There has been popular demand from friends and family to do a post on the Wild Rose Cleanse.  Although Kristin and I are not experts, we have done the cleanse a couple times and we have always benefited from it.

Since I was very young I have suffered from eczema.  At first I thought it was because I washed my hands too much and too often. I tried using creams without fragrances, gentle soaps and used many types of ointments.  My eczema would not go away.  I was introduced to the Wild Rose Detox from my younger sister, Erin.   The first time I did the cleanse it was painful and hard.  I didn’t see much results from the detox.  I was grumpy and hungry.  It was not until I moved out from my parent’s house that I did the detox again.  This time my sister and I were very strict on what we ate.  After doing this detox I noticed big changes in my eczema.  It would clear up and wouldn’t come back for a couple months.  Also my sugar cravings disappeared.  It became routine for my sister and I to do a cleanse every couple of months when my eczema flared up.  I knew my eczema had to do with my diet.  I took note of foods that flared up my eczema: sugar, msg, alcohol and eggs.  I avoided these things as much as I could. I also tried to incorporate the Wild Rose Diet philosophy into our daily diets: avoiding sugary foods, processed foods, and flours.  I think it has helped tremendously with my eczema.  I haven’t used cortisone cream in over a year and I rarely have flare ups.  I have modified my diet even more and  have a green smoothie daily and a tablespoon of raw apple cider vinegar.  I believe it helps to have the smoothie and vinegar as it balances your pH in your body and prevents any Candida yeast buildup and helps build up good bacteria in your body.  I don’t know if this works for everyone but I recommend that if you have eczema try to eliminate foods that make you flare up.  Try doing a cleanse as I believe eczema is a sign that your liver is overworked and cannot remove the toxins from your body. The only way your body can eliminate it is through your skin.

Wild Rose Detox- 12 to 14 day diet

The Wild Rose follows a strict diet of 80% alkaline/basic or neutral foods and 20% acidic foods. There have been studies that acidic foods lead to cancer and other health problems.  The Wild Rose Diet also removes sugars, fermented foods, and simple carbohydrates to help to reduce Candida yeast growth in your body.  This diet helps to cleanse your body and remove the build up of toxins from our regular diets.

We use the book Herbal D-tox cookbook for cleansing, which you can purchase at a health food store. http://nutritionplus.com/store/product/1772/HERBAL-D-TOX-COOK-BOOK/
Here are the first few pages (and this is mostly what we use) http://nhe.net/healthfoodstoressalt/salt2.pdf
The book has many recipe ideas, but I found many of the recipes are not part of the 80% acceptable foods.  Basically eat like you are on a simple vegan/vegetarian/pescetarian diet.

Recommendations:
Start clearing the fridge of anything you can’t eat.  Make lots of breakfast foods that you can reheat as we found it hard to make breakfast foods in the morning.  Learn to make Almond milk as it is really hard to find any that does not contain yeast, cane sugar and other processed foods.  You will live off of Almond milk! (I included a recipe for you at the end of the blog).  Do not go out to eat unless you like watching your friends eat yummy food.  Make extra dinner to have for lunch or breakfast. Buy a bottle of Braggs Soya Sauce. It will make a difference when you are cooking.  It is the only soya sauce allowed since it is not fermented and does not contain wheat.

Breakfast Ideas:
-left over dinner food
-1 cup coffee with almond milk
-millet and almond milk with cinnamon (cook like porridge)
-buckwheat and almond milk with cinnamon (cook like porridge)
-brown rice porridge made with almond milk and cinnamon
-for a treat, have oatmeal (once a week if other foods is from 80% column)  or egg
-you can also add apples (since you are allowed 1 daily), frozen berries, almond butter, flax seeds and cinnamon to any of your porridges to make it sweeter.

Dinner/lunch ideas:
-brown rice/potatoes/yams/squash as your starch
-fish- you can eat as much as you want.
-any vegetables are allowed.
– if you are making millet or buckwheat, make a combination with brown rice and cook in your rice cooker.  This is an easy way to make them taste better.
-use the almond grounds from making almond milk to thicken soups and stews (may make your stews a funny creamy color)
-we made meals such as stews, fish curry, vegetable goulash, vegetable fried rice, vegetable stir fry, potato and leek casserole and lentil dahl
-you can make lemon and olive oil dressing or hummus dressing for your salads
-we also had soups with our meals – for the stock we found a organic vegetable stock that did not contain yeast.
-we treated ourselves to chicken once a week.

Foods to watch out for
-not allowed: any processed foods, pasta, breads, anything that is fermented (soya sauce, vinegar), any refined sugars, too much soy products, too much beans, peanuts,  any processed flours, avoid Campbells stocks as they have yeast in them, dairy, mushrooms, tropical fruit, black tea, honey.  This means no cakes or sweets!
-if you are buying soya milk or almond milk look for ones without cane sugar in the ingredients.
-although tofu is allowed, we avoid it as much as we can especially since it is processed.

Here is a simple recipe that you can make for the detox.  This is my version of vegetarian chili.  When designing a meal on this detox think from scratch and vegetarian.  This recipe is great because it is all in one pot and you can make a lot to save for many meals.

Always prepare your ingredients before cooking.  I always start cooking any dish by softening onions and then adding carrots and celery.  Always add garlic later as it can burn easily and make your chili bitter.

I hate chopping jalapeno peppers because it makes my hands burn!Cook until all ingredients are soft. This takes about 5 minutes.

If you are using canned beans, make sure you are buying ones that are low in sodium.  Also make sure you rinse them to remove extra sodium and to rinse the gook off.  Rinsing also helps to remove the stuff that causes gas.

You can always add quinoa to any recipe.  It is a great source of protein especially on a vegetarian diet. When the grain becomes translucent, it is cooked! They look kind of like alien eggs.

These bowls were made by my baby sister, Erin.  So pretty!  If you are not on the detox, you can serve this with cheese and bread.  Yum. 

Vegetarian Chili (makes about 6-8 servings)

Prep time: 20 min  Cook time: 1 hour

• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves minced
• 2 ribs celery diced
• 1 large carrot diced
• 1 zucchini chopped
• 2 bunches or vine ripe tomatoes, chopped
• 2 jalapeno peppers diced
• 1 yellow pepper, chopped
• 1 can kidney beans, rinsed (can used dry)
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 1 cup uncooked quinoa rinsed
• cilantro, chopped
• chili powder to taste
• salt, pepper to taste
• olive oil for cooking

Chop and prepare all ingredients. Make sure that you rinse the canned beans. In a heavy pot, cook onions in some olive oil until translucent.  Add carrots, celery, and garlic and cook for about 3-4 minutes.  You want to start softening them.  Add the tomatoes, jalapeno, pepper and zucchini.  Bring the mixture to a boil and then turn down to a simmer. Add chili powder to taste. Most recipes ask for about 1 tablespoon but I find that I need to add about 2 or 3 tablespoons to mine.  Add the beans, quinoa, and corn to the pot.  Simmer mixture for about 45 minutes.  Taste the mixture.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Just before serving mix in the cilantro.

Recipe for almond milk from http://vegetarian.about.com/od/rawfoodsrecipes/r/almondmilk.htm

1 cup raw almonds
3 cups water

Soak 1 cup of almonds overnight in water.  Discard the water. (Soaking is supposed to help remove this chemical that prohibits the absorption of the nutrients)
Blend the almonds with 3 cups of water until smooth.  Strain the mixture through a strainer or cheese cloth.   You can refrigerate for 3 to 4 days.

You can keep the almond pulp and make almond cheese from it or almond hummus.

Check out other recipes on our blog  https://eatitnoworeatitlater.com/recipe-list/