vegetarian lifestyle through the ages

although with all honesty, i have decided to eat fish when the opportunity presents. mostly when i can't avoid it without being rude...as in somebody ordered a shrimp appetizer the other day at lunch and it would have been worse to refuse to eat it than to push the vegetarian issue. plus i like shrimp. GOOD shrimp. frozen shrimp is disgusting.

but so here's the thing: at the shrimp-appetizer lunch, we were celebrating. i was in the office now for four weeks and we had something worth celebrating, so we all went out to lunch to celebrate (was that vague enough for you?). but before we left, my preceptor took me aside and asked if i had eaten at that restaurant and could i eat salads? I reassured her yes (while thinking to myself that most salad dressing have eggs in them). so off we went. and thus the shrimp appetizer...she asked me at the restaurant if i ate fish, so i gave in. it was delicious shrimp. so i'm contemplating just saying i'm a pescatarian (which does not come up in the spell checker with a better spelling!) but that's an interesting proposition.

i know my generation knows the differences in vegetarians and vegans and i could probably even get away with some of the jokier sounding ones--fruitatarian etc. there's whole lists of them, including the specific ovo-lacto vegetarians and onwards. there's even something called a flexitarian--someone who is flexible about eating meat. I am not kidding, i borrow the better homes and garden's 365 Vegetarian Meals from a friend and there is a whole page describing these differences.

but i digress. to most people i can say "I'm a vegetarian" and nobody pushes the issue. especially in younger people. to my mother's generation, which is also my preceptor's generation, it's more of a thing. it's hard to quantify but i really have the feeling that neither one of these women really think i eat anything of great nutritional value. no one is denying the health benefits of not eating meat and eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, but that they feel that that isn't enough. My grandfather also would fit into this category. It's an interesting little point i've noticed. i wonder if it is truly generational, coming from people who are used to cooking and planning meals for their families. the vegetables are the side dish. not the center of the dish because there's no substance.

either way, i eat plenty. i'm not always full, but that's when i snack. it's easier to count calories when you consider a salad for lunch versus a sandwich. so i can snack. :)

in other news, I'm off on vacation at the end of the week...to the shore (beach for those of you who don't know any better)! thus the likelihood of being pescatarian...there's nothing like fresh seafood. It prompted me thinking this because i was having a conversation with my mother about whether or not I had to go off the island to buy groceries or if i would be okay on the island's small grocery store. we will see.

and for breakfast, i finally perfected the perfect banana milkshake. break up a banana, add to the blender. add a proportionate amount of ice. at this point I add ensure/instant breakfast powder so i get my nutrients, but you can skip that. add some heavy cream/half-and-half to give it a little richness--i almost cover the bananas, and then I add milk to the top of the ice. blend until smooth. delicious. i have a mini-blender which is the perfect size to make this in and then drink it straight from the blender cup (my blender top has a slot so I really can drink straight from the cup!).

to be eaten with blueberry scones. and in another bit of news, i may have to add blueberries to the list of allergens. i haven't really been a big blueberry eater ever, but when you cut out other fruits that i do it, i try some things. and that's a whole 'nother ball game, not wanting to try foods because i might be allergic. but we'll see, there's many more scones to be eaten to try out this theory.

don't ask a woman how much she weighs

I’ve been toying with the idea of this post for a long while and I hope that I express it well. The question that I’ve gotten most frequently in the past few months is whether or not I’ve lost weight on my completely new diet. It’s a complex topic which is why I’m hoping I get it right.

The short answer is no. Or really, not a significant amount—what people might be thinking. I think I can safely say about 7-10 pounds, yes. This all started around the holidays, so I had been maybe 2-3 pounds more than usual, which is why it’s a not really, not significant amount.

There’s also the fact that I was on steroids for awhile to try to control my mold environmental allergy. I (and my sister also) am strongly affected by steroids with fluid retention. I had pitting edema in my legs, not something you should see in a twentysomething (pitting edema is where you can put your finger up against your shin and when you pull it away, there’s a ‘pit’ in the swelling—it’s common in older adults with heart failure). My weight fluctuated by a few pounds here and there throughout the spring when I would go off the steroids in February but have to go back on in March when my seasonal allergies got bad.

Where this gets complex is the fact that my clothes fit a lot better. I usually have two sizes of jeans to wear on a regular basis, and I’ve already ditched the bigger size and have recently started buying jeans/pants in a size smaller than what I’ve been buying forever. I’ve always had trouble with buying pants because I have a curvaceous body and my waist size doesn’t fit with my hip size. I said I’m buying a smaller jean size anyway—and it’ll be the smallest size I could buy anyway. When I button them, they pull tight across my hipbones, but are loose about the waist.

I can clearly say I’ve lost a dress size. But…the number on the scale has hardly changed.

I’ve had a number of people say to me that I ‘look’ different. It’s not quantifiable, but that I look slimmer. I’ve even been called skinny, which made me smile and nod at the person but my mind was boggled.

The fact of the matter is that while it’s nice to buy new clothes in a smaller size and that fits well with my feminine vanity, I feel better. I like the way I look most days, and that has absolutely nothing to do with the number on the scale OR the number on a tag on my clothes. I feel good, I have energy to do the things I love, and I haven’t had to give up eating sweets completely. I wear clothes that flatter the figure that I do have and I have come to grips with the fact that I have hips and thighs (it only took about twenty years to get to this point!).

So yes, I have lost weight. But it’s also a no, not really. I can say that I have no worries about my cholesterol or my blood pressure because I can’t eat processed foods. I have cut back my risk factors for a number of bad diseases by eliminating meat from my diet and adding in much more fiber. This is what matters more to me than any quick weight loss…isn’t it always harder to keep it off anyway? I’m making better choices that will serve me better in the long run.

It’s been about six (closer to seven, holy moly time flies!) months since this all started…so maybe we’ll see at Christmas. Or next summer. Or just keep on with the feeling good, looking good attitude. 

donuts!

There's nothing quite like a donut, right? :) I don't know why I even attempted to read a Krispy Kreme box however because there's like five things in them that I'm allergic to, unforunately. It's like Entemann's...I love Entemann's cheese filled coffee cake but that's the same story. However, I have found a replacement for Krispy Kreme! Make them myself!

My love affair with donuts has had a twisty (no pun intended!) history the last few months. In the beginning, I was just trying to cope with no meat in my diet which is a big enough to change. Then I started missing some of the more luxury items in my diet. Namely desserts. I have a major sweet tooth and almost everything in the dessert section has eggs in it, or rice flour (most pastries), or the lovely yeast mold.

My birthday came around in March and Maggie sent me this fabulous Babycakes Covers the Classics cookbook. It's from the Babycakes bakery based in New York City and it's a gluten-free vegan cookbook. Which is fabulous because that eliminates a lot of the things that I'm allergic to but at the same time, she replaces regular flour with rice flour, oil with applesauce, etc so while I'm loving the idea and concepts, it's been an interesting balancing act (can I just replace the applesauce with oil, or is there a legitimate reason to have applesauce in this recipe? She does have a section in the front of the cookbook regarding gluten vs gluten-free cooking so I can replace the rice flour with regular flour if you were wondering). How does this connect to donuts, you might ask? Well...see for yourself.

It really got me going! Just salivating looking at the cover of this cookbook! It has some really fabulous recipes in here (thin mints, Chips Ahoy gluten free, cinnamon buns, all kinds of pancakes). There were a few impediments to trying this recipes however.

First, no donut pan. In case you weren't aware, donuts are healthier now because we can bake them instead of frying them but you have to have the appropriately donut shaped pan to do so. I bought one after I moved as a treat for myself.

Second, this recipe is damn hard to convert to non-gluten free. I have yet to attempt it. It's the applesauce conundrum, as well as the rice flour AND other ingredients. In my eagerness to try my donut pan, I found other recipes (I will eventually try the Babycakes recipe, but in the meantime...).

(taken off the Internet and appropriately modified for my needs...has anyone else done that? taken two or three recipes off the Internet, melded them, baked them, and had their fingers crossed while it was baking?)

4 T butter, softened

½ c milk

½ t vinegar (rice vinegar or white)

½ t vanilla extract

1 egg

1c all purpose flour

½ c sugar

1 ½ t baking powder

¼ t salt

¼ t cinnamon

¼ t nutmeg

Melt the butter in a large bowl. Add the vinegar, milk, and vanilla and stir. Whisk in egg. Add dry ingredients until well blended.

Lightly spray donut pans.

Taking a sturdy Ziploc bag, fill it with the batter and snip an edge to pipe the batter into the pans (~2/3 full). Bake for 8 at 425 minutes or until tops spring back lightly. Cool on parchment paper.

I use white vinegar instead of rice vinegar (derived from rice...can't use it--also, you can use buttermilk instead of doing the milk/vinegar bit but I don't have buttermilk), and I have egg replacer that I used for the egg. I left out the cinnamon and trust me, the nutmeg gives these suckers a delicious flavor and it made my apartment smell fabulous. I did not cool on parchment paper. It's also a learning experience to fill in just the donut shaped bit on the pan and not fill in the center hole because I also did not use a ziploc bag but instead used my 1/4 c measuring cup to go around the mold.

They are fabulous. Amazing. I've been talking about my donuts for weeks to people and I think that they think I'm going crazy. These things are so great though. They're light and delicious and even taste mildly healthy, but that's probably just because I've extolled the virtues of them being baked and not fried. Also, in my first recipe excitement I didn't glaze them or anything, but that's next. And I do know some of the calorie counts and they're not anything like the Krispy Kreme variety, so here's to making your own donuts!

Bonus points (from the health.com version of the recipe):

Lemon Glazed: 

Combine 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice and 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, stirring well with a whisk. Dip 1 side of the cooled doughnuts into glaze; let cool on a rack, glazed side up.

Chocolate-Hazelnut: 

Melt 6 ounces bittersweet chocolate in a bowl in microwave until smooth. Dip tops of doughnuts into chocolate and place chocolate side up on a rack to cool. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts; let sit about 10 minutes.

Chocolate Swirl: 

Melt 4 ounces (1 cup) bittersweet chocolate in microwave until smooth. Fill a small squeeze bottle or zip-top plastic bag (snip a tiny hole in 1 corner of bag) with melted chocolate; pipe chocolate onto tops of doughnuts. Chill doughnuts until chocolate sets (about 10 minutes).

Or you can make a general glaze with confectioner's sugar and water and use that to attach to your donut cinnamon and sugar, or coconut, or sprinkles, or anything else you can think of.

Anyone rushing out to buy a donut pan? :)

Update on allergens

As I sit here, I just finished the latest in a series of unappetizing meals and I really need to work on that. But while picking at my breakfast, I was reading Julie and Julia and she was holding forth on blogging and secret thrill it is (it's pages 83-85 in the digital edition for anyone who cares) and I have to say I don't really think it's a secret thrill when you post things out on the Internet. Either way, I at least hope that I am more entertaining than Julie Powell because this book is a serious struggle to get through.

This is a little more of a personal update on the allergy front than any fun new recipes that I've found. I had my appointment with the allergist a few weeks ago from which has stemmed a few changes in my life. It was finally explained to me that the key to almost all of my allergies in linked to mold. It was like that one puzzle piece that finally fell into place and you see the whole picture. I have always discarded my environmental allergies as quite secondary to my food allergies. Sneezing and watery eyes are annoying, but a lot less important than the crippling abdominal pain and unbearable fatigue. I take my Allegra and carry on, carefully eating only certain things. But it centers on the mold! I had very strong reactions to the mold in my environmental scratch testing, and the foods that I am most allergic to are molds.

I am posting (and potentially reposting) this picture as a reminder. The foods are on the left and the environmentals on the right. You can't really see my left shoulder where beef, chicken, and egg are and the bottom left is the positive control to make sure I have a normal immune system. Along the right, in rows 3, 4, and some of 5, are the molds. Those aren't as positive as the shots I had in my arm after that, but some of them are. I don't have pictures of my arm after the molds though. By that point, I was out of it.

So the theory goes: really strong reaction to mold ergo I'm allergic to foods that can be contaminated by mold. Point in fact, yeast IS a mold. Yeast is one of my worst food allergies. Grains are a close second (rice is particularly bad, but this also includes malt and oats, and I would classify navy beans in here too) because they are easily contaminated by mold. Some of the fruits I'm allergic to grow mold on their skins (grapes, strawberries, apples, and oranges). The meats are because the animals are fattened on grains contaminated by mold. Voila!

Of course, some of them don't fit in. Cinnamon? Maybe there's something to do with the tree... and what about sesame? Eggs--though I can tolerate egg whites well, what about the yolk? I'll of course look up and see what I can find about it, but I found all this very interesting. Like I said, the missing puzzle piece.

In other news, with that in mind and with another thought from my allergist's PA, I am testing out what reactions I have to some of the foods. There is a way to avoid the abdominal side effects potentially (H2 blocker...prevent acid's full digestion of the food, thus exposure of the proteins and thus no IgE binding; I figured this mechanism on my own so it might not be true but it sounds good) if I can't avoid eating them. The interesting thing is that I didn't have any reaction to a fresh apple and orange. So we'll see. I ate some rice last week and that was bad enough to have me back off for a bit on the whole inducing pain on myself thing. :)

do you read your food labels?

So here's what I've been wondering...I've been discussing my allergies with Amy and Adam, and they started reading their food labels. I can predict what's in certain foods by this point because I've read so many labels and it makes me wonder if what I'm going through has made any of you start reading food labels...

Has anyone seen how many products have yeast in it? or 'autolyzed yeast extract'--which I had to google at some point early in the process. It's a partially broken down yeast product, as far as I can tell. either way, no good for me. but have y'all noticed that almost every frozen food item has yeast in it? Even frozen vegetables (that's the one that drives me nuts)! I can't really think of any processed food that I can eat, which is good for my health but plays havoc with my purse, time, and ingenuity.

Have any of you noticed that pastries almost always have rice flour in them? I have yet to figure this one out, but it must have something to do with texture. Some pastry doughs don't, but I think I've only been able to find one brand.

MSG isn't something I'm allergic to and I'd say I'm too young to really understand the furor over MSG from when I was a kid, but I've always had the vague idea that it's not in food anymore. Maybe in Chinese food, but that's an ethnic thing and it's not in food made in America. That's definitely a wrong though, wherever I picked it up! MSG is in about half the food labels I read. I talked to my grandfather, who was a chemist, and he remembers when they were coming up with new recipes and adding MSG was sure to have that je ne sais quoi which made the recipes better.

In other news, this worked out okay for me when I was without power for about 24 hours here...I didn't think the storm was that bad, but that could also be because of where I'm living. Either way, I didn't have to worry about the food in my refrigerator. My freezer had some stuff in it that I had to eat yesterday because it defrosted, but the rest of it was salvageable. Same for my refrigerator, my milk went bad but that was it and it wasn't a big loss since it ended up only being a few ounces (though i have been cooking up a storm today so that some of the cheeses won't turn). The good thing about being a vegetarian is most fruits and vegetables can go unrefrigeratored and it's okay!

Although on the vegetarian front, I've been reading cookbooks and who knew there were so many different names for the different variations on vegetarians!

As a complete sidenote, I would like to comment that I know I'm terribly erratic about capitalization of first letters in sentences, but it stems from the fact that I type so fast that I often get the second letter so that's why I don't do it. It's more erratic here because I often go back or restart sentences, allowing for proper capitalization but sometimes not. It's my quirk, and that's why (and i'm sticking with it!).