{Review}: Everyday Detox by Megan Gilmore

 Last month, my sister and I did this cleanse by a doctor that shall not be named. The cleanse itself wasn't so terrible-- a shake hree times a day, plus two light meals, which is about all I have time for anyway these days. But the shake was pretty gross, plus the vitamins that had to be taken with each meal made me nauseous. (I'll spare you the details of the time that I threw up in the bathroom at a hibachi restaurant ON MY DAUGHTER'S BIRTHDAY.) In any case, I stopped using the shakes and the vitamins but stuck to the basic idea of the cleanse, which included the usual no-nos: no dairy, no eggs, no caffeine, no wheat, no nightshades. It wasn't that hard but none of the meals were satisfying.

Why do a cleanse anyway? I always joke that we all already have a detoxer-- the liver! But a detox cleanse is a way of pressing the restart button on your eating habits, if they've gone awry, or to learn some good habits in the first place, if you've been inhaling ho-hos and chugging quarter water since you came out of the womb.  After the cleanse I did last month, I did feel pretty good, especially without dairy, which I've finally accepted is not good for me or my sinuses. I wanted to keep up with the "detoxing" but I needed something more substantial than two light meals a day, which basically amounts to a salad with some protein on it. Boring.

When Everyday Detox by Megan Gilmore, the blogger behind Detoxinista came across my radar, I was immediately taken in by the front cover. I didn't know what it was but it looked delicious. This was the kind of detox diet plan I could get behind. I wasn't familiar with Megan's blog at this point though I'd heard of it and read a few posts, so I didn't know what to expect when I sat down with the book. It turns out that this book is all about food combining-- the idea that certain foods should be eaten with certain other foods, or certain food combinations should be flat-out avoided. Food combining helps to improve digestion, and makes meals simpler by virtue of having less variety on your plate. At each meal, you pick one category of food: fruit, starches, animal protein or nuts & seeds. To that, you add non-starchy vegetables to make a complete meal. For example, in one day, you might start out with a chia pudding for breakfast, then a salad for lunch, and a butternut squash pilaf for dinner.

I decided to do the seven-day jump-start menu included in the book. After reviewing the shopping list, I realized that I had a lot of the ingredients in my pantry already but the grocery list for the fresh produce and proteins is pretty long, and some of the pantry staples are pricey. As I shopped for the ingredients, it became apparent that for someone on a strict grocery budget and three kids to feed, the jump-start was going to put me way beyond my grocery budget for the week. I allowed myself to go a little over budget and decided to do what I could, and omit the rest. One thing you'll notice is that recipes that call for coconut flour also call for a lot of eggs, like a crazy amount of eggs. In my house, eggs are a major source of protein and there's no way I could use eight eggs for one batch of pancakes, for example because I only buy farm-fresh eggs and they are more expensive than grocery store eggs so I ration them throughout the week.

But for the most part, the recipes are do-able, pretty easy to prepare and delicious. The chocolate chia shake is a great post-workout drink, and my two year old loves it, too. I've never used dates in a smoothie before. The dates made it satisfyingly sweet without being cloying. In fact, dates weren't a pantry staple for me at all but the last time I went shopping, I stocked up because I discovered my son loves them in oatmeal, and so do I! I also really liked the banana walnut smoothie. Despite it's green color, it totally tasted like banana bread, thanks to the cinnamon. It never would've occurred to me to put SPICES in a smoothie.

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I also loved the "parmesan" cheese, which is nutritional yeast and walnuts blitzed together. I keep a container of it in the fridge and throw it on top of every salad I eat.

I lent the book to my sister, who tried a few of the recipes in the book. Her favorites were the Everyday Basil vinaigrette and the Skillet Fish Tacos. The tacos look amazingly delicious and they are on my menu this week!

I have a lot of cookbooks on my shelf, and there are only a few that are well-worn with stained pages.  Everyday Detox is one of them, even though I've only had the book for a couple of weeks. If you're looking for delicious, easy meals that will make you feel good, add this one to your cookbook collection.

{I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review. This post contains affiliate links.}