Epic Journeys

I am finally more comfortable washing dishes with rubber gloves on than with bare hands. My cuticles are so happy.

I tried something new with soup. I did not make stock first. I just threw water in with the other ingredients. I figured it has been so long since I've eaten canned soup, it might just fly. So far it is an acceptable alternative. It is a different soup experience. I can taste the non-meat ingredients much more distinctly. The flavors overall are more delicate. I continue to be amazed with what soup can do, the million ways it can be made.

I was excited in October to finally have enough vegetables to put carrots, celery, and onion all on the same day. So far I have not made stock with them, thus the "water" soup. On my week off after Christmas, I will be making veggie stock. I am sad I can still only use it every fourth day. Rotating is restrictive, but it really forces the issue of creativity in the kitchen, and of course, every fourth day is 1,000 times better than never.

Call it Kermit Soup

The concept of the food rotation diet is that food sensitivities are created by eating the same ingredient everyday. This is the reason why people are suing the corn industry. Corn is in everything and now there are people who get sick when they eat corn. Corn used to bother me for this reason. By being obsessive about avoiding corn for 2 years, reading ingredient lists and never eating out, I healed. I can eat corn now and feel just fine, but if I ate it everyday, I'm sure the sensitivity would come back. I eat corn no more than once every 4 days. I read every label and I do not eat out. I treat every single ingredient in my diet this way. Someday I hope to be healed of all or most of my 50+ food sensitivities. In the meantime...

Rotating is hard. The easiest way to ensure the 4 day waiting period happens for each ingredient without fail, you divide your ingredients into 4 lists, one for each day. At the end of the fourth day, start over again on day 1. What this means for cooking is that all of the flavors on day 1 are stuck with each other. I have turkey, carrots, celery and onion on the same day so I can make a nice normal soup. But I can't put all the meat on celery day. So lamb day has no celery or onion or carrots. I look at the ingredients on lamb day and it's a total quandry as to how to make lamb soup, or lamb casserole, or even seasoned lamb, because none of my herbs or spices landed on lamb day. I took a large bunch of mustard greens and boiled them, then pureed them. Then I mixed pre-cooked buckwheat groats into the ground lamb, browned it in chunks in a stock pot, and then poured the pureed mustard greens back in and cooked it for a few more minutes. It was actually pretty decent. The bitter spiciness of the mustard greens succeeds in balancing itself with the strong flavor of the lamb. It's still pretty tough though putting the little tupperware full of frozen... green in my workbag in the morning before I'm fully awake. It's pretty un-appetizing sounding. It really needs a noodle as a sidedish, but I don't have a noodle on that day. So you can see where this goes. This has been my life for the last 2 years.

Amazing Attainable Abdomen

Abs. I think a person could get a complex reading about ab exercises on-line. There used to be articles about how to get a flat tummy. Now you can only find articles about getting a six pack. Yes, these articles are directed at women. It's a splendid gender equality scenario to acknowledge that women can get six packs and there are certainly women out there with the discipline to make it happen. This girl here is going to pass. I have no problem with having a layer of fat over my abs. I want strong abs and strong good-posture muscles. If my ab muscles can hold the fat in a relatively vertical position, I will be so thrilled. I am proud for womankind that there are women proving six packs for women are attainable, but for me and my inner teenager, I am choosing to love that fat. It means I have enough to eat, it's means I'm not dying of any flesh eating diseases, and most importantly, it means I'm not anorexic.