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?

Let it snow

The first snowfall of the year always has the ability to warm my heart and relax me. For many people, snow equals stress and bad driving and general misery. Not for me. The beauty of the white flakes falling from the sky and coating the bare branches is a symphony of visual detail and reminds me of the beauty of nature. Just staring at the contrast of the snow against the dark branches puts my mind at ease. I love bundling up in layers or with a blanket and doing a whole lot of nothing, short of maybe drinking a warm cup of tea.

Luckily, while the snow is coming down today I had to take some time to practice my singing for my voice lesson next week and I just happen to be learning some Christmas music right now. Totally put me in the spirit. I could sing it all day long.

From Thanksgiving to Christmas can be such a horribly stressful time for people, and in many respects it is. Insane amounts of shopping, jam packed schedules, and money flying out the door left and right to "celebrate" the season. I often wonder why more people don't take just a minute on a day like today to just stop, listen, and stare at the beauty outside. Just taking those few seconds for mental health can do wonders for your spirit and make everything not seem so bad. The stress literally melts away. With the economic crisis we are facing this holiday season, many families are feeling as though they won't be able to celebrate the holidays "right" because they can't give as much as they want to. Why can't we celebrate the season in simpler ways? Who needs oodles of gifts and food anyway? It makes us greedy and gluttonous. And for me, I know that having that sort of lifestyle growing up taught me that love was found in things and food... neither of which are good for your emotional (or physical) well-being.

In celebration of the first day of snow and the start of the holiday season, I would like to list the "simple" things that help me to celebrate the holidays and truly enjoy the spirit of the season.

Jessica's "Favorite Things" to Celebrate the Season

1. Snow. Lots of it, pure white and frosting the tree branches like a slice of cake.


2. Christmas CDs. In particular: A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack, George Winston's December, A Very Special Christmas, and my Bradley University Chorale Christmas (circa 2001, with all of my friends from college singing some of the best holiday music ever).


3. Lights on houses.


4. Sharing meals with friends and families.


5. Blankets and warm fuzzy sweaters.


6. Hot tea or a warm cup of coffee on a cold day.


7. Christmas movies. Whether is be one from the theatres or on the TV (Lifetime original) I'm a sucker.


8. Singing Christmas songs with friends, at church, or wherever.


9. Sharing recipes for cookies or side dishes or anything in general. Finding new ways to make the holiday special through food is always fun! You can reinvent your holiday every year, or just dream of reinventing it and using those ideas from other recipes to alter your traditional recipes.
   
10. Decorating or looking at Christmas trees.

What are your favorite things?

A "healthier" Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! Today, I am giving thanks for my health and for all of the people who have helped me achieve the much improved state of health I am in today. Thank you!

As we know, my health is still very much in flux and I am continuing to take every precaution to eat healthy, even on such a glutinous holiday. My husband and I spend the holidays at my his family's farm. As is typical with the farm lifestyle, foods are rich yet simple. No fancy stuff at that Thanksgiving, and everything is made with whole milk and butter. Totally not exaggerating. The gravy has whole milk in it (though I still can't figure out why), the mashed potatoes have whole milk and butter, and the stuffing is actually cooked with the turkey drippings so it is full of fat. Not exactly a health conscious meal. Being proactive, I asked if I could bring a healthy "GB diet approved" side dish with the pie I bring every year. Thankfully, they said no problem. And thankfully, I did that because there was so little "safe" food this year! Armed with my arsenal of GB supplements I tried most everything.

Side dishes this year included sour cream mashed potatoes that were quite possibly the richest, thickest mashed potato I've ever had. One bit of my teaspoon size serving was all I ventured to eat. One side dish down. Another side dish was a sweet potato casserole with a pecan strudel. Nope, can't eat nuts. Two side dishes down. And the third side dish, which I did eat a small amount of, was corn casserole. I should have nixed that one to because I don't digest corn well, but I was desperate. One plus to day was a guacamole appetizer! GB safe and healthy food! And better yet, is that everything digested well and my GB did not complain even when I ate bites of the unhealthy whole milk laden foods. In fact, I didn't take digestive supplements after my second meal of the day and did okay! There was a bit of sluggishness in my digestion and I was very aware of my liver and gallbladder for a short time (they kind of ached a little), but in less than an hour after eating I felt completely normal. Making improvement, and I like that!

To help myself out with an easy to digest, healthy side, I made a recipe from Good Housekeeping magazine for a Spinach Salad with a creamy cranberry dressing. The salad had cranberries and toasted pumpkin seeds in it and was quite good. In lieu of pumpkin seeds, I got resourceful and used butternut squash seeds since that's what I had in the house fresh from the squash itself. I also discovered that store bought pumpkin seeds are manufactured with tree nuts, so I decided I would rather be safe than sorry and make my own. Toasted butternut squash seeds are surprisingly good! No picture of the salad, but I do have a picture of the toasted seeds.



The cranberry dressing was homemade and had actual real cranberries in it. The dressing featured a small amount of sage in it as well, and was quite thick and creamy. I will definitely make it again, but it needs something to up the flavor a bit and I haven't decided what that is yet.

One of everyone's favorite things I make is a cranberry pear pie (that I found on the Internet, I won't lie). I wanted to make it healthier this year by making the pie crust with more nutritional ingredients. The filling is chock full of fruit so I didn't do a whole lot of tweaking there today, though I might try to adjust the type of sugar I use next time or use less of it. The filling today turned out exceptionally well and I think it had to do something with the addition of orange juice I poured on the pears (four kinds) to keep them from browning and the extra lavender vanilla sugar I put in the sauce. Here is a yummy picture of the pears before going in to the cranberry mixture.



Side note: I can't wait to have a proper kitchen with natural light coming in to it. Everything looks so yellow, and I swear it's not!

As mentioned earlier, I wanted to make the crust healthier. To achieve this I decided to use a whole wheat flour and followed the recipe the flour had for a butter based crust. Usually, I make my crust with shortening because it makes the crust so light and flaky. I thought perhaps we would get the same effect with butter. Not quite, but I can't say it tasted bad either. The crust was definitely rich and buttery, and not at all the light and flaky crust I am use to. But, again, I can't say it tasted bad. And you know what? Because of the whole wheat flour it had fiber in it so I get bonus points for that, right!?

On this day of thanks, I leave you with a picture of the finished pie in all of it's glory. Cranberry pear pie with a whole wheat lattice crust, sprinkled with Lavender Vanilla Sugar.

Enjoying the simple pleasures allergy free?

I've been thinking a lot about nuts lately. Nuts and nut allergies. I am probably one of the lucky few people who has a nut allergy that is not life threatening (yet). Sure my esophagus swells and my tongue gets really tingly, but I have plenty of time to take Benedryl and wait for the discomfort to end. On the flipside, my little brother has just enough time to take his epi-pen before his throat completely swells shut. He has a severe allergy to peanuts, and I am allergic to tree nuts. In some respects I'm lucky because peanuts are not quite as often cross-contaminated with tree nuts, whereas tree nuts are next to impossible to find without trace amounts of peanut on them. Not sure why that is, but perhaps I'm wrong and misreading the labels because my allergy is not life threatening (yet).

Then there are the even more severe cases. My friend's daughter can't even touch someone who's even thought about touching/eating a nut of any kind in the last 24 hours. Immediate anaphylaxis. Recently, my friend, who just discovered her daughter's nut allergy this summer, asked her family to go "nut" free for Thanksgiving so they could join the party. I was completely surprised and shocked to hear that her family was unwilling to do so and stated that food allergies were, basically, a hoax. Now my poor friend must spend the holidays alone for the sake of her daughter's health and well-being because family refuses to acknowledge said nut allergy is being real. It got me thinking...

My little brother grew up around nuts all the time. My mother refused to give up her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Refused to remove nuts from the home entirely. Sure, she made sure he didn't eat anything with peanut butter and separate utensils/bowls were used when nuts were present. Well, at least the peanuts. My mother was convinced that it was okay for my little bro to eat tree nuts and he would be just fine. Being ever the cautious allergy suffer, my brother wouldn't touch anything near those nuts at the holidays and sometimes would flat out refuse to eat if there was a potential of cross contamination. Smart kid, now that I look back. After listening to the horrifying tale of my friend, it hit me how tough the holidays had to be for my little brother. No cookies eaten straight off of a plate- he always had to get the still segregated cookies for the tins- no grazing on hors d'eovres at his leisure, no carefree enjoyment of the holidays. And all because we were unwilling to give things up for his sake. For our own enjoyment, at the cost of his. The selfishness of it is truly bewildering. And it wasn't until my friend told me she was willing to forgo the holidays with family for the sake of her daughter's safety and enjoyment that it began to hit me what we had done to my brother all those years.

Simple pleasures for us, were anything but for him.

On a less serious angle to that, I, now a nut allergy suffer, have become a "special case" at work for massages. We have just revamped our massage services to be more spa oriented, and with that came new massage oils. Oils made with almond oil. Creams made with shea nut. Granted, I don't believe shea nut is as common of a nut allergy, but nonetheless... it's in there. What really gets me is that almond oil is now used for every massage. In order for me to get a massage at work (I do get a fabulous discount) I have to make the massage therapists use a cream, which doesn't work well for certain types of massages, or bring in my own allergy and nut free oil. In a lot of ways, I have to scratch my head that they would have decided to use an oil made primarily of a nut of any kind, but it seems to be a popular choice for massage therapists. So, for me, I have lost the simple pleasure of being able to get a massage. How can you relax when you are wondering if the massage therapist is annoyed with you for not being able to use their normal oil, and how can you relax when you are wondering if they have washed the almond oil off of themselves enough that you won't inadvertently have an allergic reaction? I might have to actually go somewhere else to get massages, which makes no sense at all!

How quickly the simple pleasures in life become not anything but when you are an food allergy suffer.

Breaking Out of the Comfort Zone

What a long weekend. After working Saturday morning, my husband and I bolted off to Chicago to see Lulu at the Lyric and then spent Sunday running around town before heading back home last night. Despite being completely exhausted from all the travel, I'm a bit exhausted mentally and emotionally as well. I made a well-planned effort to break out of my comfort zone while we were up there on Sunday and the pay off was quite good for me. I feel more in control and less panicky about all of the "what ifs" that prevented me from taking that leap before. It's nice to have a sense of calm, even if there is still a bit of chaos out there in my life. "Warm fuzzies" are abounding for me right now on the inside, and it makes me happy.

On another note, I think I have figured out how I am making Thanksgiving healthier and more gallbladder friendly this year. I already called the in-laws to get the okay to bring some side dishes that are safe for my gallbladder and they were very understanding. Hopefully they like my health food too, and hopefully the alterations I am making to my famous cranberry-pear pie turn out to be scrumptious!