Menu Plan: A Chocolate / Coffee Abstention

I have some loooong overdue dental work coming up in a couple of weeks. Basically some bonds that had aged need to be replaced, but guess what? Once a bond is set in your mouth, it has a 5 year life, more or less. Whatever color the dentist chooses for your bond, therefore, is the brightest possible color that bond is destined to be for 5 years, because you cannot "tooth whiten" the composite used for bonds (as I understand it, the same composite used to make white fillings). Ironically, bonds can stain slowly with time (as with coffee, wine, etc.), but there's no simple way to whiten a bond short of replacing it. This means that if I whitened my teeth with one of those commercial kits sold at, say, Target, I'd have some whiter teeth - but the bonds would stay their original color and stick out like sore thumbs.

So, all that said, I took the opportunity and the offer from my dentist of a free tooth whitening before I get the new bonds installed. Do you know what this means? It means, for the next two weeks:

• Nothing that stains teeth. No coffee, no red wine, no dark teas, no chocolate. While, amazingly, I have a hard time considering abstaining from these just for the fact that I maybe should not be having them every day - I have no problem with the idea of abstaining for a two week period while my teeth are being whitened. I am not going to mess up the 5 years that I'll be wearing these soon-to-be installed new bonds - and so am going for optimum results.
• I have these custom-molded trays in my mouth for a minimum of 4-6 hours each evening (or overnight). So basically, as soon as my husband arrives home and we get the girls in bed, I'm wearing this fabulous-looking implement for the entire evening...for the next two weeks.

Ergo, my biggest vices (coffee with heavy creamer, and dark chocolate) are off the menu for two weeks, as is polite evening conversation with my husband. I know, I know: who has the bright idea to schedule this kind of scenario in the two weeks before Christmas? But truth was: it was the only time that it could happen - and it just may save me some carbs and calories, maybe even more this time of year than other times.

(This doesn't really affect my general menu plan for the week. It does, however, give you an idea if you've been trying to shake a chocolate bender for a while: set yourself up for some expensive long-term-implications dental work that involves a couple of weeks of tooth whitening prep.)

And, by the way: my oven is still kaput, at least for the next week. Crockpot and stovetop cooking are the name of the game.

Here's the menu plan for the week:

Monday:
Breakfast - Bananas, whole milk
Lunch - Eggs and bacon
Dinner - Crock pot tamari chicken thighs (Nature's Promise chicken drumsticks and thighs on sale at Giant this week)

Tuesday:
Breakfast - Stir-fried bok choy, mashed boiled eggs
Lunch - Intermittent fast, perhaps
Dinner - Crock pot garlic ginger pork loin (pork loin's on sale at Giant) with cabbage and leeks

Wednesday:
Breakfast - Banana cinnamon whole milk yoghurt smoothie (maybe with some whey protein in my case)
Lunch - Veggie soup with leftover pork loin, maybe seasoned with some star anise
Dinner - NY Strip (on sale at Giant this week), cut into pieces, marinated, stir-fried on the stovetop, topped with gorgonzola and tossed on a salad

Thursday:
Breakfast - Persimmons slow-cooked overnight in the crockpot, topped with autumn spices and Kerrygold and/or heavy cream (Persimmons are on sale at Giant this week!), prosciutto
Lunch - Scrambled eggs with gorgonzola
Dinner - Leftovers, whatever they may be

Friday:
Breakfast - Cheese, sliced apples and almond butter
Lunch - Curried pumpkin soup
Dinner - Maybe out somewhere, like a Chipotle steak salad bol, or a bunless Five Guys burger? In any case it will result in meat and veggies, most likely :)