Cones

After a great lobster and oyster meal at Fish, we headed to Cones down the street for some dessert. Cones makes their own ice cream/gelato (the fat content is around 12% so it’s actually in between ice cream and gelato). We sampled a lot of flavors (some of their specialties include corn, almond cream, and other fruit-based flavors). We ended up going with our three favorites – raspberry cream, mint chocolate chip, and tiramisu:

The prices are steep (around $7 for the cone) but it was a nice treat. Right now, they have a special flavor, kumquat + Johnny Walker and it’s twice as expensive as all other flavors…AND it costs $1 for a sample! Looks good but definitely too pricey for me.

Cooler Cleanse

I recently purchased a three-day cleanse from Cooler Cleanse and have been really excited to write about my three day experience. I picked up the juices on Friday night and decided to start on Saturday morning (after my very indulgent meal at Bar Jamon). There are six juices to drink each day:

Saturday: Day One of Cooler Cleanse
I woke up very excited to start the juices – the first juice of the day is the green juice (essential green includes lots of different types of vegetables). The juice isn’t bad; I’ve had experience of drinking green juices because my mom loves to make juices and I used to make green juices with celery, apples, cucumbers, and other green vegetables. After a few sips, I realize that it’s going to be a long day because I can barely finish the juice (the ginger is a little too much for me). I finish and realize…that’s all I get for the next couple of hours.

Juice two is definitely my favorite: grapefruit and mint. It’s very refreshing and I could definitely continue drinking it even if I wasn’t on a cleanse. I didn’t have a lot of energy after the two juices but decided to go for a run anyway. I made it about a mile before I felt like I really couldn’t handle it anymore and ended up walking the rest (my only exercise of the day). I was so exhausted after the run that I came home and took a nap (thank goodness I started the cleanse on a weekend) and woke up with a lot more energy.

Drink three is another green juice, juice four is young coconut water (which tastes better than Zico), juice five is essential red (beets, carrots and apples) and my favorite, juice six, is almond milk with dates, vanilla beans and filtered water. I was surprised I didn’t feel the need to snack throughout the day but I was drinking a lot of water in between each juice. I ended up going out for a bit (and not drinking at all) and I had a lot of energy. We drove to the 53rd and 6th halal cart with Ken’s friends and ended up buying delicious chicken and rice (I swear it has never smelled so good) but Ken ate in the living room so I wouldn’t have to smell the food.

Sunday: Day Two of Cooler Cleanse
I woke up a bit later than usual (the cleanse suggests you get at least 8 hours of rest a night) but I was definitely ready to take on the day. We ran errands and then ended up going to the gym and I did my two mile run and had enough energy to lift weights afterwards. The cleanse suggests you do yoga and pilates (and sit in the sauna) but I think I did too much bikram during my fight diet that I’m yoga-ed out.

Luckily, this weekend was really light on social activities and we didn’t have to run around the city too much (although we did have to make multiple trips to shops in the city because I am looking for a birthday gift for Ken to buy me and I can’t seem to find anything!)

Monday: Day Three of the Cooler Cleanse
Going to work and drinking the juices all day is difficult, especially because I have to focus on work. It’s difficult, but manageable (some girls in my office have done this cleanse multiple times without any problems!) I’m really glad I didn’t start the cleanse during the week and although I’m more tempted to cheat on the last day with all of the snacks in our office, I refrain because I’m so close to the finish line. On Tuesday, I ease back into eating regular foods by eating Fight diet-friendly foods (to prep for the cleanse, I stopped eating eggs but I reward myself with a little omelet for breakfast).

The cleanse has definitely helped me focus on the whole foods that I should be eating instead of the processed foods that I’m tempted to eat a lot. I know my eating habits aren’t going to be dramatically changed (especially since I love pasta and bread) but I will definitely focus on eating better the majority of the week with a few fun meals sprinkled into the week.

How to Prepare for Your First Juice Cleanse

I’m doing something I said I would never do: a juice cleanse. It seems pretty silly that I’d choose to drink six juices a day instead of eating delicious foods, right? Well, I started losing some weight doing the fight diet and I decided that I would also do a juice cleanse to help detox a bit more.

Before I started the cleanse, I read about how you should prepare for the all-juice diet. Here are my tips to prepare yourself:

1. Stop drinking all carbonated beverages. This was probably the most difficult change I had to make; my office has an unlimited supply of seltzer water (my beverage of choice) and I usually drink 4 liters a day. The seltzer has too much carbonation and gives your body extra gas that it doesn’t need (same with chewing gum!) I switched to water the week before the cleanse and actually enjoyed drinking regular water again. After I introduce solid foods back into my diet, I think I’ll drink seltzer only on special occasions (or only 1 liter a day).

2. Stop eating processed foods/eat only whole foods I started eating better during the fight diet but still ate Luna Bars/other energy bars because I craved something sweet. The Luna bars weren’t extremely processed but did have a lot of random ingredients that I wanted to take out of my diet. It was difficult, especially since our office seems to have a lot of good food around the office (last week I had more than my fair share of truffle-oil popcorn, Special K with strawberries and chips and guacamole) but I tried to moderate how much processed food I ate. You’re supposed to try to eat only raw foods 1-3 days before the diet, but I looked at a raw foods cookbook and decided it was way too impractical for me to eat raw. Instead, my lunches looked like this:

Trader Joe’s chicken, broccoli and one avocado per day: lots of lean proteins, good fats, and veggies.

3. Exercise Before the cleanse, I tried to exercise to get a little more energy because I knew going from an over 2,000 calorie/day diet to 1,100 calories was going to be difficult. (This post will be published on the last day of my cleanse but so far, my energy levels haven’t changed that much).

4. Figure out when you want to start your cleanse.This might seem like a no-brainer, but if it’s your first juice cleanse, you don’t know how your body is going to react. My friend had a bad experience when she tried to do her cleanse (flu-like symptoms) and I didn’t want to get sick during the middle of the week and miss work. I decided to pick up my cleanse on Friday night and start on Saturday morning – that way, I’d finish my cleanse at work on Monday, but I’d have the weekend to figure out how to adjust my daily activity based on my energy levels.

5. Inform your friends and family of your upcoming adventure. I had to warn Ken about my cleanse because I wasn’t sure how I’d react. Originally, he was supposed to play golf with his friends over the weekend so he wouldn’t see me on the first day of the cleanse, but his plans were rescheduled and we ended up spending the entire day together. Ken was very supportive and ate his meals in different rooms so I wouldn’t be tempted to cheat (although we did go to Bleecker Street Pizza together and I had to watch him eat two slices of pizza). I think we’re both surprised that I didn’t cheat during the juice cleanse (over the weekend, he ate Bleecker Street Pizza, Chicken and Rice, Bon Chon, Just Salad, and chips).

I’ll post again about my post cleanse thoughts – juice cleanses are definitely not for everyone (I seriously thought people that did them were crazy) but I’m really happy with the results and I think I will definitely eat better after this experience.

Bar Jamon

On Friday night, Ken and I planned to do a light dinner to prepare for my juice cleanse on Saturday, but we got sidetracked and ended up having a large meal at Bar Jamon. When we first met, we originally wanted to grab dinner at Bar Jamon but it was so packed that we ended up getting drinks at a nearby bar. We finally made it back around 11pm on Friday night.

The bar is behind Casa Mono, the Michelin-starred Mario Batali tapas restaurant. I’m not a huge fan of Casa Mono because their service and food is spotty, so I was a bit nervous about dining at Bar Jamon. The bartenders were very friendly and our server was a little on the quiet side and didn’t help us with our wine choice, but gave us really great recommendations for tapas.

We started with duck liver pate and apricots:

So decadent and the apricots had chopped almonds (or some kind of nut) mixed in – I am a huge fan of foie gras, pate, and any kind of liver and this definitely had the right notes of sweet and salty. Ken liked it, too!

The server recommended this dish and I had no idea what it was until I took a bite – octopus with spicy tomato sauce and chickpeas:

The octopus was my favorite dish of the night – perfectly cooked and it had a great spicy tomato flavor with the chickpeas.

Beet and goat cheese salad:

A pretty standard beet and goat cheese salad – I haven’t eaten beets in a long time but these were really great with Bar Jamon’s acidic dressing.

Another favorite from the meal – bread con tomate:

I was introduced to this simple dish in Barcelona (at their markets) and it’s a simple dish but so unassumingly delicious. Bar Jamon rubs tomatoes and garlic on crusty French bread and toasts it – simple flavors but so comforting and tasty.

Ken did the second round of ordering (so there’s a lot more meat!) – we started off with roasted red peppers and some kind of salumi:

The roasted red peppers were deliciously sweet but the meat was a little too chewy.

Goat cheese with pepitas:

Surprisingly, the goat cheese was more mild than the goat cheese from the beet salad (probably because the salad had the acidic vinaigrette). Ken originally wanted the dish but ended up not wanting it after all.

My least favorite dish of the evening involved lentils, peppers, and another type of charcuterie:

The lentils were a little too undercooked, the peppers didn’t have a great taste with the charcuterie, and overall, I didn’t like the dish.

After finishing an entire bottle of wine and our dinner, we were pretty stuffed but Ken wanted to try the churros so we ordered the churros con chocolate:

I haven’t eaten that many churros in my life (in fact, I think I’ve only had churros two times before visiting Bar Jamon) but I know that churros should not be rock solid. We dipped the churros in the chocolate for a couple of minutes hoping the chocolate sauce would soften the churros a bit, but it DIDN’T HELP! We might have had a stale order of churros because it was the end of the night, but seriously, these were the worst churros I have ever eaten.

We enjoyed our dinner at Bar Jamon and had a wonderful stroll around Gramercy Park (it smelled like the suburbs because they were watering the grass as we walked by). Definitely adding Bar Jamon to my list of go-to restaurants in the city (but never ordering the churros again!)

Wedding!

Ken and I are in Indianapolis for his best friend’s wedding – be back next week with pictures from the wedding!