Last week I attended a class at 21 Acres called “Cleansing With Nature’s Most Important Tool: Food Food.” I was expecting a cooking class but this class was so much more.

The instructor, Elle Freeman, has a Masters in Nutrition from Bastyr University. She said that food, the freshly picked kind, has the ability to transform our health. She explained that our bodies naturally eliminate toxins (from the environment, from normal metabolic functions) and that a healthy body can normally eliminate these toxins. It is when our bodies are missing nutrients or have an overload of toxins that we can have aches and pains that can lead to larger health problems.

We can assist our bodies to purge itself of these toxins when we eat nutrients that support our organs of elimination. Elle provided a list of foods that are toxin releasing all-stars. On the list were many foods that are easy to incorporate into a daily diet – garlic (uncooked provides antibacterial properties), rosemary (stimulates liver to produce extra bile assisting digestion) and daikon radish (clears mucus from the body) – to name a few.

After a brief lesson in cleansing-rich foods and their properties, we put her theory into practice by constructing some toxin-releasing food – cauliflower pizza with fresh green pesto and goat cheese.

Though pizza dough constructed out of steamed, pureed cauliflower (along with herbs, coconut flour and eggs) doesn’t sound like it would taste good, the smell of the “dough” (as we were patting our pizza dough onto parchment paper) was so appetizing that I almost ate my pizza before it went into the oven.  Next, Elle created a pesto out of fresh arugula, parsley and spinach (from our 21 Acres Market) to top the pizzas.

As our pizzas were baking, Elle spoke of methods we could use to promote healing in our bodies. She constructed a turmeric tea mixed into organic whole milk. The creaminess of the tea satisfied my craving for dessert.

I left class satiated and confident that I could make subtle changes in my diet which would reap lifelong rewards.

-Rose Marie Gai