Back on the (food) wagon.

To talk about what an epic fail of a work week I have had would suck out the rest of my good mojo. Therefore, I am choosing NOT to dwell - I will simply summarize by saying it has been utterly craptastic, made me fall behind, and has most definitely kept me busy. That being said, it's time to move on to bigger and better topics - like fooooooood.

As mentioned before, I finally received my box of goodies from my June Foodie PenPal. Michelle lives in Wisconsin (she doesn't blog, or else I would link her up here), and sent me some fun stuff:

It included some wasabi peas, teriyaki flavor injector, locally made strawberry chocolate walnut cookies, lemon wafer cookies, and locally made orange roasted chocolate covered almonds. I have to say, the almonds were my favorite. I had never tried almonds roasted in orange before I got these, and I'd highly recommend them, if you can find any near you. How fun was it to get a box of food in the mail? TONS! I enjoyed my first FPP experience so much, I signed up to do it again this month.

You send a box to a different person than you receive from, so I was paired up with Kelly (click on her name if you want to see her blog post about what I sent her) who lives in Illinois. She is a runner who, strangely enough, was born in Round Rock and lived here for the first few years of her life. Small world! She said her favorites were peanut butter, chocolate, and oatmeal, but to surprise her with anything. It was fun getting to shop around and put this together, and I'm already excited for the next one!

As I mentioned in the previous post, the hubby and I decided it was time to go back to square one nutritionally speaking, and redo a cleanse we did back in September 2011. I blogged about each stage of the 21-day cleansing adventure, so it was interesting to go back and read what I wrote before we started this up again. It was nice to have the heads-up about how we were feeling along the way, and reading back on those posts has made the anticipation of this 21-day stretch somewhat muted. For those of you who don't know or weren't around when we did this back then, it's a vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free diet. No milk, eggs, meat, white flour, wheat, or white sugar, just vibrant veggies, fruit, meatless protein, and nuts. We started Monday, so today is day 5, and I must say we are plodding along nicely. I had a headache the first two days off and on, as did Aaron, but since then it's been ok. I haven't found myself pining for the more naughty side of food yet, but it's only week 1. I'm sure I'll whining a different tune about this time next week.

Since it's been a couple of years since we first did this, the author of the book we were following then (Crazy Sexy Diet by Kris Carr) has come out with a book to support the diet, Crazy Sexy Kitchen.

  

It is chock full of recipes, ranging from the easy to the downright chefy. I checked it out from our local library (after being on a waiting list for 2 weeks!) and as you can see, I already have about a dozen recipes earmarked for testing.

  

I'm hoping its going to be an asset to have this cookbook in my arsenal as we go through the next two weeks. We went to the Farmer's Market last Saturday to grab a few items for the week:

Tomatoes, potatoes, and squash - oh my!

Then we headed over to Sprouts and picked up a revised version of groceries for the week:



Gluten-free potato pancakes, gluten-free buckwheat waffles,
and gluten-free dairy-free chipotle black bean "burger" patties.

Dairy-free yogurt, almond milk pudding, vegan butter, dairy-free "cheese",
and gluten-free butternut squash ravioli.

We've started having salads at least once a day, usually twice, and summer produce has given us some amazing things to work with.


A thing of beauty! At this point, still having one of these with lunch and dinner.



But, as we quickly learned last time we did this, the love affair with salads will not last long. As delicious as they are, they eventually get old. Thankfully, the cookbook I checked out has new ideas for salads to keep them from getting boring. The trick will be getting Aaron to try new variations on the old standby. I will say, the fruit during summer never disappoints, so we couldn't have done this cleanse at a better time, as far as that is concerned. Melons, apples, berries, cherries, apricots, dates, mango, peaches, pears, pineapple, and tomatoes are all in season, and I'm loving every minute of it! My new obsession:

Candycots. Holy mother, are these things amazing. They are shipped in to Central Market from Modesto, California, and are worth every stinking penny! If you have these in a store near you, buy them! You won't regret it after you get one taste of their unparalleled sweetness. A perfect snack for the kiddos!



Thankfully, it's Friday, and that means I am looking forward to my day off tomorrow. I'll most likely be hiding from the wretched sun, but I'll make the most of it, no doubt. I know we won't be going out to eat like the last few weekends. If it wasn't so hot, I'd love to go hiking, or biking. Guess we'll have to brainstorm and get more creative than that until the cooler weather arrives. Maybe it'd be fun to experiment some in the kitchen? Oh, and keep going with the Doctor Who marathon we've been on - yes, I said 'we'. I sucked Aaron in - muahahahahahaha! No one can resist The Doctor!