What Can I Eat?

This whole thing was frustrating before, but now I feel like I'm being starved!  Going off of commercially-made foods, processed foods, is a lot harder than I'd ever imagined.  I had no idea it was going to be this hard!

I'll be honest, the biggest problem I have with going off of everything is not knowing what to eat.  It's not like I have a nutritionist at my disposal to advise me on what I can and can't have, though that would be lovely.  Instead I have to figure it out as I go along.  I have to play with what I need and what I'm missing out on in my diet.  Right about now it feels like I'm missing out on a good deal, but that's also because I've been programmed by society to eat so many of these processed foods.

Going out to eat has become a bit of an impossibility.  I've looked at many menus and as much as they offer gluten-free solutions, many of them are known for still using eggs and dairy in the baking process for breads and the like.  For example, a friend of mine suggested Jason's Deli does a gluten-free menu.  Unfortunately, having checked their menu, all I can have is the salad bar...and then the only dressing I can have is oil and vinegar, which I'm not terribly fond of to begin with.  Everything else on their gluten-free menu has eggs, milk, or soy.  It's not exactly easy to find a food that's free of all of those things, again, unless I hit up the salad bar. It's not exactly fun to be eating rabbit food when everyone else is eating something so delicious looking.

I've also learned that making things from scratch means really making everything from scratch.  Just going to the grocery store to pick up some beef broth I realized it's got dairy in it as well as tons of soy.  Beef stock is even worse with honey.  I'm kind of glad I've never used beef stock before!  The more I go along the more I realize that I do have to make 100% of my meals from scratch.  I can't even use prepackaged ingredients because everything's got additives I just can't have.  I think it might just be fun to start making my own stuff from beginning to end, but at the same time, this whole allergy thing is sapping my energy.  I just don't have the energy for that whole process.  At the same time, if I cheat and eat things I shouldn't, or starve myself, then where am I going to be?  Without the energy to do it!  It's a catch 22 no matter what I do.

Thankfully, this new diet does mean eating more regularly.  I can no longer snack throughout the day unless it's fruits and veggies.  That means I'm more likely to eat fruits and veggies, and since they don't fill me up the same way, I'm still hungry come meal time, though I haven't really been eating meals all that often.  Even so, I'm starting to feel like I'm getting somewhere with all of this, even if it is just a small change towards healthier living.  Every small step is one step closer, right?

Grocery Shopping for a New Diet

Grocery shopping for a larger family is already hard enough without adding more complications.  We've got three children and three adults in this house.  It's not easy to find foods that all of us will eat, and that's not even looking into the reality that we're also in a house with food allergies.  I know some people have told me I may as well just let everyone eat what they like, but that's not as easy as it sounds.  That could result in making five dinners every day because not everyone can eat the same things.  I'm not about to do that.  Instead, I've decided to take the whole house with me on my journey through allergy land!

At this point, we're avoiding a whole huge list of things, and let me tell you, they're in everything!  The hardest one to escape seems to be soy.  While making things from scratch with a gluten substitute isn't that bad, and there's plenty of ways to avoid dairy, even the substitutes for dairy contain soy (and sometimes soy and dairy combined!) which makes trying to avoid soy an interesting challenge.  To simplify things, I'm cutting soy out of my diet last because, well, I still want to be able to add butter to things a little bit longer.  It's not easy trying to escape these ingredients!

When we go to the store we've got a lot to take into consideration.  I have all of my allergies, and Marrok (the former owner of the perfect grunge shirt) has his nut allergies.  That means we've got to be very selective about what we get.  To further complicate things, we're a pork-free household, which means we've got one more option off the list.  At present we're avoiding poultry, too, as it's often injected with casein to keep it fresh.  This means fish, beef, lamb, and a lot of vegetables.  We even have to be careful about our dairy substitutes as many of them contain nuts.  Obviously soy milk is out, and Marrok can't have almond milk.  Surprisingly, coconut milk comes with a warning that it may contain almonds.  We may have to change over to rice milk depending on how he reacts.  That may not be a bad thing considering I actually like rice milk for cooking.  As he's said, we just need to make sure we have a phone handy in case of emergency.  I don't want my need for healthy living to kill him!

Shopping at Walmart, unfortunately, proves problematic.  They don't have very much selection on anything.  It seems like they're part of the culture that feeds into unhealthy America, and if I could afford to, I'd boycott the store.  Unfortunately, Walmart seems to be one of those companies no one but the rich can afford to boycott.  When it comes to home goods, clothing, and everything else, their prices can't be beat.  However, this isn't exactly the time for my rant on how Walmart is part of the downfall of this country and it's economy.  I'm trying to focus on something much happier, my own health.

Having little other option, and wanting to make gravy to go with my new version of shepherd's pie, I had to pick up some kind of flour.  Sadly, there aren't a lot of options for flours that don't contain gluten in your Walmart baking aisle.  There's tons of wheat flour of any variety imaginable.  There's organic and non-organic, self-rising flour with yeast, baking flour, and pretty much everything else.  There were more kinds of wheat flour than I had ever imagined, but only one small shelf with soy flower in small packages.  There were only two rows of it and the shelf was hardly full.  It seems like society expects that people don't have wheat allergies and things like that.  Apparently the local Asian market offers rice flour, which will probably be where I shop in the future, but until then my only option was soy flour.  They sold it in tiny packages, so small it made me glad I didn't have to do any serious baking with it.  As something to make gravy with, it wouldn't be so bad, but it certainly isn't an economical purchase for frequent use!  I can't wait to check out my options.  I'm looking forward to being soy-free and I'm hoping that rice four is a better option for us.  I've heard there are all kinds of gluten-free wheat substitutes out there, but I don't know much about them.  I'm going to have to do some research on this one because the more options I have, the better.

Butter was another challenging problem for me.  There really aren't many options when it comes to butter as most of them contain soy.  I wouldn't be surprised if all of them contain casein in their "natural flavor", but I decided it was worth a try.  I can't kick everything and butter is such a common additive for cooking.  Apparently there are only two options that do not contain dairy as a main component available at Walmart.  I hear HEB has a better selection, but I wasn't brave enough to try them.  I've found their prices to be even more steep than Walmart locally.  Smart Balance has a butter made from extra virgin olive oil.  There is also a company called Best Life that makes a stick butter.  Both products have soy, but at this point I'm running out of options.  I don't know if they make a butter that's dairy and soy free.

I couldn't help myself when it came to the milk section.  Passing my favorite chocolate milk was far too sad for me.  I didn't check the ingredients (though I suppose I should have and probably still should), but I got some chocolate almond milk.  I couldn't resist.  I had to do something for me, and we were already there buying coconut milk.  I know it's not going to be anywhere near as good as the chocolate milk I used to drink, but I can at least try it.  You never know, I may love it!  I think that's going to be the hardest part of going dairy-free.  I don't like the milk substitutes near as much as I like milk.  With how expensive this stuff is, I may have to look at making my own.  I got a recipe for rice milk that I'm going to have to try out and review later.  It would definitely put me one step closer to the root of the process, something I think is very important when you're making your own foods, especially when it comes to allergies.

To balance things out a bit, and to give me something fast and loaded with sugar for sugar crashes we loaded up in the produce section.  I picked up some butternut squash.  I'm going to try acorn squash, though I have no idea how to prepare it.  We bought a bunch of potatoes, since those are always safe.  They may not be near as good without butter, but I'm sure I can find a way to make them taste yummy without it.  Carrots and broccoli are always favorites around here, but again, I cook my carrots with butter, so that might get interesting once I kick the soy.  I've been told I should check out the Asian food market here for vegetables too.  Apparently they have an excellent variety of squash and other things.  It would be nice to have something to resort to that doesn't come in a can.  I love canned corn for it's sake of ease, but I miss having fresh corn from the little farm back home.  If anyone who reads this lives in the Arlington, Mass area, check out Wilson's Farm.  They're fantastic!

Then we loaded up with fruits, even though we only got clementines and black plums.  I've noticed in Texas there's only one short window where you can get black plums.  The rest of the time it's red plums, which I can't stand and I never knew why.  I think it's because I grew up on black plums.  My dad and I used to eat them every summer.  Clementines were new to me in high school.  My mom got a bunch from someone she was in school with and brought them home.  My sister and I adored them  They were the best thing we'd had in quite some time and we couldn't get enough.  I've always liked oranges, but the sweet, easy taste to these was delightful.  I've bought them ever since and my kids and I enjoy them.  They're harder to find when it gets cool, but in the summer, they're everywhere.  I just wish you could get the big crates of them like we always used to be able to find back home.  They would last for what seemed like forever.

We picked up some teas too.  I love drinking tea.  I haven't been drinking it so much because it's just been too hot, but if I'm not going to be drinking soda, I need to have something other than water.  I love juice, but I don't want to be filling myself up with that much sugar.  Tea is an incredible alternative.  Besides, I can get a mint tea that will help settle my stomach with everything that's going on.  We picked up some Yogi mint tea for me.  We also grabbed some Yogi detox tea for Marrok, since he's put a lot of unhealthy things in his system over the years, and if it helps his body purge, all the better.  I picked up some Celestial Seasons Vanilla Sleepytime Tea for the kids, and some Chai for Chesh.  I figure tea will be something that can benefit the whole family.

Because it's been forever since I've had honey, we stopped and looked at the Agave.  Marrok immediately jumped on it and said I should get it.  It was cute.  He said, "You use honey in your tea, right?"  I almost laughed.  Of all the things I'm allergic to, honey is perhaps the most evil.  Just one spoonful is enough to make me double over with abdominal pain and be sick for a week.  Because of this, I'd never gotten used to honey in tea.  My allergy picked up before I'd even started drinking tea, back when I was about twelve, maybe younger.  I decided it might be fun to try something new to sweeten my tea, so we'll see how it works.  I may just decide I would rather not sweeten it at all.  He's so kind for thinking of me though!

To top it all off, we got a lot of red meat and some fish.  We're going to be making steak, roast, and stew.  Of course, red meat is the most painful and expensive part of the whole thing.  One would think in Texas it would be cheaper and more affordable, but I guess not.  I also find myself missing living back home.  There's something about getting fresh fish that's so much better than the frozen stuff offered here.  It felt like there were so many more options, at least where fish was concerned.

Living back home things were different.  The local co-op held many options for those with diet restrictions.  I was able to live on a healthy diet for me for a year without a problem there before I decided to start cheating on everything again.  It felt good to know that I was able to live off of foods I liked without having to worry so much.  Here we don't have a co-op, unless you drive to Austin.  We don't even have a Whole Foods.  The options for something healthy are far more limited.  Our little Asian market seems to be the best option for someone like myself, but sometimes it would be nice to have a wide variety of options.  It would be nice to go into a place that looks and feels like a health food store, as silly and pointless as that may sound.

I can't wait to get to somewhere more health conscious than this hole in the wall city.  It will be so nice to go grocery shopping without having to worry about how much variety I can actually get.  Yes, I may still have to check labels, but a number of these health food companies are good at labeling.  They love to slap gluten-free, soy-free, and dairy-free on anything they can because they know it will get them attention from all the right people.  It helps people recognize how to shop.  It helps them recognize what they need to get without sitting there, reading labels.  It gets their company attention.

The sad thing is a lot more Americans have problems with these foods than anyone could ever have imagined.  Doctors don't exactly suggest eliminating foods as a first course of action when people come in complaining about health problems.  They would rather prescribe medications for pain, migraines, and mental disorders than focus on changing the diet to see if that helps, because adding more chemicals to the body solves anything...  We're only facing an increased chemical dependency in our country as the days go by.  Who knows what our country would look like if we learned how to eat right, eat healthy, and take care of our bodies?  Perhaps this is a sign that we should start putting a focus on eating right for a healthier, happier, America.  Who knows?  Maybe the suicide rate will drop.  I have no doubts that American obesity would be less of a problem.  Problems like arthritis and asthma might be reduced as they can relate to food allergies (though most people don't know that....I didn't know that)!