06.21.011; clean food challenge, day one.

today was the first day of the clean food challenge. and i must say, it was a smashing success.

last night i made fruit salad for breakfast, consisting of blueberries, raspberries, mango, peach, plum and kiwi. i measured out a serving (about a cup, cup and a half) added oats (quarter cup) and sliced almonds (a sprinkling) and let the flavors meld overnight in a separate container. and oh boy.



it was delicious.

i had also left a tumbler of coffee grounds cold brewing in the fridge overnight, which i pressed the grounds out of in my french press this morning.



(forgive the blurriness, pre-caffeine photography is not my strong suit.)

i added a teaspoon of sugar in the raw and topped off the tumbler with chilled coconut milk, which i opened from the wrong end.



last year, i was attempting to make vegan whipped cream for a recipe (i am going to assume it was for some pie), and the recipe called for chilled coconut milk. i left a can chilling overnight, and it hardly thickened at all. it must've been the brand i used because this stuff is so thick and creamy and good. oh boy.



it was one of the most delicious breakfasts i have ever had.

now, when i did my sad attempt at the c.f.c. in december, i had a really hard time getting a gallon of water into my system. i am determined to not have that be the case this time. i even went so far as to make a water consumption schedule.



i don't know what it was about today, maybe that it was warm, maybe that i was trying to be more conscious of the amount of water i was drinking. maybe it's that this time, i am actually carrying around a full gallon of water that i am topping of my water bottle with at various points throughout the day. as of 12:30, this was what i had left of the gallon.



(that's a 32 ounce water bottle on the right.)

i finished the full gallon by 5 pm. i've gone through another 32 ounces and am slowing down for the evening. i am trying to taper my water drinking in the evening because i really hate getting up in the middle of the night to pee.

and oh my god, have i been peeing. it was almost every fifteen minutes while i was at work. i can make it about half an hour or so now. i'm so glad i don't work in broadcast news anymore. i would've had serious issues today.

lunch consisted of spinach and onion and shaved carrot salad with balsamic vinegar. HEY ANYONE. i need a recipe for a balsamic vinegar dressing, because as it turns out, balsamic vinegar on its own is too strong.



i also had a plum and a fist full of roasted, unsalted peanuts, but i don't have photos of those items because i imagine everyone knows what a plum and peanuts look like.

after work, i went to the nearest hannaford to get a few things that my local hannaford did not have in stock (most notably, tempeh and cheap cucumbers), things that i didn't realize i needed but didn't have (frozen corn, paper bags, coffee), and things that i wanted to get but didn't get yesterday because i had a lot of food (watermelon, celery).

dinner consisted of baked tempeh, which is the fall back meal for any night when i want something substantial, but do not want to cook. basically, take one package of any variety of tempeh (i love lifelight's vegetable tempeh, but they stopped carrying it at my local hannaford, so i have to get it at other hannaford branches), and cut it into cubes. and then it's just a matter of adding vegetables that you like; tonight's medley consisted of cubes of potato, sweet potato, carrots and onions. i've also used broccoli, peppers, and jalepenos in the past. sprinkled with olive oil, whatever spices you enjoy (pepper and dill and paprika tonight), and mix together with your hands until everything is well coated. bake at 425 for about 25-35 minutes, depending how largely you cut your tempeh and vegetables, and how well done you like it. best when served on a plate you made when you were five.



so good. the leftovers will last me at least three or four more meals.

tonight i finished up making the salsa i started to make last night. the salsa is sort of an odd experiment because i really really really really really do not like fresh tomatoes. they smell weird and they are slimy and seedy and i just think they are disgusting. yesterday, i bought fresh tomatoes for the first time ever in my entire life. i seeded the three medium sized tomatoes and diced them, along with a can of organic roasted tomatoes, half an onion and a jalepeno, added a splash of white and apple cider vinegar and cumin to it, and left it in the fridge overnight. i let a cup of black beans soak overnight and cooked them this evening (with a little liquid smoke), and added an entire package of frozen corn in addition to the beans, and a little sea salt and a bit more cumin and oh my gosh. it is really good. i'm very excited about it. it will be part of (if not all of) lunch tomorrow.

i will probably make a brown paper bag of popcorn in a little while (i have never taped a brown paper bag of popcorn shut. that seems wasteful. it will stay shut if you fold down the top correctly). i haven't been hungry at all today. i'm sure all the water is playing a huge part in that. i feel really good tonight. maybe i will never have pasta or bread ever again! (this is very unlikely.)

oh, i am keeping certain processed foods in the mix, but not many. the first is sugar in the raw, but only a teaspoon at breakfast in the coffee. nooch (nutritional yeast) is staying in because it is the best popcorn topping in the world (add alongside dill and garlic powder and a little salt, and you've got a cheap ripoff of little lad's herbal corn [the nooch and spices stick better if you use a little oil, but i don't really mind eating all sorts of leftover spiced nooch out of the bottom of the bag]), and i'm also thinking it might be really good on quinoa (which i am going to be making for the first time ever tomorrow), and it's also a great parmesan stand in for emilie's crispy kale recipe (which i am planning on making at least twice; once using kale and a second time trying it with spinach, maybe as part of dinner for tomorrow night). the last is liquid smoke, because that stuff is amazing.

so yeah! i'm feeling really good physically and i'm looking forward to the rest of the week (i've got a thing i'm working on which, if it comes out well, i will probably post about tomorrow). i hope my fellow c.f.c-ers have had equally successful first days!

in other news, my music tapes kazoo arrived yesterday!



kazoos are still available through merge, as is the digital download. i implore everyone who is currently reading this because you are trying to find a free download of the ep to please just spend the $4-$6 to actually purchase it and to support these wonderful, kind, sweet people who put so much time and effort into making these wonderful songs for us to enjoy, these songs that enrich our everyday lives when things are well and provide safe audible worlds for us to escape to and reside in when those everyday lives become incredibly difficult and we need other places to be that are not necessarily places that exist in the physical realm.