Good Food Hunting

As I mentioned last week, I’m doing this detox diet program as recommended by my doctor. The first, I eliminated caffeine, artificial sweeteners and flavorings, gluten containing starches and a few other things.

That was working fabulous until Friday night. Friday, I arrived in Chesaning, MI for a weekend scrapbooking retreat with my friend Amy. Essentially, it was a weekend of scrapbooking (aka cropping) and eating. The place is like a bed & breakfast except they provide all your meals and snacks. And its not crappy food.

I missed the pre-dinner appetizers which was okay since they were mini veggie-sandwiches and didn’t look that great to me. Dinner was wonderful and pretty much within my restrictions: chicken Marsala with a rice pilaf plus a side salad with homemade vinaigrette and avocado slices. The pilaf had cheese in it but I didn’t eat much of it anyway since I concentrated on the salad first.

Then came dessert: a homemade, gigantic cream-puff filled with ice cream and topped with whipped cream and Saunders Hot Fudge Sauce. I didn’t much care for the cream puff but once she put the bowl in front of me, I had to have some Saunders! Later on, they served a late-night snack of pizza and peanut butter fritos. I passed on both of those but I did have some diet coke. If you are going to stay up until 1:30 AM croppin’, caffeine is in a must.

Saturday, oh boy.

<ul><li> Breakfast: belgian waffles with fresh fruit (3 kinds of berries and bananas) and homemade whipped cream, yogurt and turkey sausage links.

<li>Lunch: Italian grilled cheese with tomato and fresh basil, sweet-potato chips and tangy (not creamy) coleslaw). Dessert (at lunch!) was sherbet with Lime Shortbread cookies (homemade!).

<li>Dinner: For most, a beef roulade but for me: Grilled salmon with dill sauce, carrots and green beans plus red skin potatoes. More salad with raspberry tarragon vinagrette (homemade, again). Dessert was a banana cake that I did try but didn’t <i>love</i>

Snacks were veggies and dip in the afternoon and S’mores plus strawberries plus phyllo cups filled with goat cheese, walnuts and dried cranberries for midnight snack.

Sunday breakfast for most was a Scotch Egg. If I liked hardboiled eggs, I might have eaten this thing- its a hard-boiled egg encased in sausage and cooked somehow. But I don’t so they made Amy (a vegetarian) and me plus a few others who requested it, pumpkin pancakes.

I stayed up until 3:30 on Saturday night working so of course, more diet coke too.

I really did try to limit my intake of the “forbidden” foods. For example, I just ate one of the 3 pancakes I was served. But all in all, I was way off the plan so I am taking a few extra days in Phase I and will move on to Phase II on Wednesday (when I go all vegetarian and only eat rice as a starch). And re-withdrawal from the caffeine.

Funny thing I noticed though- that one can I had after dinner on Friday night made a huge impact. Just in 2 days without the stuff, I can feel what it does when I do have it.

Of all the foods they offered, I really liked the pancakes and the coleslaw plus the homemade dressings. I got the pancake recipe (buy pancake mix that you just add water to, mix it up and add 1 can of pumpkin puree- voila!) and I’m going to try to get the coleslaw recipe. The rest of the stuff, even if I loved it, I’m probably better off not knowing how to make it.