Abundance Diet, Day 24

It's the 24th day into my 28-day Abundance Diet, a low-oil, sugar-free, gluten-free meal plan from Somer McCowan's cookbook of the same name. So close! Yet with with a freezer full of chocolate doughnuts waiting for me, the end seems so far away.

Still yet, today was a delicious day that ended with a healthy restaurant meal and a glass of wine. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Today started as usual with a run (five miles this morning) and a green smoothie — the Orange Julius from The Abundance Diet. Oranges, banana, cashew milk, kale, spinach, flax, and a scoop of natural Vega One protein. I thought I might grow weary of smoothies by the end of the diet, but I'm more in love with smoothies than ever. God, I love smoothies.

My lunch today was HUGE. First, I had this Nicoise Salad with Smoky Tofu and Creamy Miso Dressing. Nicoise salads are such fun. I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to stir or mix my food. Like if there's oil atop my hummus, I don't stir it in. Or when I'm eating oats with nut butter, I like to leave the nut butter in a little pat on top and take tiny bites of it with each bite of oats. So eating these salad ingredients separately and dipping them into the dressing with each bite is perfect. Also, Somer's tofu marinade for this recipe is ridiculous. It's smoky (from Liquid Smoke) and savory (from shoyu) and garlicky with a hint of sesame oil.

So I ate all of that salad. I started it around 11:30 and slowly munched on it at my desk for about an hour. I like to drag my meals out as long as possible so I'm basically always eating. As you can probably imagine from the size of that thing, I wasn't really hungry for my second lunch. But I ate it anyway because it was there, and I like eating. I had this Lightened-Up African Peanut Stew around 2 p.m. This was also very, very hearty. So I was pretty stuffed all day. By the way, this sweet potato-tomato-peanut stew was supposed to be made very low-fat by using PB2 powdered, defatted peanut butter. And I usually keep a jar in my pantry because it's great for smoothies, but I was out. So I used regular ole crunchy peanut butter. 

My snack was supposed to be Gluten-Free Cheesy Crackers, but since I'd eaten so much lunch, I wasn't really hungry for my snack in the afternoon. I'd packed 20 noochy crackers, but I ended up only eating about half of them. And I ate them because they were there, not because I was hungry. These were good, but it was my second time making them, and the last batch turned out better. I didn't roll my dough thinly enough, so these weren't as crispy.

According to Somer's meal plan, I was supposed to have the Homestyle Mexican Casserole tonight, but that was a repeat meal from week one. It was delicious, and I would have made it again. But I went ahead and scheduled our monthly Vegan Drinks meet-up for tonight, so I could try the whole eating-out-on-the-cleanse thing. We met at LYFE Kitchen, so it was pretty easy to stay within the cleanse guidelines. Their gluten-free and vegan menu items are clearly marked, and they don't fry anything or use white sugar.

I went with the Quinoa Crunch Bowl, which is totally something Somer would approve of — red quinoa, edamame hummus, cherry tomatoes, arugala (which I typically hate but actually like in this dish), radishes, avocado, steamed broccoli, and hot sauce. The hot sauce really takes the dish to new level. 

I am allowing occasional glass of red wine on my diet, so I ordered a glass of the happy hour pinot. It was my second glass of wine all month! And it really hit the spot.

Tomorrow is mostly leftovers, but I do have a fun dessert planned. I'll be making the Friday night dessert on Thursday. So I'll take pics and check in tomorrow.