The January 2nd diet

Happy New Year, everybody!

Mine started inauspiciously.  5 minutes to midnight found me with a throbbing Class A headache, passing up a hoarded bottle of Veuve Cliquot for some sparkling non-alcoholic cider.  It’s not that I’d overdone it so much on New Year’s Eve.  I think it was the preceding week of cookies and chocolate and fried foods and odd little treats at odder times of day..it’s strange how you can never fit in 3 square meals when you’re cooking all the time.

By January 2nd, when we planned to have our last bout of festivities–a potluck brunch with friends–I was ready to detox big-time. Usually I just eat apples, one after another, for about a week.  I like them, and they make me feel better, but it’s definitely not for everybody.  And you can’t just serve people a big bowl of apples for brunch.  So I went hunting on EYB for a fruit salad, and look what I found!  Mollie Katzen’s winter salad balances restorative, January-bright tart and citrusy flavors with smooth and comforting ones like banana and pear.  I didn’t have all the ingredients, but I had enough to get close.

It was so good I had it for breakfast again today.  I felt so revived I could just about handle another round of cookies, or some potato fritters, or a haunch of venison…or, well, maybe, just another bowl of fruit salad.