It is so weird to have beneficial grains, there were none in the non-secretor O diet, except for essene bread (which has a tad bit of gluten unless you figure out a way to make it yourself, so I didn't eat it). Weirder still to have beneficial dairy, where there were hardly even any neutrals before.

Tonight I made some basmati rice for our family dinner. You can cook it just like pasta, in a pot of boiling water. Rinse it well, soak for 30 minutes, bring a pot of salted water to a boil, add the rice (minus soaking water), return to a boil and cook for about 3 minutes, test for doneness, once it is done, but not mushy, strain it. So, now that I can have cinnamon, I put a cinnamon stick and two bay leaves in the boiling water, as well as some fresh ground cardamom and cumin. If I'd had turmeric and saffron I would have used those too. In another pan I sauteed some mushrooms and turkey bacon (the only meat I had on hand that was thawed, does contain some sugar, but I couldn't let it go to waste). I added peas to the saute pan at the end, just to warm them up. Once the rice was done and strained, add a beneficial oil and the vegetable/meat mixture, maybe a touch of ghee. I ground up a few onion seeds on top of mine to emphasize the indian flavors.

Gatherers also get oats. I recommend the certified gluten free oats, as they are free of wheat contamination. I have yet to experiment with it, but I have some of the oat flour on hand (a beneficial) and look forward to trying it. Most rice and rice flours are now black dot avoids, so I may replace them with oat flour in my recipes and see how that turns out.

I looked for ricotta cheese at the grocery store today, they didn't have any natural or organic brands. Everything they had has at least one avoid in it. I will continue my quest. There's a HFS near here that is big on dairy, so I'll check there. If no luck there, I'll go up to Wild Oats. They should have some nice fresh beneficial fish there too.

I found a recipe for flax focaccia online, and sources tell me it is good (a couple gatherers at the GTD forums have tried it). It is gluten free, and made of beneficials (as long as you use a compliant sweetener and corn free baking powder (see recipebase for suggestions on that).

Today I had scrambled eggs with salsa and a quinoa tortilla for breakfast, a pummelo for a snack (if you like grapefruit you'll love pummelo), cottage cheese and pineapple for lunch, and the basmati for dinner. Some yerba mate and kukicha (twig tea) here and there. I probably didn't eat enough, but I feel fine...usually I'd feel a bit hypoglycemic. It was mostly all beneficials throughout the day, with maybe a couple neutral condiments or spices. I love the new layout of the lists because I don't even think about the neutrals, and there's so much variety of beneficials that I'm totally happy with just those. I've never gone all-beneficial before, but now it's much easier to do.

Another weird thing is that right now I actually feel like exercising, I WANT to exercise. I actually have a little energy to spare, which is not normal for me the past few months. BTD helped me a lot, but I didn't always stick to it (mainly because dairy cravings would send me to avoidland). To me, this is so much easier than the O-nonnie diet. Sure there are some things I'll miss, some "black dot avoids" I'll miss until I can add them back in, but I can't think of what they are right now!