Sante...: The Cheese Lover's 30-day Cleanse

It's day five of my 30 day cleanse and food elimination process. I thought I would be starved without cheese, but instead I have found a whole new world of food. Food, I had dismissed as too "granola" or too "healthy". I start my morning with the required pills of the Total Body Cleanse, you take five in the morning and five in the evening, not horse pills, but close. I am not a pill popping person, so this takes a level of commitment that I don't take lightly and the required 8 oz of water helps keep me full or bloated, it's all the same, isn't it?

Available at Whole Foods

Then I wait awhile and make my morning smoothie...

I change it up, but basically, it's a handful of frozen berries (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries), a few frozen mangoes, one banana all tossed into a blender with a little juice. When everything is blended smooth, thus the name, "smoothie", I fill two glasses, one for me and one for hubby (he's not doing the cleanse, but he likes smoothies). I add one TB of flax oil to supplement my lack of omega 3 in my diet at this time. It's sweet and filling, and you can't even taste the flax oil.

My Rise and Shine Smoothie

I have been on vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free blogs and have scoured cook books and I am so excited to see so much out there. When I am at the market, which is daily, I see food items that I've never noticed or more honestly, never paid attention to. But sadly still, there's too much junk food out there, too many baked goods with refined flour and sugars... I've noticed that as I linger a little longer than I should.

Funny thing, I was walking near the deli at New Season's (Mt Park location), and it's really close to the cheese and wine section, and out of habit I grabbed a sample cheese nub, which I threw in the waste bin. But it was that automatic. I guess that's the point of this cleanse, to break this habitual tasting of cheeses (and wines) where ever I go, and it's wasn't even great cheese (did I just say that?).

Good Food Salad (an adaptation of Dorrie Greenspan's quinoa, fruit and nut salad)
You will need:
cooked and cooled quinoa (3/4 cup of grain to 1 1/2 cups of water),
1 1/2 cups dried fruits (any fruit works, I had dried cranberries, blueberries, and mangoes),
1 cup nuts (again anything you have will do, I had pine nuts, hazelnuts, pistachios, pepitas, pecans
1/4 cup herbs (cilantro, mint, flat leaf parsley, basil)
Put all the ingredients in a bowl and toss with dressing of: 3 TB of olive oil, juice of 1 lemon, 1/2 tsp of ground ginger, and I also used fresh ginger, 1 TB of neutral oil (I used walnut oil - can use grape seed oil), I also added some honey to cut the tart from the lemon. Pour 1/2 of the dressing and toss ingredients and add more as you like.