Prior to heading off to The Spa Resorts a couple of weeks back, it was important that Pat pre cleansed prior to arriving in Koh Samui to do his fast. As per the spa website:

Before the Cleanse We advise you do a Pre-cleanse fast to prepare your body for all Cleansing fasts. Eat mostly raw foods (salads & fruits), lots of vegetables & drink plenty of water. Plus drink Liver Flush Drinks* twice each day, a.m. and p.m. Avoid heavy proteins, white breads, cakes, sugar & other highly processed foods as well as coffee, alcohol & soft drinks. Plenty of vegetable & fruit juices are best. We suggest you eat and drink alkaline-forming foods such as: all fresh fruits, raw vegetables & juices, salad greens, sprouts, apple cider vinegar, dates, dried apricots, dried figs, grapefruit, melons, raisins, millet, molasses, lima beans and lentils.

Even though we eat a diet rich in these kind of foods anyway, Pat usually has some kind of meat dish for his dinner, and has a hard time only eating raw at dinner time, despite the fact it is 50ºC here most days (I find it hard to eat hot foods in hot weather). So I made some hot vegetable pre cleanse meals for him in the week leading up to our departure as well as plenty of Liver Flush drinks as per the recommendation.

This volume makes a very large crock pot/slow cooker so if you find you need to half or quarter the recipe to fit your size pan, feel free. We were making a large batch to get through.

Recipe | Spinach and Broccoli Soup 

Ingredients:

2 brown/yellow onions chopped

2 heads of broccoli florets, cut into small pieces

3 white pototatoes, peeled and chopped

250g bag of baby spinach, traditional spinach or silverbeet, washed and chopped

7 cups of water

5 vegetable stock cubes (I use Marigold Organic Swiss Vegetable Bouillon – it’s gluten free and I recognise ALL the ingredients)

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 T coconut oil

1 tsp cracked pepper

1/2 tsp salt (I never use table salt – use Himalayan or Celtic Sea Salt or any other natural salt)

Garnish: a handful of pinenuts toasted in the oven with light spray of olive oil for approximately 7 – 10 minutes until browned.

Brown the onions and garlic cloves with the coconut oil in your soup pot. I used my slow cooker.

Once browned, add the remainder of the ingredients and bring to the boil.

Once boiling, turn down to simmer until all ingredients are soft.

I used an immersion blender to blend the soup into a puree whilst still in the pot, however you could place the soup in a food processor when cooled or a blender to puree.

Garnish with toasted pine nuts and enjoy!