Today is the day. Jason and I have officially succeeded in our 2-week clean food detoxification! Considering that the last detox we tried ended up with a lot of cheating and only lasted a week, I’m pretty proud that we were able to stick to it for so long. I have a new-found love of fruits and vegetables, and the past couple of weeks have been so valuable to me in terms of learning how to make more nutritious meals for us.

Here are some of the biggest things I learned in the last couple weeks:

1. It is REALLY HARD to not consume any refined sugar. Sugar is in everything. Bread, crackers, salad dressing, peanut butter, almond milk…EVERYWHERE. It’s not even something I really payed attention to before, but I do now.

2. We LOVE brown rice pasta! I’m so glad we discovered this on the detox! Jason hates whole wheat pasta so I usually use one of those “blends” that is mostly white flour, but brown rice pasta is a much more nutritious option and we both like the way it tastes.

3. Fruit makes a really good dessert. A lot of nights when I was craving a sweet, I just went and grabbed a whole piece of fruit instead. It’s not the same as cookies or candy but I was always surprised at how it got rid of the craving (or at least let me forget about it).

4. Jason can survive with only one serving of meat a day.

5. Any acid reflux symptoms I have are completely avoidable if I just eat the right way. Okay, I sort of already knew that. But it was still nice to be confirmed.

While it was an awesomely valuable experience, it’s a completely unreasonable and unnecessary way for us to eat all the time. But there are a lot of things that I hope we can carry on into our everyday diets. We’ll see how it goes!

In the meantime, ALL I could think about during the past two weeks was chocolate chip cookies. So you can guess what just came out of our oven.

Okay. These are hands-down the best chocolate chips cookies I have ever made. I wish that I had made them earlier in the day because I wasn’t able to get very good pictures of them (our daylight is now GONE at 7pm…blast you, fall!!!), but I have to share the recipe with you anyways. This was a first trial, but for whatever reason I got really lucky on the first try. I can’t not share this recipe with you.

Perfect Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies (adapted from a King Arthur Flour recipe)

• 4 T. butter, softened
• 1/4 c. granulated sugar
• 1/3 c. brown sugar
• 2 t. vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 t. apple cider vinegar
• 1 t. salt
• 1/4 t. baking powder
• 1/4 t. baking soda
• 1/2 c. white whole wheat flour
• 1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 c. semisweet chocolate chips

-In a medium sized mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugars together with an electric mixer.

-Mix in the vanilla, egg, vinegar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda until well combined.

-Add in the flour and mix just until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips with a spoon or spatula.

-Drop cookie dough by the tablespoon onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes (the edges of the cookie should be golden brown).

-Remove the cookies from the oven, let them cool a few minutes on the pan, and then remove them to a cooling rack to cool for another few minutes. Serve and enjoy! Makes 20 deliciously soft cookies.

These were even better than I had been dreaming of all week. The whole wheat flour is amazing and completely undetectable in these beauties. We deserve these cookies. And so do you…you need to make them ASAP.

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren