Mamarati

This is not a post about cats.

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.

I made an eggless banana bread today and it turned out not half bad. (Does that also mean not half good?)

I was a little afraid of a couple of the bananas, though. They seemed just a bit off. I mean, when you’re cooking with overripe (rotten) things, how do you know when you’ve gone too far?

It’s a very dense loaf. I’d take a picture but my boyfriend went on a trip to the Faroe Islands and took my camera, leaving behind his janky piece of shit that I don’t even know how to run.

In other news, I gotta go get the kiddo. Don’t let me forget to talk about the nervous breakdown I had last night over Day 4 foods. And about his suspension from school.

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)

Dinner:
Salmon sushi w/ tamari, avocado
Edamame

Breakfast:
Rice and honey

Lunch:
Rice crackers with peanut butter and honey
oranges

Snacks:
Peaches, oranges, grapefruit, pineapple

Shopping:
Edamame
Avocado

Dinner:
Baked chicken with tarragon, mashed potatoes, carrots, celery

Breakfast:
Grapes
Cantaloupe
Toasted Walnuts
Cream of Buckwheat with maple syrup

Lunch:
Chicken and salad
(use balsalmic vinegar and safflower oil for dressing, sprinkle with sunflowers)

Snacks:
Grapes, cantaloupe, cucumbers, salad

Shopping:
Potatoes
Carrots
Celery
Whole cut up chicken
Salad greens (lettuces)
Tomatoes
Cucumber X 2
Cantaloupe

Dinner:
Beef Stroganoff (use leftover flank steak)
Broccoli and cheese

Breakfast:
Bacon
Toast on homemade bread
Butter
Strawberries and cream

Lunch:
Leftover stroganoff
Or Grilled cheese sandwiches

Snacks:
Chocolate cake (rz#52396 -vanilla)
Kiwi, banana, strawberries cheese, blueberries. milk, oatmeal cookies, oatmeal, cheese toast, bacon

Shopping:
Sour cream (daisy full fat has no additives)
Fettucine noodles
Broccoli
Cheese without cellulose
Cane syrup
Strawberries
Cream
1/2 gallon of milk
Buttermilk (1 cup)
Try to find “vanilla essence” w/o corn or alcohol

Hmm. It’s probably edible. I mean, it actually tastes fine. The consistency is a bit hard, however. Probably needed more oil and less cooking time.

At any rate, I’ve figured out how to make crackers if I just omit the pie filling. Ha.

Crap.

So, my first time baking with amaranth flour. (I’ve mentioned that I can’t use eggs, no?)

Wow. I was so impressed. The batter actually looked like a real muffin batter, unlike the buckwheat snot that I was faced with earlier in the week. I fill the muffin cups and put them in the oven and wait.

Never before has waiting for baked goods been filled with such confusion and mystery. What will they taste like? What will they look like? How much will they weigh? Will they turn into rocks? Sludge?

So I open the oven when the timer goes off and there they are — a beautiful sight to behold. I wish I’d taken a picture. Fluffy, risen, gorgeous muffins.

And so I set them aside to cool… and I come back a few minutes later to find that they have completely imploded and all that is left are these flat little disks of sludge.

What a disappointment.

Again, I’m about to give up on baked goods. Why am I bothering?

At any rate, I found a pie crust recipe in the book that is close to the pie crust I started making when I jacked up my arm… an oil crust that you press into the pan. So far, so good, it appears to be behaving like a crust. But as I just learned from the muffins looks can be deceiving, no?