After the Clean Program

Our "we're done with the Clean Program" celebration continues! Breakfast: fresh squeezed organic orange juice with the oranges we bought at the farmer's market yesterday, coffee we brought back from Honduras last year, organic half and half and organic sugar, bacon we purchased from Cognito Farms (a local farm that we visited last weekend), french toast made with organic eggs, organic maple syrup, and toast with the raw nut butter we made yesterday. A bit carb heavy, but super delicious and something we'd been craving all month! While we ate our gourmet breakfast (Ryan's awesome at breakfast) we discussed how expensive our meal would be at a restaurant, which further confirmed our resolve to stop eating out so much. We even made our budget more specific so that the majority of our food budget goes to the grocery store and a tiny amount goes to eating out. Hopefully this will make us more responsible!

Dinner last night was....awesome. Not really because of the food so much but because our options were now limitless! We were both giddy with the freedom of choosing WHATEVER we wanted to eat off of the menu at 'town. We started with a favorite, black truffle oil tater tots. These are not your average tater tots! They're closer to a freshly-shredded-potato-shaped-into-a-delicious-square-with-some-sort-of-seasoning-and-on-top-of-a-delicious-cheesy-cream-sauce....so good!

I had the exotic mushroom risotto and Ryan had the shrimp and grits (They were both half plates and we still were way too full). I got some coffee and Ryan had his first beer in over a month! (He stopped before the Clean Program) We finished off the experience with freshly made sugar donuts with a milk chocolate fondue to dip them in. All in all, a delightful dinner. But, as we discussed later, it wasn't THAT great. While we were on the Clean Program, all we could focus on at times was what we were missing...now that we can have whatever we want, we have decided that we are going to try to stick with what we have been eating, and if we want to add on to it, we can. "WHAT?!" (You may be thinking this) "Who would want to eat like this?!"....well, we do. It will be nice to know that if we really want pizza or popcorn or a little Almond Joy, we can have it but we don't want to go back to the way we were eating. We had our celebration brunch today and we're having celebration deep dish tonight, but then it's back to healthy eating!

Changes we will keep:

-More veggies and fruit
-Less refined sugar
-Liquid breakfast and dinner, but we can eat other stuff in addition to this if we want to
-Yummy, healthy homemade lunches...this was my favorite part: not having to worry about what to take for lunch. I get sick of sandwiches, frozen Kashi entrees and other bring-lunch-from-home foods. When we have good leftovers from a homemade diner, that's a good lunch day, so why not keep that up?
-Less coffee
-Less pre-made food and beverages
-Less food that isn't food! For instance, the Bailey's Hazelnut Creamer I bought before this: I knew it wouldn't go bad in three weeks and I could have it after the Clean Program....1.Not going bad in 3 weeks should be a sign that it has a TON of chemicals in it to keep it from going bad....maybe not the best thing to put in my body? 2. It really doesn't taste as good as I remember


Side note: I made my own raw nut cheese today with sunflower, almond, cashew, miso and garlic! Yay me! It's pretty good but not as good as the stuff we bought....oh well, it will be good on crackers! This is how I did it: 2 parts raw nuts, 1 part water, miso to taste. The more miso you add, the more "cheesy" and salty it will taste. You put this all in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. (It took me about 5-10 minutes) I added garlic to mine for flavor and because raw garlic is super good for you :)