Wind And Waves

So it is officially Spring and that means a time of change,cleaning, flowering open, getting ready for Summer….which is a whole different lifestyle.  No more hunkering over good books and hot cocoa and hot crock pot meals, break out the bikini, the flip flops the hat and get ready for sun and adventure and baseball and flowers and flowing water and green trees.  So to bring in the Spring season, Eli and I decided to do a three week cleanse.  Wow. Let me just say, three weeks has never gone by so slow! And….I’m not sure if I could have done it without Eli.

For the cleanse we had liquid breakfast (see blueberry,almond milk chocolate smoothie, surprisingly delicious) very healthy lunch and then liquid dinner, which at first were zuccini and butternut soups brought to work in our water bottles, until we were too grossed out to include dinner in our repitoire.  So the mornings consisted of a trip to the sunny whole Foods in our neighborhood.  While the world around us woke to baked muffins with blueberries and rich espresso drinks (at least this is what I imagined)  Eli and I were foraging the store for vegetables and asking lots of questions “what is a jicama?” “Whats the difference between shallots and green onions”, “Where do we find brown rice sweetner?”  “Where can we find a gluten free Tamari sauce?”  “Do you have coconut oil?” “Why is it solid? “……..ect. We leaped into the world of food and learned all about it.  And I must say, I am very glad I have NO special dietary needs (like, no dairy, or gluten) its practically a full time job.

So every day we could be found in our cute little kitchen, chopping and dicing and grating and soaking and grilling and steaming and frying all sorts of veggies and trying hard to stay out of each other’s way……did I mention that, not enough food in my system makes me irritable?!)  However! I think we both agree it was well worth all the effort.  Now three weeks later we feel healthier, are skinnier and Know how to cook!  I, who LOVE to have  my cup of coffee in the morning, have gotten out of that habit (we’ll see how long that lasts) and seem to be preferring a smoothie, especially after my yoga classes, which I have been thoroughly enjoying lately.

The night before our Cleanse ending, I felt like how I used to feel as a kid on Christmas Eve.  I was So excited.  I couldn’t get to sleep, I ended up doing creative projects up in the loft till midnight.   I couldn’t stop thinking about the yummy breakfast we were going to have in the morning (at a Good home Southern Cooking restaurant called Luciles) Big fluffy bisquit with melting butter, eggs, cheese, seasoned potatoes, coffee! Strawberry smoothie with orange juice and bananas (these were all things we werent’ allowed to eat) I was also visualizing the Chocolate cake I was going to make and eat, who’s recipee I found on the back of our cocoa container.

So, this cleanse is called CLEAN from a book I happened to pick up at Barnes and Noble.  I read it and surprised myself by mostly agreeing with it (I’m a little leary of the fad diets that come and go) The author suggested we take a before shot and after shot of ourselves, so we can see how much we’ve changed.  Well, we didn’t ever get around to the before shot but here is our after shot, just before we walked into Luciles to have our indulgent breakfasts.  Do we look 20 years younger or what??!  I will say, the whites of my eyes got whiter!