2012 Whole Living Healthy Detox: Week 2

Well, week 2 is over, but it was much easier than week 1.  We made quite a few tasty meals.  We started  the week off with a family Christmas party - we brought baked salmon with chimichurri sauce.  We also revamped one of our favorites, lemon pepper shrimp, to be detox-friendly (and MUCH healthier).  Typically, this dish consists of whole wheat orzo and broccoli sauteed with garlic, topped with shrimp in a lemony, peppery, garlicky, buttery sauce.  We left out the orzo and we left out the butter, making the shrimp with only the lemon, pepper, garlic, and a bit of olive oil, so there wasn't much of a sauce.  We were very pleased with the results!

Throughout the week, we also ate our Dark Days meal of beans and cabbage, and I improved upon my favorite smoothie from last week, the Carrot Mango Smoothie, by adding some strawberries to it as well.  We used up the only soup in the freezer that we can eat, a veggie-filled base for Soup au Pistou, to which we added white beans and a cube of basil puree to give it flavor.  One day for lunch at work, I had half a bag of frozen edamame for lunch, which surprisingly filled me up a lot!

I also managed to squeeze in another recipe from Plenty, one of the two featured cookbooks for January.  The recipe is for Saffron Cauliflower, shown up above, which we ate as a side with salmon.  Because you cook the cauliflower, onions, and golden raisins in the oven, covered, the saffron flavor steams into them.  If you really like saffron (I find it overrated, but that's just me) you will probably like this dish.  I would have preferred if the cauliflower mix was left open to roast and crisp up a little, but it was an OK dish.  I probably won't make it again.

This week is week 3, the final week of the detox.  It's going to take all my willpower not to go straight back to sugar and coffee and bacon!  Wish me luck!

A pictureless summary

While I'm waiting for my official photographer to send me our Thanksgiving photos, I thought I'd share some notes on recipes that I haven't gotten around to posting about.  I've got a few posts started for recipes that I never photographed - since the main point of my blog is to post about the food I make and to avoid making the same mistakes twice, I'm going to share them quickly all at once, instead of dedicating a separate post to each.  Tune in later this weekend for our Thanksgiving post and for some Italy pictures!


Coconut Granola Bars
The coconut granola bars, from NY Times Recipes for Health, were a tasty treat on our vacation.  We snacked on them at the airport and on the plane, crumbled some into yogurt at the continental breakfast, and left a few for Deanna's roommates too.  They were super easy and very crunchy.  If you like those Nature Valley crunchy oats and honey granola bars, you'll like these, and you'll be eating a home-cooked, less-processed (and therefore BETTER) version of them.

Napa Cabbage Salad with Peanuts and Cilantro

I found the recipe for this salad in Deborah Madison's book, Local Flavors.   I made a number of changes to this based on what I had on hand. (It was good, but I thought it would be even better as written.) I didn't have any lettuce, so I used entirely cabbage, and a bit more than called for, a change I think was great! I omitted the scallions because I didn't have any, so I added in a shallot with the dressing. I made the dressing in the blender, and I also added the cilantro to the dressing instead of the salad. I skipped the basil and mint because I didn't have any. Next time I would add extra carrots too!

Fire-Roasted Tomato Stew with Eggplant, Bulgur, and Chickpeas
This one comes from Ancient Grains for Modern Meals.  It's been a while since I made it (eggplant season), but it was good.  I stuck a bit in the freezer for lunches.  The chickpeas are an optional addition, but I think it's always better to toss in some vegetable-based protein when you have the opportunity.  I used bulgur instead of farro, because it's cheaper and I wasn't sure how this would turn out, and also because I thought it would go better with the other flavors.  I was a fan of the golden raisins - if I remember correctly the recipe called for regular dark raisins, but I prefer the golden ones, and I thought they gave the stew an interesting dimension of flavor.

Slow-Cooker Black Bean Mushroom Chili
I made this chili recipe in the slow cooker I got for my birthday.  My old slow cooker is very temperamental and the temperatures seem to be off (thanks to the internet, I've found that this is a very common complaint with that particular brand and model).  My new one lets you set the time by the half hour, and you can jump straight to warm if that's what you want.  This chili recipe uses dried beans, which cooked very well in the 8 hours in the slow cooker.  One complaint is the fresh tomatillos I used - I don't think we scrubbed them well enough and their sticky coating lent a slightly bitter taste to the chili.  The mushrooms gave it a nice meaty element and the spices were a little unusual and interesting.  I would try this one again, maybe with the tomatillos I canned several weeks ago in place of fresh ones.

Chewy Almond Butter Bars

I've been making the Chewy Almond Butter Bars from Ancient Grains for Modern Meals over and over and over.  They are so good.  In fact, I made it a bunch of times and never took a picture - that's the reason I haven't posted about it yet.  Oats, puffed kamut, sunflower seeds, almonds, sesame seeds, flax seeds, apricots, currants, and golden raisins, held together with a glue of almond butter and honey, with just a hint of vanilla and salt in the mix.  The recipe calls for additional sugar, but I've been leaving it out as the notes suggest to lighten it up.  I can't imagine it with more sweetness - it's perfect just the way it is.  I'm on the verge of not needing the recipe for this one anymore.  It's quickly become a favorite.  I'm looking forward to some variations - chocolate and peanut butter, a hazelnut version, an apricot/pistachio combo... the possibilities are endless.

Muesli

I've never had muesli before.  At least not the right way.  On our vacation in January I had a delicious muesli at a breakfast buffet.  But I ate it just as a cereal, with milk, and didn't give it time to soak.  This Muesli from Super Natural Every Day was super simple to make - just mix a few things together and soak overnight in the fridge while it plumps up full of thinned-out yogurt - and super tasty too.

It got me thinking about other muesli recipes I've seen.  There are two in Good to the Grain - one with hazelnuts, rye and quinoa flakes, and dried cherries and cranberries, and another with almonds, pecans, walnuts, spelt and quinoa flakes, figs and apricots - and one on 101 Cookbooks with dried peaches and apples, sweetened with honey.  I'm thinking about my own flavor combinations too - mainly apricot and pistachio.  I'd also like to try the mixed rolled grains in place of some of the oats for a little variety.

Roast Banana-Pumpkin Breakfast Bread

I've been making a list of possible edible gifts for Christmas, and I came across a recipe for Roast Banana-Pumpkin Breakfast Bread.  The picture looked amazing.  At first I thought it had pumpkin in it, but it turns out to be only pumpkin SEEDS.  (I'm considering a variation for the future already!)  I figured I'd try making it in mini-loaves to see if it might be a nice Christmas gift for some of my family members.

The recipe calls for 2 cups of cake flour, so I made some adjustments.  I wanted at least half whole grains here, so I used half all-purpose flour and half white whole wheat flour.  A substitute for cake flour, which I found online, is to add two tablespoons of cornstarch to the bottom of the measuring cup, and fill the remainder of the one-cup measure with flour, so I did this for both cups.  Since I was baking mini-loaves, I baked them for 40 minutes.

I started making this around 8AM, so just the smell of the rum-soaked raisins nearly knocked me over.  I was nervous about how they'd turn out in the bread.  One of the four mini-loaves fell apart, so of course I had to eat the piece that broke off.  At first, I thought my concerns were warranted and I thought to myself that I would use less raisins next time or cook a bit of the alcohol out of the rum.  But as I took a few more bites, I decided that wouldn't be necessary.  This is DELICIOUS.  I love banana bread as it is, but I think roasting the bananas gave an extra dimension to the flavor, plus the plentiful add-ins made it more interesting.  My cake flour substitution seems to have worked, and I may try all white whole wheat flour next time.