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.

The Truth of It

For two years I've been on the Food Family Rotation Diet. It is strict, complicated, and designed to cure and prevent food sensitivities. Along with some blood tests through my nutritionist, it has completely changed my physical existence from one of discomfort and fatigue, to one of energy and happiness.

With it's ability to cure, I may not have to be on it forever. My sensitivities have improved a lot. I was hoping I was done. But I got the blood work done again, and they told me I actually have a long way to go. Many symptoms came back in small ways that I had not noticed. So I have had to recharge my motivation to stay on this diet. I have had to wrap my head around the possibility of staying on it for a very, very long time.

The Breakfast of Bad-asses

I have given up eating starch with breakfast. I am completely sick of the way it tastes, and once I start eating it, I just want to keep eating it, so I've started putting it off until lunch. This morning I was craving carbs though, but instead of eating quinoa or buckwheat or rice cakes like I had been doing, I ate a tablespoon of flax meal. I thought to myself, I really have become quite the bad-ass because this doesn't seem weird at all.

When I say I'm sick of the way it tastes, I'm not talking about wheat bread, risen with yeast, full of doughy yummy goodness. Or any other kind of un-risen, gluten containing food, or even any non-gluten foods risen with yeast. I've been yeast-free for two years. My nutritionist suggested it, and I thought she was nuts but I've had dramatic results so I stuck with it. But now some new tests I've taken are indicating I really need to try going gluten free too. So basically me and bread are not on speaking terms. I've got some great recipes using quinoa, teff, and buckwheat that are gluten and yeast free (Sondra Lewis rocks!) but eating them before noon kind of reminds me of eating pickled herring in the car when you're motion sick.

So what the hell am I eating for breakfast? This morning I had Chilean sea bass, strawberries, protein drink, and... a tablespoon of flax meal.

The sea bass was actually the first bad-ass moment of the day. When I stuck a bite in my mouth and tried to eat it like I'd eat a bite of frozen waffle (bite, chew, swallow) I almost gagged. I look at it and thought to myself that it tasted good and it certainly cost enough, so I must be doing something wrong. On my second bite I ate it like I eat sushi. Pause right before it hits my tongue, with anticipation. Let it sit there for a second and then carefully press it between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, tasting it. Then slowly and delicately chew, pausing occasionally to taste it some more. Shi-zam, that's some good food.

And suddenly it really sunk in to the deepest part of me that simple food really does taste better. It tastes better because you can taste it. I've sort of timidly asserted this fact as an opinion, which I only ever brought up as a defense when people would ask me, with incredulity, how I can eat such boring food all the time. "Well I kind of have to if I want to feel good even a little bit, and besides it's kind of cool that you can actually taste what you're eating instead of just all the seasoning."

Public versus Private

I am still having a hard time deciding what to write about. I read some blogs that are so intimate in theme. It's a ludicrous concern given that this blog is totally anonymous. I've shown it to only two people. I just think of things I'd like to write about, but then I'm not sure I want it "out there" even if nobody of consequence to me knows it's me. It's still ME, you know?

In the realm of health and fitness, which are my favorite things to read about on-line, talking about my experiences with exercise is easy. I love exercise and I'm not embarrassed about it. But the freaky allergen reducing diet I've been on for two years? I already wrote about the day I had nuts in the microwave. My blog has already pretty clearly indicated I'm up to no good in the kitchen. It's like I expect somebody to e-mail me and ask me why the hell I had nuts in the microwave to begin with.

Obviously, I could just write whatever random shit is in my brain. But I don't enjoy reading this kind of thing, so why would I create it? I already create that in my journal anyways. I have hardwood floors under my carpet and I didn't find out about it until this weekend. If I am writing stories about my home improvement projects, and include a picture of the carpet pulled up to show the wood, that's interesting, but not just tossed out there without context. There is a line that needs to be drawn somewhere.

I'm actually working on this in real life, too. Fine tuning what I will and will not share, where and with whom. I've been an open book about the food allergies (and the exercise), but the cost of this is beginning to aggravate me. It isn't any of anyone's business. I have grown to not care about their almost exclusively uninformed opinions, so it's just one more small step to just not offer information in the first place. But I do NEED to talk about it. And on this blog, any potential/imaginary readers can choose to read or not read at their discretion. And I in no way feel obligated to respond to people who doubt my ability to make heath care decisions. But by putting it "out there," even without any readers, I would probably still feel... heard.

Hmmm....

The Anti-Ice Cream

It's one of those mornings where everything tingles a little. The coffee at work is so bad it hurts but it's funny instead of annoying. I finally have a place to put paper clips on my desk. The trees are freaky red and yellow and the grass is so green and the sky is so blue. Neither of my cuff buttons were buttoned and it was a naughty naked feeling. And my cube was moved at work to be near where all of the cute guys sit. I pulled out a new box of hot cocoa, because that is what they all drink. A day can be judged entirely on whether it's like high school in a good way, or a bad way. The sad truth is every day is like high school. Except now the teacher's pets spend their days exerting an enormous influence on workplace culture rather than being stuffed in lockers. And I do what I've always done. I eye the cute guys and get A minuses and go along half-heartedly with all the school spirit events so the teacher's pets don't stuff me in a locker.

I had a dream once that I had a blog and I only wrote in it once a week, but on that day I'd write 5-6 entries. I can see that happening with this blog. I will have a bunch of ideas all at once. I am perfecting the idea that if it really doesn't matter how I do it, I do it any way I want. It is a skill to feel my will and act upon it. I'm not talking about eating a half gallon of ice cream. I'm talking about having a blog and doing it however I want to do it. I was once a person who didn't know what she wanted or how she felt. I was entirely caught up in what other people wanted me to do, to the point where I couldn't tell if it was my will or theirs. It has been a joy to learn to know what my will is, and use it to bring myself happiness rather than daily trips to the ice cream aisle.