Day 43 - Home Straight

Well, turns out I hate onions, but they don't hate me. Oh the irony. Love garlic, hate onion. Intolerant, A-OK. *sigh* Life's just not fair, is it?

Also looks like I'm gluten intolerant. Durum wheat was already out, but now both oats and wheat are no-nos also. Boo. On the other hand, gluten intolerance is pretty well understood and accepted in restaurants these days. Unlike garlic intolerance!

A coeliac friend of mine (she knows about these things) suggested that I get the gluten intolerance confirmed with a doctor. I've already had a coeliac blood test though, which came back negative, so um, I don't really know what I can do, I guess it's just gluten intolerance but not coeliac. Although two little words spring into my head (false-negative) and make me think maybe I should be retested. I hate needles. But I hate being sick more, so um, maybe I should do that.

Anyway, on to yummier things! Last night, pondering the issue of not being able to cook with wheat flour, I turned to "Corn" in my favourite cook book - Stephanie Alexander's "A Cook's Companion". I spied a recipe for sweet potato corn bread. It looked yummy, but I went out on a limb to make it, because Steph was very evasive on the topic of whether it was a sweet or savoury, bready or cakey... Now I see why, it's a hard to describe thing, this corn bread... Sweet, but not really sweet, not bready, but not quite a cake. Moist and delicious is all I can really say. The only change I had to make to the recipe was to swap the sugar for honey. I'll put the recipe up when I get a chance.

I did scoff the corn bread pretty fast, but the recipe makes a lot (I actually only made a half batch and it was about an inch thick and 20cm x 20cm), so there was plenty of time for me to take a photo of some. :) And even some left to take to uni today. More Yum!

Thanks to all the lovelies who gave words of support after my last post, and indeed throughout this process. It is great to be feeling so great, and I'm so stoked that you're happy for me too. I don't have long left on this crazy diet, only a handful more foods to test. Life is certainly not going back to normal afterwards. This may be stating the obvious, but there's a mixed blessing in that. No gluten, no garlic, no cocoa. I'm also going to avoid as much as possible processed foods and refined sugars - they're just unnecessary shit really. Basically I've become a food hippie (and a soap-avoiding one too). Eating out is going to be a lot harder (more on that shortly). But then, if changing my normal food paradigm means a change to my "normal" (read fucked-up) health paradigm, then there are greater sacrifices I would make than this.

An Open Letter

Dear Friends,

A number of your have asked me the same question lately: "Have you lost weight?". The answer, for those wondering but not asking, is: "No shit, Sherlock". My jeans don't fit. Nor do my shorts or skirts. Apart from being a royal pain in the arse clothing-wise it's not something I'm concerned about, and neither should you be (so shut up and stop asking). I'm not going to waste away into oblivion. Ask D: he sees me eat, hears me whinge when I'm hungry, sees me pat my tummy when I'm full. I eat a lot. Probably a lot more than I used to. But cutting out refined sugars and processed foods just means you lost fat reserves. I'm happy. All I was carrying around was shit that my body didn't need. I wasn't any healthier for being heavier. I haven't lost muscle tone, I've lost fat.

And you know what? I feel bloody amazing, thank you very much. It would be a lie to say I've never felt better, but the truth is that I haven't felt better for about 6 years now, and that's a bloody long time. Last weekend I went to two parties on Saturday night, and stayed out until 4am. On Sunday, hungover and sleep deprived, I packed for a week long trip (many thanks to D who did all my cooking for the trip!). Then I got up early on Monday, drove and worked all day, stayed up late, and did it all again for the next 4 days. On Saturday morning I cleaned the bathroom (I'm not sure what got into me there), I was social through the grand final BBQ, I slept for a couple of hours in the evening, got up and kicked on. Then I got up on Sunday and cleaned the kitchen (it's Spring, that's the only explanation I can think of). I have spent the week at uni, doing my thing, keeping normal hours. I went to a gig last night, stayed up til 1am and got plastered. Now I'm hungover at uni remembering what that feels like. Yeah, it doesn't feel great, but it was fun at the time!

The above sequence of events may not seem unusual to you. Maybe a little tiring, maybe less that you would do in a normal week, I don't know. But it's pretty incredible for me. I have chronic fatigue syndrome. The kind of behaviour I've been exhibiting for the last (nearly) 2 weeks would normally have put me in bed after 3 or 4 days. Touch wood. It may yet put me in bed, but it's astonishing that it hasn't already. Especially since I've been drinking like a trooper as well as all the staying up late and working hard. And when I say "put me in bed", I don't mean having an early night. I don't even mean having an early night and then a sleep-in the following day. I mean run-over-by-a-truck flu-like symptoms, deliriousness, muscle aches, racing-heart, can't get out of bed to feed myself for 2 days. Yup.

So please, stop looking at my loose jeans and start looking at the glimmer in my eye. It is the tiniest spark of hope that things might be changing for the better in my life. Smile with me and cross your fingers that it continues.

Love you lots,
Ellie



Photo credit: Zara J

Eating Out

One book I won't be buying anytime soon. Or ever.

"Hi, I can't eat garlic or anything with gluten, is there anything on your menu that I will be able to eat?"

This is how I envisage a lot of pre-dinner conversations starting in the future. You know, scenarios like this... I walk into a restaurant with friends, the food looks yum, I ask the above question, get a negative and decide that for the sake of friendship a liquid dinner will have to suffice, end up throwing up in a gutter later. Or I walk out, repeat said process a few more times then give up and go home to cook. Or I call ahead and don't even make it to the restaurant before getting a negative. Bleak picture I know. But think how many things have garlic in them.

D and I are going out for dinner tonight. It's super exciting. First meal out since all these shenanigans started. We're going to a little place that he has sussed out at being able to cope with my dietary requirements. Hooray for places like this. :)

Day 35 - I've been away too long

Sorry! I just dropped off the face of the blogosphere for a while there. I have an excuse. I was away on field camp taking students around Northern Victoria to do some water quality monitoring. It was great fun!

Not so fun, however, was having to cook my own meals after a long day in the field. I ate a lot of fried rice. In fact, looking back at my food diary, it seems I've been pretty much living on fried rice for about a week now. Can't be too healthy. On the other hand, all it has is lamb, rice, beans, egg, sunflower seeds, oil and salt. OK, so those last two not so good. But the others, health plus!

Anyway, I've been feeling super awesome, but I still can't quite figure out if wheat is a problem. Sometimes it seems so, sometimes not. Hm.

We introduced the nightshades last week. I don't expect you to know what they are, but isn't is such a great name for a plant family? There's even a deadly nightshade (belladonna), but I wouldn't go eating it. Anyway, the two most commonly eaten nightshades are potato and tomato. On Sunday we introduced tomato, and on Tuesday, potato. Tomato gets two thumbs up, plus an extra one for being so delicious and juicy! Potato gets another "hm" from me. I only tried it once and felt a bit yuck immediately afterwards for a couple of hours. I had, however been out all day in the field and was pretty tired etc, so that's why its a "hm". I haven't tried it again yet, but I suspect a second eating will resolve the hmmming.

And then, on Wednesday, D fell off the wagon. Oh dear. It started with a salad, then a gluten free rhubarb slice, and by dinner had progressed to a smorgasbord of Indian curries. But, luckily for him, he suffered no ill effects. This seriously dinted his commitment to the process. And then on Friday night when I said it didn't bother me, he decided to largely abandon the process. His main aim, it seems had been achieved. This was, of course, to get me to do the diet, and get me committed enough to finish it. I'm committed, although I did have a small tumble off the wagon myself on Saturday. My darling friend C is a ginger fiend and makes the most amazing ginger cake and ginger balls. On Sat we had an AFL grandfinal BBQ at our place and C made ginger balls. Oh, such a cruel temptress. I caved. And ate about 6. Possibly more. :) I was largely fine, although the amount of wine I had consumed would probably have masked any minor effects anyway. Oops. But I'm all back on the wagon now and gunning for the finish line, which is not too far off.

Still on my list of things to check are:
Red wine (we cracked this last night and seemed OK, but I'll give it another run tonight, just to be sure.
Oranges
Yeast (supposed to be tried in bread, but as wheat is still iffy it might get bumped for a while)
Beef
Lentils
Capsicum
Ginger (more ginger balls perhaps?)
Sugar
Licorice (my chocolate substitute)
Gluten free pasta (I can't have durum wheat, so normal pasta is out. Some varieties of GF are fine because they're just rice or corn, but the one I like is a bit of a mix)
Beer (not a big priority because I don't like it that much anyway).

I also need to retest wheat (again), potato, and avocado. But I will probably sneak these in on off days between having tried the other things, or else exclude them until I've tried everything else and then avoid tack them on the end in quick succession.

So....

That means I should be done by October 16. Phew. And old friend is getting married on the 16th, so I'll eat a bit of whatever at the wedding. I've already RSVPed as the most difficult wedding guest with a request for gluten free, lactose free (pre revelation), cocoa free and garlic free. I'll resume my more strict diet for a little while after that if I still have things to test. Wow, only a couple of weeks to go! How exciting!

Day I-dunno-what - Corn

Oops! Too many corn chips. But they're so yum! I hope they don't give me a tummy ache. I guess I'll find out later tonight.

In other news, I have been field camp menu planning for the trip next week. I think fried rice with lamb, egg, beans, and sunflower seeds will cover a couple of dinners. Some chops with broccoli (yay, my fave vege is A-OK!) and mushrooms (double yay!) will probably make a showing. And the surprise runner, which brings in another challenge food - corn chips with sour cream, cheese, tomatoes and avocado. Mmm, how good does that sound? Throw in some poached fruit with maple syrup and some banana muffins and I'll be the envy of everyone else eating their mess hall slops. Suckers!

Image from Christaface

Day 31 - Confounding factors

Since I last wrote, we have added a few things. Lately, broccoli, mushrooms. Before that wheat (and in D's case yeast too). I had two bananas in that blackened pungent state, so I decided to make them into banana muffins. Yum!

I slightly modified my Mum's banana cake recipe. I have to say, although I'm biased, it's a pretty bloody awesome recipe. It's in a recipe book Mum's had since we were kids. It's a hardcover book, and if you stand it on it's spine, it will fall open to the banana cake page. All be-smattered with old cake batter and butter and whatnot.

My modified version goes like this and it's just as good, I reckon.

125g butter
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs
1 teaspoon bi-carb soda
2 very ripe bananas
1/3 cup yoghurt/milk
2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour
Pinch salt

Cream honey (melt it a bit), butter and bananas. Add eggs, beat. Add yoghurt, bi-carb, flour and salt. Mix. Bake in 180 degrees C oven for about 25 mins. Makes 12 bigish muffins. Or back for about 50 mins as one cake.

Anyway, onto the confounding factors. I've been doing some tutoring on environmental monitoring. My students have to design a monitoring program, and it's really important to reduce confounding factors. This diet is just like that too. That's why there are no spices allowed and things like that, even though we're not going to be explicitly testing them at any stage. If you just started eating them, then you wouldn't be able to tell if a reaction was due to those things, or to the food you are testing. So you exclude them to reduce confounding factors. But, just like environmental monitoring, you can't control for everything.

Take wheat as an example. It's hasn't given me a stomach ache (my classic intolerance response). However, I have been waking up with a stuffy nose and throat. Hmmm, says I. Is this the wheat? Or, perhaps I'm just getting a cold. Well, I haven't come down with a cold, but the level of tiredness I've been experiencing would suggest that I have been fighting off a cold. Or... perhaps that level of tiredness if a result of a reaction to wheat? Hm, who knows! See what I mean about confounding factors? I am well confounded on this one!

Day 29 - Now you're cooking with butter!

Wow, it's been a month and we're still going strong!

On Friday, we tried milk. As I've said here a number of times, and to my friends about 50 million times, I was already about 99% sure I was lactose/milk intolerant (you can be intolerant to the milk proteins also). Er... And now I'm about 80% sure I'm not milk intolerant. I was totally gearing up for a horrid experience. I didn't drink my milk until mid Friday arvo, just in case I needed to rush off and throw up or go home because I was feeling terrible. I started slowly - after the garlic experience I'm a bit cautious - with just about 75mL. Half an hour later and feeling fine I had another 75mL. An hour later and wondering what was going on I downed the rest of the 250mL bottle I had brought with me. Nothing. Nothing at all. Feeling braver on Saturday morning I started the day with a whole glass of milk and nothing else. I figured the combo of empty stomach + no other food was sure to get a reaction. Nope. Made it 2 and a half hours til lunch without so much as a rumble or pang. Hm. So it would seem that milk's not such an issue. How strange. a year and a half of total milk avoidance for nothing. Well, not for nothing - I actually don't like milk, so it was hardly a chore.

In other good news, while it's still on the suspicious list and needs further trialling tonight, it seems wheat might not be a problem either (durum wheat is still permanently off the menu, unfortunately). D and I ate pancakes until we were exploding last night and again, not so much as a dull ache resulted. D seems to have an iron stomach, although is beginning to suspect that avocados (one of our 'safe' foods, haha) might be a little problematic at times.

Day 26 - No lactose, no gluten, no garlic, no cocoa

So. After inhaling some more bran muffins after dinner last night, I woke up this morning with a stomach ache. I woke up yesterday with a stomach ache too, and attributed it to the honey we put in the last lot of muffins (thinking we were fine with oats and trying to sneak another food in). This lot of muffins only had maple syrup in them. Oats? Are oats a problem? Honestly, what an innocuous food! Well, if the garlic stomach ache was a 7/10 on the "I never want to eat again" scale, oats are a measly 3 or 4. But there's something there for sure. I'm not ruling them out, but they're off the menu for the moment and I'll see how I go some other time.

I filled in a form for a conference registration today. When I got to the bit about dietary requirements I had to think hard. No cocoa was an easy one; so was no garlic. I'm pretty sure I'm lactose intolerant (or milk intolerant), but I'll find out later today or tomorrow for sure (more punishment for some past-life misdeeds), so I put that down too. And then I thought about the oats. Surely they weren't going to serve oats. But having small problems with oats has me worried about a bigger issue - gluten intolerance. See, while wheat is the biggie for gluten intolerance, oats have some gluten in them too. Geez I hope I don't end up on that road. Although, honestly, it will probably be easier than no-garlic, as gluten intolerance is well recognised and reasonably well catered for at many restaurants these days. My final food list said "No lactose, no gluten, no garlic, no cocoa". *sigh* I restrained myself from also ticking the "Vegetarian" box. I think they might have spat in my food if I'd done that.

Recipe - Apple Bran Muffins

So, having made 2 more batches of bran muffins, we've now gotten as far as writing down the recipe, but not quite as far as far as taking photos before we scoff them all. In lieu of the photos, here is the recipe:

Apple Bran Muffins (make 12)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

1 cup of brown rice flour

1 cup of oat bran

2 teaspoons of baking powder

2 eggs, beaten

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 tablespoon of soy milk

2 grated granny smith apples (we've used 3 small red apples and it was good)

4 tablespoons is maple syrup OR 5 tablespoons of honey

Mix all dry ingredients.

Slowly add apple and mix.

Add eggs and mix.

Add other liquid ingredients, mix.

Bake for 25 minutes.

Try not to eat them all at once.

Day 23 - Naughty Children

D and I, that is.

So I've been on the chicken for 2 days. No issues, yay. D is all good with chicken and broccoli (he moved on while I was still moaning about garlic). So today (day 24) was supposed to be oats day. D bought some oats and some oat bran yesterday in preparation, and last night we made muffins from a modified recipe on the bran packet. No recipe to give you just yet as I wasn't looking too closely as D whipped it up. We put them on to bake, thinking we'd have them for breaky this morning.

Oh no, it wasn't to be. We couldn't resist the look and smell of them when they came out of the oven, and like naughty children we gobbled them all up, as fast as you can say "We've eaten a fair bit of chicken for 2 days, I think we're fine to move on to another food a bit early". Yeah, I know that's a longish sentence, but we did eat 3 muffins each in that time! We ate them so fast there are also no photos. We're making some more tonight, so I'll take some photos then. :) Then I got worried. I got worried because when I ate a lot of garlic (and then, even when I ate a little garlic), I got soo sick and felt horrible for days. And in my haste to devour muffins I forgot this for a second, but then I remembered and was worried that I might get really sick again. Anyway, we went off to the Melbourne Ukulele Collective open mike night and I tried not to worry.

When I woke up this morning without any signs of tummy ache I felt like waking D and squeaking at him with joy and elation, and waving my arms about a bit (nothing so drastic as actually getting out of bed to do a dance). But he was sleeping so I didn't. When he woke up he said "No tummy ache!", haha, great minds, and then I got to have my celebration. Oats for breaky this morning,, so we'll see how that goes down.

Soap Avoiding Hippies and the Opposite of Elimination

D and I had a discussion last night about our changing views on food. We decided we were in imminent danger of becoming health nuts. It may already have happened, in fact, however it's hard to tell when at present we're eating healthy by force rather than by choice. Certainly, though, I've been having quiet hopes of taking up dancing if I get enough health and energy back, and certainly of restarting yoga once my back is up to it. At one point last night we were discussing brown rice (as one of the few carbs in our diet it features highly in meal planning). In particular we were noting that neither of us had eaten it much before this diet and that we were both quite enjoying it. "Yeah, it's really got something to it, you know, texture and flavour. Why do we even eat white rice?", I wondered aloud. "Societal norms." D replied, as he picked up his uke and started strumming.

Another societal norm I've been bucking is the use of soap. Ok, stop going "Ew" now, I've been washing myself! I've started using natural ingredients, no preservatives body wash. D hadn't noticed yet and in general isn't as fussy about bath products as I am anyway, unsurprisingly. As Sam Kekovich (who I'm not sure if I like or hate, I've only seen one clip of his work, so don't throw things at me) would say, I've become a "soap avoiding hippy". I've got to say, I'm not going back in a rush, the body wash is certainly much kinder to my winter ravaged skin. And it smells yum too. The one I've been using is Sukin. I've also tried their shampoo and conditioner since my previous (also soap-avoiding) shampoo just ran out, and my conditioner is about to do the same. The shampoo's not that great (not terrible either) and I will be going back to Natural Instincts for the ole shampoo next time, although I like the conditioner.

Actually, rereading that paragraph reminds me of something else, a tangent which I will briefly indulge. My nose has become incredibly sensitive since I've been on this diet. D came home from coffee with a friend a couple of weeks ago. At this stage he wasn't drinking coffee himself, he'd just had an apple juice (100% pure, of course), but his mate had had a coffee. He came home from the cafe and I could smell the coffee on him. It's was bizarre. I mean, yeah it's a cafe, but it's not a bloody CBD espresso-a-minute cafe, it's our relatively sleepy round-the-corner cafe (the lovely Squirrel Cafe, which gets a few bad reviews if you google it, but they are from the early days and I have to say it's pulled it's socks up since then). Then, yesterday (geez I hope my uni colleagues aren't reading this or they'll think I'm weird. er, even weirder than they already think I am), I was sitting in a lecture on OH&S. In between giggling uncontrollably at photos like this (yes, they're from the Waikato), I was wondering who sitting near me had been sitting by a wood fire recently. I would get wafts of wood-smoke smell coming towards me. I was surreptitiously (I hope!) sniffing the air to either side to see if it was one of my immediate neighbours (my colleagues, hence the weirdness). It's my nose's fault! I'm just not used to this newly acute sense and it's making me more curious than usual. Not curious enough to ask outright who'd been by a wood-fire, but almost.

Back from the tangent, and to conclude, I am reminded occasionally of how strange this diet seems to others, even though it's becoming normal-seeming to me. And even though I might be a health nut for the rest of my life as a result. I was reminded yesterday in a meeting about the upcoming camp. I had to enquire again about cooking facilities and then was queried about why camp food wasn't good enough. A blush, some nervous Ummming, and then "Er, I'm on a really strange diet at the moment and need to cook for myself." Cue restrained strange looks, and a possible light-bulb moment in the head of the colleague who had recently observed that I eat a lot of fruit. I was even more forcefully reminded of the fact that most people eat quite differently, and some in a manner that is on the other end of the extreme. People like this the Facebook Food Diary keeper. A short sample of his diet:

Breakfast - Skipped

Lunch - Chicken Snitty Pack (with chips and gravy), and a can of coke.

Dinner - 2 beef patties, 2 eggs, 2 slices of cheese, 4 rashers of bacon and 4 slices of toast, 1.25L Coke.

Wow. Cue strange looks.

Day 22 - GIY and Recipes

Finally, finally on Saturday night my stomach was good enough for me to try soy. So I made soy pancakes - soy milk, eggs and soy flour. DON'T do it! They're horrible! Nevertheless it was a milestone to be able to try something new again after 4 days of pain.

Anyway, off the back of the horrible soy pancake experience, I was still hankering for something sweet. One of my favourite sweet things is creme brulee. But, I can't have milk yet, or cream, or sugar. So um, I improvised! I replaced the sugar with maple syrup (the Joy of Cooking suggests this as a bona fide alternative anyway). I replaced the milk with soy milk, and I replaced the cream with silken tofu. It kinda worked! It has a nutty flavour from the soy which actually went nicely with the custardyness and the maplyness. I didn't go in for the bruleeing, instead I made a different baked custard. Here's the recipe:

Soy Maple Custard:

2 eggs
1/3 cup of maple syrup
200mL soy milk200mL silken tofu (squoosh it up in a measuring cup and use a bit less than a full cup).

Preheat oven to 150 degrees C.
Squoosh up the silken tofu until it's smooth.
Put tofu and soy milk in a saucepan and bring almost to the boil.
Meanwhile, whisk eggs and maple syrup.
Pour in soy mix and beat until just combined.Pour into ramekins (this will fill 2x 300mL ramekins, or 2 and a bit teacups).
Place in a baking tray. Fill the tray with boiling water up to halfway up the sides of the ramekins.
Bake for 45mins until just set (use the wobble test).
Pour over a little maple syrup to serve (I liked it better cold than hot).

Also, fried rice is great! Since we have been able to eat eggs we have been making it with brown rice, a little olive oil, eggs, sunflower seeds and beans.

And we've been doing a bit of GIY - grow it yourself. We've been growing alfalfa sprouts. It's pretty easy and kinda cool. In fact, getting the seeds seems to be the hardest bit. We eventually got some from ebay. Once you have them, you just put a tablespoon of seeds in a largish jar and soak them in water overnight. Then you cover the lid with a piece of old stocking or muslin or fly mesh, drain the water, roll the jar to get the seeds to spread out and stick to the glass. The you put the on a window sill, or in this cold weather, somewhere warmish - like the top of the frog tank, or if you don't have one of those then the top of the fridge will do. Leave then for a day and the rinse them, drain them again, and repeat this process for a few days until most of the seeds have fallen off the sprouts. Then put the sprouts out on a tray in the sun for 15mins or so, then eat them! You can save any extra sprouts in the fridge for several days. And if your sprout jar gets too cramped during the growing process then just transfer half the sprouts to another jar. Et voila!

Day 19 - Falling Behind

Oh my poor tummy. I am still suffering from that goddamn garlic. Although I think I exacerbated things by not being careful enough with some medication that I should know to be more careful of when I have an upset stomach. I am finally starting to feel a bit better today, and hopefully tomorrow I should be back on track.

Back on track but behind schedule. D had soy yesterday and today, as planned, and I didn't because of the masking effects of already having an upset tummy. Tomorrow he's onto chicken, but I, I will be stuck back on soy, 2 days behind schedule. I'm tossing up skipping soy for the moment and moving on to chicken. We'll see. But either way I've fallen behind. This does not bode well. If there's anything else I'm intolerant to it's likely to cause a pretty similar response, and possibly set me back further. On the other hand, next time I will trust my poor stomach and not eat the food again the following day.

Day 16 - Garlic - Friend or Foe?

Hm, having uploaded this photo, I realise that our meal from Tuesday night looks totally unappealing. You'll have to trust me that it's just exceptionally unphotogenic (like me) and really was totally delicious and looked amazing in real life (like me).

We have introduced deep sea fish (not farmed = no chemical contaminants) for a bit of protein variety. That's the flaccid white blob at the bottom of the photo. The slimy green things are very yummy baked green beans with olive oil and garlic. And the lumps up the top are baked kumara with baked garlic smeared on them. We really went all out on testing the garlic, mostly because we both LOVE it.

So we enjoyed our meal, and D didn't seem to suffer any major repercussions. I however, swelled up like a balloon, or pregnant lady (choose you imagery), felt very "weird" in the tummy all evening, and then woke up with a heavy stomach feeling, suspiciously similar to how I feel after eating chocolate or durum wheat.

When I still had a stomach ache yesterday morning, I though "Oh no, garlic intolerance". D said "Maybe you just ate too much of it, after all garlic is really potent". So I looked up dose-response in food intolerance, and yes, it could have been that I ate too much, although that would suggest some level of intolerance anyway. But despite the stomach ache lasting til midday, I decided to brave the garlic again last night in a much smaller dose, the kind we would normally include in a meal. Fortunately I didn't become grossly pregnant looking this time. I did, however wake up in the middle of the night with just the same stomach ache, which is persisting even now. *sigh* I guess it's just time to face the fact that all these years garlic has just been a frenemy, and I should let it go from my life. This it a royal PITA, because not only do D and I love it, but it's also put in just about everything you get when eating out. Seems I'm condemning myself to a life of cooking for myself.

Oh, and as an addendum to that, my Poppy used to always say that garlic didn't agree with him. We all used to think he just didn't like the taste, but maybe he was intolerant too!

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.