Sick for Christmas

Well. I am WAAAAAAY behind on blogging and reading blogs and that's just no good! Unfortunately, I caught that awful Christmas Eve flu bug that was going around and spent the last four days in misery. Christmas did not happen at my house this year, and it ended up being okay because my mother-in-law was sick, too. She didn't ended up coming over like she was supposed to and will be coming instead for New Year's. And with as sick as I was on Christmas, that was just fine with me! Found out on Friday that two of my coworkers had the same flu on Christmas Eve, and heard from a few patients who had it too. Not a pretty flu bug people. If you get it, don't eat a lot and keep it to bananas, rice, and tea. Do not attempt anything else! Oh, and lots of sleep. I'm finally feeling and eating normal after four long days. I'm thinking that if I had played it easier it might have been gone in three.

Anyway, I am way behind on reading blogs, so I must get to them and catching up with life now that I'm on the mend! I will post more later once I have some scrumptious soups and other feel good meals to share!

Christmas Cookies: These are a few of my favorite things

Thought I should share with you the VERY unhealthy cookies I made this year. Usually, I make anywhere from 5-10 different types of cookies, but I limited it to my favorites this year.

1) M&M cookies: this year I made two batches because the first batch did not turn out soft and moist like my cookies are supposed to be. I think I got it figured out and I actually ended up making the second batch with dark chocolate M&Ms. You know, to make them healthier.... antioxidants... and stuff....

2) Candy cane cookies: These are the cookies I'm allergic to but are my all-time favorite Christmas cookie from childhood. The are a dryer cookie topped with crushed candy cane and sugar. Scrumptious and aromatic.

3) Chocolate and peppermint meringues: this is actually my own recipe that I created about two years ago. I was making coconut meringues from a recipe I had and thought it would be fun to crush up the leftover chocolate chip and candy canes I had and throw them in to a meringue mix. Genius! It's a bit tricky to get the chocolate chips and candy canes just right so they are melty and gooey inside the meringue, but I'm not sharing my secret. This is my new favorite Christmas cookie. You can't beat a mint and chocolate combo. Well, expect maybe peanut butter chocolate.... oh! Now I might have to experiment!

Cookie overdose!

I discovered a funny thing today. There really is a limit to how many cookies I can eat, and eating too many really does make me sick.

After Sunday night's cookie making fun, I decided to go crazy and make a few more batches. Well, after eating too many yesterday (and learning the ins and outs of baking in my new house) and developing a throbbing headache, and eating too many for breakfast today and feeling sick from it I learned my body does not like that many cookies! Plus, once I did "detox" and eat real whole foods I felt a true sense of calm and relaxation come over body, like it was giving me a hug for not feeding it more crap. This time last year, I would have just kept eating cookies and ignored the strange icky feelings they gave me, but this year I actually started craving real food! Goes to show that the body really does know what's good for it!

Also, I am pretty sure I am allergic to even imitation almond extract. The cookies with that in it gave me a huge headache yesterday and today made me eyeballs feel like they were bugging out of my head. Too bad those happen to be my favorite cookie. I guess I will have to leave that flavoring out next time and substitute for something else. I'm sure I will find something as good if not better to make them just as tasty.

Scratch that... a Christmas with A batch of cookies

My old co-worker Stephanie (who got me my fabulous fridge) came over for dinner tonight and there was much revelry and good eats to be had. I had a blast and can't wait to have her over again for another fun filled evening. After we were done with dinner we decided we needed to make a batch of Christmas cookies for fun and to at least say we made a batch of cookies this Christmas. As mentioned in my previous post there was much more tasty dining to be had beforehand, so here is tonight's dose of food cravings. Feel free to drool a little, I won't tell. :)

For dinner, I made roasted chicken that I slathered with butter, EVOO, salt and pepper, herbs de Provence, and some lemon. I cooked it my convection (microwave) oven and it was quite possibly the juiciest peace of poultry I have ever had. I could have eaten the whole bird in one sitting! For side dishes I made my EVOO and herb roasted potatoes and my mango, cucumber, and red pepper (a new addition to the recipe) salad with balsamic vinaigrette. The dinner was healthy and ridiculously flavor-filled. I could be content eating it ever night of the week.

We followed dinner with port wine poached pears, scented with cinnamon and star anise. Stephanie and I decided to kick things up a notch and add in some orange juice, which was a very smart addition. The orange notes would sing through the reduction every so often and surprise you. It tasted and smelled a bit like Christmas. The smell wafting through the house as they boiled was intoxicating.

The reduction on top of the poached pears was thick and syrupy. Look at the deep dark red color from the wine!

The sauce was so good, Stephanie and I couldn't help but lick our plates! I thought I would be funny and snap a pic of us doing just that! Stephanie isn't normally a plate licker, but I am when the dish is good enough and I don't care if you think it's gross... you know there are times you want to lick your plate too!

After dessert, we made a batch of candy cane Christmas cookies and had a blast doing it. Unfortunately, I ran out of red die so we made blue candy canes instead!

What we didn't know was that the blue food coloring would stain our hands!

It was totally worth it though! I ate a cookie and it tasted so good, but my lips and tongue are telling me to wait another day to eat more... the eggs aren't fully cooked/set yet in the cookies! That's the problem with raw egg sensitivities, it means you have to wait a day before eating your freshly baked cookies!

A Christmas Without Cookies

Between moving and working and life in general-- well, mostly the moving and unpacking- I've come to realize that I don't have time to make a single batch of cookies this year before Christmas. I'm a bit bummed about this, but at the same time I'm sure my stomach and gallbladder are very thankful for it as I have a bit of an addiction to cookies and will eat them until I get sick. In fact, most years I make way too many and then eat them for two out of three meals a day. Perhaps I will get to make some on Christmas day itself, but it's highly unlikely... and at that what is the point so late in the season?

Since I don't have any cookies to show you (little tear) and I have not dedicated adequate blog time to food porn as of late, I thought I would spend some time updating you on what I did eat during the moving these past few weeks. Food allergies and gallbladder dysfunction aside, I ate well and even created a few quick and multiple purpose (leftovers are awesome) dishes to get through the week.

During the week prior to moving I developed a deep love and craving for portabello mushrooms and potatoes. Both are great cameleons and soak up the flavor of whatever you put in or on them, which makes for a wonderful flavor explosion in your mouth. I reused some mashed potatoes I had made a few days prior and topped them with sauteed portabello mushrooms that were simply seasoned with EVOO, salt and pepper, and a garlic pepper spice blend I have from the Spice House. That was one of the best lunches ever, everything tasted so buttery even though there was only a small amount of butter in the potatoes!

Trying to make lots of food that I could reuse during the week and getting rid of excess food product in the house roasted some yukon gold potatoes with fresh thyme, EVOO, and salt and pepper. Having enjoyed thoroughly the flavor combo from earlier in the week I made a fresh batch of sauteed portabellos to go with it. So good!

Once we had a working fridge and were completely moved in to the house, I was excited to make our first meal in the house. Time constraints considered, but still wanting something flavorful, I opted to make one of my famous stir-frys. A no fail flavor combo, I stir-fried up some broccoli, orange pepper, mushrooms, and chicken with fresh grated ginger and garlic, freshly squeezed lime, soy sauce, and a dousing of honey. You know, some people say the holy trinity in cooking is carrots, celery, and onion, but I saw it should honey, lime, and garlic. I served everything over jasmine brown rice. I was hoping to have leftovers for lunch but my husband ate it all.

Ok, that should hold you over for now. I am off to prepare a gourmet feast for my girlfriend who sold me my fabulous new fridge. On the menu: Herb roasted chicken, herb roasted potatoes, a fancy salad, and port poached pears for dessert. I need to get cooking!

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?