Day 6 - Cleansing

We couldn't stop thinking about that vegetable pizza we made a few days ago...So we made that for dinner again last night. Delicious. The difference between last time and this time was the fact that I became full before I finished my second half!

This cleansing is amazing so far. I have already lost weight in my pants. At this point I can say this will be a lifestyle change, rather than a diet cleansing. I have never seen such results before because I have never been this persistent.

The impact seems bigger because I haven't been exercising.

What great results without even exercising!

Cleansing Day 5 - A Sushi Treat!

Tonight we treated ourselves to sushi at Ru San's.

It was delicious...as usual.

Today was a little rougher than usual. I ate a mixed bag of cheerios and peanuts this morning for breakfast, and wasn't hungry until 3:00 in the afternoon. I tried to eat tomato soup around 12:00 but my stomach was not taking it. I think my body is realizing that my diet is not a 2-day thing. It's a little shocked! I'm sure it is after I've been eating: Crap, broccoli every 20th day, cookies, fruit here and there, ooh cheesecake!, then there was the casserole my mom made me...

Cleansing Day 4 - Stopping to Eat in a Vegitable Garden

Topped Thomas Bagel Thins with pizza sauce (jar kind) and fresh tomatoes!

(mmm...my favorite part...the best layer)

So we wouldn't eat our hands, we snacked on carrots while we waited for our pizzas to cook.



We steamed some broccoli and created the next layer.

Spinach leave galore.

By this point I'm am feeling the vegetable love.

Finally, I finished these bad boys off with some shredded Parmesan cheese.

All there is left to do is pop them in the oven (350 degrees) for about 15 minutes or so.

I like mine crispy.

This is MK's version of what we have termed the "vegetable garden pizza".

She put minimal pizza sauce and heavy chunks of tomato on a platform of her favorite wheat tortillas. She also used reduced-fat white sharp cheddar cheese.

I'm okay (most of the time) just drinking water, but the 17 Day Diet thing really pushes Green Tea.

It's not half bad.

So after not too much work (and might I say WAY better than the avocado experimentation) you've got a very healthy, guilt-free pizza!! It was delicious.

Cheese is not a weakness of mine (cookies are though!) so I think I could have left the Parmesan off completely and been fine.

Also! Don't forget to add some seasoning! Even though this pizza isn't covered in cheese and grease, it can still have that great pizza flavor with a little Oregano and crushed red pepper

 (if your a spice fanatic like me).

Cleansing Day 3 - What's for Dinner?

Spice-Dusted Avocado with Mango & Crab

(Origin: Zanzibar)

My experiemental Avocado dinner...was interesting.

I chose a recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks (an Indian Ocean Spice Route cookbook!)

You can purchase it on Amazon.

It's actually called: Where Flavor Was Born.

An interesting mix of spices...

Mix continuously over high heat for 1 minute to release the flavors.

I'm not an avocado fan, but my roommate let me try a cube of hers one night. She put a little salt on it and I downed it. My reaction? I re-thought the judgement I had passed on to this poor fruit.

Enter the (fake) crab.

A little scary, since I know the difference!!

My daddy cooks crab legs whenever I come home to visit.

Frozen organic mango.

I am also not much of a mango fan.

As I'm writing this post, I am wondering what caused me to "cook" this meal.

Oh yeah, the photography in the cookbook.

Mette Randem

But this is my photograph. And it still looks good.

I wish I could say it was delcious, but it was just different.

This dish is from another culture and it was just a lot of new tastes for someone who doesn't eat mango or avocado (which makes up 95% of it!)

But similar to sushi (with the crab meat and avocado combined).

Fruit Discovery - Cleansing

Introducing: the Cocktail Grapefruit!

Grapefruits are one of my favorite fruits, so it was a pleasant surprise to see this black sheep of the grapefruit family sitting on the fruit shelf at the grocery store.

I was surprised by just about everything this fruit had to offer:

• Green skin.
• Yellow inside.
• Tons, tons of seeds.

Taste of a lime and an orange (?) combined.

(haven't quite nailed down what it is)

I chose not to purchase more of this fruit because it took a lot of work to get the meat out of it. Even using a knife wasn't much help. However my dear friend MK (who does not like grapefruits) bought three the next time we went to the store! (We split the test fruit above.)

17 Day Diet?

My roommate has discovered the "17 Day Diet".

Now I'm not really into diets...but this is more for cleansing's sake.

This "diet" coincidentally has fallen on New Years day!

Anyway, if you're interested, here's the link: v-e-g-i-t-a-b-l-e-s.

(Hence the over-piling of clementines and tangerines.)