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!
