hoo boy. it’s not quite 10:00 here in the happy household on day 1 of the cleanse. both of my guys are already in bed, snoring away. i’ll probably be joining them as soon as i’m done writing this post. that is earrrrrrly for the grown-ups in this house to be down for the night. it was a bit of a rough day.
we started off the day with a green smoothie:
on the advice of friends who did this program last summer, i added pineapple (they’d actually suggested apple, but the pineapple was easier to get to. i didn’t add a lot.) and lime juice to the recipe in the book. although it wasn’t something i could see myself ever craving, it wasn’t terrible. mr. happy stuff said he expected it to be a lot worse since it includes kale.
i sent mr. h-s off to work with an apple and some almond butter for a morning snack, packed some cheerios for the little boy to munch on (he’s not doing the cleanse with us), and headed out to whole foods in search of the last few elusive ingredients. we found most of what we were looking for (still no passion fruit puree, oh well) and a few things we weren’t looking for, but which fit within the guidelines (hooray for a few “clean” fruit/nut bars we can use for easy snacking! and black bean spaghetti!) and then headed to yoga class. back in the car, i realized that i’d forgotten to pack a mid-morning snack for myself, so i raided our recent purchase and ate a few cashews and some freeze-dried mango. delicious!
after yoga and back home for lunch, i was working on prepping the warm salmon with pesto asparagus and teaching myself how to use the broil function on our stove. i’ve never really tried it before, so i read the oven instruction manual and it says you should keep the door propped open about 5 inches (the door sort of props itself open at that spot, you don’t have to put a stick in it or anything) while broiling. i put together the asparagus and the salmon (a little olive oil, salt and pepper) and put them in to broil, then worked on the simple salad dressing (lemon juice, salt and olive oil) and right about the time for me to flip the salmon over, the happy toddler grabbed the top of the stove door and shut it. with his fingers stuck inside. he burned all four fingers pretty badly (they have huge blisters), and he’s been eerily nonchalant about them the rest of the day. i mean, yes, he screamed right when it happened and for a few minutes afterward, and now that they have bandaids on them, he sort of floats that hand around, treating it gingerly, occasionally trying to poke at the bandaids and two or three times, he’s sort of acted like he might be in pain (i did give him tylenol) for a few seconds (whiny, nose scrunched all up), but it usually passes quickly. i feel terrible every time i see his poor little hand (especially tonight when i was changing the bandages), but i keep reminding myself that accidents happen and that this will likely not be the last time he gets hurt and that he will survive just fine. but… still. ouchy!! *shudder*
but back to lunch… it was actually quite delicious (despite the disaster), although mr. happy stuff thought the mesclun dressing was a little too lemony (he was right. it was, unless you ate it with a bite of salmon or asparagus) and although i totally forgot to put the pesto on, until he’d already finished eating and i was a quarter of the way through mine. i sent him back to work with one of the clean snack bars for an afternoon snack and then took the boy upstairs for a nap.
supper tonight was definitely the worst meal of the day. i realized as evening drew near that a liquid supper was going to be the most challenging part of this regimen for us. i sort of knew that going in to this (i’ve had smoothies for breakfast before, so that was familiar. big lunch? bring it on! but drinking my supper? hmmm….), but it became crystal clear this evening. i’d sort of had this idea that eating soup instead of a smoothie might feel more like supper, so i chose one of the “soup” recipes from the book. here’s the thing–mr. happy stuff really is not fond of butternut squash soup (and i can usually only eat it in small quantities myself) and that was pretty much the only kind of soup that the book lists with the option to serve it warm. the rest of the soups sound like weird, blender gazpachos (without tomatoes or peppers, of course). i’m hoping to try making some recipes just using the yes/no list, but i thought for the first day, we should stick with their recipes to get a feel for how big the portions should be and to see if their recipes were more “effective” at cleansing than mine. so, with mr. happy stuff’s input, we chose to make the zucchini and basil soup. here’s what it looks like:
let’s just say… it was a learning experience. here are the things i learned from this soup:
1. tepid + savory = blech.
2. just because you’re eating with a spoon doesn’t make it feel more like soup. just chug it down.
3Â super watery soups = blech.
4. when you drink this much tepid soup and one of the ingredients is onion, you spend the whole evening wishing you could brush your teeth every five minutes.
5. when you have to force yourself to finish your food, you spend the rest of the evening feeling just a little sick. blech.
i made the executive decision that mr. happy stuff and i deserved small glasses of a sweet smoothie to chase that nasty green stuff down, so i mixed up another recipe from the book (it only made a small portion and we didn’t drink all of it) that consisted of mostly pineapple, mango and coconut. it tasted amazing!
i also chewed on a mint leaf and that also helped a little bit. i began fantasizing about a pinapple mojito smoothie that may be in our future…
the happy baby got his favorite (mac & cheese) for dinner and also got to watch a few extra episodes of “thomas sodor” and “sheep!” because of his ouchy fingers.
mr. happy stuff suffered a headache for most of the day and went to bed before the happy toddler, feeling kind of sick.
i’m still in a pretty good mood because i still have that, “this is a fun, new adventure!” feeling, but let’s hope tomorrow is better for my boys.
