Day 13, Saturday: In Which Our Heroine Passes the Test of Michael and Susan's House

Breakfast: Turkey burger and rainbow chard
Lunch: Green apple and nut butter. When trying to reconstruct what I ate, I actually could not remember what this meal was, it was so boring. I had to sit here wracking my brain.
Dinner: At my brother-in-law's. We had deviled eggs, baked chicken, portobello mushroom, and spinach. Yummo.

My in-laws, Michael and Susan and their kids, are a whole story in and of themselves. I adore them. Their house is a big food trigger for me, because they make excellent baked goods, we spend every Thanksgiving there, and the crazy hijinks that ensue when hubby and his brother get together make me very feckless. That family is full of eaters, which is part of why I fit right in when I married into it (the other part is that I like shouting). I generally eat whatever the hell I want at their house, and there's always plenty of it. Dessert has many courses. At a typical gathering we'll have the following: regular cake. Ice cream cake. Cookies. Ambrosia.* Coffee cake. That's AFTER a huge meal with plenty of hors d'oeuvres! My sister-in-law, Susan, and I both adore dessert. She makes one of my all time favorite desserts: CREAM PUFFS. They're insane! The "puff" part is crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside (ah, gluten). The "cream" part includes jell-o pudding (ah, dairy).

My brother Michael Magenta is an amazing writer. My favorite work of his is a short play called "3-3-3-1-1-1". But I am also very fond of a show he wrote and performs called "Fat Selfish Bastard". Michael has plenty of his own issues with food that he unpacks with humor and pathos in that show. If you want to see it, keep an eye on my FB--I post links to his performances. All of which is to say that when he invited us over for dinner, I knew I could tell him that we're avoiding sugar. Sure enough, the minute, the minute we walked in the door, he presented us with a plate of Detox-approved deviled eggs! That's a supportive family member. Then he served us grilled chicken, portobello mushrooms and spinach. It was fantastic and I had two helpings.

Then...things went downhill. Susan and Lauren, my niece, decided to make chocolate chip cookies for a hike they were taking the next day. They negotiated, in excruciating detail, all the various ways you can make chocolate chip cookies. What kind of sugar to use, what kind of flour, how to load them onto the cookie sheet so that they come out perfect. Then they made them, and you know that there's two factors at play when you're resisting chocolate chip cookies: resisting the dough, and resisting the cookies after they're made. Shockingly, I DID NOT EAT ANY.

...So then when I got home I rewarded myself with a paleo milkshake at like 10:30 at night. Technically you're only supposed to have one piece of fruit a day on the Detox, and the banana in the milkshake made two. But honestly, resisting those cookies was absolute torture, so I give myself an enormous pass on the two fruits thing and celebrate my cookie resistance. I can't believe I did it! It didn't help that hubby had one. He stood right in front of me and shoved it all in at once, licking his fingers and saying "Mmmmmmm! Yummy!", and later told me that it was probably one of the best chocolate chip cookies he'd ever had. Thanks honey!

*Have you ever had ambrosia? Okay, I'm going to describe it, and I know that if you've never had it, you'll think it sounds disgusting. But it's fantastic! Ingredients: minimarshmallows. Sour cream. Mandarin oranges. Pineapple. Shredded coconut. Mix it all up and snarf it all down! I went to a party at Michael and Susan's once and I ate six plates of this stuff. Now I realize that I was basically mainlining sugar. Such good times!

Day 9, Tuesday: In Which Our Heroine Resists the Dread Beast Chocolate Chip Cookie

An amazing thing happened today. I pleasantly surprised myself. Today was my first time back in our car after hubby's road trip. Things I found there: 1. rotten banana peel; 2. used coconut shell/ghee lanterns that had dripped buttery grease all over the floor of the car and, subsequently, my hands; 3. PACKAGE OF HOME MADE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES MADE BY THE HOSTESS AND SENT HOME WITH CHRIS. They were just sitting there. Looking at me. The edges were lightly browned. The middle looked chewy. There were maybe five left in the knob of tin foil. I looked at them. They looked at me. Then I swept them up with the coconut shells and the banana peel and put them in the dumpster.

Okay, let's get down to bizness:

11:30 am: Homemade green juice
2:00 pm: Goat cheese and prosciutto salad
9:00 pm: Fajita-less fajitas
10:00 pm: Apple with almond butter

Okay, so I have so many things to say about the green juice. First of all, full disclosure: these days I find myself actually thinking about what I am going to eat not just from my usual perspectives (will this make me feel good? Is this good for me? Did this have to travel a long way on a truck to get to me? Is this homemade?), but from the added perspective of HOW WILL MY BLOG READERS PERCEIVE THIS MEAL. This is kind of silly, because the only person reading my blog is my sister, and once the Dorothy Lynch salad dressing references dry up I can't promise she'll keep reading. It's also silly because of this: there are a million different diets out there, and a million people willing to raise an eyebrow at mine. The whole point of my Detox is for me to take care of MYSELF, not worry about whether or not I look like a pig or whether or not the vegetarian yoga mafia is coming after me. So it's silly, okay? Very very silly. And yet, when I contemplated my breakfast this morning, I thought of you, Gentle Reader, and how I really had to redeem myself for last night's travesty of a dinner. So I made green juice!

Green juice sounds like a punishment but it is, in fact, an indulgence. Green smoothies make me feel ill, but green juice makes me feel great, when deployed effectively. Effective deployment means not drinking too much of it, drinking it slowly, not using it as a meal replacement. Ineffective deployment means drinking a lot of it very quickly and going out to teach two classes without any protein under my belt. Unfortunate digestive sequelae* and crashing soon follow. Green juice is very potent and my system needs time to absorb it. If you think about it, we didn't evolve with juicers, and our bodies are used to processing celery juice in the context of all the fiber that goes with celery. Or that's my goofy theory anyway. So I drink it slowly.

I first got into green juice because one of my friends was visiting to teach a yoga workshop. She had brought with her a huge plastic quart container of green juice. Being from New Jersey, I'm used to seeing those containers filled with Chinese hot and sour soup. But this one had a kind of electric green liquid in it, and as she walked past me carrying it, I was entranced by the fragrance emanating from it--it smelled like grass, and summer, and my cells cried, "I want that! Gimme that!"

Here's my favorite green juice recipe: (I use a Breville, one of the numerous fantastic kitchen appliances I have from when my hubby worked at Williams Sonoma. We live in a teeny tiny apartment but man, we have the kitchen appliances of an EMPEROR.)

- Head of romaine lettuce
- Three stalks celery
- Half a cucumber
- Two large handfuls of kale
- A lemon
- Half a head of fennel OR a green apple

The fennel is pretty sweet. (I didn't use the green apple today because I wanted to save it for snack time--as you know I've been relying on green apple and almond butter a LOT during this Detox for snacks.) The lemon gives this a wonderful flavor. So that was breakfast. I didn't have to teach on this day so I didn't bother having anything else, but when I do have to teach I'll supplement the green juice with a handful of cashews or an egg.

I can't remember what I had in addition to goat cheese and prosciutto on the salad, but it was probably cucumber and scallion, my go-to salad ingredients. 'Twas tasty. Hubby liked it too.

Okay, I understand that this picture makes fajita-less fajitas look like a big bowl of featureless glop, but they are one of my favorite dinners currently. They work on the same principle as bunless burgers and bagel-less bagels and lox--just leave out the tasteless bread-y meal component. This meal comes together insanely quickly. I get some Trader Joe's organic chicken tenders, or even better, skinless boneless chicken thighs. Put them on a cookie sheet. Cover them with salsa and salt and garlic powder to taste. Whack 'em in the convection oven on broil, 400 degrees. While that's cooking, I slice up half an onion and a bell pepper, put some olive oil, cumin, garlic, chile powder, salt, etc. in a pan and cook 'em up slowly. When the onion and pepper are soft, I dump in an entire package of sliced mushrooms. While THAT cooks down, I make guacamole. I can't stand store-bought guacamole. Here's how I make it: a whole avocado from a reliable source. (Ashley Market has reliable avocados. They're always ripe but not rotten.) Two medium garlic cloves chopped very finely. Two limes. Plenty of salt. Mush together. By that time, the chicken is done, the veggies are done, BAM. I arrange all three meal components in a bowl. I add a dollop of goat milk yogurt instead of sour cream. Some other time I'll regale you with a tiresome list of all my dairy issues and how I get around them.

Apple with almond butter is becoming my go-to snack on this detox. It was not at all very prominent the first time I did the Detox. The first time around, I ate a lot of cheese sticks. Which really screwed up my train schedule (see asterisk).

*Do I really have to spell out what I mean by "unfortunate digestive sequelae"? Lemme put it this way. People have three types of digestive problems. 1. The trains come too frequently. 2. The trains come too infrequently. 3. They alternate too frequently and too infrequently. I don't spend a lot of time loitering on platforms. Capiche?

Day 6, Saturday: In Which I Fall Off the Wagon

NOTE FOR THE CONFUSED: BLOG IS 5-6 DAYS BEHIND REAL LIFE. I'M POSTING SATURDAY'S UPDATE ON A THURSDAY.

Sorry the blog didn't go up last night at the usual time. Wednesday night is always a toughie for me because I teach till 9pm. I was flattered to receive several messages from my rabid fans clamoring for the latest post! Okay, not several. I got one. And actually, it wasn't really "fans" plural. It was one fan, who, full disclosure, is actually related to me. And really, I don't know if you can call it a message--it was a text. Still, I have made it my business this morning to satisfy my sister's craving for my food update and my scintillating prose!

On this day, I fell off the wagon, once on purpose, and once by accident.

Breakfast was pretty stellar, although it was not breakfast food, which I'm not crazy about. A couple of slices of turkey and a half a yellow pepper. I adore yellow and orange bell peppers, but I do feel a bit guilty about eating them because most of them are exactly the opposite of local--they're from Holland or Israel. But man are they fantastic! Sweet, too.

Lunch: my lovely in-laws took me out to lunch because hubby was out of town. We went for Mexican. We had guacamole (fine) and I had fajitas without the tortillas. So steak, onion, green pepper, mushroom, tomato. Should be fine, but afterward I felt a bit...off...and I'm pretty sure the steak was marinated in something sugary.

Dinner: turns out my friend Eyal is in town from Israel (where my peppers come from!) and our mutual friend Nina invited me over for dinner. Now, here's my thing about going over to a friend's house when I'm on a sugar detox: I let it go. If I had seriously dangerous food sensitivities, I would be much more careful. But I don't. So I eat what everyone else is eating. Everyone else was having adult beverages, there was some fantastic corn on the cob, there were grapes, there were cookies and chocolate covered pretzels. Here's what I had:

- Vodka with lime juice. I'd never had this beverage before but it might be my new go-to drink. It was the first thing I had when I got there, and again, because of the detox, it actually tasted SWEET. As anyone who has ever socialized with me knows, it takes a very small amount of alcohol to create lampshade-on-the-head Emma. I have the tolerance of a flea but I drank this slowly and it was fantastic. BOOZE IS DECIDEDLY NOT DETOX FRIENDLY. As you probably know, it's all sugar. Did you know that one factor in alcoholism is that the sufferer is addicted to the sugar? True story.
- Spinach dip. Not sure what Nina put in this but it was spinachy and oniony and cheesy and very tasty. I'm sure it was cow milk rather than goat milk cheese (I generally can tolerate the latter, but not the former so well). I ate it with baby carrots instead of the crackers that were there. It was also fantastic.
- One grape. Then I remembered that I'm not eating grapes, and there were plenty of other tasty things, so I ate those instead.
- Lots of carrots and blanched green beans.
- One ear of corn on the cob.
- Shrimp
- Salad (probably some sweetener in the dressing. There were cranberries but I didn't eat them.)

So far I had been doing pretty well. I'd had vodka and corn, but oh well--vodka is a very clean drink and the corn was from an organic farm stand, so I felt my fall had been gentle and short. THEN the dessert came out. I simply cannot--CANNOT--sit next to a plate of chocolate chip cookies and not have one. I can't do it. They are my number one, number one favorite thing to eat. They are my nemesis. If it wouldn't destroy my health, I would eat chocolate chip cookies and milk* at every meal and never, never get tired of them. The crispy outer edge. The chewy center. The hint of salt. The texture when soaked in milk. The way the chips melt all over you when you eat them straight out of the oven. What I really love is home made, but I'm not picky. I would eat Entemann's if necessary.

So I had one. Then I had another. Then a plate of dark chocolate covered pretzels came out. Thereupon the cookies became a gateway drug for the pretzels. I told myself a very strange story: "Oh, the pretzels aren't cookies so they're not so bad." So I ate four of them. Here in the hard cold light of morning I realize that in fact the pretzels are exactly the same thing as the cookies. Wheat flour and chocolate. Forget the hard cold light of morning--I knew they were the same thing the moment I was eating them! Good thing I skipped those grapes, huh? Wouldn't wanna screw up my Detox with GRAPES when there are COOKIES around!

Sigh. I enjoyed my fall off the wagon immensely. And if you ask me, when doing a Detox, that's exactly the attitude to have. I fell off the wagon, I had a great time, and tomorrow is another day.

*WHOLE milk. That's right. I would dip the cookies in whole milk. Now that's PROFESSIONAL.