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!

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!

Amazing Food Everywhere!

So while I have been slacking off in posting, I have not been slacking off in the kitchen. We have been cooking up a storm of gluten and dairy free amazingness that I am going to try to explain to you. The sad thing is I keep forgetting to take pictures!

So first up - GF/DF Fudge

We needed a sweet treat that was going to satisfy my intense need for chocolate. Something I sadly had been having to do without because almost all chocolate you buy in the store has dairy in it, unless it's for baking. Enter Trader Joe's (Thank goodness!) who sell dairy free chocolate chips and delicious dark chocolate bars that are both cheap and dairy free. So inspired by this I again consulted Pinterest (which seems to house a lot of inspiration).

I found this pin from the Once a Month Mom that was for fudge. As always I didn't have exactly what was needed (really the only thing I didn't have was a conventional sifter and an 8 x 8 pan) so I made it in an eight inch round cake pan. We used this tea strainer we have as a sifter, which takes longer but worked just as well. I have since purchased a nifty three cup sifter which I will be using today to make another batch of fudge. I used carton coconut milk and found it to work surprisingly well. This fudge was amazing. We kept it in the fridge and it lasted a long time because one or two pieces is dark and rich enough to satisfy even the strongest craving.

I am still on a mission to find a more natural replacement for powdered sugar. I killed our blender attempting to make coconut powdered sugar for a cake several months ago and haven't tried a second attempt since then. I'm sure a good hour on the internet will solve that problem!

I also made another Allergy Free Red Velvet Cake using Cybele Pascale's recipe. I used a "rice beverage" as opposed to Rice Milk and I'm not sure it didn't negatively effect the cake (Logician says it was the best yet, so there is that). I also only have one eight inch round pan so I ended up using two springform pans. Which resulted in a thicker layer that caved in a bit while it settled. Since I had a new surprising indent I put some Trader Joe's Monticello Cherries in the middle, which was quite tasty. Again this is another recipe where I would love to substitute the powdered sugar with something else, but the coconut 'powdered' sugar gave the icing a strong molasses flavor that the vanilla extract then made too strong. So adaptation in progress!

That same night we also tried out a new Korean Dish - Kimchi Soup (Kimchiguk) made by Maangchi. Who by the way - if you haven't tried her food. Do it. It's incredible! We've only had one recipe Logician and I didn't agree on and we had to use different ingredients (I'll explain a bit further down!).

We started making her Easy Kimchi sometime last summer. The first batch we made was okay but we increased the spiciness and added more vegetables and such the second time and it's so much better! Logician first discovered Maangchi on YouTube watching one of her BBQ Pork videos, which got me hooked. So we turned to her when we made the kimchi. We had finished off almost all the old kimchi but had bought a new container specifically for making kimchi (plastic, not the beautiful clay pots. That comes next) so we made a new batch. So sitting lonely in the back of the fridge was this older, more sour kimchi. So I decided to make Kimchi Soup after seeing one of her newer videos (Recipe and Video here).

It was delicious! I picked up a new type of tofu which turned out to be really weird to me (Logician found that it grew on him) and it was my first experience cooking with pork belly on my own. But the soup was incredible. We had company so I made a double recipe which allowed me to use all the remaining older kimchi and some of the newer batch. It was so good we decided to make it again this week.

However, as we were on our way to the more Chinese based market to pick up what we needed, Logician became inspired by a different recipe for Braised Saury. I knew we had seen this canned fish somewhere before so we set off to find it in the market. As it turns out that particular market does not stock Saury so we opted to try Jack Mackerel instead. The recipe looked and smelled beautiful but was way too fishy for me! I couldn't eat it. I went to the Korean/Japanese influenced market this morning and found the exact brand she used in the video. So I am thinking in the next two weeks or so, we'll try it again.

Maangchi has so many recipes I want to try, but I am absolutely addicted to her Kimchi recipes! I want to get a clay pot (I saw a smaller one today for about $20.00) and make whole cabbage kimchi. But only time will tell if I get to!

One thing we have discovered is that the more Asian influenced food we cook, the less likely we are to run into Dairy and Wheat, our two biggest foes. However this does leave some room for GMO soy, MSG, and other nasty chemical things. However, it seems like the more we read labels the more we find out that there are less of these chemical bad guys in the things that are imported! Seriously! It seems awfully odd to me, but it does make me very happy.

I promise to take some step by step pictures of the Kimchi Guk tonight and a finished picture. It's going to be awesome. I will likely make a one and one half time recipe of it, since I have such awesome looking pork I want to have stewed in the broth and I also bought some Enoki mushrooms to place into the pot! I'm looking forward to dinner so much I'm hungry now!

Happy Eating!

What's on Hand Thursday #1

Well to be honest, I did not make this challenge happen yesterday but for good reason. There was a lot of running about town yesterday and we ended up stopping by one of our favorite more health inclined restaurants for lunch fairly late. So when it came to dinner time, we simply weren't hungry. I wasn't going to cook just to see the food sit - so no dinner.

Instead while trying to decide what to eat for breakfast this morning we came across a slight conundrum. Logician really wanted muffins. None of the places we have previously explored around us sell Gluten and Dairy Free muffins, and we are trying to save money by cooking at home. So we started thinking about what we could do, and I turned to Google for help.

Alas we only had limited baking supplies on hand. We only had one full stick and just under half of another of EarthBalance Butter, we only had two eggs... We have brown rice flour and xanthan gum but weren't sure how to use them together.... So I looked and looked until it occurred to me that really I should look for a Vegan Muffin recipe. I found a list of several recipes and chose the one here. 


I was quite happy to find it because suddenly we had a recipe that fit what we had in the house, though the recipe only says to use flour -Which now that I am thinking about it, is likely regular flour - and does not specify type we decided to use it. We did make some alterations/adjustments as follows:

Flour: We combined the remaining bits of Bisquick Gluten Free (also Dairy Free) Pancake mix with what we had left of Bob's Red Mill Gluten and Dairy Free Pancake mix. This was just enough flour to meet the recipes requirements (ideas for next time - add some applesauce or change the flour mixture).

Sugar: We are trying to do away with white and refined sugars and to switch to more natural and organic sweeteners. This is especially important as we're trying to avoid family history of diabetes. So instead of white refined or other misleading sugars we used a new find, Madhava Oranic Coconut Sugar (Blonde). It tastes like evaporated molasses and looks a bit like rough crystals or finely shredded coconut. In the final product we didn't even know the difference.

Eggs: We didn't have any egg replacer on hand, and honestly we are not trying to become an egg free household. Instead we're trying to be more conscious about the eggs we buy. So we used cage free, antibiotic free, vegetarian fed organic brown eggs (store bought as our Farmer's Market eggs didn't last long).

Other than that we stuck to the recipe using Almond milk and the other ingredients stated. Here's the result:

They were delicious, especially with a little bit of Earth Balance whipped buttery spread on top. Logician even decided to be nice and take a few to his coworkers.

My thoughts - change the flour. Both of the flours we used were based solely on brown rice flour and so these had a drier, grainy texture that I want to experiment with. Next time I will either try to make and use our own all purpose flour mix, or I will add some applesauce (unsweetened) to see if that will give them a bit more moisture. They came out of the pain really well, thanks to a nice spritz of baking spray and held together fairly well so I don't want to up the moisture content too much or else that will negate the result.

They also needed to bake only about 12 minutes not the full 20-25. I put them on a timer for 25 with the light on so we could keep an eye on them as they cooked. I'm glad I did!

All in all these were a tasty breakfast, that was indulgent but also made from more wholesome and healthy ingredients without setting off our allergies. I would definitely make them again just as we did and it was fun to stretch our pantry to see what we could bake with!

My Reboot/Juicing Post #2 should be up in the next day or two! Tomorrow is the Farmer's Market, I can't wait to see what's fresh!