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After the New Year detox

May 2010 (Updated)

January: Detox. February: Retox? Every now and again a word comes along and there's a stampede to get onto its bandwagon before it sails off into the sunset. Our culture readily adopts words which aptly describes the feelings of the moment. And right now, at this very moment, it seems like the whole world (apart from Ben Goldacre and Catherine Collins) is on a detox!

I was waiting for a client in a restaurant the other day, and overheard a couple of 40ish men discussing their detox diets. My client came in, we hugged and he looked at the menu. "I have to be careful what I order" he said "I'm on a detox". I should have known. I was sitting there with my lemony water and a huge internal grin. I don't have much left to detox, that's for sure.

My client ordered his lunch, char grilled chicken salad with roast vegetables. It was detox, he explained, because there was no wheat or red meat. He's also off the coffee and tea. The detoxing men on the other table might well be following a different set of detox rules. That's fine, because it doesn't matter how you detox: So long as you take in less toxins than before, you are officially detoxing.

But it's not very sensible to detox a load of horrible chemicals one month (which, let's be honest, shouldn't have been put into your body in the first place) if you're going to to reintroduce them again the next month. There's a danger with detoxing and retoxing -- it shocks your body and might leave you ending up in a worse state than before. Detoxing has to be done with the intention of staying detoxed, or at least respecting your body temple a bit more than before. And yes, you will probably want to go further than just physical house cleaning.

As your body detoxes, emotions will be released. You must be ready to deal with them or you could find yourself reaching for the biscuit tin. Join a support group, a local pot luck or an online forum. Read inspiring blogs and seek out a special friend for support. Detoxing your life goes something like this: Your body becomes cleaner and lighter, suddenly you can't stand to see mess around the house. Out will go clothes, music, furniture, body products (you won't be as smelly!), and maybe houses, spouses, friends, jobs and countries. If you find yourself in a new place, with new friends and a new job, you'll be a new re-invented person. You can finally be who you've always wanted to be! Detox can bring about major life changes, which the countless magazines on the shelves fail to mention because it's unlikely they've even tried or continued the detox that they offer to the masses.

So, after you've detoxed according to one of the millions of detox plans on offer, where do you go next? Well, regarding food, you continue to explore the brave new world of delightful, delicious, clean foods which make your cells light up even more. Buy some pure food recipe books and make sure you eat from them as much as possible. If you eat something that you consider bad for you, then don't worry about it, because worrying's even worse for you! Just keep ecstatic, and carry on. There's no "I'll start again tomorrow" because you haven't stopped. Detoxing is a continual process your body goes through if you step out of the way or offer gentle assistance.

Here are three special recipes to tempt your taste buds. You can make a three course meal or individual meals. You can find many more in my books Shazzie's Detox Delights, Detox Your World, Raw Britannia, Evie's Kitchen and Ecstatic Beings, which you can buy online now. There are also an abundance of recipes in Shazzie's VIP Room, instant access to visionary living. Have a safe and healthy detox, and take it easy, but do take it!

Recipes

All food must be ripe and wild or organic. A tomato has about twice as much vitamin C in it if it's picked ripe from the plant, rather than picked green and allowed to ripen. Insist on the very best in life and you will get it.

Jessie's tropical soup

Serves 2 as a main meal or 4 as a starter. Keeps for two days when sealed in a refrigerator.

2 medium mangoes, skinned and stoned
Juice and rind of 2 limes
1 medium-hot chilli, deseeded
1 avocado, peeled and stoned
1 passion fruit, scooped out of the shell
Juice of 1 orange
Roughly 10 stalks of coriander/cilantro
2 juicy dates, stoned
Half a red onion, skinned

Add one mango, the passion fruit, chilli, dates, lime juice and rind and orange juice to your blender. Blend until smooth and leave to marinade for half an hour to an hour.

Once marinated, strain the ingredients to remove passion fruit pips and other unblended bits. Discard the strained ingredients and keep the liquid. Dice the other mango and the avocado into half-inch cubes. Dice the onion into quarter inch cubes, and chop most of the coriander.

Put all ingredients in a serving bowl and top with a few whole coriander leaves.

Butternut noodles with golden curry sauce

Serves 2 as a main dish, 4 as a side dish. Keeps for two days when sealed in a refrigerator.

1 small butternut squash, peeled
I small handful of coriander/cilantro
1 tablespoon of Madras curry powder (Or to taste. If unsure, add a small amount and taste, keep adding and blending until you have a flavour you like.)
1 large or 2 medium avocados, skinned and stoned
1 stick of celery
2 dried apricots, soaked for at least 2 hours
Quarter of a cup of sultanas, soaked for at least 2 hours
Half a papaya, skinned and deseeded
Half a mango, skinned and stoned
4 baby carrots
10 sticks of baby sweetcorn
1 yellow pepper, deseeded and topped
1 large tomato
The juice of half a lime

Set your saladacco (spiral slicer) onto the "spaghetti" setting and process all of the squash. You will have to do it in pieces, and cut out the seeds.

Dice the celery, papaya, mango, corn, tomato, pepper and carrots. Mix these ingredients and add half of the mixture to a blender. Add the avocado, curry powder, sultanas, lime juice and apricots to to the blender. Keep 6 sultanas for decoration. Blend the curry sauce until fine. Finely chop most of the coriander and add this to the sauce.

Place the noodles on a big serving dish, pour the mixed vegetables on top, and pour the sauce on top of that. Flatten a little place out and place the 6 sultanas there, to make a 5 petalled flower with a centre. Use the reserved coriander to make the stem. Serve with delight.

Toffee and raspberry fool

Serves 4. Keeps for two days when sealed in a refrigerator.

2 cups of sunflower seeds, soaked for about 24 hours, rinsed periodically
15 raspberries
1 inch of vanilla bean
20 dried apricots, soaked for over 36 hours, rinsed periodically
12 fresh dates, skinned and stoned -- it's very important that they're fresh dates, as in white and wet inside, with shiny dark and easy-to-remove skins. If you can't find these, use plump dates soaked for 24 hours.

With a hand-held blender, blend the drained sunflower seeds and 10 of the drained apricots with 11 of the raspberries until it's a smooth cream. Set aside and rinse the blender. Scrape the seeds out of the vanilla bean into a bowl and add the remaining apricots and 10 of the dates. Blend to a smooth cream.

In four lovely stemmed glasses, add a layer of the date mixture, then a layer of the raspberry mixture, and repeat until you have about 6 layers in the glasses and all the mixture is used up. Top each pudding with a raspberry in the centre. Cut the remaining 2 dates into thin strips and add them around the raspberry in a sun ray pattern.

You can serve it as it is or chill on a hot day.

Finally

Healthy eating is something you need to do for a life time, if you want the time of your life.

Healthy eating leads to simple eating. You will gain so much energy, that you'll create more hours in the day. You'll soon be able to do all those things you've always wanted: spending more time with friends and family, meditation, yoga, charity work, your own work, hobbies -- everything!

When you get food into perspective, when it stops being an obsession, when you just eat and go without ever worrying about it, you know that you've detoxed your world for life.

My detox books