So excited!

They opened up a Whole Foods Market semi-locally yesterday.  I was pretty excited and was hoping it wasn’t overhyped.  I was not disappointed!  I’m super stoked because they have food items there I don’t have to guess or hope they’re safe for me. I think what I was most excited about was finding broth I can entirely safely use!

I don’t care if it’s organic or not.  I just care if it will kill me immediately or not!  They also had a really yummy sounding bone broth I can’t wait to try!  I’ll check out their selection better when I don’t have to wait my turn to walk down an aisle.

I was also concerned whether or not it would smell like fish since I knew they were supposed to have a well stocked fresh fish counter.  When I walked in, I saw it was quite open where the fish was and almost right next to the door.  I immediately held my breath out of habit.  Then I took a small, cautious sniff.  Then a breath.  Then I smiled.  I could barely even catch a whiff of fish and what I could smell was very clean.

Despite the grand opening crowds, it was an enjoyable experience that left me feeling normal and happy, for a change, walking out of a grocery store.

As a side note, they had these granola bars at one of the checkouts.  They are RIDICULOUS!

I ended up sending my fiancé in for more and he didn’t complain.

Hope to catch you all soon!

 

So very sorry for the long hiatus!

This will be just a short post for the moment, as I should have been in bed for work 2 or 3 hours ago.  Sleep?  Who needs sleep?  Anyways, I looked back and saw that my last post was December 8, 2012.  What I had not mentioned in my original brief history post was that about a month prior to my food allergies surfacing, both my maternal grandfather and my father were diagnosed with lung cancer within two weeks of each other.  My grandfather passed away in September 2012.  My maternal grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s, passed away before Christmas of that same year.  While both were hard, it was my father’s passing at the beginning of February 2013 that entirely turned my world upside down.  Before his passing, I was scared and mad at the world as I watched my father wither away before my eyes.  After his passing, I completely lost myself.  I don’t remember most of 2013.

Good things did happen during that year, though.  I reconnected with a good friend I had lost contact with years ago.  He managed to get me to leave the house outside of going to school and the grocery store.  We had a wonderful time and it returned a small sense of normalcy in my life.  I am truly grateful of this and am proud to now call him my fiance.

I also graduated college with an AAS in Electrical Engineering Technology in May 2013.  I really wish my Dad had lived long enough to see me walk the stage.  He was so proud of me!  It’s also a shame he didn’t get to meet my fiance.  He would have liked my fiance immensely.

I didn’t come out of my haze for a little over a year.  I’m still having problems getting my life back in order, but I’m getting there.

So there you have it.  That’s pretty well why I disappeared.  As another step towards working on getting things back in order with me, I will try to start updating this blog again.  I have so much I want to put on here!  I’m glad I’m feeling interested in constructive activities again.  I’ll try to update soon!  Much love and thanks for the understanding <3.

 

Arrowhead Mills Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

As you can tell by the tag, I decided to take a chance on these when I saw them at Big Lots. I just finished baking them and have now tried one. Their texture is a little off, but then again, I’m not used to gluten free flour. The taste was pretty good, a little bit bland, but good. I would get these again, though, I’m going to see if they have sugar cookies available. I love sugar cookies :).

 

It’s been a while…

I apologize for not posting anything for a long while.  Things have rather gone topsy-turvy on this end lately.  School started again in August and, considering I’m one semester away from graduating with my Associates and I’m President of my school’s IEEE Robotics Club, I’ve been having to try to keep my nose to the grindstone.  Throw in switching jobs and adding in a seasonal job for October, things got really hectic!

As I’m still trying to figure out what I can and can’t eat, I haven’t been eating well, honestly.  I’ve lost quite a bit of weight.  I needed to, but not by unintentional nutritional starvation.  I need to be taking vitamins, but it’s gotten very hard to find any that don’t contain fish/shellfish or are too expensive for a college student’s budget.  I have discovered that Enfamil Poly-Vi-Sol drops (non iron variety) are supposed to be free of any allergens that would bother me including being gluten free.  I realize it’s for little kids, but anything I can take to help, the better.  I’ve read that it’s quite nasty tasting though.  Any suggestions would be more than welcome!

I’ve discovered that Ken’s Honey Mustard Dressing in the dipping cups is safe for me to eat, which means I’ve been eating salads again!  That really does make me happy, as I greatly missed salads.  I need to find some dressing recipes that I can make that will keep for longer than 3 days.

I’ve found an amazing recipe for pan seared lemon herb chicken.  Instead of oregano (which now makes my mouth go numb like garlic does) and parsley, I use rosemary.  It is absolutely delicious!  The first time I made it, I put about a 1/4 of the fresh squeezed lemon juice into some yellow squash and zucchini I was pan searing in another pan.  Talk about flavor!  One of my sisters was awesome enough to let me try the recipe out on her.  She made yummy noises the whole time!  The second time I made it, I put all of the lemon juice in the chicken and made some gluten free rice pasta to go with it.  I now know to hold back about 1/4 of the lemon juice to add to the pasta, as I ended up with extremely lemony chicken!

Speaking of pasta, I’ve found two brands that are quite good.  The pasta I used for the lemon chicken was DeBoles Gluten Free Rice Spaghetti Pasta (found at Kroger in the organic section).  I highly recommend it for non marinara related dishes, as the flavors didn’t mesh too well for me when I tried it.  I’ve also found SamMills Corn Pasta (Kroger in the organic section).  It’s gluten, egg, dairy, cholesterol, and GMO free with a low glycemic index!  It smells a little like a corn tortilla when it’s cooking, but I can tell very little difference between this product and regular spaghetti noodles in taste.

Aldi has become my go to store for certain items that are safe for me.  Their Happy Harvest brand is inexpensive and taste pretty darn good.  I can’t have their pasta sauce, but I can have their tomato paste.  I haven’t figured out a good balance of flavor yet for spaghetti since I have to leave out oregano, but when I do, I’ll post it!  This tomato paste makes for very good pizza sauce, too.

Glutino makes a very good Gluten Free saltine cracker.  I need to check out their other flavors and see if I can have them.  I wish they didn’t cost so much, though.

Another quick meal I’ve found I can make is Thai Peanut Chicken with rice.  A Taste of Thai has a delicious Peanut Sauce Mix (gluten free!) they sell in some stores.  It calls for coconut milk, but I used regular milk and it’s just fine.  I will either chunk up some chicken tenders and pan sear them or use the precooked canned chicken and add it to the sauce to let them simmer together for a few minutes.  Simply put it over rice (I like the single serve Minute Rice cups as it only takes two of them) and store any that is left in the fridge.  It’s a little spicy, but it’s worth it.

I ordered The Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook from Amazon.com and received it today in the mail.  It had good reviews, so I can’t wait to see what it holds between its covers!  I’ll let you all know how things pan out with it…no pun intended.

This was a long post, but I had to make up for lost time!  Until next time!

 

 

Avocado and Egg Sandwich

After searching online to find out what I could do with an avocado (which turns out to be quite a decent amount!), someone said that they would simply put mashed up avocado on some toast.  I decided that sounded like something simple enough to start out with, but I wanted to do something to add some protein to the mix.  Why not an over medium egg?

I put about a teaspoon and a half of olive oil in the skillet and empty one egg in over the lower end of medium heat.  I add some sea salt and a little pepper.  As I’m waiting for the first side to cook, I pop two pieces of bread into the toaster.  I also take a ripe avocado and squish it some in it’s skin to make it easier to scoop out.  I open the avocado and remove the pit.  By this time, the toast has popped.  I put both pieces of toast on a plate and proceed to scoop out the avocado onto the toast.  Usually the first side of the egg is cooked, so I flip it over and turn off the stove, as there is still plenty enough heat left to finish cooking the egg.  I put some sea salt and lemon juice on the avocado and mix it around a bit on the toast.  When the egg finishes, I slide the egg off onto the avocado and place the other piece of toast on top.

It’s a little messy, but super good.  So far, I’ve noticed oatmeal bread is an exceptional bread to use for this, as it adds a bit of sweetness to the sandwich.

Enjoy!

 

A brief history and why I’ve started this blog

As of 3-4 months ago, I could eat nearly anything. I knew I was selectively allergic to shellfish (oysters, mussels, and lobster (mildly)), but that was it. A couple of months ago, I ate some clam chowder, which was on the safe list. My throat started closing! Needless to say, I downed some Benadryl quickly. Stupidly, I waited until the next night after a shift at work to go to the ER. I had been taking Benadryl every four hours since it had started. When my throat started closing again and the back of my tongue started to swell a little, enough was enough. I got to the ER in time and they treated me.

I went a month just avoiding shellfish and was doing fine. I decided to try some imitation crab, not knowing it had crab oil in it. This time I went to the ER after taking some Benadryl to slow the reaction down and figured I would be fine. I started to look at labels more closely after this incident and completely cut out fish just in case. Three days later, I’m back in the ER because my throat swelled almost completely while at school with no ingestion of shellfish or fish. Two days later, same thing with a little less random swelling. It turns out, the initial reaction to the imitation crab was so bad that it sent my histamines into a frenzy. It took two weeks from the initial reaction for my throat to stop randomly swelling.

A few weeks later, I go into a McDonald’s with a friend. I commented that it reeked of fish outside of that particular restaurant, but it didn’t inside. I get a usual burger and fries. Shortly after eating, my throat starts to swell slightly, but it stopped. There had been a cross contamination between the fish and my fries.

Since then, I’ve been bordering on neurotic with checking ingredients in food. After cutting out all seafood, food intolerance and sensitivities started popping up left and right. It seems I am intolerant to garlic, slightly allergic to seaweed, and can’t even be close to the fresh seafood section at the grocery store longer than a few minutes before starting to have a reaction. It’s insane how many processed foods and sauces contain seafood, seaweed, and garlic! It’s hard for me to find things to eat that is affordable. To complicate things, I’m also hypoglycemic due to a genetic family trait.

I think one of the worst parts of all of this is the nightmares. Nothing like dreaming that any food you eat is trying to kill you. This is really throwing me for a loop. I’ve always loved food, but now I find I’m more afraid of it than anything. Don’t get me wrong, when I find something I can eat, I eat what I can.

In trying to make sure that I can have something, I’ve noticed just how many chemicals and bad things they shove into our food. The same chemicals as cleaning products? Really? I’ve been meaning to start to eat healthier as to get my hypoglycemia a bit more under control. I suppose this is God saying, ‘Hey! Take better care of yourself!’

I’ve started this blog as a means of therapy, a place to gather information and recipes I find/make, and a way to possibly help someone else that may be having problems coping with a seafood, or really any food, allergy.