Detox Desperado

I would say to housewives, be not daunted by one failure, nor by twenty.

Resolve that you will have good bread, and never cease striving after this result till you have effected it. If persons without brains can accomplish this, why cannot you?

Marion Cabell Tyree

’Housekeeping In Old Virginia' ed. (1878)

Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.

James Beard

(1903-1985)

For the past twenty three days I've been eating like a gluten-free vegan. And I feel great for it. Mostly.

I'm one of those extremely fortunate individuals who has no food allergies and I actually love fruit and vegetables so managing my 'five a day' is no problem at all. I have a bit of a weakness for chocolate, love toast with honey perhaps a tad too much, and eat almost no meat, but generally I follow an everything in moderation diet and consider myself reasonably healthy, borne out so far by those things they measure annually like BMI, blood pressure and cholesterol. I do like to do a detox every now and again though, to give the ol' metabolism a little boost.

And just before Christmas I volunteered to support a colleague of mine who wanted to detox as one of her earliest New Year's resolutions. Twenty eight days: gluten-free vegans the pair of us.

And it's been no problem - there have been things I've missed a little (especially in the cold weather, nothing satisfies quite like some starchy carbs) but there's nothing I've really craved. Until this weekend. Suddenly all I could think about was bread. Any and all kinds of bread. With butter.

I know that proper, grown-up gluten-free vegans would probably whip up some delicious alternative (and feel free to shout up with ideas if there are any of you out there) but my culinary skills are limited at the best of times and I've never tried bread making. I would clearly not have cut it as a Virginian housewife in the 19th century. So instead, I just looked at mouthwatering pictures of bread on Flickr in the hope that I could fool my brain into believing it was getting what it wanted.

But you know how it is... once a craving strikes, it's difficult to ignore. And I think bread is going to be calling my name loudly for the next five days. I'll have to hum to drown it out.

Five days will fly by.

What would you miss most if you were on a strictly fruit and veg diet?