Real Food is Awesome

So it's been an interesting bit of time dealing with the fallout of the surgery but I can happily say I am eating normally (well, not old normally - but normal food normally) and digestion seems to be going well. I've even been able to start adding back in Greek Yogurt and Sheep and Goat Milk Cheeses without too much effect. I cannot begin to tell you how amazingly happy this makes me.

I also cannot tell you what an eye opener this has been. I had my follow up with the surgeon today and he informed me that I actually had Necrotizing Cholecystitis (on it's way to gangrene). Which basically boils down to my gallbladder was dying and beginning to become toxic to my body. Which may explain a lot of the food issues I have been having. It also makes me feel really lucky to be here, because of the research I could find it suggested that what I had was mere steps away from becoming sepsis - which and often does kill.

So I have two options now - go back to the way things were and basically have IBS type symptoms my whole life or completely shift my eating paradigm and really heal. I (We really) have chosen the latter. To do what we've been trying to do all along. So far we've done really well. The most important steps I am taking are the following:

• Step 1 - Adjust Overall Diet
• Adjust portions - Smaller meals when I feel hungry and eating less at each meal. I feel like I am a bit more intune with my body now and can more adequately understand my full signals but I want to stick with it.
• Food Diary - I am going to make an effort for the next month or two to keep a food diary, starting today. This should allow me to monitor how my body seems to be responding to certain foods both at the time of eating them and over the course of the day. This is also how I plan to become more aware of my digestion as unpleasant a subject as it can sometimes be.
• Rethink my food pyramid - This one is going to take careful thought and planning. I know now that 'fad' diets and multiple juicing fasts aren't going to help my body truly heal. Instead I need to adjust the entire picture. 
• COOK! - This one is the most important both to changing and to this lovely blog. I'm also hoping it will help me increase my posting rate here. Cooking at home is the only way I am going to know exactly what is in my food, so it just needs to happen. Plain and simple.
• Increase Water - This one is by far one of the most important to me. I deluded myself into thinking I was okay drinking clear sodas, iced tea, and the like. They're fine but I need to be sure I am taking in water also. So I'm working on toting around a 3L bottle of water with me and it is my eventual goal to drink one full bottle (or more) a day.
• Step 2 - Adjust Meat Intake:
• No Beef - I have been cutting down on red meat intake anyway due to eating far more than I would/should ever have needed to in the first twenty nine years of my life.
• Little to no pork - I really shouldn't have pork but we have a local farmer who humanely raises and kills his animals with the help of a local butcher. So I will allow myself to occasionally (really, really occasionally) have leaner cuts.
• Fish - to be enjoyed abundantly but with caution of the overly oily varieties
• Chicken - boneless, skinless only - with preference to leaner cuts.
• Decrease total consumption - I have had nothing better to do than watch several (about five) food documentaries, read several nutritional related blogs, websites, and books since the surgery and have decided that instead of following the Standard American Diet (SAD) I am going to adjust and have meat be an addition instead of the main focus.
• Step 3 - Paying more attention to grains - 
• Wheat - I am aiming for gluten free, but if I have wheat it will be whole grain with as few additives as possible.
• Rice - I have been told it is better to do brown over white, so we have been cooking more brown rice. But I know white rice is still going to always be my favorite. Especially in sushi.
• Corn - This one is tough as it is in absolutely everything! But I plan to really ingredient watch and remove corn syrups from my diet.
• Baking - make homemade treats as often as possible using allergy free recipes. 
• Step 4 - The ongoing war with dairy - This one is by far the most exciting and tricky for me. I intend to continue towards a more vegetarian/vegan style of baking and cooking but some of the research suggests I need to include some items in to help my body process food.
• Yogurt - Begin eating Greek Style yogurt (one containing as few additives as possible and if possible also organic or at least stating no growth hormones or antibiotics were used). So far this has worked out well and I need the probiotics and live cultures to help my body break down foods. I have tried Goat's milk yogurt and could not eat it, but enjoyed baking with it. I also did not like soy yogurt. I will still be experimenting with Vegan alternatives.
• Cheese - Sheeps and Goats milk are preferred, especially aged cheeses. I will eventually try eating some Cow's milk cheese but I want to be a bit further down the road before I potentially tax my system so much. Still to be consumed in low amounts and avoided if possible. I plan on purchasing some Nutritional Yeast to use in place of cheese in most instances and experimenting with making Vegan Cheeses in the future.
• Milk - I have found I prefer Almond Milk to almost anything else these days, so I intend to stick with it. I also prefer Coconut Whipped Cream. I am however trying to avoid Soy as it can be bad for me so I will be working on alternatives for that as well.
• Step 5 - Super charge Vegetable and Fruit intake - 
• Vegetables - It is my intention to move towards making vegetables the majority of my meals rather than a minority. I also want to work towards consuming more raw vegetables and more dark leafy greens. In fact we made an amazing salad with kale and arugula last night. A Kale salad, who knew?! I have heard so many statistics and numbers about how much of your diet should be raw, and yet I have also seen so many areas that suggest you can't eat too much raw without your gallbladder. So I'm just going to increase my veggies (via raw, lightly cooked, and juiced varieties) and see how my body handles it.
• Fruit - I have to water down apple and pear juice. It blows my mind. The juice is delicious to me but is far too sweet so I am forced to water it down. A very good problem to have! Apple and pear juices seem to come recommended for gallbladder issues so I have no problem continuing to include them (both homemade and not from concentrate, additive free store bought). 

So take all of that, add in that I will be watching what fats I consume (as in oil based) and trying to keep to a homemade agenda and things should go pretty amazingly. Already I have been feeling amazing with the meals Logician made me and the ones we worked together on. My first temptation since surgery was sugar. I craved sugary things. He had bought regular cookies for a study session and almost all of them came home. We ate them, but I felt bad about the additives and sugars in them. So when the craving came back I made homemade allergy free treats to help. 

The first were these Sugar Cookies. I tempted fate by making substitutions - Trader Joe's Gluten Free Flour Blend, Coconut Sugar, and almond milk - but they came out okay. Not great, but okay. I'm not sure if I made them too small or if I missed a step but they came out very flat and super grainy in the middle. Though once we dolloped on some coconut whipped cream they were just dandy.

The second turned out better - Vegan Blackberry Lemon Ginger Muffins, and by better I mean amazing. I did make a few substitutions here as well, again almond milk instead of rice; golden flaxseed meal instead of regular ground flaxseeds. They were still pretty incredible.

So everything was prepared and ready to go pretty easily. We were out of coconut sugar so I used regular white refined sugar (grumpy faces were made) but I am glad I did. If I had used a liquid sweetener (maple, honey, or agave) I think they would have been too moist. I used homemade young crystalized ginger that had been hanging out in the fridge for awhile, next time I might try fresh (in a smaller amount).

 I also chose to bake them in cupcake liners just to see what would happen. The result was they stuck just as much in the wrapper as they would have in the pan. You live and learn! I also used regular white confectioners sugar for the lemon glaze. However I look at it this way - we bought it and our pantry is full of stuff. We should use what we have instead of just tossing it because it doesn't 'fit the bill' as it were. These were not only amazing looking but they tasted great too. They were a little moist (I could have probably cooked them the extra few minutes) but I took them out as soon as the toothpick came out clean. With a little SF Earth Balance and the glaze they are one of my new favorite treats!

So far our other meals haven't been too exciting a lot of chicken, brown rice, and veggies. Though Logician did make a tasty curry soup, we had turkey tacos, and a few other fairly normal but more healthy version meals the last few weeks. Now to find more awesome things to cook!

Be well!

Little did I know...

I started off my last post discussing how I was having a food crisis. Little did I know, I truly was. I woke the next morning with terrible pain that I associated with bad dinner choices and a milk allergy. However that pain grew progressively worse within a short few hours and I ended up at our nearest Urgent Care clinic. I was sure I had food poisoning but Logician had none of the symptoms. Since we'd shared a pizza, it wouldn't fit that I would be sick and he wasn't.

So off I went to get an ultrasound and I learned that I had gallstones. This in an of itself is not a particularly frightening thing. According to most of the research I have done since something like 80% of people have these little buggers but only a smaller percentage (I think I read 20%) actually have what are called gallbladder 'attacks.' Lucky me....

I was told to I would have to have surgery and left the clinic awaiting a surgeon referral and staunchly saying I was going to try anything else (Acupuncture, Chinese Herbs, dietary changes, supplements, anything). I reread the report from the ultrasound technician and saw that a stone was overlying the opening to my gallbladder - I was concerned but certainly if it was a situation the doctor would have said... Or so I thought.

Now don't get me wrong here - I'm not bashing doctors of any form. They have reasons I will never know for what they tell me and don't tell me. I'm only saying that I likely should have asked more questions.

So Friday I developed a fever of 100.5. Now in my little brain I never before believed in going to the doctor unless you were dying (as I thought I was Wednesday) so a little fever was nothing to me. Thankfully Logician thinks differently and encouraged me to call the Urgent Care clinic for advice. The advice was to go to the ER. Hooray....

I was admitted to the hospital straight from the ER Friday evening and told I was going to have gallbladder surgery the next morning. The stone that was overlying the duct from my gallbladder was actually completely blocking the way and my gallbladder was working itself overtime to try to push passed the obstacle it faced (Sounds a lot like something I would do...). So it had to come out.

The surgery itself was short, sweet, and according to plan. I have four little holes (not really sure how else to describe them) with three around my gallbladder's former home and one in my belly button. I was released from the hospital the same night (partially I think due to the fact I desperately wanted to be home) and am now home. I can't work for two weeks and then I have to start back on light duty to see how that goes - the last thing I need to be doing is pushing my poor little abdomen around massaging people when it's been so traumatized! I can't lift over ten pounds and I am exhausted - all the time.

But this has given me so much time to consider how things were and a sort of fresh place to start from the change them. Having surgery on your 30th birthday is a hell of a way to break in a new decade if I say so myself. So now's the time to make changes, especially since my poor digestive system can't tolerate some of the abuses I used to throw at it! And I can promise that pizza Wednesday night will be the last chain restaurant pizza I ever eat! No more cravings there and if I do get some I'll find a way to make at home GF/DF/SF pizza that will be delicious!

Though this also poses a harder problem for me as I cannot quickly fix this. There is no magical quick diet that's going to help my body recover from what has been done. Instead now is the time I HAVE to make dietary changes.

The main changes I will be focusing on are:

- Going completely Gluten Free (GF): Logician can't have it and I have seen in my recent research that going GF can help with digestive issues moving forward from surgery. So this is a happy direction to go.

- Going completely Dairy Free (DF): I know, I already was supposed to be here. But I wasn't. I cheated (sometimes a little, sometimes a lot) and my body suffered for it. But I CAN'T have anything full fat dairy since surgery anyway. The only exception here would be if my body can tolerate some sort of low fat, possibly Greek style yogurt. I have not been able to find a non-dairy yogurt that I like to eat on its' own. So for baking definitely sticking with DF/Soy Free options but eating will be a trial and error experiment in a few months.

- Going completely Soy Free (SF): This one is going to be the biggest challenge. We are already avoiding it as much as possible but we love Asian food and one of the staples of many recipes is Tofu. Tofu will likely be the only exception I will make but with limits. I will only buy organic (to ensure it is not genetically modified) and I will not eat it frequently. However soy milk, soy protein shakes, soy creamers, etc - out!

I'm going to have to relearn my body now. I almost feel like a child learning what is good and what is horrible. It's an interesting place to be sitting at thirty, that is for sure!

I can't do any sort of decent cooking for the short term future - but rest assured I will be trying new products and as soon as I can be back in the kitchen I will bring you more GF/DF/SF goodness!

Be well!

The Difficult Task of Food

No apologies this time. I've been gone and part of it has been because I have been having a personal crisis with food. And I do believe it qualifies for the word crisis.

Since discovering that I do have a dairy allergy it has become one of the biggest battles for me. I love cheese and there has yet to come across my taste buds a worthy alternative (though I'm currently beginning experiments with nutritional yeast). So I am easily tempted. Especially when it comes with bread. Seems like a pretty common weakness.

But it's driven me to gain back almost all of the weight I had lost between the Reboots and exercise. So that in turn makes me depressed, which of course makes me crave comfort foods... I think you can see the pattern starting here. Now add in some insomnia, a increasingly common sort of restless leg feeling, and fatigue and you have a monster of an issue. I can make excuses all day long about how I can't do this or that, but that's all they are.

So I have done a little branching out in the last few weeks, in the attempt to curb this nasty food habit that is creeping back up on me - and I've made the decision to go ahead and try another (much shorter) Reboot in a few weeks.

I can tell you one thing Maangchi is a life saver! We have recently made a new batch of Kimchi (and by we, I mean I. It was so much fun!) and tried out two new recipes. Though I was disappointed when I found out that the rice cakes I bought contained wheat.

First and foremost I kept promising pictures of the Kimchiguk and I finally have one for you! I may have more pictures but they are on Logician's phone and I don't think waking him for it is very polite.

It's not exactly a pretty picture but it shows the soup quite well. I usually make a double batch of Maangchi's recipe (Kimchiguk) and being the people we are we added in extra pork belly this last time. Though the next time I think we might try it with some fresh chicken (from our local farmer). Our newest batch of Kimchi is the best yet and it's already quite spicy even though it's been keeping in the fridge. I think it's going to make a really tasty soup!

The thing I love the most about using the Kimchi in this way is that it allows me to make more! I have way too much fun cutting up the cabbage, salting it, and making it into delicious fermented joy.


I bought two new items just for making Kimchi this time also. I bought a large plastic bowl (with cute teddy bears on it) and a large strainer. This made things SO much easier! I used the Easy Kimchi version of the recipe, though I have been wanting to make whole cabbage Kimchi also. I am going to try to get my hands on one of the clay pots here in the next few months. But it was so much easier to salt the cabbage, strain it, and rinse it with my two new kitchen helpers!

 The left picture is the cabbage soaking in it's cold water bath prior to being salted. The right hand picture shows the cabbage shortly after being salted. I like how the green stands against the pretty red of the strainer!

I tried to stay as close to the recipe as I could this time (finding 10 lbs of cabbage without a scale or patience is somewhat challenging) but I think I only ended up using about 6lbs of cabbage and I only had a cup and a half of pepper flakes left! I had to buy more for the next recipe I made that same day, but it was too late for the Kimchi.

That night I decided to keep going with the spicy theme and made Ddeokbokki. Which is a snack recipe on her website but was easily transformed into a meal with the addition of pork belly and lots of delicious vegetables. I could not bring myself to buy an entire bag of dried anchovies (which is about $20 here) as it's such a large bag and I wasn't sure if I could bring myself to use them. So instead I used five dried shitake mushrooms and the kombu. It was delicious. So much so I thought Logician might gobble it all up in one go! It's definitely something we will make again, likely in a vegetarian version (and maybe if we're lucky we can find/make rice cakes without gluten).

The last recipe I tried of hers (which will certainly not be the last ever) was for fried chicken. I choose to make this on a day we were both definitely needing comfort food, because I knew I could make it gluten free and dairy free. It turned out amazing (way better than expected) and even though it was fried it didn't taste like it at all! The recipe is called Yangnyeom-tongdak and it's a sort of sweet and spicy coated fried chicken. We ate it with kimchi and vegetables and it was perfect! I used only drumsticks (for ease) and for the gluten free flour replacement I used Bob's Red Mill Biscuit and Pie Crust mix (as we will never cook with it otherwise). I tried following Maangchi's method for breading the chicken and it didn't go well for me (think scramble egg and a bit of mushy flour) so I pressed what I could on the chicken, added another beaten egg and coated the chicken with the gluten free flour mix. It was so good. I want to make it right now and I'm not even hungry!

You'll notice some cupcakes hanging out there in the background - it was a new product we tested out. Betty Crocker has come out with boxed GF cake mixes and this one was on sale (likely on it's way out). The cupcakes are Devil's Food Chocolate Cupcakes with Funfetti icing (because there needed to be some badness involved). All in all it was a tasty comfort food dinner that allowed us to cheat a bit (with all the not so pleasant ingredients in the icing) and yet have a GFDF dinner and dessert.

The cakes were good, though a little dry and Logician reported that had I not told him they were GF he might not have known they were anything other than slightly dry cupcakes.

His birthday is in a few weeks (it will actually be right after my intended Reboot) and I am going to use Cybele Pascale's Red Velvet cake recipe to make Blue Velvet Cupcakes (which, interesting note I have found that Trader Joe's GF Flour mix is actually a very nice substitute for the blend she uses and it's much cheaper even if the end result is a hair grittier than it would be otherwise). I will likely also try my hand as some sort of dairy free mock cream cheese style icing for said cupcakes.

With the chicken being such a big hit I may make it again or I may try my hand at making a sort of veggie tempura coated with this same batter. I'll have to see how I'm feeling at the time!

Either way I will have some more kitchen adventures for you soon, including a daily update of my Reboot (I am planning on starting on the 20th of July as I have a long weekend (It will be a five day Reboot, with me only working on day 1). I intend to do just straight juice and protein shakes (we've been using a Raw GF/DF/SF powder mix) and we will see what happens! Hopefully if nothing else it breaks this vicious cycle of cheese craving!

Eat well!