: Chia Pudding with Strawberries, Fig & Almonds
Snack: Carrots and Hummus
Lunch: Nicoise Salad
Dinner: Spaghetti Squash with Ground Turkey, Tomatoes & Swiss Chard
Snack: Banana, Coconut, Chocolate Popsicle

“Pudding” is a loose term. This concoction sat in my fridge for 12 hours, I brought it to work, sliced the strawberries and almonds, tossed them on top and dug in. It was not terrible. I would have preferred a slightly thicker texture, but it kept me full for a good four hours, so there’s that.

The Nicoise Salad left a little to be desired. I made the dressing it called for: lemon juice, dijon mustard and olive oil, but the smell was absolutely repulsive. Disclaimer: I am not a fan of mustard. So I ate the weird mixture of items sans dressing. Individually I enjoy nearly everything in the salad: tomatoes, green beans, tuna, mixed greens. The hardboiled egg was not terrible but I prefer my eggs scrambled. Kalamata olives also fall into the pile of foods I do not like. All in all it was a LOT of food that I picked at for about three hours. Honest moment: I wanted chocolate after eating all of this healthy stuff despite feeling very full. That is going to be a hard habit to break.

Carrots and hummus are not an unusual snack for me to eat. I mixed it up a bit by purchasing a variety of colorful carrots: orange, purple, and yellow, as well as garlic hummus. Yum!

My take away from dinner: spaghetti squash is super hard to cut into! It is essentially an oblong yellow pumpkin, so imagine trying to slice a pumpkin into evenly cut rings to roast. It wasn’t easy, but I prevailed and continued cooking the rest of the meal. I messed up, but did not realize until later in the evening: I used twice the amount of ground turkey that I was supposed to. When I plated it all up I thought it seemed like a very large amount of food. I was not able to eat half of the spaghetti squash as directed, and did not finish the tomato, turkey, swiss chard mix either. I’ll need to swing by the store and acquire more ground turkey before Friday. I put the leftovers away in the fridge incase something falls through with another meal this week.

While dinner was cooking I whipped up a batch of banana, coconut, chocolate popsicles: super easy process with a blender. When I ate the sweet treat later that evening I was not disappointed, but would honestly have preferred this without chocolate. Perhaps some pineapple? The banana and coconut make it a tropical dessert.

Thoughts: Again, not so bad. I never felt hungry throughout the day, but my natural inclination to consume chocolate hit hard after lunch.

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