And the random rashes begin again

It's been months now that I have been rash free on my ankles and feet, but it looks like that has come to an end. Agh! Itchy itchy itchy!

Look at all those hives on my ankles... they completely surround them! I'm starting to wonder if the rashes have to do with the amount of refined sugar I am consuming. I've had quite a bit of "not good" for me food (pop/soda, donuts, eating out) this past week due to moving and not having a fridge so it's making me wonder if there is a correlation.

Either way, I will do some acupuncture tomorrow and slather my ankles with hydrocortisone in the meantime. Funny thing is, they weren't even itchy until was I taking my socks off and noticed them, it's like they were brewing under my socks all day and then, bam, surprise! Itch me!

Let them eat steak!

First, a quick update on the fridge. The new fridge came on Tuesday (yet again, my friends came through for me and made miracles happen) and it is AWESOME!!!!! You can't even tell it's a scratch n' dent fridge that also survived a truck going off the side of the road! Look at how lovely it is:

It's ginormous!

Look at all the storage space, including two humidity controlled crisper drawers, a temperature control meat/cheese/deli tray, and bonus third drawer for whatever! And did I mention the shelves are spill proof and slide-out?!?!?

And look at all the storage in the pull-out freezer! I can easily fit a turkey in the bottom and upper tray makes for great organization!

You're jealous, I know. :p

Enough about my fancy new fridge that I got for under cost (I will be cooking a gourmet dinner for my girlfriend who sold it to me in thanks this Sunday). Let's talk about steak. It's been well over 5 months since I last ate a piece of steak, and my only exposure to red meat since that time has been the occasional lamb in my lamb stuffed vegetables. After all that time, I risked it and had a small amount of steak last night at my work's holiday party. We were at a country club and allowed to order off the menu, but unfortunately there were not many things on the menu that were bubble-girl friendly.

Side note: speaking of bubble-girl my coworker yesterday was joking that I should live in a bubble... it actually makes me smile when people say that because it is so true given my ridiculous amount of allergies and now that I have a blog and lifestyle dedicated to talking about and actually breaking those bubbles it makes me motivated to do it more!

Everything available to eat last night was laden with non-bubble friendly foods. The safest looking item on the menu, that also would require the least effort on the chef's effort to accommodate said food allergies (which is how I make these things work as opposed to calling ahead of time and talking with the chef like I should... I'm lazy in that respect) was the 5oz fillet with garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus. I spoke with a waitress to let her know of my food allergies (or at least the ones that were likely to be present in the meal I was ordering, it's easier than listing all 20 million of them), and she was so understanding and accommodating I couldn't believe it! When I thanked her for being so wonderful, she told me that she had food allergies when she was a child and grew out of them so she understood what it's like eating with food allergies. Takes one to know one, right?

My dinner was wonderful and my gallbladder (thankfully) did not complain at all. Granted I only ate half of the 5oz fillet because I was so satisfied from the baked potato (I substituted from the garlic mash to save on some unneeded fat and heavy cream) and asparagus and starter salad- which had a very tasty raspberry poppy seed dressing- that I didn't feel like eating more than that of the steak. Plus, the steak was way overcooked and dried out. I can't say the chef was good chef, but at least he went above and beyond in accommodating my needs so I can't talk too much smack about him. I even split a triple berry lemon cake for dessert with my husband, and still no complaints from the GB! Success! Granted, I did feel like my stomach was churning a little bit in it's attempt to digest the food, but it was probably mostly a result of my stressing about whether or not I would have GB attack. These things are frequently psychosomatic, I've discovered.

I still have a ton of pics and other stories to share from the move in to the new house, but right now I am off to get a move on my day and finish some unpacking. It's my day off and I've got things to do!

Moving... on

This last weekend was a big milestone as my husband and I bought and moved in to our first home. All things considered, it went really well. Nonetheless we did run into a big roadbump in our gameplan when we tried to turn the fridge on and it wouldn't cool. Not fun. We quickly scrambled and found a replacement for a great price- many many thanks to my wonderful friends and old co-workers at American TV & Appliances for getting me a steal of a deal on an amazing fridge (scratch and dent, but not so much that you notice which is awesome).

I dealt with the broken fridge ordeal like a champ Saturday morning when it was confirmed that the fridge was indeed not working. Acting quickly I got a hold of my friend and she found me the perfect fridge that could be delivered Monday. Awesome! Granted, I didn't foresee the delivery truck going off the side of the road on it's way to the house today due to the ice we got last night, but thankfully they will be delivering it tomorrow.


It wasn't until Sunday night when we talked to our realtor that I stopped handling things like a pro. His reaction led us to believe that perhaps the seller would need to replace the fridge for us. Come to find out our contract was worded as such that we are SOL on the broken fridge, but still my realtor even hinting at it start my brain going in all sorts of directions. In a matter of hours I was overwhelmed with information and possibilities and regret and anger. As a first time home buyer I have no clue about such things and, yet again, it seemed that everyone had an opinion. For the past 24 or so hours I have heard nothing but everyone's opinion about how we should or shouldn't proceed. Frankly, I just want to take a nap, put my hands over my eyes and ears and pretend it never happened. Hear no evil, see no evil. I'm having a real hard time moving on from all of the stress of the broken fridge fiasco and I'm finding it even more difficult to focus on the positive- I'm going to have a kick butt fridge and I got it for under cost!


So, let's take a moment to focus on the positive. Here is my new fridge in all of it's glory (okay, just a web pic, but still):




It's an LG French door 25770 series fridge in smooth white. Pretty awesome right?

See, just blogging about it made some of the stress of the day go away... And as my voice teacher reminded me (he's my surrogate therapist when the regular one is not available), the good news and the bad news is that I'm going to be okay. He also reassured me that my feelings and reactions to all the was happening were perfectly normal and that if the fridge breaking down was all that went wrong in the move we were doing great. I guess he has a point.

Now to wait and see that my fridge is still in the same condition it was when I picked it out after surviving the delivery truck going in the ditch. Fingers crossed it is all okay and I can start enjoying my new fridge tomorrow. I'm sick of eating out and I miss my fresh fruits and vegetables!

Acupuncture saves the day!

I'll admit it. I'm a bit stressed. What with all the closing on our first home in two days and trying to make sure everything is done beforehand and all the paperwork is submitted that needs to be, stress has become my middle name again. Like many people, I go in to a very much fight or flight state when I am dealing with such major stress. Accordingly, my body responds with digestive issues, mood swings, crying, and general disorientation and forgetfulness while I am panicking away. Knowing this was all about to happen/happening I had Doc K pin me up for stress relief last week and it worked wonders. Today, it was definitely time again to have the acupuncture work it's wonders and get my mind and body to relax to a more normal level of chi flow.

Sad but true, I had a complete melt down when I couldn't find my glasses this morning. I had come home from working out and running errands, played on facebook a bit, and then taken a shower. Somehow, during the time my glasses came off my face and ended up getting legs and walking. I literally spent 20 minutes searching the whole apartment to find them. Meltdown city. Normal people would be able to think soundly and do a thorough retrace of their steps to find said glasses, but not I. Instead, I frantically searched the same three spots over and over hoping to find them even though they weren't there the first five times I looked! It turns out they had fallen on the floor in between the couch and coffee table, and I'm still not sure how they got there but they were found. Not surprisingly, this complete loss of mind happened right after I was stressing out over whether we had all of the final paperwork submitted for closing on the house. I'm sure the timing was not a coincidence...

So, I was very demanding of Doc K today and told him exactly how I wanted my acupuncture to go: stress points including my ears, sinus points to do a pre-emptive strike on the cat hair clean-up we will be doing after close (the seller owned cats, I'm super allergic), and the special point on the foot that gets your bowel movements to "stick together" better since I'm still recovering from all of the margarine in that frosting and cake I ate this weekend. It definitely did the trick. Within an hour after my acupuncture session my head and body felt so much better! The stress seemed to melt away and my energy levels boosted, plus my nose started to drain and my stomach stopped being so mean to me. Acupuncture saves the day!

Now, I am just keeping my fingers crossed that the effects last through the next week!

Let them eat cake... or not, in my case

Saturday night, in my effort to branch out with more foods that I haven't eaten in a while, I decided to make a cake. I also, made a tasty dinner to go with it, but we will get to that in a minute. Cherrybrook Kitchen makes a boxed cake and frosting mix that is free of egg, dairy, and nuts- SCORE! This concept is wonderful for the nut-allergic community especially since if you look at any packaged good nowadays it says that it may contain trace amounts of nuts. Being part of the nut allergic community, and also still limiting my dairy intake while still avoiding eggs when possible I decided to give it a go. Things went quite well at the beginning.





The batter was very scrumptious. Melted margarine and rice milk were used as the moistening/combining agent for the dry ingredients and it made for some darn good batter. Have an allergy to raw egg since about 4 or more years ago, I have missed eating raw batter! It was so good. The baked cake itself turned out quite good as well, moist and rich from all of the margarine. Albeit, it was a bit thick and heavy for my usual preference in cakes, for not having eggs in it I can't complain!


For as good as the cake was, the frosting didn't quite live up to the same standard. The concept sounded good, but the final product was anything but. The box mix called for two and a half sticks of margarine to be mixed with the scant amount of dry ingredients they gave you. After tasting it on the cake I wished I had added my own confectioner's sugar to soak up some of the oiliness of it. Even after putting the frosting in the fridge to solidify the result was no better. The frosting had a nice chocolate flavor but it is ultimately overwhelmed by the massive amounts of hydrogenated oils in the margarine. My husband and I both thought we were eating a stick of margarine. Look at the frosting, you can see the sheen from the oil!



To make matters worse, my stomach had a very difficult time digesting all of that margarine. Remember, there was a lot of margarine in the cake too! The more cake I have eaten the past few days the more it feels like there is oily sludge just sitting in my stomach, and today that sludge wanted out. Yeah... it didn't end pretty, but at least now I am feeling better! I'm sure by tomorrow my belly will finish cleaning itself out of all the margarine gunk and be ready for lots of and lots of salads... which is all I want to eat now after that much margarine!


On a positive note though, I made a nice dinner Saturday night too, which I repeated tonight since I still had some leftovers. I saw Rachel Ray make something very similar on her show 30 Minute Meals and I decided to make my own rendition of it. Roasted broccoli with lots of garlic and EVOO (my husband and my favorite thing), mashed potatoes made with chicken stock in lieu of milk, and Italian sausage turkey meatballs with tomato sauce. I think next time I will make homemade turkey meatballs instead of the stuff I got out of the casings (which is filled with all sorts of fake stuff that's not good for you) and not used a jarred tomato sauce- even though Newman's own marinara is one of my favorite marinaras out there. Seriously though, I could eat a meal of nothing but the roasted broccoli.

More Food Fun

Thanks to the new supplements I'm taking I've been able to successfully branch out with all sorts of foods I haven't eaten in a while. Always erring on the side of caution I try to reintegrate these foods in moderation... as tempting as it is to binge on them! But I would rather be safe than sorry because nausea, indigestion, and gallbladder attacks are no fun!

I'm slowly working on eating dairy products again, so the other night I made one of my all-time favorite easy to make pastas with Parmesan cheese one top. It's a simple radiatore noodle with Newman's Own Pasta Sauce dish sprinkled with cheese. I served it with broiled swordfish (which, thanks to my crappy oven almost started a fire... I will not miss that broiler when we move, or the oven itself). Wanna hear something funny, though? The cheese didn't really taste as good to me as I thought it would. I could have left it off and enjoyed the dish just as much, if not more. Isn't interesting how our tastes change, especially after eliminating certain foods for a period of time?


Now that I have determined that whole grains and gluten are very important for my digestive process (gluten-free wasn't the way to go for me) I found a super tasty fiber-filled oat cereal, Mother's Cinnamon Oat Crunch, that is my new favorite breakfast. Served with rice milk and topped with berries- I prefer raspberries with the cereal, but only had strawberries at the time I took the pic- it is a filling and super healthy breakfast.


In my quest to stimulate my liver I have started to drink small amounts of coffee again. Hey, if the GB lady thinks I need to do a coffee enema to stimulate my liver, than why not give it some stimulation through a daily dose of "joe" in preparation? Ok, so my logic and reasoning may be flawed, but I do love any excuse to have coffee. Usually, I will drink a small cup of black coffee but I have been allowing myself to have the occasional Starbucks while I am integrating dairy back in to my diet. My new favorite? Tall/Grande half-caf non-fat vanilla cappuccino, though I still have a soft spot for my old favorite, the Grande half-caf non-fat hazelnut latte.



I'm also trying to eat more protein, though I still limit the kinds of protein I get. Searching for quick meal options I have started to enjoy my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches again. Since peanuts don't bother me- just the tree nuts, especially almonds- this is a great source of protein fuel for me on the go while I am still limiting dairy. I especially like my PB&J sandwiches for lunch on Wednesdays after personal training. My new favorite thing to do with PB&J? Toast the bread it is going on and eat it open face. Something about warm bread making the PB all melty makes it tastes so much better.



For Thanksgiving I made the Spinach Salad with Cranberries that I forgot to take a picture of and finally I remembered to take one! I've altered the salad to my liking by removing the pumpkin seeds (they were too hard to digest for me still healing digestive system) and adding in cucumber. The combination of cucumber and cranberry is a match made in heaven. The taste is completely refreshing, especially with the homemade cranberry dressing.


Ok, I think that is enough food "porn" for now. I will post later about the dinner I made last night, complete with cake!

Stress is an understatement

House buying is ridiculously stressful. You cruise along for awhile and it goes along fine, then you get to two weeks before close and WHAM! It all starts hitting at once. Negotiations with the seller, whinyness from the seller, friends telling you to back out of the deal, family members telling you to fix everything you found wrong in the inspection yourself (crazy!), etc, etc. It's non-stop! And as of 10am this morning I was having a nervous breakdown from it all!

Here is the really cool thing though. Knowing I was getting uber-stressed I had Doc K pin me up (acupuncture) so that I would de-stress yesterday. I had him do this not even knowing that I would be hit with a huge wad of stress last night. Some issues with the seller caused me to get insanely stressed out, and normally that would result in hours on end of obsessing and being on edge and consequently not sleeping from that nervous negative energy. Not the case this time. I slept like a baby last night and felt rested this morning. Not only that, when the stress level climbed higher this morning from concerned friends all wanting to put their two cents in (some good advice, some a bit extreme) and I went in to full blown meltdown I recovered really quickly. I literally was able to let go of the "gunk" and move on with the rest of my day. Did a few things to pamper myself (drank a cappuccino from Starbucks, which was amazing), ate some healthy food, and mentally moved on. Seriously folks, for anyone that knows me you know that I usually am completely incapable of doing that. I think the acupuncture really unblocked my chi that affects my mental state. Doc put needles in my ears and I really think- scratch that- know that it worked. Acupuncture is amazing!

Interestingly enough, we watched a great speaker who talked about getting rid of the gunk and getting out of our "mental" state of being during training at work today. It was a wonderful motivational speech and touched me and my situation in a lot of ways. Still digesting the full meaning of it, but already realizing how much of that work I have already started to do this past year or so. Getting rid of the gunk and living in the now feels so amazing! It truly allows me to vibrate/resonate at a high frequency state of being rather than a blocked up low frequency state of being. Would you rather resonate in the world living your dream, than be a dull vibration ignoring your dreams?