The other side of the cleanse...

After giving up sugar and all other delicious things for a week, I can confidently say I feel so, so much better. The point of our cleanse was, obviously, to cleanse out our digestive tract with detoxing tea, but also to merge into a few permanent diet changes to alleviate some of Matt's Crohn's disease symptoms.

Fasting from (table) sugar was SO much easier than I thought it would be! After the initial few days of withdrawing, I was fine. Any time a sugar craving hit me (which was around three times a day), I would slice up a fresh pear or blend together a fruit smoothie and it would totally hit the spot. My moods throughout the day were completely different. I was never too wired, I didn't get hungry between meals, I slept great and I didn't completely fall apart as a result of my blood sugar plummeting.  Now that the cleanse is over, I am looking forward to experimenting with some baked goods that are sans table sugar. I know that all sweeteners, including raw honey, agave, stevia, etc, need to be consumed in moderation, but at least they contain some nutritional value, unlike processed table sugar or high fructose corn syrup (both my faves) and are easier on the pancreas.

When Matt and I were browsing through Trader Joe's this weekend, nonchalantly trying to check all the food labels in the least snobby way possible, we noticed that almost all of the cereals contained some kind of cane sugar/juice/etc in it! Even the most healthy options had sugar in the first two or three ingredients. As much as I have become endeared to my morning smoothie, I need something a little more substantial than that to ward off any hunger pangs while I'm serving up fresh cinnamon danishes at work.

So in an effort to use up all the expensive leftover ingredients from our cleanse last week, I came up with a pretty decent granola recipe. It's not as savory as the other recipe I posted, but it's quick, easy and can be altered to whatever you feel like throwing out of the pantry and into the mixing bowl.

3 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut shreds or flakes
1/3 cup melted coconut oil
1/4 cup maple agave nectar (or sweetener of choice)
just less than 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine all the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl until oats are fully coated, then spread evenly over a parchment paper covered baking sheet. Bake for 25-30 minutes, stirring around every 10 minutes, until golden brown. Then, turn off your oven but leave the granola in there until the oven has completely cooled (about an hour or two); this will help make your granola crunchy! (Dried strawberries would pair well with these flavors but should be added after baking.)

This smelled like delicious cookies while it was baking! I splashed some coconut milk over a small, still-warm bowl of this stuff and felt like I was sneaking dessert in the middle of the day.

Enjoy!