By far-- by FAR-- my most-accessed post ever is this one, which discusses the nutritional value and potential toxicity of eggplant.  This post has been read by dozens of folk (that's a lot, for me!) literally all over the world, in places like Dubai, India, the Phillipines, and Japan.  I guess everywhere that people eat a lot of eggplant.  

And the weirdness of the Internet is: the more people read something, the more people read something.  So most of this blog goes unnoticed while the eggplant post gets more and more widely disseminated.

There was also a brief burst of hits to this post, when Buzzfeed decided to feature my photo of none-pizza-left-beef along with 36 other photos of none-pizza-left beef in this random posting last month.  Ah, fame!

Neither of these items represents the blog particularly well.  Meanwhile, as I post less and less, and get distracted writing mystery stories, the site gets more and more traffic (albeit mostly to the eggplant thing).  Isn't there any correlation at all between effort and payoff?  Apparently not.

April 25
Breakfast: lemon water, green tea, shake made from hemp milk, vanilla almond milk, hemp protein powder, cashew butter, strawberries, and spinach.

Lunch: sliced almonds, strawberries, blackberries, carrot sticks with cashew butter.

Shopping (Snider's): 6 single-serving Chobani Greek yogurts (assorted flavors), boneless chicken thighs, salmon filet, boneless beef short ribs, ground turkey, smoked trout, ground beef, frozen blueberries, lentil chips, broccoli, multigrain tortilla chips, pomegranate rooibos tea, jar of marinated artichoke hearts, spicy olives from the deli, kosher dill pickles from the deli, red leaf lettuce, grape tomatoes, 1/2 a red cabbage, 3 avocados, bag of sweet mini peppers, strawberries, Arnold wheat and oat bread, 3 lemons, dozen eggs. $98.  Note that my kid is not on the gut cleanse, and some of these items were for them.

Dinner: salad of spinach, red leaf lettuce, and shredded purple cabbage, with freeze-dried raspberries, blackberries, roasted broccoli, sliced almonds, and white-meat chicken, with red wine vinaigrette.  The colors in this were very pretty.

Warning: ​extremely boring gut cleanse data below.

April 21
Breakfast: lemon water, green tea, shake made of almond milk, hemp protein powder, avocado, almond butter, frozen blueberries, fresh strawberries, and kale.

Lunch: 2 boneless chicken thighs, dried blueberries, dried green beans.

In the late afternoon, I began feeling dizzy and exhausted again, much as I had this time last week.  I suspect the supplement that I reintroduced this morning, the yeast Saccharomyces boulardii.  Going to skip this one for a while, until I have introduced all the others.

Dinner: Salad of romaine lettuce, shredded cabbage, and tomato; topped with turkey tenderloin, boiled egg, avocado, and roasted brussels sprouts.  White wine vinaigrette dressing.  The heirloom tomato that I belatedly realized I'd paid $4 for turned out to be terrible, tasteless and mealy.

Snacks: 2 cups of green tea; 1/2 avocado; 1 cup rooibos tea with almond milk; carrot chips, handful of tamari almonds.
 
April 22
Breakfast: water with 1/2 lemon, green tea, shake made from almond milk, coconut water, hemp protein powder, avocado, sunflower seed butter, frozen strawberries, fresh strawberries, and mixed greens.

Lunch: Evolution green juice blended with coconut water and strawberries; 2 fried eggs; celery sticks with guacamole.

Dinner: salad of Power Greens mix, shredded carrot and shredded cabbage, topped with canned tuna and tamari almonds, with sesame vinaigrette dressing.  Small bowl of Moroccan lentil soup from Roots.  We ate dinner quite early, because we needed to go out to a theater performance directed by my stepson.

Snacks: 3 cups green tea, leftover turkey tenderloin, cup of rooibos tea with hemp milk, few carrot chips, small handful of raspberries.  Small bowl of curried split pea soup when we returned from the theater performance, 10:15 pm.  This is technically eating too late to be allowed on Clean Gut, but oh well.  I hate to go to bed hungry.
 
April 23
Breakfast: lemon water, green tea, shake made from coconut water, hemp protein powder, sunflower seed butter, frozen strawberries, fresh strawberries, and greens.  Did I mention I am allergic to sunflower seeds, and had an anaphylatic reaction to eating too many of them a couple of years ago?  So I am nervous about the sunflower butter, but we didn't have anything else in the house left to bulk up the shake, and I have a grueling 7-hour Saturday-brunch waitressing shift ahead.  However, it turns out fine.  I have never had any kind of allergic response to processed sunflower, for some reason.

Lunch (not until 3:30 pm): strawberries, celery sticks, carrot sticks, tomato wedges, dried blueberries, dried green beans, tamari almonds.

Shopping (Coop): frozen peas, lip balm, 2 cartons unsweetened vanilla almond milk, dried raspberries, cashew butter, lemon juice, can of cat food, 4 avocadoes, sliced almonds, blackberries, strawberries, organic spinach, 2 lb. bag carrots, garlic, white mushrooms. $65.

Dinner: salad of power greens, basil, and tomato, topped with sliced NY strip steak, roasted mushrooms, roasted carrots, sliced almonds, and avocado, with a mustard vinaigrette dressing.  Very small bowl of curried split pea soup on the side.  This salad was so filling that I left about a third of it to eat later.

Snacks: cup of wild berry zinger tea; 2 scrambled eggs at work; cup of green tea; cup of rooibos tea with hemp milk.  The rest of my dinner salad about an hour and a half later, while watching TV with my husband.
 
April 24
Breakfast: lemon water, green tea, shake made from coconut water, hemp milk, hemp protein powder, avocado, frozen strawberries, and fresh strawberries.  This was good and thick (lots of avocado, and the hemp milk seems thick) and actually pink in color instead of brown or sickly green, a nice change.

Lunch: We went to the restaurant where I work to eat "Sunday brunch," since one very good thing about the place is a willingness to indulge dietary restrictions and make substitutions.  I had a "southwestern" omelet with no cheese or sour cream, and sliced tomatoes and cold broccoli on the side, as well as green tea and a strawberry-cucumber-lemon juice.

My husband and I are getting very tired of this diet, and fantasize together about baked goods and coffee.

Dinner: salad of power greens and shredded carrots, topped with canned tuna, 2 hard-boiled eggs, cooked peas, and artichoke hearts, with a lemon-olive oil dressing.  Small bowl of minted green pea soup from Roots.
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Snacks: cup of green tea, cup of rooibos tea with hemp milk, carrot chips.

Breakfast: glass of water with lemon juice; green tea; shake consisting of almond milk, canned coconut milk, hemp protein powder, frozen blueberries, and fresh strawberries.

Lunch: Evolution Essential Greens with Lime juice, with strawberries and frozen blueberries added to try and render it palatable (only partially successful).  Celery sticks with almond butter.  Cherry tomatoes.

After lunch, I could definitely feel the impact of the new probiotics I'm taking-- a period of quite remarkable belching, as well as a roiling sensation in the stomach.  It wasn't intolerable, just odd.  And then it stopped and I felt okay the rest of the day.

My kid needed to be picked up at school, so we decided to take a trip together afterwards to visit an old friend.  Roots Market, up in Olney, MD, was a favorite destination a few years ago when we regularly went to Olney to have kid's foot warts treated by a podiatrist there.  The wart treatment turned out to be a massive waste of time, as well as painful, but the discovery of Roots (plus the weekly drive to Olney together, sometimes singing in the car) made the entire experience more joyful than unpleasant.  We ended up with fond memories.  And a store we can visit when we've got a couple extra hours and are craving some novelty in our diet.

I told my kid they could get whatever they wanted (although they just can't break the lifelong habit of saying "is it okay if I get..." about every single item); the inventory below reflects this.  It also reflects that my kid has great taste in food and reasonably healthy inclinations.  Things of which I am so proud.

Shopping (Roots): Olivia's Power Blend salad greens, 3 portobello mushrooms, organic strawberries, heirloom tomatoes, organic orange bell pepper, organic lemons, 4 organic avocados, carrot chips [kid], dried green beans [kid], mixed vegetable chips [kid], tamari roasted almonds, 2 individual goat milk yogurts [kid], raspberry kefir [kid], organic whole milk, frozen strawberries, 100-bag box of green tea, freeze-dried blueberries, coconut water, hemp milk, dish soap, 2 cans tuna, single-serving maple water [kid], lingonberry jam, Effie's nutcakes [kid], peppered goat cheese [kid], turkey tenderloin, salmon fillet, baguette [kid], 3 quarts of housemade soup (moroccan lentil, curried split pea, minted green pea), "ocean combo" sushi [kid], cilantro and roasted garlic hummus [kid], Ricola herb cough drops [kid].  $200.  Yes, certain items I regretted once looking over the receipt (e.g., the two! heirloom tomatoes I bought for the low, low price of $7.09).  But there are so many things available at this grocery that I don't find anywhere else, it is worth the occasional special trip.  And the quality of everything is always excellent.  Great baked goods, not that I can enjoy those right now.  Great sushi.  Great cheese section.  Great, though limited, hot bar, salad, and soups.  Amazing bulk/snack section.

Dinner: salad of romaine lettuce and green cabbage, with shredded carrot and orange peppers; topped with roasted cauliflower, quinoa, and two boneless chicken thighs.  Apple cider vinaigrette dressing.  This was so filling that I was quite stuffed, and then overstuffed when I ate all my kid's uneaten roasted cauliflower so that it would not go to waste.  I guess there are worse things to binge on than roasted cauliflower, though.

After dinner, A. complained that I was using their name too often in order to avoid using pronouns (teenaged translation: "Pronouns do exist, you know!").  Perhaps this is so.  I've been slipping back into a almost-but-not-quite-thoughtless use of "she,"  because it is easier and less emotionally-confusing, and because A. said she, sorry, they didn't mind.  But I'd also figured that the use of a proper name was the least gender-loaded choice.  This discussion led to A. saying definitively for the first time that they would really prefer us to use "they" consistently.  Husband and I immediately switched.  More practice needed.  But it is good to have greater clarity in this area.
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Snacks: cup of rooibos tea with almond milk, 3 strawberries, celery sticks, carrot sticks. 2 cups of green tea.