I've been eating out a lot lately...bravery sometimes pays off, sometimes doesn't.

I got a nice big salad from a nearby pizza place, and asked them to add hot chicken to it. In the past I've always asked for cold...I will in the future too. There was some major cross-contamination with something the chicken was sauteed with...bread crumbs or something. Ugh. Most of the reaction passed pretty quickly, but my joints still hurt a little and I'm a little grumpy.

On the good side, I had some fresh Mahi Mahi with tropical salsa over sesame rice. It was unlike any Mahi Mahi I've ever had before. It was just heavenly. Not dry or 'squishy' like it can get when it's been frozen. Very tender and meaty, almost like a cross between tuna and salmon. Yummy!

I also tried some Korean food. I was scared! I thought it would be full of soy sauce, and there was a language barrier there, but it was surprisingly simple and had no soy sauce. Seaweed soup with a flavorful but clear broth and beef (the seaweed tasted more like thin noodles than anything else), seaweed salad (it was a bit sweet so probably some avoid in it, but it was also good).

More to come! Thanks for visiting!

I tried the recipe for energy balls from RecipeBase. I made a few adjustments for being a nonnie, 3 oz prunes instead of 2 of prunes and 2 of dates, then cranberries instead of apricots. It's easy to make with a food processor. (This is the first time I've used my new food processor) It will be a good way to get the pumpkin seeds and walnuts that I don't eat enough of. (I don't really like them plain.) Other than using sweetened dried cranberries, the ones I made are compliant for O nonnies. I'll find some unsweetened for next time... it gets plenty of sweetness from the prunes. It was cool how as soon as I added a little water to it, it started sticking together. Perfect for shaping.

I don't really know how to work with recipes in ounces, so I just guessed on that, and used the right proportions of everything.

They're quite good, they remind me of some whole food fruit and nut bars I bought once, but fresher. I don't think I'll be overdosing on them, but they will certainly fill their purposes: a few beneficial nuts and an emergency snack.

G'Night!

Making Jerky wasn’t as hard as I expected. 1 ½ pounds thin sliced flank steak, 2 tsp salt, bunch of fresh ground pepper, garlic powder, then I used Italian seasonings with crushed red pepper. It didn’t take much to season it well. I’m glad I looked at recipes or I would have overdone it. Just rub it all in and put it in a dehydrator. (Or oven with door cracked open – not an option with a toddler) Fresh jerky is the best, not loaded with soy sauce, wheat, sugar or preservatives.

I had some spicy Mahi Mahi with grilled shrimp, veggies and rice at a restaurant. I’m trying to eat more fish. It was quite good. The next step is to learn how to cook it. Trout steamed in a steamer is tasty, and it’s harder to overcook fish in a steamer…I have trouble with overcooking fish. That’s about the only good way I know to cook fish.

I’m soooo tired. The baby is mostly over his stomach flu, but still grumpy. It’s been a long week.

Nutrition Action Healthletter's failure to fairly evaluate the Blood Type Diet

I have to admit that I didn't expect rave reviews of the BTD from Nutrition Action Healthletter, but their treatment of the BTD was still a letdown for me. They said it's not scientific at all, which tells me they didn't research the science citations at all. To say "It's about as scientific as a horoscope" is low. You don't have horoscopes reaching every cell of your body, or on genes close to other genes (linked to) that are involved with disease susceptibility. From their review all I can tell that they read is the foodlists!

Where it really let me down though was that for the other diets they evaluated, they also evaluated the healthiness of each diet. For BTD they just copped out and wrote, "NA, different for every type and ancestry". How hard is it to break it down and evaluate 4 diets? What would they have found? Every type's diet is at least as healthy as, if not much healthier than, the other diets they covered.

The other thing that struck me as incongruous was that they criticized this and many of the diets for claiming that they can improve health. Here cspi works to improve the quality of our food and our health, yet now they say that diet can't improve your health? The next page talked about how omega-3's can reduce inflammation. Get it together guys!

Dr. D'Adamo is one of the few, if not the only, author listed who works for many of the same causes that they do. The only one who tells us to avoid overly processed foods and dangerous additives, to get our food from good sources: organic, free range, free of added antibiotics and hormones... He's not slapping his name on low-quality processed Franken-foods and marketing them to the masses as part of some low-carb (capitalist) revolution.

I just don't get it.

Of course after being diagnosed with celiac disease I've felt left out from mainstream nutrition, and for some time I cancelled my subscription to NAH. This was my first issue after reinstating it. There was this article and an article on which doughnuts are least deadly. Ha ha! What do I care about doughnuts?

Even though I laud and actively support their work, especially when it comes to improved food labeling, food safety testing, and bioengineering, I found this issue to be extremely closed-minded. Of course out of everyone on their editorial board there is not one N.D.; surely they could find one N.D. out there to include in their 'unbiased' reporting. They need someone in there who can mix things up a bit, and get them thinking a little harder.

Gastroenteritis, that is. My 16-mo-old woke up vomiting yesterday and it went downhill from there. How do parents cope? I guess that, like me, we just somehow do. He's doing better today. His fever's down, and he's keeping fluids down. He won't let me out of his sight, and I don't like eating in front of him since he shouldn't eat much yet, so I've skipped a few too many meals, and eaten too much takeout. I'll survive though. I think I'll get a glass of water now :-)

That's what I was afraid the dentist would tell me today. I had many cavities as a kid, but so far my adult teeth have none! Part of that has to do with getting sealants put on them as they came in. I'm not sure why I got so lucky otherwise, but I do eat my non-secretor share of avocados, and then some! My latest is to spread some guacamole on a rice cake. It's better than you'd think, and in my opinion, a worthy substitute for chips. Nonnies only! We have to enjoy what we can

I'm beginning to think seriously about snacks. I bought some flank steak and I'm researching jerky recipes. I like it peppery, so I'll definitely make good use of my pepper mill. I've found a few recipes that don't have soy sauce in them. If I can perfect it, I'll keep making it for snacks. I have a food dehydrator; I'll check the instructions, but I think it works for jerky. I don't want to leave the oven door open for 8 hours with a mobile baby running around! I'm also making some energy balls from a recipe on RecipeBase. I'll have to leave out the dates, but otherwise it looks pretty nonnie friendly. I'll keep everyone posted on my results. I think I'll pick up a box of mangoes at Costco and dehydrate those as well. I can't find any ready-made dried mangoes that don't have sugar or cost a fortune. It's all pretty high calorie stuff, but still better than what I currently resort to when I'm hungry and don't have time to cook.

My baby's been having a hard time. I started to think that he was getting yet another ear infection, until I put my finger in his mouth. He's getting at least 4 teeth..molars at that. We're in for it now! At least he's been eating a lot lately, because he's stopped eating much now. He ate some tofu, which impressed me. It was the soft silken type, he even ate some of the miso soup it was in.

That restaurant visit was nice for the As in my family, but not for me! I should have ordered sushi. They couldn't quite grasp that I can't eat wheat or soy sauce. I asked them to prepare something from the menu that looked safe without the soy sauce, but the chef said he couldn't, and recommended something else. So I get whatever he recommended, not realizing it's battered and fried! Needless to say, I didn't eat it. I ate rice, and some of the lettuce from the salad that didn't touch the soy sauce-based salad dressing. I ate some edamame because I was hungry. IF I go there again (big if), I'll figure out some type of sushi to have, and some seaweed salad. I have such a variety of adverse reactions to wheat that I take it very seriously. Digestive problems, acute joint pain, depression, etc. etc. I went to Krispy Kreme, to humor my husband, when they first opened here. It took 30 minutes to get through the line, and by the time we walked out my joints were stiff and sore & I didn't even eat anything!

This wasn't the worst restaurant experience though. Years ago I asked a waitress if something she brought to the table had wheat in it, she just shrugged, said "I don't know" and walked away, not to return for 30 minutes. I didn't leave her a tip! There are many restaurants I never go back to, but then there are many that treat me right and I go back many many times to those places.

I was just reading the Health Library Book on Cancer, and noticed the number of servings of fish I'm supposed to be eating. Yikes! 4-5 servings each week? I've never even come close to that. Then finding fish that's never been frozen is another whole challenge. I may have the best chances of finding fresh trout here, but even it is usually farm-raised. I have no idea how they feed and treat them on fish farms here. I better look into it though. Either that or figure out some way to find time to catch my own. I love fresh-caught trout, but I'm not much of a fisherman.

Cheating...

I haven't been eating enough good things, even though my appetite is back, that means I've been cheating. I was reading that when Os don't eat enough protein and beneficial foods, they eat too many carbs. I need to eat more protein and vegetables...and fewer valentine chocolates.

Goodnight!

Yesterday was a good food day. I had my egg salad for breakfast from eggs I boiled the day before, with some fresh spinach leaves, then the rest of the huge sirloin steak from the day before for lunch, with more pineapple. For dinner I had a naked burrito: pinto beans and carne asada with no tortilla, alongside some avocado and salsa.

The best part of the day was taking a long hot bath, followed by some pineapple juice/sparkling water. I tried an Olive Milk Bath from my favorite skincare company, DHC. I haven't had anything remotely resembling bubbles in my bath since I was a kid, so this was nice (I have very sensitive skin, and I also used to get UTI's an a whim). I was a little worried about it at first, but I've never reacted to any of their products, so I decided just to relax and enjoy it with my new scrub brush. I think it helped me to detox a bit, as I feel a little better today than I have in a while.

Today is already well underway, and seems to be another good one so far!

Ahhh. A chance to breath! I've been eating a decent amount, and decent food choices, today. I'm beginning to feel much better. I had a big steak (free-range sirloin) with pineapple for lunch, and it was perfect. Life is good.

My baby boy is doing much better too. He had a real tough time getting over his first ear infection, with 2 rounds of antibiotics. Then just when he was through it, he got a bad cold with a stuffy nose for a week. I was worried it would go to his ears, but it cleared up a week ago, and he still doesn't have any symptoms. He now likes pineapple and ezekiel bread, today I made him some ghee (he's an A).

I'm off to replenish my vegetable drawer!

Today I ate breakfast and dinner, but I never quite found time for lunch. That was still an improvement, and I'm getting a healthy appetite back.

My jog didn't work out so well, I hadn't eaten enough, didn't make it very far, and felt a little faint afterward. It still seemed to help with my stress-in a way-but I didn't go about it right. I may have lost as much weight now as the baby weighs, but he sure felt heavy pushing that stroller up the hill!

I went out to a relative's house for dinner, and I was a pretty good girl. Turkey, green salad, blueberries... Some avoids have crept into my diet the last couple days, but now I'm starting to turn that around. That's exactly how I fell away from the diet before, and I'm determined not to do that again. I wonder if eating avoids after illness-related weight loss doesn't do more damage than at other times, it seems like your body is ready to absorb anything you put into it and put it into storage... I need to be more careful.

The supplements and protein powder have helped me quite a bit lately. When I eat enough of the right foods, they don't seem as necessary, but they've been very necessary lately. Thanks for reading my brief blog! Goodnight!

Sometimes when I'm stressed I eat too much, lately it's been the opposite case. Yesterday I didn't get my roast started early enough, and didn't prepare a lunch because I was preparing the vegetables for the roast. So I had pineapple juice with the protein powder in it. It seemed to get me through ok. I usually can manage a couple eggs in the morning, but some mornings my tummy is so rumbly (from stress) that I don't dare eat much or feel like cooking. So a couple mornings this week I've just drank some sip right or sparkling water and taken some supplements until I get past that feeling. I take the polyflora, fucus, and deflect, just in case it's got something to do with h. pylori coming back to haunt me.

I think I'm going to pack the baby in his stroller and jog up the hill again. I haven't jogged for more than a week now, and it's been a tough week. It will be harder with the stroller, but I'm sure it will be effective. I think exercise is the only thing that will help me unwind a bit.

ha! I almost typed unwide, instead of unwind, I suppose it will help with that too! Make me a little more narrow?

This weekend I ventured out to my favorite Thai restaurant, and found quite a few good things with no (or few?) avoids. Egg Flower soup...it's soooo good there. When I asked if it was thickened with wheat the waitress said that she didn't think they had any wheat flour in the kitchen, but she double-checked. Very cool. I avoided the curries, all made with coconut milk, and had some beef with vegetables and a little rice. It was all so good. Since it was my birthday though, I had my favorite dessert: mango with sweet rice. The rice is like a pudding made with coconut cream. It tasted great, but I could feel a difference after eating it. The other food energized me, the dessert made me feel quite tired. Better than cake, though! I did buy a cake mix with only a couple non-secretor avoids in it (tapioca flour and sugar), but I didn't get around to making it. Maybe it will last until my next birthday! I've never been a huge fan of cake. Brownies, on the other hand, if i weren't a secretor I'd make them every few weeks.

For all you secretors out there, the trick I found for brownies is to use Sweet (glutinous) Rice Flour. It isn't sweet, and doesn't contain gluten, but it makes a better brownie than wheat flour. Use a recipe that calls for cocoa powder, because then you don't need much of any type of flour.