Summer 2009 – Ease-In Day 1 Soup, Salads, No Processed Foods and No Meat

I planned for three types of eating today: snacks to get me by until I could make and eat some soup, followed by a salad in the evening.

My menu for today included

Snacks for Master Cleanse Ease-In

1 whole grain bun
Organic peanut butter
1 avocado
2 tomatoes
blackberries

Lunch

Veggie Soup

This was only the second time I have tried to make a vegetable soup. The first time was on the Ease-out from Fall 2008. It didn’t turn out great. The veggies were soggy, but the broth tasted okay. The base was mainly onion and mushroom.

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Since that time, I have made a few soups with my grandma and my girlfriend, who cooks like a grandma. I think I have the process down, but as they say, practice makes better, and since I haven’t practiced much, I suppose I was asking too much to expect more than a moderate improvement from the last time.

I went shopping on an empty stomach, while coming off a weekend of fast food, so I was craving everything I saw. I probably bought too much, but if there is too much left over, I will just juice it tomorrow.

Vegetable Soup Ingredients for my Master Cleanse

1 large onion
1/2 small red cabbage
4 small beets
3 sticks of celery
4 small red potatoes
2 wedges of garlic
6 large Brussels sprouts

Cumin
All Spice
Garlic powder
Flaked onion

I began by sautéing the onion in a large pot with olive oil. I soon noticed that I didn’t have enough olive oil for my onion – or did I have too much onion for my olive oil? I then realized even quicker that I have no ideas on quantities, but I proceeded anyway – the onion was cooking and the clock was ticking… and besides, I was hungry.

I found more oil, but not until after I’d added some chopped red cabbage to the sautéed onion. I added some cumin and All Spice to the growing base, which was cooking so fast that I had not prepared the next ingredients, so I don’t know, maybe add water now? That decision combined with my first to make two critical mistakes, the first being the overdone onion and cabbage sauté.

So, I had a large soup pot. Too large maybe, but certainly large enough that I decided to add more water than was probably necessary (mistake number two). Now that the water was in, I decided my next ingredient would be the beets. My Grandma always says that to make a borscht, just add beets. While I wasn’t making a borscht, I was adding beets, so perhaps I was still making one by Grandma’s standards.

Having loosely contributed to my girl’s first attempt at borscht recently (by that, I mean I watched and ate), I learned by osmosis that the beets take forever to cook. I would later Google some advice on this, but not until after my potatoes were soggy… oh no, I just gave away the consequence of mistake number 3 – I didn’t cook the beets long enough or early enough, or separate enough, or whatever enough.

At this point, my bed (soup), was made and all I could do was scramble to the finish in an attempt to salvage something soup-like. Grandma also says to throw in whatever is at hand in order to rescue the situation. So I started grabbing more salt (the base was weak from too much water), more spice and onion flakes. Finally, I caved and added a can of pre-made lentil soup. It was organic, at least, containing only pure ingredients, so I was fairly happy with these emergency additives to my fresh soup. They looked like they helped a little.

Well, they did, but only a little. I ate two bowls and my uncle managed one. It’s okay, but certainly not great. I learned some good lessons, and am looking forward to the Ease-Out.

I had planned to make a salad today, but it is late and I am tired. I am going to pass on the salad for now, and juice like a mad-man tomorrow. That soup did me in. Guess I will have another bowl.

Salad

Postponed due to soupiness.