Tag: cooking2

Add Foods Slooooowly

If you upset your system be sure to add foods slooooowly once you’re feeling better. The mistake I made eating smoked brisket in August, is still affecting me. No, it’s not my imagination. No, it’s not fun. It affects my everyday life, my work life, and my social life.

That’s what ingesting gluten, or triggering an IBS, or MCAS flare can do. It can disrupt everything! The results can make familiar situations so uncomfortable you have to change your routine. And, in the case of me yesterday, they can mean you have to lie down after a meal because if you don’t you feel dizzy or too tired to move.

For the next couple of days, I will eat primarily apples, eggs, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and limited amounts of chicken or turkey. These are things my system tolerates well even during a flare. As time goes on, I’ll add squash and English peas.  

The second mistake I made is, once I felt normal for a day, I rushed back to my regular diet and even tempted fate with restaurant food and a few Cheetos. The restaurant is local and uses fresh food, but still may have stretched the limits. Cheetos. I knew better.

long spread of food on wood table

Don’t worry, I won’t do that again any time soon. But I haven’t had a flare that lasted this long or put me in this much pain in a decade so I no longer remembered the effects viscerally.

If you try an elimination diet, make note of foods that you tolerate well when you begin adding foods back. This can become your go-to diet for recovering from an accidental ingestion of foods that irritate your system.

Using well-tolerated foods as your base, slooooowly add back foods that typically give you the least issues. For instance, I don’t usually have problems with beef until my system has already been triggered to overreact. In that circumstance, beef may cause a significant detrimental reaction.

It’s best if I don’t rush to eat beef once I feel better. If I do, I risk starting the healing process over to some degree. Not only will that bring physical discomfort, it will bring multiple levels of frustration.

Would I love to eat some chocolate today? Yes, it sounds yummy. But chocolate is an irritant I cannot tolerate in large quantities or often. Instead, I’ve gone back to the dietary basics I started with a month ago.

This is a great opportunity for me to practice patience. I will today and tomorrow, but as I begin to feel better, the temptation to eat something that tastes better will reappear. That’s when my resolve will be tested.

To entice myself to continue to eat safe foods, I can add small bites of relatively safe foods to jazz things up as I continue with the basics. Adding a little honey to my toast, a bit of goat cheese to my eggs, a bowl of rice with a dab of butter and raspberry jam to my breakfast, can introduce enough taste variety to reduce the temptation to eat chocolate or Cheetos.

There’s no set time frame for getting back to a more varied menu after a flare but learning from my mistake and not going back to a full diet immediately after you feel better for a day can prevent a lot of pain. After a flare, it’s better to add back slooooowly.

Garden Preserves

When the garden delivers its bounty, you may need to make garden preserves. Even though many of the seeds I planted this year didn’t germinate, I have an abundance of some things. If you’re more successful than I am, you may need a way to preserve the bounty.

swiss chard with stems tied in bow

Preserves typically refers to cooking something with sugar, usually fruit, so that it will last. I can’t think of anyone I know personally in my adult life who has made fruit preserves. They’re more likely to have frozen, dried, or in rare cases, pickled something. Not being great at freezing, cooking is a better option for me.

During a busy week, making a cobbler or pie may seem daunting. But preserving berries doesn’t have to involve rolling a crust, mixing biscuits, or locating gluten-free oats for a crumble topping. All you need to do is cook the berries.

If you know you’re going to make a pie or cobbler later, add sugar or brown sugar, water, a little corn starch, and a squeeze or lemon or lime and cook briefly. Once the mixture cooks down, you’ll have a compote you can use for your pie or cobbler. It can also be used to top pancakes or bake into a breakfast bread.

I don’t always use refined sugar. Sometimes, I substitute honey or a mixture of honey and maple syrup. And I like to mix blackberries and blueberries.

But berries aren’t the only item I have in spades. Arugula is also abundant. I love a peppery salad, but I can’t consume it fast enough. Cooking works for arugula as well. Not only can it be sautéed, it makes a great addition to potato soup. If you want a hearty stew, add cabbage and chicken to arugula potato soup.

It’s fun to cook new assortments of greens together – chard, bok choi, dandelion, spinach, kale – in varying proportions.

Cucumbers are also prolific producers. I love to use them in cold soups, pico de gallo, popsicles, and to line the bottom of a glass of Hendricks gin in addition to the more traditional salad treatments. I also dip them in hummus or ranch dressing and eat them all by themselves. With so many options, I don’t need to pickle, freeze, dry, or ferment.

Fresh vegetables and fruits will last longer than those trucked to your local grocery, but if they’re approaching the end of freshness and time is short or energy low, it’s okay to let go of a dream day of baking in favor of a quickly cooked compote. Or throw some greens in a frittata if they start looking wilted.

If you’ve done all the cooking you can, give your neighbors a treat. My garden gifts often result in a hot meal unexpectedly delivered to my door a few days later.

I’m always amazed how much food can be grown in a small space. My garden often yields enough excess for garden preserves.

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