The best salad ever

"An explosion of yumminess"

As I mentioned in my first posting, the name juice fast is sort of misleading.  I drink 3-4 juices a day; each one a little different and I eat a salad for dinner.  The salad has pumpkin seeds and hemp seeds the first couple of days and then on subsequent days also some sort of protein.  Well yesterday, after about 8 hours of just drinking my juice, I prepared and relished my first salad.  I had been looking forward to the salad, but not in any sort of desperation.  It was after all only the first day of the juicing extravaganza; even I can handle a few hours of something.  Nonetheless, I was looking forward to, if nothing else, the ritual of eating.  Since you sip on the juices all day, you don’t really sit down for a meal.

I enjoyed cutting up the vegetables and making the salad pretty.  Jeremy made food for himself and Johannes and this gave me time to really savor putting my little reward salad together. I think even just the few hours of not eating solid food made me remember how much fun it is supposed to be to put a meal together.  Meals stress me out.  Trying to feed myself and feed my family in between the craziness that is mamascholarhood has made food preparation feel overwhelming.  I know this has also contributed to making my already bad relationship with food worse.  It may be an added benefit of this whole adventure that I am able to find a little more balance in how I view food preparation.

In keeping with the green theme, my salad was essentially green.  But it was so far from bland.  Parsley, romaine lettuce, green apple, cucumber, zucchini and just a hint of color with a few slices of red pepper that had to be eaten.  Pumpkin seeds, lemon juice, flax oil and Himalayan sea salt finished it off.  It was a tiny explosion of yumminess in my mouth. I can literally still feel the food’s taste in my mouth. I cannot remember the last time I could really recollect the food I consumed 12 hours previously. It may be a bit hyperbolic,  but I swear my taste buds were appreciating flavor and texture in a new way.  I could single out particular flavors, the sour of the lemon, the nuttiness of the pumpkin seeds, the sharp bite of the garlic, followed by fresh parsley and a sweet tart bite of green apple.  Even the flax seed oil, a little earthy and buttery, had its place.

So here I am writing about my juicing fast and I have just spent 3 paragraphs carefully describing the only non-juice I am eating.  But I am pretty sure that this salad made such an impression because of the juicing. I am looking forward to my salad tonight even more than yesterday. Until then another sip of juice…. a new one to try, Swiss Chard-Maca.  Now that promises a flavor explosion too!