vitamins

So I may have mentioned that while I was traveling, I thought I was likely anemic. Hey, anyone would get short of breath climbing the stairs of St. Paul's, but getting short of breath going up the first ten? Not likely. I persevered and got to the top to see a fabulous view, but it lodged in my brain and I thought about it in some down moments.

the pano from my iPhone from the top of St. Paul's dome

I circled back around it a lot. I have problems with vitamin intake in general because of a not very varied diet, but I knew it was worse when I was traveling. Despite lots of fresh fruits while I was in Jamaica, there were probably days I went without vegetables. I did eat goat while I was there, but I can't say I ate it that frequently to get the vitamins and mineral from it.

So I resumed taking my vitamins when I got back to the States. I isolated a headache one afternoon, and then the next, and next. I eat out very infrequently when I'm just at home, so I could NOT think of anything I had eaten. I had however taken my vitamin every day. So I had unhappily determined that my vitamin was the cause of the allergic reaction, since it wasn't a one-off headache.

I tried to vary my diet, but y'all can imagine it's not that easy to do. Major wakeup call recently when I did a quick blood test and found out I was still dangerously close to official anemia. I had a friend recommend a 'natural' vitamin for me, so I tracked it down.

As you might imagine, finding such an item involved an organic grocery store. Not a bad place for me to check out (I almost found bread I could buy in the store!), but an entire aisle of vitamins? I ended up sitting on the floor reading all the different labels. What about this multivitamin? What about the prenatals? Hmm, maybe just these iron pills...

I loved the transparency of the labelling on these 'natural' vitamins. I am a doctor. I can interpret all kinds of things. I loved seeing 'brown rice' and 'yeast' labelled, in addition to the soy or gluten you see on the labels on the vitamins that Giant and Walmart and Kroger carry. BUT what about the B vitamin complex that simply lists that the B vitamin is bonded to S. cerevisiae. Hands up--how many people know that's yeast?

You see, after nearly three years of this, I read every 'new' label twice. Once to scan it, then twice if I don't spot anything. A third time before I do anything with it in my kitchen--you would all be surprised at how often I catch things that third time. And I almost walked out of the store with these pills before I noticed that bonding thing, because it was up in the 'percent' section of the food label.

I ended up with simply iron pills. Chewable though. And considering I've recently and unhappily added raspberries to the list, the fact that they have raspberry leaves in them means I have to take them before I go to bed so I miss the headache and am only slightly nauseous when I wake up.

My life is so grand sometimes...consider this: there are NO vitamins that I can likely take...so what if I wanted to get pregnant? Also, trying to feed me and a fetus? How the hell is that going to work?

I leave you with that super awesome thought.

Happy Fourth of July!

Okay so back to the whole food concept. :)

It's the Fourth of July, Independence Day here in America and I totally started my day off with a pot of tea straight from Piccadilly, London. A nod to the Boston Tea Party, really. However, I am fully prepared to spend the rest of my day in my red, white, and blue and enjoy my version of America's summertime fare--a black bean burger.

Some of you may have heard me lament my ability to buy any of the fake meat products on the market due to the yeast being used as a preservative. So my mom and I embarked on an effort to find something that could work as a 'burger' and we played around with a black bean burger recipe. Many use egg to help bind the beans today, so obviously that's got to be tweaked. Some use rice as a filler. No go there too. Interestingly, we stumbled on to barley as a substitute. They still may fall apart, but it's the best I've got.

Black Bean Burgers

1 can black beans
1/4-1/2 c cooked barley
Spice (Hamburger spice is an option, but whatever works for you)
1/4 c corn

Drain and rinse can of black beans. Mash with pastry blender. Add cooked barley and spice. Mash more with pastry blender. Add corn. Mix and make into patties. Fry/saute til slightly browned.

Obviously however big you make your patties can determine how many you make. For me, it's usually between four to six. I make mine a little smaller because I also can't eat the store-bought hamburger buns, so I make them biscuit sized. But whatever works.

It would probably all make you  laugh to look at my version of the hamburger: Pillsbury biscuit split in half, black bean burger oozing out the side, a slice of cheese melting over all, and Pam-kosher-ketchup in there too. Usually one of the messiest meals I eat, simply because it's so cobbled together with a little hope and love trying to keep it from falling apart. But it's so incredibly awesome to have a burger to eat--they're one of the few things I truly, truly miss.

So enjoy those fireworks (if you're not rained out) and burgers today, as we celebrate life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

[Query: did Jefferson use the Oxford comma? Hmm...quick search tells me no...]