A new tradition is born

It is intermission of the Canucks vs Flames game and we have just finished our inevitable and wonderful leftovers.

I’m not sure yet if the title of today’s post refers to this cleanse (we’ll see how the three days of nothing but veggies go,) but definitely to an annual turkey dinner in January. Just because. Despite and/or because of our food limitations, dinner was a success. We had awesome company in our friends Matt, Dori, Claire (the catalyst of this food thing and fellow cleanse participant), John, my Aussie friend from work and a later addition of Claire’s buddy, Brent – another Aussie. (They are everywhere and such good fun!) Our neighbours must hate when we have people over because I swear, it’s nothing but very (loud) animated conversation and a lot of laughter.

Everyone arrived a bit after the indicated 7pm time, which was lovely because being stuck on a stand still train put me behind at least half an hour. As I had to work during the day, Sean got the turkey in and cleaned the house. And then he had to wait for me to get home with the groceries needed to make the last half of the meal. You should have seen me zip through Whole Foods with my list and cart – Whirlwind Yasmine was in fine form. A taxi ride got me home with about 45 minutes to spare. Phew!

A Cleanse Friendly Turkey Dinner – Served Family Style

Spicy Baked Chick Peas – As previously blogged, so delicious and as my recipe source of Sarah Robinson from “5 Ingredient Fix” promised, a crowd pleaser. Who knew?

Turkey – Thank goodness we can eat white meat in Week 1! Sean cooked the bird beautifully and, as we later found out, upside down. 😉

Gravy – Juice from the turkey, whole grain spelt flour, sugar-free vegetable stock, pure apple juice and herbs. I would put quantities, but Sean is very “a bit of this and a dash of that”, so make the gravy based on your consistency preference.

Vegan Stuffing – Really good. Sean says this recipe was more of a guideline. See above as to why. Breads used were half a kamut loaf and half a spelt loaf.

Cranberry Sauce – This recipe called for orange zest, but guess what? Not allowed, so lemon juice went in instead.

Garlic Mashed Yams- a Sean creation

• 4 mid-sized yams – peeled, chopped, boiled (until tender)
• Drain and mash yams with 4 cloves of chopped garlic
• Add a splash of soy milk
• Add pepper to taste

Caesar Salad – Courtesy of Dori. Croutons, parmesan and dressing were served separately as the cleanse trio looked on longingly over their greens.

Spelt Crust and Honey Apple Pie – I used Spelt flour for the crust and honey replaced the sugar in the apple mix. My go to apple pie recipe is from Kraft.ca, but I think any recipe would work with these replacements. Tenderflake is my preferred shortening. While I realize that, in theory, it may have been against the cleanse rules to use lard, olive oil wouldn’t have cut it, vegetable shortening has hydrogenated canola oil in it (can’t have canola on cleanse and hydrogenated is not a good word in terms of food), and the fancy-dancy organic pig kidney stuff is just expensive. I would rather use what I know – rules be damned – and it was a fabulous pie. The spelt flour gave the crust a sweet taste and it felt good to be eating dessert. 🙂

(Speaking of the rules, when I got home to help with dinner, I relayed my tomato story to Sean and when we looked at the list again, we saw that bananas weren’t allowed either. Sean’s smoothies of the past day or so had bananas but as Claire states, these are not set in stone rules. So this is Sean’s pass.)

There was a lovely Tinhorn Creek Merlot, courtesy of John. Rather unfortunately, I only know it was lovely because the smell was divine and Matt and John seemed to enjoy it. Brent came with a lovely (from past experience) Baron Philippe de Rothschild white and all I could do was wish I was having a glass. Jan 31 is a day I look forward to with great anticipation… I will have definitely earned a very large glass of red.

So now, after eating the inevitable and awesome leftovers, the second period has started and Edler just tied it up 2-2 against the Flames. Time to pay attention.