Healthy?

"Think, think, think...", to quote Pooh-bear.  

Currently I am reading The Omnivore's Delimma by Michael Pollan--a fascinating read that has at least given me some consolation on giving up foods with corn and soy as additives.  With that in mind, though, I have been giving a lot of thought to my flour issues.  There was a definite difference in texture in my baking without the soy flour, so I do need to find an alternative. 

When I first began looking into baking gluten-free, I saw that the most common blend of flours were rice and starches.  A few initial experiments that got thrown into the trash can caused me to pursue other flour options, leading me to the sorghum, oat, and soy.  As I have looked into starch side of the equation, I have realized that it is not an ingredient I really want to make a regular part of my baking.  Creating starches, whether corn or potato and I assume others as well, is a pretty complex chemical process, so the original food has been broken down way beyond its natural form.  Using it as an occasional thickener is great, but it isn't something I want to be consuming all the time.  Plus, I seriously doubt my system would handle it well.  Even in eating potatoes, a little goes a long way with me.

So, I began to consider soy and what kind of flour might have similar properties.  Soy is a bean, so that gave me some clue as to where to start.  I have tried a mix using garbanzo flour, and it, along with whatever I had baked, went straight into the trash.  Yuk!  However, I have discovered it is not the only bean flour out there.  There is fava bean, garfava bean (a blend of garbanzo and fava), and even green pea flour, but the one I decided to try is white bean flour.  The flavor is supposed to be very mild, and I hope it will have the same affect texture-wise that the soy flour did.  I ordered some this past Friday, and it should arrive in time for me to do some baking before my next post.  I will give my review next time I write. 

Adjustments

A few months ago I started an experiment with my diet to see if I could find the source to some health problems I have been having.  As a result, there have been major changes in what I can eat, and also how I eat.  One change that has helped is not having my tea first thing in the morning, but rather after breakfast.  Though I drink herbal teas, having them on an empty stomach was not working well.  With that change in schedule, I decided to also make part of that time my time to knit.  Knitting has been rather hit and miss the last few weeks, and I really need to be making better progress.  

Yesterday, during my tea time, I bound off a shawl and worked on another I had started but laid aside.  I find I do best with one project going at a time--one personal quilt, one quilt for my quilt group, and one knitting project.  Each has its time slot in my day or week, so I know that I will get to it--well, in theory, at least.  


I realized that I need to get some pictures of a couple of hats I finished some months ago, so will hopefully do that this weekend at my parents.  They have some lovely outdoor areas which make for good photo settings.  If all goes as planned, I will post those pictures next week.


Until then!

Onward Through the Fog

Last Tuesday evening, after blogging that morning, I hit the wall so hard it knocked me down and made me cry.  I discovered yet another expensive ingredient I was using wasn't safe, and I had tried to make myself some pancakes substituting brown rice flour for the soy flour.  They pretty much flopped.  The rice flours are just not my thing.

Anyway, the next day I got up and dusted myself off, and because I didn't have any leftovers for lunch, decided to try pancakes again.  This time I went back to my resources on different flours and thought perhaps potato starch might be workable.  Sure enough!  They had good texture and good flavor--better than the blend with soy, and I had hope again. So my new flour blend is as follows:

Equal parts of sorghum flour, GF oat flour, and potato starch.

A few other changes I have made helped as well.  Hot cereal everyday is hard on the digestive system, so I made a small batch of granola again with the new blend.  Waiting to have my morning tea after breakfast instead of before is easier on the tummy as well.  And as much for my mental sanity as my physical, I am not going to focus on anything else besides getting gluten, soy, and corn out of my diet.  I need to give my body time to adjust to the current changes.

Experiments with thickeners, soy sauce substitutes, and more baking still ahead. 

Edit:  Made biscuits tonight.  Equal proportions of the above flours don't always work well.  Worked for pancakes, not for biscuits.  Back to the drawing board.

Back to the Beginning

I feel like I have returned to the days when I first married and knew so little about cooking.  As more and more of the basic ingredients I cook with fall away, I am having to work with new ingredients and figure out how they work.  

Soy bit the dust this past week in my diet.  The irony of it is that I had just received four 20 ounce bottles of traditionally brewed soy sauce I had ordered on-line to be able to deal with the corn issue.  My husband opened one to help out some soy-free sweet and sour chicken I made.  He said it was very good soy sauce.  Glad to hear that at least.  (BTW, adding a little extra salt and sugar to the leftovers helped a lot, so I don't have to slog my way through eating rest of it.)

At this point I figure that once I get through testing out foods, I will make a list of what I can eat.  To keep writing about another food that I have to drop is getting a little depressing.  Even though my diet is restricted, it is a lot more positive to go at it from the challenge of "what good recipes can I come up with using only these ingredients".

This week I am planning to play around with sweet rice flour and potato starch to determine the proportions of water to thickener.  Building block # 1.  

A Quilt Tale

Several months ago I came across I came across an unfinished project at my quilt group that needed a little help.  When I picked up the bag out of the UFO bin, one of my fellow quilters said, "Don't go there!  It is too ugly!"  Well, I couldn't resist a peek and had to concur that it wasn't very pretty, but I felt challenged to see if I could redeem it somehow.  I decided to name it The Ugly Duckling.


Here is the before picture:

Six blocks created an imbalance and there was way too much of that red fabric.  To tone it down, I removed the solo block at the top and added a couple of borders between blocks and the outer border.

Next came the quilting.  The pattern on the red fabric is leaves, so I echoed that motif in the three rectangles.  I outlined the pattern in the plaid block and did a sunflower in the light green square. For the red fabric I did fill quilting, roughly following the leaf pattern.  

While I wouldn't give this quilt the status of swan, it turned out to be a pretty decent little duckling.

Two Contrary Tummys

I have lost my culinary mojo.  My rhythm has fallen apart.  My recipes are dying like flies.  Why?  Because my hubby's stomach and mine have decided to take diverging paths and don't want to share.  He cannot eat dairy and has other diet restrictions because of IBS.  I am off gluten and corn.  He can't eat butter.  Margarine is out for me.  Apple vinegar is now a mainstay for me.  He can't eat apples.  That wonderful soy cream cheese and sour cream that was the answer to several recipe challenges is off the list for me.  Argh!  When I am putting together a meal, I am constantly forgetting to get all the parts and pieces going at the right time so that the meal is ready on time.  

Sometimes lately I feel like my conversation with my digestive system goes something like this:

Me:  "What?  Are you really going to be particular about this, too?"

Tummy:  "Yes, I believe I am."

Me:  "You have been rather a pain lately--literally.  And you are starting to cost me a lot of money."

Tummy:  "Sounds like a personal problem to me."

Me:  "No kidding."

My goal at this point is to go a week without a reaction to anything.  Once I go a month, I will feel like can finally get my grocery list settled.  Maybe one day I will have a post entitled "How Elzbee Got Her Groove Back."  

Bingo!

Well, an interesting week....  Things are generally going well, and I am overall doing pretty good, but I a couple of times I hit the wall of pain recently and have had some minor lingering issues.  I decided to start writing down what I was eating with a key code of symptoms after which I would evaluate at the following meal time.  With a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being best, I was hovering between 3 and 4 for most things.  One thing I had eaten was some tortillas chips and, while I didn't have pain, I had a definite reaction.  They were a gluten free brand, so that wasn't it.  Hadn't felt well after eating some Mexican food as well.  Hmmm....  That leaves corn.

Off to Google last night for several hours of research.  Well, what do you know!   Corn is a common binding in medications.  It is also used in asthma inhalers.  Light bulb moment!  This explains a lot.  As I looked into it more, I find that corn truly is everywhere and in the most unexpected places.  I thought going gluten free was overwhelming, but this is like Mount Everest.  At the same time I feel like, "I've found it!"  Yes, I think gluten is still an issue, too, because I have see a change.  This morning my cheeks and nose are a nice shade of normal skin color instead of red, in spite of a tummy reaction to some salad dressing in a local restaurant yesterday which was probably the corn.  

So, along with this discovery, I am making an appeal to my family for some help.  There are going to be quite a few things in my pantry that I can't use any more (Goodbye, Celestial Seasonings tea.  I am going to miss you so much!! ), so I need to be able to pass them on.  I will publish a list after I get things sorted.  If you can use anything or know of someone who could, please let me know.  

The journey continues....