The Weekend Homemaker

I found my dairy-wheat-sugar-egg free cleanse extremely helpful in getting my diet re-calibrated. Even though I feel like I eat pretty healthily in general, completing the cleanse helped me to realize several things:

* I eat way too much sugar (as an additive in other products)

* My grain to vegetable ratios are way off

* I wasn't eating 5-10 vegetables a day even though I thought I was

Most significantly, however, the cleanse showed me that it is not realistic for me to eat a diary-wheat-sugar-egg free diet all the time. Eliminating these foods from my diet, in combination with my desire to eat real food and eat locally, made food planning and preparation extremely time consuming.

In other words, I am very happy to be back in my weekend cooking mode!

My food box arrived last Thursday and I spent the weekend cooking; preparing enough meals to last me for the next two weeks (although I will probably need a few additions to avoid maltime boredom)!

My very wintery looking food box.

My box contained pears, apples, oranges, romaine lettuce, collard greens, onions, carrots, potatoes, garlic and a lemon.

I started off my weekend with a lovely salad of lettuce, dried figs, pine nuts and a homemade honey balsamic dressing. This salad is even better with spinach and some chopped mint, but you've gotta work with what you've got! I ate this along side some sunflower bread spread with local goat chevre.

On Saturday, I made chicken noodle soup from scratch. I had made some homemade chicken stock from a roast chicken the previous week and decided to go whole hog (or whole chicken, as the case may be) and make my own noodles as well.

Mmmm. Cooking from scratch is SO worth the effort. I am usually not a fan of chunky soups, but this soup is delicious and definitely the best chicken noodle soup I have ever eaten! And, in total, I will get 14 meals out of my $24 local chicken. At $1.71 per meal, eating local, pasture-raised chickens doesn't seem so extravagant!

I had never seen or eaten collard greens before they arrived in my food box this past week. I wasn't sure how I would like them and thought they might end up on my "never send" list, but after I boiled and sautéed them, they were actually pretty good.

I ate these greens along with Red Lentil Dahl and rice, which I did not take a picture of. Dahl is tasty, but not particularly photogenic.

Lastly, I made Baked Pear-Apple Sauce. I will use this throughout the week in my morning muesli, a favourite discovery from my cleanse!

I still have the carrots, parsnips, potatoes and garlic to deal with and I am looking forward to roasting them up this coming weekend, perhaps along with another roast chicken!