Some say that Day 3 or 4 are the hardest when you are dieting or on a detox. Any sort of limitation always gets you thinking more about exactly what you cannot have.
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| Lunch on day 11: Pan-fried tofu with African Chicken sauce and baby bok choy with garlic |
But I say the hardest days are the final ones. After all the days of hard work, towards the end of it you start making excuses for little cheats, you say to yourself, “There’s no harm if there is a little bit of vinegar on my salad, is there? The kitchen made a mistake, and I can’t very well send the dish back just because I neglected to mention that my detox stipulates that I shouldn’t eat it…?” Or you start getting very confident, and when your friend asks you if you can come to a wine tasting dinner that he’s organising, you feel confident that you can sit there and watch everyone drink, talk about, and enjoy glass after glass of wine – “Sure! I’ve come this far, of course I’ll be able to drink Perrier all night!”
Yeah. Right. That would be a big N-O. That’s where I lost it last Friday night, sitting in Red Tavern with 5 other people and 5 bottles of wine.
We went to Life Cafe (again) for lunch and we were superbly unimpressed with our food. The frittata had been reheated, and to my eyes the egg was taking on that dull grey-ish hue that eggs can become when they’re more than a few hours old.
I was thoroughly unexcited by the poached egg with za’atar. The dish had not been seasoned at all, and when we asked for salt and pepper, the staff gave us a large table salt dispenser, which shouldn’t have been given to a customer because it contained rice grains and was obviously meant for the kitchen. All of the dispensing holes were large enough to let the rice through, which meant we had to pick out individual grains from our meal.
I had ordered whole fish for the first time from South Stream Seafoods (SSS), and wanted to try a baked flounder recipe that evening for dinner. I was quite excited about the fresh fish that is advertised by SSS, but when I took it out of the bag, the overwhelming smell indicated that perhaps it used to be fresh! It was still edible, so we continued with the recipe, but the smell lingered throughout the cooking process and remained in the final dish when it was plated, altogether a little unpleasant. We ate some but didn’t finish it – the caper and tomato dressing that we made was quite tasty though, reminiscent of a sunshine-y summer in Provence!
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| Smelly whole flounder |
Whole Roasted Flounder with Caper and Tomato Dressing
Olive Oil
1 cup flat parsley leaves, washed and dried
1/2 cup of onion, finely diced
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp salted capers, rinsed and chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
20 cherry tomatoes, finely chopped
1 kg flounder, skin on, cleaned, gutted and head removed
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| Oops, forgot to remove the head… |
Preheat the oven to 425 F/218 C.
To prepare the flounder, rise the fish and pat dry. Brush both sides of the fish with olive oil, then place in a roasting dish lined with baking parchment (so the skin won’t stick). Place the fish white skin side down in the dish, and bake until the flesh pulls away easily from the bone, about 18-20 minutes.
Place the fish on a flat surface and cut an outline of the top two fillets – trace a line down the backbone, and also an inch from the outside edge of the fish from head to tail. Using a spatula or wide knife, remove the fillets by lifting them up and away from the backbone. Plate the top two fillets
Using a knife, lift the backbone and the tailbone and set aside. Separate the bottom fillets and plate them.
(Photo: Kang Kim for New York Magazine. Illustrations by John Burgoyne.)
We ate the fish with a rice (quinoa for me!) mixed with a cooked tomato and shallot sauce.
LoveBites 
Hi there, I came across your blog by randomly searching for Wild Rose Detox, great posts! I’m just wondering, how much weight did you lose by the end of the detox? Would you recommend other people doing it? I see that the ingredients are not that difficult to follow as I cook Chinese dishes at home with similar ingredients anyway (except for soy sauce and starch thickening which is hard to get rid of). I’m about to start mine but I’m worried about how it would affect dining out as Chinese New Year celebration is coming up shortly.
Hi Joyce! Thanks for reading and yes, I would definitely recommend following the Wild Rose diet – cutting out caffeine, alcohol, yeast and dairy did wonders for my skin and hair! You may find it tough at the CNY dinners, since soy sauce, sesame oil, cooking wine or any cooking sauces for that matter are not allowed. So unless you’re eating boiled chicken, steamed or grilled fish (with no sauce) or steamed veggies, you may go hungry I’m afraid! If you haven’t started it yet, perhaps wait until after CNY so you can have a good go at it and not feel like you’re missing out 🙂
My first detox was the most successful in terms of finishing the full two weeks and taking all the supplements. I also lost the most weight, almost too much! However the following two times I only finished the diet and not the supplements – they made me quite ill the 3rd time around. So the lesson is, if you start feeling ill and like something’s not right, then stop the supplements and just keep going with the diet. Pamper yourself at the same time (lots of foot massages and steam room sessions!) and continue exercising for the best results 🙂
Good luck – you’ll feel great afterwards!
Hi Joyce! Thanks for reading – here we are almost one year later and Chinese New Year is approaching once more 🙂 it’s a great detox and cutting out processed foods, sugar, dairy and alcohol make you feel really great afterwards! The ingredients are not that difficult but it takes effort and time – there will be times when you are tempted to fall off the wagon. Do yourself a favour and try to avoid temptations as much as possible. I don’t know about you, but saying no to suckling pig and lucky noodles would be too difficult for me 🤓 why not start your detox immediately after CNY?