Eating to Glow

It is the new year and people tend to do food detox/cleanses during this time so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon.  When I got sick last month,  everything kind of shut down for me and I had horrible bouts of acid reflux for some reason.  I often do get acid reflux but this was abnormal.  Certain foods seem to trigger it (rich, fried/oily foods) and I assume it was triggered by the cream puff I consumed earlier that night during Christmas dinner.  I'm not sure though because it didn't go away and I literally could not eat without acid foaming up.  I lost about 5lbs during that time because I could only eat a few bites at a time.

Now, I am all better but I do need to pay more attention to my body and change my eating habits.   What better time to kickstart a new eating habit than today?  So I did.  Kale as been touted as the "it" food of the moment for it's cancer-fighting properties and it seems like it is everywhere in the blogosphere.  People are baking it into kale chips, eating it raw, juiced, steamed, souped, in salads...you name it, it has been done.  I've added a lot more kale into my diet but my simple steam + oyster sauce method for cooking greens just doesn't work with kale.  Kale is a tough vegetable.  I used to buy the curly kale because it seemed greener and even healthier than flat-leaf kale but I could never chew through the tough fibers no matter how long I cooked the darned thing.  It usually ended up sadly neglected in a glass container, admonishing me in the back of the fridge for letting it go to waste.

Now I know better.  Today, after 2-3 weeks of being unhealthy, I felt my body crave something clean.  I didn't want meat, I didn't want sweets...I wanted a vegetable salad.  Not the fancy spinach salad mix I had in the fridge, but a good, hearty, earthy salad.  And so I did.   I finally had time to go to the grocery store today and I purchased the following items:

honeycrisp apples, yali pears, cherry tomatoes, English cucumbers, portobello mushrooms, green onions, red onions, oyster sauce, sesame oil, bananas, avocados, kale, garlic, lemons, green lentils, fancy mixed olives, fancy sweet and spicy red peppers, almond milk, and Greek yogurt. 

All in all, I spent about $40 on food today (most of the cost went towards my giant tin of sesame oil--it's so much cheaper to buy it in bulk) and I went to town making my salad.  First, I took a lonely acorn squash that had been turning bright orange in my pantry for weeks, and peeled and diced the whole thing.  I lightly coated it with grapeseed oil, sea salt, fresh black pepper, and 5 spice powder and baked it until it was golden.  Though not my original intent for the squash, the results tasted like really awesome sweet potato fries.

While that was baking, I washed and boiled the lentils in lightly salted water.  Meanwhile, I went to town chopping up my veggies.  All the kids went into the pool: kale, carrots, celery, red onions, walnuts, dried cranberries, avocado, olives, peppers, and lemon juice.  I mixed a little tahini, fish sauce, sesame oil, and more lemon juice for the dressing and gave everything a mix.  I topped my bowl off with two tablespoons of the lentils, cherry tomatoes, and some of the squash and called it a meal.

And now, my notes on the meal:

Tonight, I feel energetic and my concentration is better.  I feel light inside but I am not hungry.  I am looking forward to eating more kale salad tomorrow.  Surprisingly, I do not want to eat meat but I still wanted to eat a little sweet snack.  I baked pumpkin dark chocolate bread loaded with whole wheat, flaxseeds, and walnuts earlier today (I usually bake one loaf of fruit bread each week for breakfast), and had a slice of that for dessert.  That satisfied my carb and sweet craving quite nicely.