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!

The joy of eating tasty old and new favorites.

I realize it's been a while since I have shared some good meal photos on my humble blog. As my diet has expanded back to a more "normal" variety of foods, with less restrictions, my meals haven't been quite a notable as I rotate the same GB friendly meals over and over with a few of my old favorites in between. However, I notice that because I am able to eat some of my old favorites with no consequence again I am getting a bit lazy with my eating. For example, we have had Olive Garden a few too many times the last few weeks since I discovered that I can eat my (carrot free) salad with my own dressing and the cappellini pomodoro. Chocolate has also become my friend again, since it does not cause nausea anymore and digests fine (though I noticed it does make the mucous in my nose get thick... probably from the milk, which I am learning I have a potential intolerance for). The darker the chocolate the better I do, probably because there is less milk. But I digress.

The long and short of it is that I started getting lazy with my eating. Still mostly healthy, but not quite as healthy as I was during the early months of my GB fixing journey. So, keeping the food interesting, easy to prepare, and flavorful is a challenge at times. The creative juices for meal planning have stopped flowing at times so I resort for the easy outs, which is probably not helping my system continue to clean itself out of the toxin overload it is carrying. In order to stay focused, I need to keep finding new foods to share with you, so here are a few of my favorites from the last few weeks.

This dish was my "ode" to being able to eat broccoli again. Stir-fry with chicken, zucchini, squash, mushrooms, peppers, green onions and broccoli. I used toasted seasame oil, lime, and honey to flavor the chicken and used it as a sauce during cooking. Soy sauce was also abundant, of course. I love how the broccoli sucks up all the sauce so you get a great flavor explosion when eating it.

I discovered a new favorite salad last week. Spring mix with cucumber, mushrooms, red peppers, diced marinated artichokes and flax seed oil and lemon dressing. On the side I serve toasted whole wheat flax seed bread with olive oil and salt and pepper. Quite possibly the best salad ever. I served this to my husband tonight for dinner and he commented on how great the salad dressing was. Who would have thought a simple flax seed oil and lemon dressing would taste so amazing? Shelf stable junk dressing be gone! Homemade is so much better! Oh, and I could seriously eat that bread with EVOO at every meal. It's that good. And believe it or not, it's Schnucks brand bread! I "heart" Schnucks store brands. Not that I'm biased or anything from my previous work/research on store brands, cuz I'm not (though really, I am... Schnucks is one of the best out there).

Now, this dish deserves it's own blog. It is by far the best butternut squash risotto known to man. I have requests from my friends all the time to make this dish, it is so wonderful, especially when it's cold outside and squash is in season. It's a butternut squash risotto with fresh sage, and dried red chilis. A wonderful combination of savory, sweet, and spicy. I've been making this dish for about two years now, and it calls for a ton of butter and Parmesan cheese. Given the state of my GB, I decided the only way I would be able to enjoy it this year was to try to make some changes. I substituted some of the butter for EVOO at the beginning, and used less at the end, plus I omitted the cheese altogether. Drum roll please..... it tasted just as good, if not better, because I could truly enjoy it without overloading my tummy with lots of fat. I did not miss the extra butter or cheese at all.

Last, but not least, was my recreation of another of my husband and my fall favorites. This is a dish I kind of created one day, and it came out wonderful. Italian sausage with kale, diced tomatoes and rigatoni. Previously, I would coat the whole thing with Parmesan cheese, but of course, I omitted that this time. I also made a substitution of the Italian sausage for turkey Italian flavored sausage, and the result was awesome. To up the flavor quotient, I included fresh rosemary and thyme and it made the dish come together spectacularly. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. :)

Now I just need to figure out how to get through Thanksgiving this year. My husband's family is not known for a low-fat turkey dinner. My husband frequently drinks a glass of whole milk with his meal (blech!). I'm bringing my famous cranberry pear pie (trying to come up with a healthier version, especially a shortening free crust), but I think I might need to bring a salad for myself as well...

Learning to listen.

It is official, I feel awful from all of the stress of the last week. I am so worn out mentally, emotionally, physically from all the goings on last week that I had to stop and really listen to my body last night though I wanted to ignore it badly! Between the stress of buying our first house, working a ton of extra hours at work, three early mornings in a row (when I'm used to late mornings), and day trip to and from Chicago during all that I plum wore myself out. Stress. Stress. And more stress. There is only so much this bubble girl can take before it shows up in a physical manifestations. So, with much regret I had to cancel on attending my girlfriend's graduate recital last night so that I could listen to what my body was telling me and stop for a while. Luckily, she is an awesome friend and was very understanding and is going to let me watch the video of it later.

After a very long day at work (for a Saturday) yesterday I came home and tried to take a nap in the hopes that I wouldn't feel so exhausted afterwards and could make the drive to see my friends recital. No such luck. With all of early mornings and stress I had decided to drink some coffee that morning and the caffeine was still in my bloodstream apparently. I couldn't sleep at all (though I did drool a little for the whole 3 minutes I did sleep before waking back up). Talk about exhaustion. My eyes were heavy and my body was moving in slow motion, plus my throat felt quite raw and a bit swollen. Clearly, my body was sending me a message. STOP!

If you had talked to me a few years ago, and I felt that way, I would have ignored and kept going. However, I would end up sick for weeks on end afterwards with a cold or just general over exhaustion symptoms. Although I still find it difficult to listen all of the time, I do my best to make my health a priority and listen to the subtle signals my body sends me. Interestingly, the more I listen, the less subtle I realize the signals are! If I had listened to my body better years ago when I first started getting heartburn, who knows if I would have ended up with gallstones! I could have prevented and minimized just by listening harder to how my body reacted to different foods and meal sizes. Sure, I listened a little, but not enough until it was already too late.

Unfortunately, our society is so focused on being superhuman we look down on anyone who can't push themselves to the limit 24-7, even when sick. Too many companies/bosses don't believe their employees when they need to take a sick day, and so many times that sick day isn't asked for until the illness has already progressed so far that it will take twice as long to recover. Not so long ago, I met a man who's company required him to give three days notice if he was going to take a day off when he is sick. What?!?! I don't know about you, but I don't have the ability to predict three days in advance that I will develop the flu or a sinus infection or that I'll break a bone. Anyway, the point is that we operate in a society where you aren't "allowed" to be sick. If you are like me, and have a weaker immune system, you constantly feel like no one believes you when you are in fact sick enough that you have no option but to stay home (even though for the previous 3-5 days you went to work despite not feeling well and subsequently infected all of your coworkers).

So I am working to change that unhealthy mantra, slowly but surely. I am allowing myself to take a day (or two) off to let my body rest and heal. Someday, my nervous system will be operating efficiently and I won't get sick as much, but I have many many more chiropractic adjustments to go until my spine in free of subluxations and healthy! Until then, I'm taking the day off and listening to my body.

A quick dose of food "porn"

I haven't put up any pictures of my food "porn" lately, so here is a quick, but belated, dose for you. Homemade chicken fajitas with lots of red and yellow peppers, covered with avocado, cilantro, and salsa. Yummy. It made for an extra special meal following my first personal training session last week. I don't eat a ton of meat anymore, but I wanted to make sure I had some amino acids and protein for my muscles and the chicken helped out the cause. And it made my husband happy because he didn't have to cook his own chicken on the side like he does with the rest of my vegetarian dishes!