Cabbage Rolls - Yum!

These are the cabbage rolls we made the other night. They were yummy! The recipe goes a bit like this:

Heat oven to 180 degrees C

Finely dice about 300g lamb

Cook 1 cup brown rice.

Blanch 8 large cabbage leaves.

Mix rice, lamb, some sunflower seeds, a little salt.

Place lumps of the mixture into a cabbage leaf and roll into a little parcel.

Place parcels in an oiled oven dish.

Cover the dish with a lid or alfoil.

Cook for about 20mins.

Enjoy!

The Plan

Ok, so before we go any further, I have promised and promised to show you The Plan. It's becoming almost like the Epping Rail Link. I bet you don't think I'm ever going to deliver. Well here it is: The Plan.

The point of the diet is to establish which foods you are allergic to or intolerant of. The structure of the diet is this: To detox the body for a period by eating only known hypoallergenic foods, then challenge the body with foods that are known allergens for many people until all major foods have been tested. The detox weeks allow the body to recover from masked food allergies (those which don't usually give immediate reactions, either because they are slow acting, or because they are so frequently eaten). Being free from these ongoing reactions means you become more sensitive to food allergens when they are reintroduced. The challenge can run for as long or as little as you need, but the aim is to test a wide range of probably allergens.

In our case, the detox part of the diet consisted of 1 week of eating only lamb, sweet potato, beans, sprouts, apples, pears, sea salt and maple syrup. Then in the second week we introduced 3 other low allergen foods in succession, every second day - brown rice, avocado, and banana.

Today we start the challenge part of the diet, and we have just semi-finalised our list of challenge foods and the order of introduction. On advice we have left wheat and milk until a way into the diet to allow further detox time from these foods. The timing of introduction has been a little affected by logistics. I am going on a camp in 3 weeks in Northern Victoria for a subject I am tutoring at uni. There will be limited cooking facilities and while everyone else will be catered for, I will have to cook for myself. I therefore wanted to test wheat and yeast beforehand so I can make some bread to take up there with me for easy lunches. So, without further ado, the challenge list is:

1. Eggs

2. garlic

3. soy

4. chicken

5. broccoli

6. oats

7. milk

8. wheat

9. yeast

10. beef

11. mushrooms

12. oranges

13. red wine

14. tomatoes

15. sugar

16. lentils

17. capsicum

18. corn

19. shop-bought bread

20. gluten-free pasta (Ellie), pasta (D)

21. potato

22. licorice (Ellie), chocolate (D)

23. onion

Some questions you're probably wondering about: Where's the white wine? We're gonna cheat a bit and introduce it on an off day - this wednesday at Wednesday Night Dinner. In a small quantity, of course. Why is garlic practically first? Because we love it and it's a great flavouring agent to open up the range of meal scenarios (eg you can start making stocks and soups once you have garlic). Why are eggs actually first? Because we have chickens (and they lay eggs, duh)! Why is onion last? Because I hate it anyway, but I think I should probably test it. Why is gluten free pasta on the list for Ellie? Because I am intolerant to durum wheat, which is used for pasta. I eat gluten free pasta as an alternative, and as I frequently east pasta it is important to know I can still eat it. Ditto for the licorice/chocolate. Will the list change? Yeah, probably things will be shuffled about as we decide we can no longer live without X, but Y is less important.

So, now that you've seen "the plan", I'm gonna go and show "the plan" to someone else...

Day 14 - Eggs!

Today is day 14. Today we get to start the challenge part of the diet. Today we get to eat eggs. This is great news, as we have chickens, and they have just gone back on the lay. The photo above is D peeling his eggs for breaky this morning. Yes, the eggs are slightly blue. That's the colour eggs our chickens lay!

We have 3 soft boiled eggs for breaky this morning. Then another hardboiled one for lunch. I've been feeling a bit funny since, but it's hard to tell if this is from the eggs or spill over from feeling a but funny from the oldish rice that I ate yesterday arvo. D also felt funny last night, which is why we're putting that one down to keeping our rice a little long and not to anything else.

Well, as for my crash on Wednesday night, it could be the avocado, so I've stopped eating avocado since then. However, given I had no stomach pain or anything else digestion related, I think it was probably just a good old CFS crash. I don't usually get them with quite so little warning, however I had had a couple of busy days and I've also had a bit of trouble eating enough at times. Given we've had no carbs and then very little carbs in our diet, it's pretty tricky to make sure you get enough food in to stay full for any length of time. D confessed he doesn't eat 3 meals anymore, he just eats continuously. So, I have since been careful to get enough food in throughout the day. So much so that at a training session on Friday, a colleague of mine who I haven't known for long said: "So... you like fruit then...". Cue sheepish, slightly uncomfortable look from me. "Well, so far you've eaten an apple, a pear, and a banana, and it's only lunchtime". Ok, fair cop. But you just wait til we go on field camp together, then you'll think I'm a proper weirdo.

This arvo we went shopping. D and I usually get a vegie box from uni, and buy other necessaries sporadically from butchers, grocers, supermarkets occasionally and the local deli. When we go to supermarkets together we tend to get a little overwhelmed. Relatively unexposed to supermarket specials, we go nuts for 2-for-1s and price-cuts. Today, with a limited range of foods to buy, we restrained ourselves a fair bit, but did end up buying rice milk, soy milk, and soy flour! Soy pancakes here we come (on Thursday)! We're also planning a Thursday lunch-date for edamame. Yum! And tonight, we're going to cook J's suggestion of dolmade-style lamb , beans and rice wrapped in cabbage leaves and baked. I'll report back on our success or otherwise.

Day 11 - Down For The Count

Maybe avocados were a bad idea. Or maybe I just got unlucky. Either way, I left Wednesday Night Dinner early last night feeling fluey and off colour. Woke up this morning feeling worse and have been back in bed sleeping since then. More once I can think straight again.

Into Temptation Knowing Full Well The Earth Will Rebel...

So far one of the hardest aspects of this diet has been social, and mostly around our friends temping us with yummy things.

Wednesday Night Dinner last week was our first test, and with another tonight I'm sure we'll be tempted again. We also spent Friday night with friends in Daylesford celebrating a birthday. The birthday girl had requested snacky foods (thinking that we could snack and play board games). Her mother, who never does food by halves, had cooked up an incredible storm, and there were about 20 different amazing-looking (and smelling!) dishes crowding the table. With such a smorgasbord of dishes, it was really hard to resist. D asked at one point if we could chew stuff up and then spit it out. I said No, and then I said it was up to him. In the end he didn't.

We had a federal election on Saturday. Being politically aware, Saturday night was a bit of a nail-biter for me. Fortunately I had a few lovely friends to share it with. They, however, were all merrily drinking red wine, and I wasn't. It was (still is - counting ongoing, Parliament hung) a very close election and having something to calm my nerves would definitely have been a good thing!

D also went to a concert on Thursday night with the boys. I imagine he found it quite difficult being on the water while the others happily downed the beers (and offered them to him too). My housemate G was very impressed with his willpower, but couldn't help taking the piss by adding: "Oh, but there was that kebab he ate on the way home."

I know my friends have their hearts in the right place. They're just trying to share their yummy food experiences with us. Thanks guys, but it'll be a good few weeks before we'll be able to succumb!

Food Intolerances and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Just a quickie to bring your attention to this:

Nightlife with Tony Delroy -Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which is the primary reason for doing this diet. I manage it pretty well but do have suspicions that there are a couple more undetected food intolerances that are giving me grief. I was particularly interested to hear Leigh Hatcher mention his diet and the fact he eats like a diabetic. I have certainly been feeling better on our very restricted diet, and I will keep in mind the role of simple sugars and carbohydrates as we introduce those things. I also found the bit about lactose intolerance interesting. When I did a food intolerance test I did not show up as lactose intolerance, but I had already been off the milk for about 6 months. I am pretty sure I am in fact lactose intolerant, but this diet will give me an avenue to test this more systematically than I have previously. It is also interesting because it is a genetic condition, and therefore has some relevance to my family.

Day 9 - Brown rice, runnin' around in my brain...

Our diet progresses, and we're now allowed brown rice in addition to the other things. D and I had thought this would be very exciting, and we built up much anticipation before Monday (aka Brown Rice Day). However, when our Monday morning breakie bowl of rice arrived, we discovered it's really not that exciting. It's just brown rice, and we're not like my sister S who loves rice and will quite happily eat it by itself.

However, by getting a bit inventive (and because I was craving some edible sweetness and needed a quick meal), I discovered a yummy combo last night. Brown rice, poached fruit and their juices, and maple syrup. Yum! It's just like rice pudding, except without any of the things you usually put in rice pudding (apart from rice, I guess). Best dinner since starting this diet. Not that that's saying much. Every other one has been lamb, cabbage, and beans, plus or minus some sweet potato.

We have had some lovely recipe suggestions from friends. Most notably J who may well get some phone calls form me as I get more bored. She came up with dolmade-style lamb, rice and mince packages, amongst other inventive suggestions. My friend L also suggested sweet potato mash. D turned up his nose at this suggestion, adding: "I'm sure it's fine with butter". I think he has a point, but it may yet come into play.

Tomorrow we get to introduce avocados. This seemed non-controversial until I was at my aunt's place last night. When I mentioned this progression, her friend said: "Oh, I'm allergic to avocados". Uhoh, spanner in the works. I did some quick research today and it turns out both avocados and bananas can cause allergies, but this is primarily linked to latex allergies. Kinda weird. But anyway, I think we'll go ahead as planned. I also think that while it would not be ideal to introduce an allergen this early, we are probably sufficiently detoxed that we would be able to idnetify any reaction.

Moving from the "food goes in" to the "stuff comes out" part of digestion, our friend F asked about poos. F, D says: "Few and far between" (he's missing his museli). I haven't noticed a difference. I think we'll leave the topic there unless good cause arises. If we're having embarassing reactions to food along the way I'll probably stick to vague descriptions and let you wonderful people exercise your imaginations(or not, if you'd prefer!).

I realised yesterday that I am going on a camp in a few weeks. This is going to be a royal pain in the arse. It will be a pretty hectic week, and while everyone else will have their meals prepared for them I will have to slave in a very substandard kitchen (possibly only a microwave, I might need to take a camp stove I think!) to cook my own meals. Sucky. Oh well, c'est la vie! The timing of the camp will influence the order of introduction of food. It will be much easier for me if I have tested some more cold lunch foods before then, and maybe wheat and yeast (so I can make bread beforehand to take along). D and I will sit down in the next couple of days and put together "The Plan"* and I'll show you "The Plan" shortly, with a bit more of an explanation of what the premise of the elimination diet is. Til then, eat well!



*That, my darling sisters, is for you. I hope you laughed. :)

Roasting

Day 6 today. D was amazed. And very excited that we're adding in new foods from Monday. You know the song that goes: "I got cocaine, runnin' around in my brain... right on.... right on, right on ,right on..." or something similar? Well D changed it up a bit and was singing it on the train on the way back to Melbourne today from an overnight Daylesford sojourn. His version goes a little like like this:

I got brown rice runnin' around in my brain... Brown rice... brown rice, brown rice, brown rice...

Accompanied by excited bopping movements.

On Thursday we roasted a 1/2 leg of lamb. We decided that the 10 minutes it takes to fry a lamb chop and steam some vegies was just too long, and that we should just roast some lamb so we could steam some veg in 5 and then reheat some lab. Or eat it cold... Also, it's probably not healthy to be eating lamb fried in lamb fat at least once and mostly twice a day. Much better to have roast lamb.

As often happens in our house, we turned to Stephanie Alexander for advice. Her invaluable Cook's Companion is a bible of which foods go together, the basics of selecting and storing foods, and different ways to cook various ingredients. We flicked through to Lamb. Lamb goes with beans - good to know. Too bad if it didn't. While she has a lovely 7 hour roast recipe, Stephanie's instructions for a basic roast lamb go a little like this:

Heat oven to 220 degrees C.

Roast lamb for 10 - 25 mins per 500g depending on how well cooked you like it. We opted for about 20 mins, which meant a roasting time of 60 mins in total for our 1.5kg half-leg.

To roast the lamb, set it straight onto the oven rack, with a pan below it. The pan should be filled with about 2cm of water and topped up as necessary throughout the roasting. This allows the fat to drip from the lamb into the water, which prevent it from burning. In our case, this had definite advantages that I will mention later.

Baste the lamb with the collected juices "several times" throughout the cooking time. I did it twice. The lamb still tasted awesome, but could probably have benefited from a higher basting frequency.

Turn the temperature down to about 200C after 30 minutes.

I actually forgot about the lamb for a while and pulled it out of the oven 13 minutes later than planned. Oops. In choosing our cooking time we had opted for "reasonably well cooked". I was a rather worried that it might have crossed over to well cooked, or worse still, over cooked. It was in fact a little pink still right in the middle, and ranged out from there. Very lovely and tender.

By the end of the cooking time the pan juices had cooked down to a rich jus (aren't I a swanky foodie?), topped with a fair puddle of liquid lamb fat. This proved rather useful as I alluded to earlier. I allowed this mix to cool and then scraped off the lamb fat into a container, and poured the jus into a jar. At present we do not have any fats or oils to cook things in, so having a little lamb fat aside is a handy thing for frying. Lamb chops have plenty of their own fat, but we cooked lamb steaks the other day and needed some extra fat to fry them in. The jus may come in handy to flavour things. In particular we are introducing brown rice on Monday and having something to add a little flavour to it will be nice. It'll be just like chicken rice, but with lamb instead! Mmm, chicken rice...

Day 4 - Same Same

After the excitement of Wednesday Night Dinner, yesterday was just same same. More poached fruit for breaky, more sweet potato and beans for lunch, and more fruit for snacks.

I am feeling quite good. Psychologically, the boredom isn't getting to me yet. Physically, I was quite tired for the first two days, and had some muscles aches too. Neither of these is out of the ordinary for me, but I was worried that if these symptoms got worse rather than better, I might be in a bit of strife. But yesterday and today I'm all bright eyes and bushy tailed. And, I have a flat stomach! Sorry if you don't care, but I'm a girl so I have to rave about these things. Yeah, OK, so even at the worst of times I don't have much to complain about, but I usually end up with a significant "food baby" after eating even a reasonable amount. No, I don't think I've lost weight, and no, I'm not trying to, but this bulging-stomach-after-meal thing isn't so attractive and makes me feel a bit like a snake that's just eaten a wallaby. So It's nice to be rid of it. I wonder if it was because I was eating things I shouldn't have been? Or maybe that's just wishful thinking. I guess we'll see as I add foods back into my diet.

D has never suffered from food babies, except once recently when he ate heaps of food (possibly at a WND). On Wednesday night though, he was suffering from a headache. I wonder if it was from starvation? We didn't eat until 8:30, and while the others all had delicious snacks beforehand, we were both pretty empty and ravenous by the time we ate the main meal. D especially. He even said he was grumpy. Unheard of. No really, usually it's me who becomes intolerable and childish if I don't get fed at regular intervals (more pouting faces than tanties - I'm not that bad!). I also had a bit of a headache for the first few days. Getting rid of toxins? Perhaps.

This whole diet thing is definitely making me think about food in a different way. It's a bit strange and incomprehensible to me at the moment, but I will write more about it when things solidify in my mind. At the moment I just have these random thoughts like:

Maybe we should eat like this all the time.

What's that all about? I mean, we're coping OK, but I love flavour variety and that's not something our diet is really overflowing with right now; and:

Those chocolate biscuits, I'm sure they have all sorts of fillers and chemicals in them. Hm, before I eat chocolate next I'm going to read the ingredients list. Maybe I'll just eat Green & Blacks organic chocolate only.

Where did that come from? I mean, I'm a forgetful type, but I have barely touched chocolate for almost a year now! I'm intolerant of it! That's part of the reason for doing this diet - the knowledge that I'm definitely intolerant to certain foods, but that maybe the list is more extensive than I know about.

Madness I tells ya.

And, to finish, a big thanks to all those who have told me they're enjoying reading this. I pretty much expected that my sisters would occasionally glance at it, and some of my close friends who want to know why the hell I am eating so strangely. I've been pleasantly surprised that other people are liking it, so I'll try to keep it on a roll.

Day 3 - The Wednesday Night Dinner Challenge

I've alluded to Wednesday Night Dinners already. They are a weekly tradition amongst about 10 of our friends. Each Wednesday, one friend will cook for all the others, and we take it in turns to do so. Initially the idea of cooking for 10 (or more, the cook's housemates are also invited, and sometimes a friend or two from outside) is pretty daunting, but once you done it, it's not that hard to plan a meal that will feed everyone without running you off your feet. A common strategy is to do much of the preparation in the day or so beforehand and then throw it all together on the night. And the payoff is huge - nine weeks of Wednesdays when you don't have to cook! And you get a pretty amazing meal... We're not competitive about things, but everyone seems keen to turn out a good meal for their friends, and the standard only ever gets higher. Wednesday Night Dinners has been running since March this year and is a solid fixture in the calender.

As the first WND since we started our diet, last night was bound to be a challenge, and I really wasn't looking forward to it. But I sure as hell wasn't going to miss it. I love seeing these friends once a week, and even if I had to cook my own dinner and apply my iron willpower, I was going to be there. Come 7:30 I arrived to a lovely warm house filled with delicious cooking smells and with a cheese platter and hot marinated olives laid out on the table. *sigh* This was going to be tough. D was already there. Apparently I gave him a bum steer by telling him it was at 6:30, so he'd been enjoying/enduring this lovely atmosphere for an hour already.

C had cooked a lovely veal casserole with parpadelle, with parmesan and herb, and beautiful breads on the side. It looked pretty delish, and the thought of cabbage and beans with lamb yet again wasn't so appealing. It is great that D and I are both doing this, as I would definitely have caved when C said: "I don't want to lead you into temptation, but if you want to, you're welcome to some of this". Oh C, your cooking could lead me into temptation any day! So, We steamed our veg and fried our chops. I had made sure I bought nice loin chops. I didn't want to be chewing on any sub-standard chops while all this delish was being passed around! Really it wasn't so bad, we just ate our food with everyone else, and the conversation and joviality of the night carried us. But there was still desert to come...

Putting maple syrup on the list of acceptable foods was an inspired idea of D's. If you buy the good Canadian stuff, maple syrup is really pure and unprocessed. They pretty much just stick a tap in the side of the tree and then hold a bottle under it to fill. Well, not quite, but if white sugar is a hussy, maple syrup's a virgin. I would never have thought to put a sweetener on the list, despite being a rampant sweet tooth. Perhaps D already had the exquisite torture of cooking our own food at WND in mind. Anyway, come desert time, we decided to reprise the poached fruit. D: "Would you like me to poach the fruit, dear". Me: *stares daggers*. Hmph. "Ok, you can poach the fruit". So we chucked it in a pot with some water and an light-hearted admonishment from C's housemate K: "No fires". It all went to plan this time, and what emerged was a lovely mix of firm poached pear and mushy apple sauce. We poured on a bit more maple syrup for good measure, and munched away happily.

It was pretty funny being a non-drinker at WND for the first time. It's pretty standard for a fair bit of wine to be consumed at these affairs. In fact, at the very first WND I drank so much wine I was rather hungover and very grumpy the following day, and loudly declared to my poor housemate who had gone to the effort of kicking it all off: "I think doing this weekly is a bad idea!" I quickly learned the gentle art of moderation and have managed not to get into too much strife since, but I'm not the only one who frequently feels a bit tipsy by the end of the night. We get away with this indulgence because all of us except C live in the same suburb, within a short walk (or drunken stumble) of each other. C lives a five minute drive away, and once you count out the cyclists, the rest of us usually manage to pile into one or two cars leaving the rest free to wine it up. I'm making us sound like drunkards. We're not, but you get the idea, we like wine. Anyway, there was one point last night when I was conversing with S and K, and then, all of a sudden, I had no idea what they were on about! They clearly were still on track, as they were laughing away together. I was laughing too, as I loudly proclaimed: "The only problem with being sober, is that you can't keep up with the conversation!" All in all it was a lovely night, and I didn't at all mind being the designated driver.

Day 2 - Getting the hang of things

By day 2 we had a better grasp of how much food to take to eat during the day, how much we hated sweet potato, and the fact that lamb is our friend.

I would usually eat meat maybe 3 times a week or so. I think I'm a vegetarian avoiding her fate, and I have reasonably good reason to think so. In my life, there is a conversation that recurs, quite frequently. The friend that I share it with changes, the exact situation changes, but the general theme is the same. It goes a bit like this:
Friend: "Lets go out for dinner"
Me: "Sounds good to me, where do you want to go?"
Friend: "Hmmm... How about.... Oh, hang on. You're a vegetarian aren't you?"
Me: "No, people just think I am."
Friend: "Really? I could have sworn you were a vegetarian. I'm sure you stopped eating meat for a few years at least."
Me: "You know, so many people say that to me, you know, friends who really know me, that I think I might be fated to be a vegetarian, but I've just avoided it so far."
So anyway, I don't eat a heap of meat. Luckily lamb is the only meat that I actually like just as it is. But still the thought of eating it every day was a little unappealing. I certainly hadn't planned to eat it at lunch as well as dinner. But after day one where both D and I were starving by the end of the day and hated sweet potato, the lamb-at-lunch eventuality has been realised.

So day two's menu looked like this:
Breaky: 1 apple, 1 pear
Lunch: 1 lamb chop, cabbage, kumara (sweet potatoesque, we figure this is ok)
Arvo snack: 1 apple, 1 pear
Dinner: 1 lamb chop, cabbage, beans, sprouts

I actually don't know what poor D ate for lunch because he forgot his lamb and cabbage. I think he found some beans in his desk drawer (don't ask), and I guess he had a small stash of apples and pears to add to that. But I found the new menu much more satisfying and wasn't quite so ravenous by the time I got home.

After dinner I decided to get a bit adventurous and poach some pears and apples for breaky the following morning. So I peeled and cored them, put them in a pot with just enough water to steam them, and set them on the stove. Then I went back into the loungeroom, and forgot all about them til my housemate said "Is something burning?" Oh dear. You cannot probably imagine how burnt you can get a mix of apple, pear and water. Very burnt. Burnt solidly onto the pan. Scorched pan. Horrible smoky stink. I retrieved what I could and we packed them up for breaky, but really, I can recommend that you eat your poached fruit unburnt. Burnt fig jam is nice (thanks Maggie Beer!), burnt poached apples and pears are not. Even with maple syrup to disguise them.

Apart from the not-so-haute-cuisine smokey poached fruit breaky, today's fare has been much the same as yesterday. However tonight we have a little tradition called Wednesday Night Dinner to attend. It's going to be a test of will power, as delicious things are always in abundance. I think some version of poached fruit for desert will be required (prefeably not the same as last night's version!) to save D and I from caving in to the aromas of our friends' no-doubt amazing food.

Day 1

On the bus home yesterday, I got a message from D: "Are you dying from sweet potato yet?" I could not have put it better myself.

We had both taken some roast sweet potato as the base of our lunch, reasoning that it would be the most filling option (apart from lamb, which we planned to save for dinners). D is not a fan of sweet potato at the best of times. I am, but as I reluctantly stuffed forkfull after forkfull of it into my mouth at lunch, I quickly realised that it's a "small doses" food for me. Do you have any friends or acquaintances like that? People who you're happy to spend time with, but then after hours (minutes?), you are thorougly sick of them and your smile becomes a grimace as you restrain yourself from exploding in a frustrated outburst? Yeah, you know the people. If sweet potato was an acquaintance of mine he/she it would fall firmly in this category. Great as little chips with spinach and fetta in a salad, ok as a piece of roast veg nestled amongst a good quantity of potatoes, but pretty much intolerable on it's own with only sea salt to disguise it.

We are going to be totally hypersaline by the end of this diet. I'm not an auto-condimenter (to steal a term from the wonderful Terry Pratchett). I don't subscribe to the theory that salt improves the taste of everything. But quite frankly, when there are no spices, no cooking oil, no butter, no nothing, then salt does improve the taste of most things.

We've had a couple of great recipe tips that we might try out later in the week. My friend J bravely had dinner with us last night - lamb chops (yummy just fried in their own fat), cabbage (with extra lamb juice and salt), beans, and sweet potato for J (we were sick of it already). She suggested poaching apples and pears together for a delicious desert or breaky. My sister S also suggested a yummy desert with maple syrup and apples or pears. J also recommended a lamb/cabbage rolled roast or similar. I might need to pull out one of these speccy suggestions tomorrow, for a little tradition we call Wednesday Night Dinner.

The dreaded elimination diet

A few weeks ago, D said to me "I think you should do the elimination diet". This comment was not completely out of the blue, as I have health problems that are serious enough to warrant an investigation of anything that could be compromising my immune system. He followed this up with "I'll do it with you." Very supportive. And then, "Lets start on after C and K's wedding, August 1". "Nope, my birthday's the following week, I want a good meal!"... "Ok, August 16 then." Hmph. And so it was, apparently, settled.

Last week we devised the list... Literature is quite confusing and contradictory. Some say bananas are fine, some say no... Eventually after some reading and synthesis we decided on the "safe list" for the first week of cleansing...

1. Sweet potato

2. Lamb

3. Cabbage

4. Green beans

5. Apples

6. Pears

8. Maple syrup

9. Sea salt

I know this is going to be a hard couple of months, but and interesting one too, I hope. I will share it with you if you would like to come on the journey.