My husband and I decided to challenge ourselves in a way that we didn't know was possible. We decided to start an Alkaline Diet. Now, before you say, "What is an Alkaline diet?" I'll tell you. We're loosely, and I stress loosely following a book by Annie Guillet. It gives a basic outline of the premise of the alkaline theory. I was introduced to the idea and book by my very good friend Autumn. She and her fiance have been followint it for several months, made a few modifications, and are really enjoying the food. So, in the spirit of doing this thing full tilt, we cleaned out our fridge, both freezers, all the cabinets, our cars, our offices, etc. of all food that is not expressly listed in Annie's book. It took us 2 garbage days to get rid of everything. When we were done, we had baking soda, lemon and lime juice in the fridge. And even less in the cabinets. Talk about a rude awakening. Not only were we vastly overstocked, but we were stocked full of 'unhealthy' foods. The basics of the diet are no dairy (including cheese, yogurt, milk, icecream), minimal soy (only tofu and only once or twice a week), no pork, no beef, no turkey, no chicken, no eggs, lots of leafy greens, beans, almonds or brazil nuts, lots of vegetables and everything EVERYTHING must be fresh.
We've made a couple of adjustments to help this work for us. We added chicken breasts and eggs to our menu. Tony has a lapband and as part of that, he must have 24+ grams of protein at each meal, doctor's orders. We do pretty well most of the time without it, but there are times when it's necessary. We also drink pre-made juice and pasta sauce. It's just SO much easier to buy it. Of course we're very observant of what the labels say and if there is one ingredient we can't have, we don't buy it.
I naiively thought that all of the recipes would be tasty. When I went to the grocery store, I piled strange vegetables into my cart, feeling excited and looking forward to starting something new.
Little did I know, not all of the recipes were as I had anticipated. For my first breakfast I had grapefruit, spinach and radiccio salad with olives. It was AWFUL. I struggled through it. And I didn't throw up. Which took a lot of will power.
Then I tried to cook fennel. Uh, not so much. It tastes a little like licorice. Ew. Then I tried making 'muffins' with no flour. The basic ingredient in the batter was white beans. That should have tipped me off. But I plowed ahead hoping that I was wrong. I wasn't. They were awful too. At least I could pick out a few of the blueberries from the nastiness. But, that was all they were good for. Another jumbo sized FAIL was the white bean dip. It didn't matter what I did to it. It was still bad. Blech.
Some of the recipes, about 5 of them out of the whole book became something I could handle. I've added several ingredients to them all to make them more zesty and flavorful. We love garlic in our house. So I doubled it almost every recipe :)
We drink a lot of water every day. I drink almost 4 of my 32 oz. nalgene bottles full of alkaline water (filtered or reverse osmosis water with lemon).
We drink juice every morning before we eat breakfast. I eat vegetables for breakfast. Usually green beans that have a sweet curry sauce with them... YUUUUM!
We eat at specific times, except on the weekends.
And we're feeling really good.
I've started cooking fish more and have come to appreciate it a lot. I cooked my very first tuna steaks a week ago. They were REALLY good. All this time I thought tuna was NAAASty.
I also like making up my own recipes. I'm trying to write them down. I'm contemplating putting everything I've learned in a book. But, that's a LOT of work. I figured I'd write in my blog and see how that goes first:) It worked for Julie from Julie and Julia! So, you're my guinea pigs.
If you would like me to share some recipes, I'm happy to, please post it in my comments:)
Peace out!
Sunday, January 24, 2010
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