Final CFC Thoughts

It's officially over, and I officially did it.  Because I spent all of Monday feeling like I'd accomplished the task, I did find myself licking the jelly knife and even made my tempeh stew, which had about 1/2 cup of flour in a large saucepot.  I use a modified beef stew recipe: start with the onions, celery, and garlic (sautee until transparent), then add the tempeh (brown slightly then flour and a splash of water to the mixture), before the stock, potatoes and turnip (simmer for about an hour).  I thought about making the stew with no flour, but it was really unappealing.  Admittedly, when I woke up from sleeping with Lucy at 2 am, I also had an oreo and a handful of doritos.  It wasn't the fabulous feeling I'd hoped to get from the snacks ... perhaps I should have had a beer instead?

I never achieved sparkly, but held steady at five pounds lighter than my pre-CFC self, so I'm certainly not complaining.  And as I told a friend tonight, sparkly feelings aside, this challenge really opened my eyes to how much I eat in any day that is unnecessary, snacking, empty calorie type of food.  I wasn't able to have a quick bowl of cereal for breakfast here, a slice of bread and butter there, finish whatever Lucy left on her plate, or grab a granola bar between meals.  It also left me actually hungry, something I don't usually allow myself to get, snacking during the day so much.  As I was explaining all this to Stacy, I noticed some batter from the chocolate cake we baked for our neighbor's birthday on the door of the microwave and licked it off.  That was not clean on so many levels.

My new post-CFC me has grocery shopped with a new benevolence, turning past aisles of dirty food and opting to continue some of my new, healthy habits.  As I scarf the leftover frozen pizza from Lucy's dinner the other night while writing this at two am (what?  I'm hungry - dinner was almost 7 hours ago!), we'll see how long the benevolence lasts.  I certainly didn't eat clean today, but I didn't go on a dirty binge either.  Eric thinks I'll bounce those five pounds right back on, so I'll once again be working hard to prove him wrong, even if it means a little self-sacrifice.  Thanks to Emilie at One Mom in Maine and to Joanna at the High Raw Nourished Kitchen as well as to my friends and family who cheered me on and the other Emilie-inspired CFC bloggers who provided comic relief and great recipes.  And who knows?  This is Emilie's second Clean Food Challenge - maybe some of my friends (you know who you are!) will join me for her third ....

I'll leave you with a picture of our decidedly not-clean chocolate cake that I barely sampled (but from the photo you can probably guess who licked the bowl):