Mamarati

Email from rep regarding the powdered sugar in Newman O’s (doesn’t break the ingredients down):

Stephanie,
There are some corn ingredients in the NewmanO’s. the vanilla is grain
distilled (probably corn), but you are correct about the powdered sugar-
there is about 2% cornstarch in the powdered sugar.

Newman’s Own Organics pretzels (all varieties), Soy Crisps (4 varieties)
and 3 varieties of Hermit cookies are corn free. There is corn present
in the manufacturing facility.
I hope this is helpful.

Peggy Westenhofer
Director of Customer Relations
Newman’s Own Organics
831-685-2866

—–Original Message—–

Posted At: Monday, March 24, 2008 6:44 PM
Posted To: Web Inquiries
Conversation: ‘Talk To Us’ Information Sent!
Subject: ‘Talk To Us’ Information Sent!

This was sent from the ‘Talk To Us’ page of the Newman’s Own Organics
website.

Name: Stephanie Brown

Do your Newman Os have any corn ingredients? My son is allergic to corn
and it\’s in everything. I\’d love to find a safe cookie for him. I\’m
thinking if it\’s in anything it\’s in the powdered sugar (sometimes
contains corn starch) unless you process your own from straight sugar.
Thanks a bunch!

Corn-free according to rep I talked to yesterday. No ingredients derived from corn.

No reaction from the kiddo thus far in brownies that contain said chips.

This is not a post about cats.

When it comes to food dehydrators. Mine came with 4 trays. This handled two bunches of grapes, 3 pears and 3 apples.

I still have two pomegranates, 2 mangoes, 1 papaya, 4 bananaanananananas, 2 pineapples and some meat left. I think I might also go and buy some salmon and dry it. Debbie Downer boyfriend thinks that will make the trays permanently smell like fish, though. I don’t think it works that way, but I could be wrong.

I’m going to need about 40 more trays, please.

Maybe I need to get one of these bad boys. I’m sure I can find $10k laying around here somewhere.

Of course, then I wouldn’t be able to afford to put anything in it. We’d have to live inside of it or put wheels on it and drive it around.

I’m so excited now I can barely contain myself. I will have to remember that the majority of this food should be reserved for my son. Especially since I have been doing more than a little cheating on the nights that he is with his dad.

Like yesterday when I had a corn dog and a cherry limeade from Sonic. I really don’t know what the hell came over me, especially since I’d just left Sprout’s where I could have gotten any number of healthy food items to eat on the way home.

But instead, I had a corn dog.

I don’t even know what is in a corn dog. More ingredients than I care to think of, I’m sure.

So, I’ve been trying to figure out culprits in my diet that are making me feel like shit. I have already figured out coffee which was a very sad realization, but now that I’ve eliminated that, I’m still having problems with something. I think it’s chocolate or milk.

I eliminated chocolate the last two go arounds. I was completely off the diet when I went back to Oklahoma, so that was nearly a full cycle. But this is what I ate when I was away:

• 3 pieces of cantaloupe
• 1 piece of lettuce that tasted odd so I spit it out
• Some chicken noodle thing
• tea
• peanut butter cookies (about 5)
• 2 bloody marys
• King’s Hawaiian Rolls (3)
• Izze Blackberry drink

That was over like 3 1/2 days. It was very odd. Because I was surrounded by food. You know how it is when someone dies. You just get inundated with food. Well, people know how big our family is, so there was just tons of food. Every day, more and more of it.

So it was strange to be in the midst of that, and yet nothing looked appealing to me. It was like my mind was just tainted against all of it. Everything all mixed up together and in big aluminum trays or casserole dishes… I had no idea what was in anything. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stay completely on the rotation, but I was going to try to stay as close as I could. Once I got there, I had no idea that my body and mind would align and do it for me. It wasn’t like I even had to put up any will to not eat things because nothing looked good.

I’m sure emotion had something to do with it as well. When I’m uncomfortable emotionally or having sad kind of stress I never want to eat. Everything loses its luster.

At any rate, I avoided both chocolate and milk. Dinner last night started Day 1 on the diet, which is milk day. I had a glass and a half and made alfredo. About 30 minutes after dinner and after I’d been feeling fine all day I came down with what was nearly a migraine. Today I woke up feeling better, but then had a little bit of milk with oatmeal and as I was driving Jacob to school another migraine set in.

I came home and got in bed and didn’t get out till nearly 11am. What the hell?

So, it may be both milk and chocolate, but I know that it’s milk for sure now.

And I’m so sad about that. But it’s just like the allergist was saying… too much of a good thing. I’ve had milk every day since I was probably about 15 years old. I guess my body has decided that enough is enough.

I really wish I’d known, being the allergy-prone person that I am, that this is how these food allergies get started. I would have made some major changes years ago. I would have started the world of food for Jacob in a completely different way…

Speaking of which, it’s time to pick him up at school and take him to get his weekly allergy shot. Bleh.

To show how little I think sometimes… I mixed cream of tartar with sugar to make powdered sugar. In my blender. I was going to use tapioca starch, but I couldn’t find it. I know I did buy some, however.

At any rate, the frosting came out tasting rather… tart. Is that why it’s Tart-ar?

I have no idea, but you’d think there was some sort of lingual connection there, no?

It’s not a bad tart, I don’t think… but it’s definitely there. Almost a lemony taste.

The sugar did not become near as powdered as I wanted. This is because my blender sucks. I want a BlendTec, dammit.

I’ve figured that there are a few pieces of equipment that will be important to Jacob when he is out on his own or if/when he goes off to college. He’ll never be able to have a meal plan, you know?

So, he’s going to need a blender to make nut, rice and soy milk. Powdered sugar possibly… Nut butters. But the milk stuff is really the big one. I’m using the blender almost every day now.

A food dehydrator. Because he loves fruit. And fruit is expensive. It’s not subsidized like corn, after all. And he loves dried fruit, but they always add stuff to it that doesn’t match our days. Oils. Sugars. Whatnot. We could make our own and buy it when it’s in season, local, cheap… and then if I need to add any oils or sweeteners, I can do that according to the rotation. It’s also easier to send dried fruit to school with him. I can’t send apples because they brown and get gross, the outsides are waxed with corn crap or they’re washed in citric acid from corn. But I can send some dried apples. So on and so forth. The only reliable dried fruit that we find around here is pineapple.

A juicer maybe. I’m entertaining the idea of this… Juices are expensive. Especially the ones that we get that are a bit “off” for the mainstream. Mango and whatnot. I’m thinking it might be easier to do this with juices or smoothies I make at home. Then I can get some greens in them as well and make it even better. And there’s the transport issue again. School lunches are just a bitch sometimes.

Food saver system. I will probably just pass mine on to him if the damn thing is still working. It has been a blessing in so many ways. Mason jars are great for holding flours and such and I can stretch them even further with the vacuum sealer. More on that later. I use that thing so much it’s on my counter now. I used to only use it when I’d buy the occasional giant pack of meat.

Have to run. Need to shower before frosting this cake and heading to the party.

Some of you have been reading me since Jacob was just a wee tot… Can you believe that he’s going to be 12 years old????? Tux, when I started reading you, you were just 4 or 5 years older than he is now, right? Such a crazy world. It kind of freaks me out how time is passing so quickly.

(sigh)

In other news, I am missing the hell out of my boyfriend. He has been out of town for like… ever. I have played a lot of Animal Crossing. I have like 800,000 bells in the bank if that tells ya anything.

Boyfriend, I wish you didn’t have to be away from me right now. I miss you. I hope you have an Internet connection long enough to read this. MMMmmmmmmwaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!1

One of you has got to go.

So, I think I’m seeing a pattern of something on day 1. I knew this diet would uncover some things in me once I started reading the information the doctor gave to us and the books she recommended. Once it got into my head that allergy symptoms aren’t all just sniffles, sneezes, watery eyes and asthma attacks, I knew for sure that some of my problems might turn out to be food related.

I know for sure that coffee was a culprit for me. So I’m keeping that out of my diet until who knows when. Maybe next year I will give it another try and see if my body is OK with it again. I mean, it used to be that coffee gave me energy and was something that I enjoyed. But at some point, after drinking it daily for years, the tables turned on me. Drinking it became a routine that I couldn’t ignore. I had to have it, but why? It wasn’t giving me the same energy, and in fact I believe it was just making me feel more drained and lifeless. The headaches that would come on just a few hours after having a cup… the joint aches and soreness. The nonstop time on the toilet. (Last time I challenged it, I stopped counting at 10 trips to the bathroom!) The pain behind my eyes. All of that has been almost completely alleviated since getting the coffee out of my diet three weeks ago.

Except after Day 1 of the diet. I used a couple of “day 1″ (I should really come up with a clever name for our days… there’s a book out there that I want to read called If this is Tuesday, It Must be Chicken) times to try to challenge the coffee back in. I chose this day because it is the day for cow’s milk products and I really need half and half in my coffee. Each time I tried to challenge it in, it was worse.

I chose another day to challenge it in, a day without milk, just to make sure it wasn’t something else. And sure enough, the coffee problems came through.

Now that I’ve thoroughly decided to give it up and I’ve had day 1 without it, something else is still a problem I’m finding. I’ve got the headache, the stiffness in my neck, the aching in my joints, the back pain, tiredness, pain in my face and eyes and my thinking is just not very clear. I can’t “stay on task” as they are always saying about Jacob… I’m all over the place today. Also, and I don’t know if this is a symptom or not, but I have that feeling of needing to pee really bad, but there’s nothing there. This is not a consistent problem for me, but it is recurrent. And I wonder now if it has to do with food. Last night and today is the first I’ve noticed of it happening in at least a few weeks. Who knows.

And so I think that it’s either milk or chocolate. The next few day 1s I’m going to try no cocoa and see how I feel. And if that doesn’t work out, then I can probably suspect the milk.

Right now, though, I think I’m going to go take a nap. I really feel run down.

Jacob says to me just now: “Every different day, 1,2,3,4, have their own special poop. The look and smell and texture is always different from the other days but all day 1 poops are the same, day 2, day 3, day 4. Do you notice this?”

Well, I start to feel a little better during the day, but then I do a bunch of stuff and feel like crap again, or I lay down and all the sinus stuff just pools up in one place making my head feel like it’s going to explode.

I spent all morning cooking. Chicken soup. Had to cut up potatoes, carrot and celery for that and get those veggies tender so that I just plop some cooked chicken in it tonight. Luckily I’d made the broth last week. Washing, cutting, bagging. Strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupe. Making hashbrowns, which I’ve never done without using an egg and an onion. That was weird. I used some psyllium seed husk and a little bit of buckwheat flour and water. They look kind of odd, but taste fine.

And baking a cake. An eggless chocolate cake. And I just looked in the oven and it might just work out. It’s actually rising and looking normal. Go figure. I hope so. It would be nice to make Jacob a birthday cake. I could top it with whipped cream and strawberries.

Who needs all that shortening frosting anyway?

Or I could pulverize some sugar and sift some on top in the style of powdered sugar, which he can’t have any more.

My head is killing me and I feel so loopy. I’m not even on any cold medicine and I feel like I’m out of my mind. I really dislike being sick. Much much much. More than just about anything I can think of, I hate this feeling.

I hope this cake is moist. How great would that be?

—

Update… cake. Pretty delicious. Quite moist. Could have cooked it about 5 minutes less… but turned out great. At least by my standards. We shall see when the “real” tester gets home today how he likes it.

10/19

Dinner:
Turkey burgers
Spinach

Breakfast:
Cashews, mango juice, coconut, apple

Lunch:
Tuna pack
Jicama chips
Apple
Black olives

Snacks:
Jicama chips, pistachios

Shopping:
Tuna packs
Black olives

10/18

Dinner:
Spring rolls (shrimp, rice paper, rice vermicelli, avocado, snow peas)

Breakfast:
Almond milk
Rice
Honey

Lunch:
Rice crackers
Peanut butter
honey
Pineapple

Snacks:
Peaches, oranges, grapefruit, peanuts

Shopping:
Rice vermicelli
Shrimp (small, about 18)
Snow peas
Almonds (1/2 cup to 2 cups water)
Rice crackers

10/17

Dinner:
Fried chicken
Mashed potatoes
Salad

Breakfast:
Hashed Browns
Cantaloupe

Lunch:
Chicken soup
Red grapes

Snacks:
Walnuts, raisins, celery, sunflower butter

Shopping:
Chicken pieces
Red grapes

10/16

Dinner:
Pork Roast
Collard Greens
Wheat Rolls

Breakfast:
Strawberries and blueberries with sugar

Lunch:
Ham sandwich
Cheese sticks
Milk (J buy milk at school)

Snacks:
Bread, cheese, banana, brazil nuts

Shopping:
Pork roast
collards

Dinner:
Turkey thighs with gravy
Jimaca fries
Spinach

Breakfast:
Pears
Quinoa flakes
Date syrup

Lunch:
Leftover from dinner

Snacks:
Apples, coconut, cashews, pistachios, hazlenuts

Shopping:
Cashews (CM?)
Pears (w*m)
Spinach
Jimaca
Turkey thighs (Target)