21-Day Detox Day 8: Vegan Veggie Spaghetti & Pesto

It's day 8 and I'm fantasizing about the yummy chicken I'm going to cook for dinner. As part of the detox, I can have one 4 oz serving of protein a day. I can either have it all in one sitting or split it up. Today I'm saving it for dinner. The protein has to be organic or pastured-raised (chicken), grass-fed (beef, veal), wild (fish), cage-free/pastured-raised (eggs). The point is to continue detoxing without adding any additional toxins. Every vegetable that I've been eating in the last week has been organic to ensure that I am not taking in any pesticides or other harmful chemicals.

For breakfast, I made a yummy juice.

Red Bunny Lemon

3 carrots
5 celery stalks
1 small beet
1 lemon
6 beet green stalks
5 mint springs
1/2 apple
2in ginger knob
cup of spinach

For lunch, I made spaghetti! Spaghetti squash that is! Spaghetti squash is a really fun winter squash that yields stringy, noodle-like threads when cooked. Squashes reduce inflammation, improve qi circulation and help alleviate pain. This squash is super easy to cook and is delicious.

Vegan Veggie Spaghetti & Pesto

Ingredients:
1/2 cooked Spaghetti Squash
2 tbsp Gina's Pesto Sauce (clean sauce made with olive oil and lemon juice) [Available at Rainbow]
2 tbsp olive oil
Celtic salt to taste

Process:
1. Set oven Bake at 350
2. Cut squash in half and place on an oiled parchment sheet. Bake for 30 mins and turn off the oven. Leave squash in oven for 20 mins
3. Remove and let cool.

4. Using a fork, scrape the insides and you'll get noodle-like strands

5. Put in bowl and mix with pesto

6. Add salt and enjoy!

As a snack, I made homemade veggie crackers made from juicer pulp.

Super Veggie Crackers
Ingredients:
As much juicer pulp as you want

Process:
1. Lay out juicer pulp on parchment paper and press down to get as thin of a layer as you can

2. Either:

(a) Set oven to it's lowest setting, place baking sheet into the over, pry oven oven door with rolled up kitchen towels. Bake for 3.5 hours and turn over and bake for another 2 hours

or

(b) Dehydrate for 6 hours, turning over once (my oven dehydrates at 140 degrees)

3. Crackers will look like this, once ready

For dinner, I made hubby and me some more of the tasty squash. I paired it with my signature BBQ buffalo chicken and some sauerkraut I picked up at the farmers market.

BBQ Buffalo Chicken
Ingredients:
3 chicken thighs or 2 chicken breasts
2 tbsp Bragg's Raw Apple Cider Vinegar
1 tbsp Spice House Smoked Spanish Paprika
1 tbsp Spice House Half-Sharp Hungarian Paprika
1/2 tbsp Celtic Salt
2 tbsp olive oil

Process:

 1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl using tongs

2. Heat oil on a grill pan or frying pan
3. Place chicken in pan and cook until golden brown (8-10 mins)

4. Flip over and cook for another 6-8 minutes (until fully cooked)

 5. Enjoy!

After dinner, I had a juice shake as a snack around 9:30. I had gone to the farmer's market and picked up a bunch of organic veggies. For $20, I was able to buy:

2 bunch of carrots (4 huge carrots each) with all tops intact
1 bunch of beets (4 long beets) with all tops intact
2 Lacinato Kale
2 Swiss Chard
1 Curly Chard
1 Fennel Bulb

Who said eating healthy is expensive!

Scary Green Monster
10 cups of carrot tops
2 large carrots
1 fennel
1 granny smith
2 inch ginger


I have to say that eating the chicken was a bit uneventful, although extremely satisfying. I thought the heavens would open up or something, but really it was just another Wednesday. I guess it's good knowing that I can survive without protein. Ever since FA, I felt like I needed to eat protein with every meal to survive. For a while, I was eating red meat at almost every meal. Sometimes a healthy intervention really opens up your eyes about your beliefs about yourself. It feels really great to be learning so much about myself.

Embarking on a 21-Day Detox- Part 1

Most of you reading this probably think I'm crazy. Possibly all of you think that and even a little part of me thinks that I'm crazy too.  I didn’t decide to do this on a whim, this has actually been a really long journey for me to even get to a place where I am right now:  to even consider doing a 21 day detox. But I intuitively knew it was something that I really needed to do for while.

  

About 10 months ago, my husband's cousin who I was seeing at the time for acupuncture, suggested that it would be a really good idea for me to do a detox before trying to even thinking about getting pregnant again. My response to her was: “thanks, that’s a really great idea, but I’m planning on being pregnant soon, so I just don't have time for that.” Yet somewhere deep inside, I knew that it probably wasn't a good idea for me to get pregnant feeling lousy (read on to learn more). This is partly why I'm embarking on a 21-day detox cleanse. I have a wonderful three-year-old daughter and my husband and I are really looking forward to having more children. I know for a fact that I need to do this for myself first before I embark on another pregnancy...

Before I got pregnant with our first daughter Tali, I was in amazing shape.  I was doing yoga 4-5 days a week and my diet was pretty good. I ate no dairy products, wheat,  chocolate, very limited refined sugars,  and lots of vegetables ( not always all organic), meat and fish ( not always organic or grass fed). I was able to sweat out most of the toxins in my Vinyasa yoga classes.  When I was pregnant I continued with my diet and doing yoga 3- 4 times a week, and when I couldn't do yoga anymore, I swam. I gained approximately 30 pounds in the pregnancy and had a fairly easily labor that lasted about 4 1/2 hours. My birth goal was a natural birth (no drugs) and I was able to do that.

The goal was not easy to achieve, I call it training for marathon.  Besides exercise and diet, I saw an acupuncturist and a chiropractor almost weekly, and my husband and I attended hypnobirthing classes.  I also had several hypnosis sessions to help me deal with any fears surrounding labor. I worked really hard to ensure that my vision of the birth came true.  I am extremely grateful to all the wonderful practioners who helped me achieve that vision.

If you are mom, then you know that once you have your wonderful bundle of joy, your needs take a backseat. Or rather, the needs are still there but the time and desire are not. Taking care of myself in the way I had been doing prior to my daughter's birth became much more difficult. 

I nursed my daughter until she was 25 months old,  which also made things a bit more difficult as I was pumping 3 times a day the first year and then in the second year, twice a day. There wasn't really a lot of room and time for me. Don’t get me wrong, this was purely my choice and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. I tried to do yoga as often as I could, but it became really difficult to even go once a week. I would feel guilty about being away and not being there to nurse her. 

When my Tali turned 1, we introduced cow dairy and wheat products into her diet.  Having dairy in the house became very difficult for me and I began eating goat and sheep cheese again. After spending six years of not eating any dairy products whatsoever, I began to really indulge. I also switched jobs and was working over 12 hours daily, leaving me no time to even cook. I ate at Chipotle daily, thinking this was a good choice. My health started deteriorating and I no longer felt healthy. I started to feel “old”; my body felt like it was giving up on me. I was having aches and pains, stomach troubles, mental fogginess and a really hard time dealing with and processing stress. I knew intuitively that part of that feeling was my diet, but I wasn’t ready to do anything about it. I had been eating a lot more sugar, and even though it wasn't necessarily refined sugar, I was eating it in large amounts. In general, my diet was pretty lousy and I wasn’t taking care of myself…

to be continued...