The 2013 Food Lover's Cleanse Diary: Day 2
Sara Dickerman didn't just write the Food Lover's Cleanse--she's an active participant. Follow along with her every day as she reboots her diet. (No juice fasts allowed.)
I love waking up to muesli in the morning, as I did yesterday, because that little scoop of oatmeal grows like a magic sponge overnight into quite a substantial meal. I also like it because it reminds me of some dear family friends I visited in a gorgeous Swiss lakeside town when I was in college. After staying the night with them, they handed me a bowl of pasty stuff that was studded with currants from their garden. I was suspicious--bagels were my breakfast of choice at the time--but the currants gleamed enticingly, and the mush turned out to be refreshing and kept me feeling content each day as we whizzed off on bike rides through apple orchards or hiked high into the Alps. Now whenever I eat muesli, I feel a sort of folksy fresh-air glow that I still associate with Switzerland.
Lunch and snack went off without complications, though they weren't nearly as pretty as the remarkable Kimberley Hasselbrink's photos.
Come dinnertime, I was expecting to be quite alone eating my entrée. My husband's gamely joining me for most of the cleanse, but he hates squash. In our years together, I've managed to show him how delicious beans, beets, and strange bony fish can be, but when I bake up butternuts, he usually pushes the results around his plate with a frown. I made a stack of quesadillas for him and the kids as backup, somehow without a single shred of cheese, miraculously.
So I looked forward to the meal solo. I'd worked hard to get some hearty vegan meals into the program, and I liked the way the sweet butternut plays off he earthy shiitake mushrooms and the juicy-crunchy pomegranate seeds. I'd added a little more depth with a quickie stock made with the mushroom stems, plus some port (always good for adding mysterious richness to a dish). I tentatively served it to my husband--fully expecting him to stop after two bites. But something about the stew sat well with him, and he finished the full meal, eating just a single slice of quesadilla for dessert.