Conscious Cleanse Pix & Tips

On the conscious cleanse we start each day with a quart of lemon water (we add a drop of stevia) and write for 15 minutes. After walking the Ruckus Pack (Mishkami, Bean, Sophie & Pearl) breakfast is a green smoothie. Each night before bed I cut everything up, so in the morning hunger we can just add 2c water and press blend. I’ve fallen in love with the way the coarsely chopped plant manifestations look in the glass blender together.

The idea is to start with ¾ fruit and ¼ vegetable (i.e. Blueberries, bananas, pineapple and lettuce) and slowly invert that until the smoothie is mostly greens & other veggies (i.e. Kale, spinach, cuke and lemon or mango). And we usually throw a couple tablespoons of a ‘superfood’ like ground flax, chia or hemp seeds and a bit of coconut or flax oil.

Lunch is usually a big salad, or leftovers from the night before. Dinner has become a playground of vegan, gluten, and soy free wonders. Day 1 dinner was quinoa tabouli and wilted mustard greens tossed with portobello mushroom gravy.

Part of the cleanse is the food combining principle not to have grains & proteins in the same meal (except lentils) and to really emphasize vegetables. So on Day 2 we went all out with three veggie dishes with little proteins: raw mustard & salad greens with mung bean sprouts, toasted almonds and vegan caesar salad (which includes cashews & dates); sesame sautéed kale, chard and dandelion greens; and citrus infused steamed broccoli.

Day 3 was leftovers and Day 4 we switched back to grains with veggie fried rice drizzled with ume plum vinegar and lemon jus on a bed of red leaf lettuce and raw kale massaged with olive oil.

I want to share my quick version of the Vegetable Medley (or as Frankie likes to slur it ‘Vegetable Melody’) recipe. It’s one of our new favourite dishes. It’s a veggie ‘stir-fry’, except it’s actually steamed and you only put oil on at the end.

Vegetable Medley

First you chop up a bunch of veggies, aiming for a rainbow of colour choices. As you chop, separate into 3 bowls, based on degree of hardness. After my meltdown, (see post Tears and Green Poop) Frankie offered to help out more with cooking during the cleanse and actually did all the chopping you see here!

Into a inch or two of boiling water the first bowl goes, with ginger, garlic, onion and anything harder (broccoli stems, carrots).

Steam for about 5 minutes. (Our lid system looks tricky, don’t worry it’s just because we don’t have a lid large enough to fit this pan.) Next goes the second bowl for another 5ish minutes with things like tougher kale leaves, celery, mushrooms, chard stems, etc…

When everything seems about ready (still vibrantly coloured yet pierce-able without too much force) you add things that just need a 1-2 minute wilt, like chard leaves and baby spinach. Add, stir and turn off the heat.

When it’s done the idea is to drizzle each bowl with just 1-2T of oil (we like to blend sesame & olive) and a pinch of sea salt or dash of Ume Plum vinegar.  Then you feast on the flavours of the veggies themselves.

We did this recipe on a transition day and found it a little dull. When we made it again on Day 6 we were shocked by the bursting flavours of each morsel, and to realize how desensitized our tongues had been before!

Vegetables melodies,

~Sab

On Frankie’s farm, somewhere north of Siler City, NC