This is what Detox looks like

Every year after the holidays, I do a 2-week detox. Every year it sucks. This year it seems to suck even more. This year I took my usual detox - no dairy, no meat/chicken, no alcohol, no coffee - to another level and eliminated all things flour. Ugh. I am almost at the end of Week 1. Surviving, with the occasional cold sweat in the middle of the night while dreaming of honey BBQ chicken or Aioli's pork loin or a glass of wine. The work days are hardest especially with no coffee. But it has not been completely bad. I have been having a lot of good stuff.

Breakfast in the last week was quinoa egg scramble - quinoa with roasted red peppers, tomatoes, spinach, scrambled with eggs, salt and black pepper, and then topped with fresh spinach. Pretty nice.

Very delicious. Pretty awesome breakfast I must say

During the day, lots of wheatgrass, lots of water, lots of green tea.

Really nice...

It's not coffee though

Snack of choice - watermelon. This is a daily thing, even when not detoxing. I love watermelon. Like...seriously. I also snacked on cucumbers.

My Independence Square fruit guy always has my melon wrapped and waiting every morning

Tonight, I was REALLY craving burgers, even though I very rarely eat burgers, but the meat craving was real. Not yielding to temptation, I instead made spicy quinoa and lentil burgers. They are MEGA good!! What's in these? Lentils, seasoned with salt, black pepper, stir fried garlic, onions, celery, parsley, pimento, chilli peppers, tomatoes, quinoa, tomato pesto, one egg, olive oil. No breadcrumbs.

Just before they went into the oven. No breadcrumbs in these.
Used a mould to get them in shape.

After all the Christmas food and drink, I felt so ill, and after one week of this suicide mission detox, I feel a whole lot better. One week down, one more to go!

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Food Police to the Rescue

Lunch for work this week

Last night on the primetime local newscast, they showed a story where the city's health inspectors had closed down some more food establishments in the southern city. They have been out and about with a vengeance, ensuring that eating places have their establishments in tip top shape. Many, sadly, have not.

Anyone who knows me, knows I am more than slightly anal about hygiene and when that is married with food that I have to ingest, well...I am a nuisance.

With that being said, it is why I have an adventurous streak when it comes to cooking because my rule is "If I love it, I better learn how to make it". I stopped buying roti, for example, from all unsundry and through the amateur chef's Bible aka the Naparima Girls' High School cookbook (big up my alma mater for being awesome and global) I have been able to whip up a complete roti/curry meal for myself, friends and family, when I need to. That being said, I do still patronise roti shops, but the list of those shops is very, very short.

So when I saw the news item last night, it reminded me why I am drinking celery and spinach this week. It also perhaps provided extra clarification as to why I felt so ill on Sunday, since I had lunch from one of the nasty offending establishments that was closed down yesterday.  I typically avoid food courts like the plague but when this place in particular opened, I thought maybe they were above board. I guess I was wrong. Seeing some of the photos I was disgusted, and it goes to show that "having a name" when it comes to food, and having a nice modern and professional menu board and well dressed frontline staff does not mean what goes on in the back is up to scratch.

A pot observed in one of the kitchens yesterday.
A pot being used to cook stuff for us to eat!!!
Photo credit: Trevor Watson

I guess eating out is like love - your heart may get broken but you don't give up. You cannot cook all the time, and you cannot cook everything. Some may even repeat the saying we use here, "what doh kill, will fatten, and what doh fatten will purge", or yet another,  "what you don't know, won't hurt you". Well, I may not always know what's going on in the back there, chefs and cooks, but I am glad that the authorities are letting us know and I hope that they remain this vigilant about it. In the meantime, I will still eat out, though with serious discretion - though I wonder if I can get any more picky about it. lol.

And I have a salad and some veggies - last night's veggie/fruit cornocupia...

Apples, carrots, a small lime, celery, spinach, cucumbers.
To the juicer we go - yummy.

I have been doing really well with my detox but it has been hard. I decided to go full hundred yesterday and not have coffee, but that was an epic fail and I think I started seeing smurfs, gnomes and fairies by 9.30am. I immediately went to the office kitchen, where all they had was Maxwell House and Nescafe instant, and I made a cup of watery, creamless, near sugarless coffee. It was not gourmet but it did the job. I also got stuck in traffic heading back to South and had no snack, having eaten my banana in the morning. By the time I got home, I was about to eat the dog if he came near me. I ended up inhaling/destroying a pack of Chee-Zees before being grounded enough to juice the fruits and veggies above, and make a soup.

Just a few more days.

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Death of a Foodie Superstar!!!

Yesterday, I felt sick. Deep down sick. And I listened to my body and it was saying...no...it was SHOUTING...

Chile, you keep putting all sorts of crap in me and I have had enough of it, so take jammin'.

The last straw was probably girls' night on Saturday, where besides girl talk and buckets of laughter, we had sushi, wine and cocktails, and then ended the night with Belgian waffles and ice cream with too much whipped cream and girlish nonsense. It was a great evening, but...

I woke up on Sunday morning feeling like crap, and even though I still whipped up a more sensible brunch that same morning for las chicas, I knew I had hit rock bottom. The good times had to stop rollin'.

Honestly, I have not been taking very good care of myself for a while and the effects are seriously manifesting themselves now, through bad skin, weight gain (duh), lethargy and all those yucky feelings, so I am hanging up my cocktail glass and my knife and fork, and busting out my juicer.

I do a detox 2-3 times a year (remember this post-holiday detox moment), as it brings me back from the brink of destruction and more importantly, reminds me that I am at my best when I eat well, and by well, I don't mean overdoing it, but eating healthily. My mojo is gone and well, it's time to get it back. I made an emergency detour after work to run into Hi-Lo to get all I needed for this juice cleanse, cranked up the old juicer, and added celery, spinach, apples, cucumber and ginger to make a very refreshing and natural nightcap after a long work day. I know these are not the awesome food pics you have come to know and love but it's really quite delicious and all natural. I had a green frothy moustache after downing this number.

This week - lots of water, lots of fresh food, usually no caffeine but let's get serious, now. lol. I need my coffee. I will just have one cup instead of 2. Promise.

Annnnnd lots of sweat purging aka exercise.

I need to better manage and channel what little energy I have left into staying focused at the gym. I have enlisted my girlfriends as support and I have also done the unthinkable but something that is on my bucket list, albeit somewhere at the very bottom - signed up for a road race! Jeebus! Now don't get excited, I will not be running any marathons, as I think it is well known...WELL KNOWN...that I hate running. It's just a couple 5Ks but clearly the goal of getting back into all these clothes I have in my closet is not enough motivation. I think my Hi-Lo girls are tired of the pink t-shirt I have been beating every week, and let's not talk about the daily struggle of trying to decide what to wear and which outfit to recycle to go to work. And yet, that has not pushed me over the cliff towards ending the madness yet. However...public embarrassment, or rather, staving off public embarrassment is a great motivator, and yeah, that sense of accomplishment and all that after school special stuff.

No cocktails this weekend. No nothing. And it's a long holiday weekend too. Cripes! I will be home. With my Kindle and my juicer and my water bottle. Wish me luck!

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Turning Water to Wine...with my Imagination

Yummy green tea.

I started the morning with a huge cup of water and 2 cups of green tea and frequent trips to the bathroom.

And so the detox began.

I have been a really bad girl over the holiday season. Excess is not the word. I guess after last year’s miserable holiday season, I was eager to make up for it. Lol. Make up I did. Between all the visits to friends’ and relatives’ homes and thus ultimately, visits to their buffet tables, and all the cooking done at home, not to mention the drinks, I have, in 3 short weeks, done serious damage to my waistline (my hips, my ass, my everything!!!) and my internal machinery. I can actually feel the toxins dancing in my bloodstream.

So I am flushing them all out with gallons of water and pure green tea and fresh fruit and vegetables, with a total avoidance of alcohol, coffee (the absolute horror!!), chicken, ham and pork (no more pig, pleeeeeease!!), and any other flesh, and dairy products. The detox also called for no wheat but that is taking the thing too far. I cannot eat fruit and veggies and live! I need the occasional sandwich! I had a lovely whole wheat pita with a hard-boiled egg white for breakfast and prepared a pumpkin soup for lunch.

By 8.39am, I was chomping on a stick of gum as if my life depended on it. It did. It was not too bad though. Got some fruit tonight and they said no dairy - they said nothing about no soy - so got my low fat soy milk on BOGO!!! Woot woot! It’s meant to be a 5-day detox and cleansing. Not sure if I can go through the weekend doing this but I just need to look in the mirror for motivation! I have also unpacked my gym shoes and will use exercise as a distraction from the carnage of green tea and carrots!

Or, I can also consider the alternative to keep me on the straight and narrow – the traditional post-holiday trauma Trini mothers inflicted on their children after all the sweets and treats of Christmas. Force feeding them laxatives or disguising them in hot chocolate to “flush” out the junk. Just thinking about that makes me want to brew another cup of tea and chomp on a cucumber stick! Ughhh.

Other than that, life is good. I had a lovely weekend, though I was a bit sick. I made no resolutions as I stopped doing that years ago. Instead I just make plans, which include:

• Travel (duh). Will be limited to my hemisphere this year but there are loads of places I still have not been to.
• Write more. And not just on the blog.
• Pick up a class. I tried the adult French class last year and it was a dismal failure. The tutor, while lovely, talked too much…about her life and her husband and kids…and in English!!! Waste of my Saturday morning. No...maybe a music class (always wanted to learn to play the piano) or a dance class or a cooking class.
• Network more.
• Maybe run part of a 5K. lol. Part...planning to run the entire thing would be disingenuous. 

There are other things but I am tired of typing. What are your plans for 2012?

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