The Cure for Holiday Excess

Spending a day eating simple, tasty and pure recipes from cookbook author Adina Niemerow is the perfect way to recover from holiday overindulgence.

By Emily Kaiser

For Adina Niemerow, overindulgence (even the holiday-season kind) has a remedy. The San Francisco–based private chef, whose résumé includes an externship at Napa’s French Laundry, has a recent book, Super Cleanse, in which she offers one-day and weeklong eating plans built around delicious vegetable-based dishes. Her detoxes are not about backing away from food; if anything, they’re about getting closer to it. “A cleanse is a chance to pull out of your daily routine,” she says. “It’s a chance to look at what you’re consuming—and what’s consuming you.”

Some of Niemerow’s ingredient combinations are surprising, but the flavors blend together beautifully. For a hearty salad, she rubs raw kale with a little bit of salt to tenderize it, then tosses it with avocado, radish and olives. For a breakfast “porridge,” she chops fresh apples, almonds and ginger, then tops the mixture with sweet dried goji berries and ground flax seeds. These six dishes all work as a single-day detox, but they’re also tasty enough to incorporate into a healthy everyday diet and can easily be doubled or tripled.