Spring is Here! Easter is Fast Approaching.
It’s almost a month since I wrote last. I’ve been following the Plant Paradox Program for over 8 months now. My weight seems to have stabilized in the low 180s. I still want to lose another 10-12 pounds, but I may need to do the 2-week cleanse to do this, or at least avoid all approved dairy, bread, alcohol, and grains.
I’ve been perfecting my sourdough bread baking using Anna’s Tipo 00 flour from Italy and a little of my own Plant Paradox-approved flour mix (cassava, sorghum, blanched almond flour, tapioca starch, minimal white rice flour). This latest loaf so far looks the best. I haven’t cut into it yet so we’ll see. I followed the 8-hour bread baking recipe by Amanda, “Sourdough Mom” on Facebook.
Easter is right around the corner, and we’ve been invited to our neighbors' for Easter brunch. The group will be fun, and we’re all very compatible. She’s a wonderful cook, and making what I’m sure will be a delicious brunch of mostly foods I can’t eat. So I’m making my own Plant Paradox-approved egg bake of pastured eggs, onions, portabella mushrooms, home-grown kale, a combination of shredded Manchego and Pecorino Romano cheeses, and possibly some approved yogurt. It will be similar to a crust-less quiche.
She’s doing her egg dish with sourdough bread from another neighbor who makes delicious sourdough using the same Italian flour I use (a tip I learned from her). Assorted meats such as sausage and bacon, fruit salad, and sweets will round out the food. If there are berries in the fruit salad, I can eat those, but not any of the other foods. I’m sure there will be chocolate, which I really need to avoid since I doubt there will be 72%+ dark chocolate.
April 6 update
Turns out she made two egg dishes, one with sausage and the bread. The sweets included mini bundt cupcakes, doughnuts, a gooey monkey bread, and traditional cookies she makes at Easter – no chocolate bunnies, surprisingly! My crustless quiche was delicious and she also served a fruit salad with strawberries and blueberries, which I could eat. I should have avoided the Caesar salad a friend brought since I began to have side effects an hour or so after eating lunch. Thinking back, it may have been the start of the respiratory illness I contracted rather than the salad, since my neighbor’s congestion and cough were more pronounced that day and continued to worsen over the next week, as did my symptoms.
Eating Out is the Biggest Challenge
I’m finding my biggest challenge is eating out, whether at a restaurant or at a friend’s house. At least with friends, I can bring food I can eat and enjoy the social time. But at a restaurant, I’m relegated to a simple salad with oil and vinegar or fresh lemons, foregoing all protein, tomatoes, cucumbers, and cheese. We ate recently at one of our favorite Greek restaurants and I asked if the Feta cheese they use was sheep’s milk or cow’s milk. Guess what the answer was. Yep! Cow’s milk. And likely from US cows rather than European. So my Greek salad was just lettuce, onions, and olives with their oil and vinegar dressing. No lamb gyros or Schwarma chicken, which I used to eat, since both are given corn and other grains. At home, we only use imported Greek Feta made from goat’s milk. It does have a tangier flavor than feta made from cow’s milk, and we enjoy it in salads and egg dishes.
Even ordering guacamole is questionable since many restaurants add tomatoes or use a pre-made version that includes them. But the consequences of just eating what I know my body no longer tolerates aren’t worth what I go through for 3 days to get rid of it — extreme fatigue, weak leg muscles, constipation. I can feel the battle being waged throughout my body and I’m left unable to function while that goes on, sometimes for three days.
It’s more challenging where we live in our smaller, rural community. We don’t have access to the array of fresh fish you get in coastal cities. Restaurants that do offer fish serve farm-raised, not wild-caught fish. The eggs and poultry are not pastured; they may promote organic and cage-free, but that’s not the same. Even specialty restaurants serving locally-raised chickens and eggs don’t serve pastured eggs and chicken. The chickens are fed corn and other grains to supplement their normal diet of worms and bugs and grass. Purely grass-fed beef is hard to get and very expensive.
So I concentrate on eating affordable frozen wild-caught fish consisting of mahi-mahi, ono, cod, salmon, and tuna, rounded out with salads and vegetables like broccoli, spinach, kale, asparagus, and brussels sprouts.