Showing posts with label ambercup squash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ambercup squash. Show all posts

Sunday, January 8, 2012

2012 Whole Living Healthy Detox: Week 1


I'm doing the 2012 Whole Living Action Plan, which is kind of a healthy 3-week detox.  This first week, I ate only fruits, veggies, nuts, and plant based oils.  It was hard at times, because I was seriously craving sweets from the holiday season, but we made it through the cravings and I even dropped a pound or two of unwanted weight!  We cut this week short to 5 days instead of 7 because we have another family Christmas gathering to attend and we wanted to have more options than just the veggie tray.  I'll write more about week 2 next week.  I've been too busy during the week to post, so while I'm doing this detox, I'll do a summary at the end of the week.  Hopefully when I'm done I'll be craving nutritious foods instead of all the sugar I've been craving.

Here are some of the foods I've eaten this week...

Fruit Salad Smoothie - from the Vitamix cookbook, which came with my Christmas gift :) and this was the first smoothie I tried with the Vitamix.  It was delicious.  It had a bunch of different fruits along with carrot and cucumber.

Berry Delicious Smoothie - also from the Vitamix cookbook, some pineapple and berries, including cranberries, which provided a really nice flavor.  I plan to make this again this week.

Orange-Berry Smoothie - This one was pretty good, kind of tangy from all the orange juice. I would make it again.

Beet and Carrot Smoothie - This was my least favorite. I couldn't even force myself to eat it. I don't like beets, so I thought this would make them easier for me to stomach so that I could get all their nutrients without the flavor and texture I don't like, but the beet overpowered the smoothie and the ginger didn't help either.

Carrot, Mango, and Herb Smoothie - I'm drinking this one right now and it's one of my favorites from the week, probably because it doesn't have any veggies in it... just carrot juice, orange juice, mango chunks, and mint.  I put about half the amount of mint in because it can be overpowering, and I just get a slight refreshing coolness from it.


Kale Slaw with Red Cabbage and Carrots - I had this for lunch a few times, and I really liked the tangy dressing and the crunchy pepita seeds and the hemp seeds were good too.  I liked the refreshing bite of parsley though toward the end of the week I got lazy and it was just kale, cabbage, the nuts, and dressing.

Steamed Broccoli and Squash with Tahini Dressing - We had this for dinner one night and it was one of our least favorites of the week.  The broccoli with the tahini sauce was the best part.  I definitely wouldn't make this one again.

Roasted Peppers, Cauliflower, and Almonds - This one was pretty good.  I liked the roasted peppers and the saltiness from the kalamata olives.  One thing I would do differently is to make a better dressing, since this one was mainly just lemon and oil.  This would also be really good with feta.  Boy do I miss cheese.

I've already started week 2, and I've moved on to making mostly my own recipes either improvised or from other sources.  One in particular deserves its own post, and if time allows, I will share it this week.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Lentil Stew with Winter Squash


When I am miserably bored I like to search for recipes.  So most of the time, I have a ton of tabs open on my browser, and usually they stay there for weeks and I end up making none of them.  Recently a friend was here for dinner and she can't eat any fat, which you would think is impossible in my house, but as I was flipping through my open recipe tabs, I noticed that one of the NY Times Recipes for Health that I had open, Lentil Stew with Pumpkin, had the nutrition information, and zero grams of fat.  I had pretty much all the ingredients, so I made it for dinner and sent her home with the leftovers.  (I also made her some very low-fat brownies.  Delicious.)

The soup was pretty tasty.  I personally do not prefer the texture of lentils and split peas, but they happened to taste good, which made up for it.  I didn't eat a lot, though.  The spices and aromatics added some good flavors to the soup.  I used what I think is ambercup squash - that was pretty good too.  According to Ken, this is a regular lentil soup.  But I thought it was pretty good, and I hope my friend enjoys the leftovers!