quinoa porridge and other detox discoveries

Well, we made it through our three-week detox (just!). It is one of the toughest things I've had to do. Not because of the food we were eating, but the extreme amount of effort involved. During the detox we had to avoid dairy, wheat, gluten, processed, packaged, and canned foods. Everything had to be made from scratch. The amount of pots, pans and plates we had to wash every day was ridiculous! It was truly exhausting.

What I enjoyed, though, was discovering some new tasty meals. My husband made a heap of Zucchini Fritters for us to heat up at breakfast time. They are really simple to make and so tasty. Mix two eggs with one grated zucchini and fry in olive oil. We also added grated carrot and some sliced mushrooms, served with a bit of sea salt and ground pepper.

I loved the fritters, but didn't really want to have them every morning for three weeks. So, we cooked up some Quinoa Porridge. Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) is a seed that is very high in protein and is quite versatile. Boil it for 10-15 minutes, then you can make a risotto-style meal with it, or substitute for rice with a stir fry, or sweeten it up to make porridge. We blended up some berries (which gave it a spectacular colour!) and mixed it through, sprinkled some crushed nuts and sunflower seeds on top, then served with soy milk. It also tasted great with an apple puree that my husband made by boiling up some green apples. It certainly hit the spot as a 'breakfast cereal' substitute.

Another highlight was San Choy Bow. We've never made it from scratch before, but were able to make it easily with this recipe from the Metagenics website as our starting point.
Since we couldn't actually use mince during the detox, we cooked up some chicken breast cut up into small pieces in the fry pan, then used our Turbo Chef to 'mince' it. I was surprised how well it worked - I've never used it for meat before. We had no water chestnuts, but added finely chopped mushrooms, carrots, onion and whatever else we had (again, using the Turbo Chef to save time - best invention ever!). I couldn't believe that using only fresh ginger and gluten free soy sauce would give such a delicious flavour.

As well as introducing new meals to our repertoir, this detox certainly made us more aware of what goes into the food that we buy and has lead us to make better day to day decisions in that regard. But, more about that later, I reckon.

algae in a glass - detox time!

I mentioned that I was feeling bloated in a status update on Facebook several weeks ago. I was surprised when my whinge about rice crackers generated a huge response from different friends who have had similar issues. It's more common than I thought and there are so many different causes for bloating and other symptoms. I was convinced to go and get some proper advice in order to get to the bottom of my health issues.

So, I booked myself in to see a local Naturopath. In my initial consult, Susan asked me about everything. Every aspect of my life. Diet, work, hobbies, nearby electrical equipment. (At least she'll never be accused of not being thorough.) She then sent me off for a stack of blood tests. These tests revealed vitamin deficiencies, the main ones being protein and iron, and a couple of other unusual things. Also, my digestive system is all out of whack; "not enough of the good guys", I was told. This explains so many things!

That is how I ended up here. Deviating from my mission to organise the house and, instead, doing a 'command-delete' on my insides: detox!

Yep, I'm now one of those "weirdos" on a restricted diet. I never in a million years thought that person could be me. And my lovely husband is coming along for the ride. What a good guy.

The aim of this special diet is to remove toxin exposure, remove bad bacteria from the digestive system, renew and improve digestive function and release existing toxins. Mostly, it's avoiding gluten and dairy, as well as processed and packaged foods for three weeks. (This is called an 'express' detox). There are actually a lot of things on the "allowable foods" list, so the food has been quite good. It's just breakfast that has been the major challenge. But, more about the food another time.

We have just completed day 3 of our 21 day detox. And if it was just the change of diet that we had to deal with we would be cheering. But, and I believe this to be a fairly big BUT, we have been given some powdered supplements to "assist" with our detox. Morning and night we have to drink this stuff. The first, Thermo Phase Detox, is "vanilla flavoured" which I think is a very generous description. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the texture. It's quite gritty and hard to swallow.

You should have seen us both. Standing over the sink, gagging, trying to get the stuff down. Urrggh.

Now, for the even bigger B-U-T: this "vanilla flavoured" powder is actually really enjoyable compared to powder number two. G-Tox Express curiously hasn't been labelled with a flavour. We soon found out why. Have you ever drunk a glass of pond water? No? Me either. But, if I ever did, I imagine this is what it would taste like. (And feel like, for that matter). Even my eldest son said "Yeah, it looks like algae. Like the algae in the Octonauts Algae Cleanup!" Awesome.

Check it out:

It's the most torturous thing I can ever remember doing to myself. And probably the thing that will make my husband hate me.

I just keep remembering that in a couple of weeks we'll be feeling awesome!

(And keep not remembering that we have 18 more days to go.)