Life is Happening.

It's funny how life happens.  Stuff just comes up.  My *plan* to do this blog for three months was thwarted by a pretty nasty health upset.

Life is happening.  This blog really isn't.

Sure, we ate local tonight.  We had our carrots and kale from Oxbow Farms, and we had lamb from Olsen Farms, cooked in a bone broth from Stokesberry Sustainable Farms.... but really, who needs a picture of that.  And all I had was the bone broth and the lamb, anyways.

I am currently eating:

Bone Broth (3 times per day)
Meat/Fish/Poultry
Eggs
Butter
Heavy Cream
Avocado
Coconut Oil
Full Fat Plain Yogurt

... and a totally ripe banana every few days.

That's it.  Nothing else until I get to see the specialist and we figure this out.

But nothing is figured out yet.  Quite a lot was ruled out today, when I got all of my blood work results back.   I'm apparently extremely robust and healthy, according to my labs.  I'm not angry about this.  I'm thankful.  But part of me wishes there was an answer to this.  Why did a peach or some honey make me double over in pain?  I'm still going to get tested for more things, like fructose malabsorption, etc.  But no answers thus far.

And I've decided that since I'm drinking bone broth every night for dinner, this is no longer a worthwhile experiment for me.  So I'm going on a hiatus until I have some more answers and until I can start putting other foods back into my diet.

Hopefully I'll be back soon!  :-)

Chicken & Blood Draws

There's no picture tonight.  Will cooked dinner (that I prepared ahead of time) while I was at the doctor, and I told him not to worry about the pictures tonight.  Two fussy kids and making dinner is a lot for him.  :-)

Dinner Menu:

Roasted Chicken Legs & Thighs (Stokesberry Sustainable Farm)
Roasted Dino Kale (Oxbow Farms)
Steamed Broccoli (Oxbow Farms)
Leftover Yukon Gold Potatoes (farmer's market)

Today I went to the doctor.

Overall, it went really well.  I had typed out two pages of my medical history, neurological problems, intestinal issues and current issues and all of my food restrictions/allowances for her.  She ordered a LOT of tests and referred me to the research GI that our friend recommended.  Most importantly for me, she believed me and didn't just assume I needed a psychiatrist because I was stressed out and making things up like the lovely Boston neurologists said back in 2008.

Medicine has finally caught up with some of the paleo principles I found years ago: namely, that gut inflammation due to diet problems/autoimmune issues can lead to neurological issues.  It's actually part of a diagnosis now, in 2013.  Back in 2008, it wasn't.  This was such a relief for me.  I was so upset, thinking that I would go to a doctor again and I would just get told to go to counseling.

So I'm feeling fine, mostly because I'm only eating like, seven or eight kinds of foods right now.  Today I had eggs, butter, full fat yogurt, avocado, bone broth and chicken.  That's it.  I had a LOT of bone broth.  I'm actually making another batch (with chicken feet and chicken carcass) right now because my beef bone broth will run out tomorrow at the rate I'm drinking it.  It's really helping me right now.

As for dinner, the children scarfed down all of their kale and broccoli and ate some chicken.

I was a happy mommy tonight.  :-)

Breakfast for Dinner!

Dinner Menu:

Pork Breakfast Sausage (Sea Breeze Farms)
Frittata with Aged Cheese (Anthem Farms, Glendale Shepherd)
Roasted Yukon Gold Potatoes (farmer's market)
Rainier Cherries, Peaches (Oxbow Farms)

Who doesn't love breakfast for dinner?  I love making extra on these nights so I can sleep in a bit longer the next morning and already have *actual* breakfast taken care of.  Perhaps I'll sleep until 6:30 AM tomorrow morning.  It would be for the first time in..... months?!?!

I only had the eggs tonight with my bone broth (made from Skagit River Ranch bones, of course!)  I'm avoiding all potential triggers until I get to the doctor tomorrow and figure out a game plan.  It's been not so bad actually.  Bone broth is freaking amazing.  I know so many people do those juice fasts for "cleansing" fasts, but really, bone broth would work so much better.  All that sugar in all that fruit is so inflammatory.

Good bone broth, when made properly, is just gelatin in the fridge.  Warm it up on the stove and add a bit of sea salt... and you have a warm mug of absolutely nourishing liquid gold.  Who needs coffee now?  :-)

Pork Chops & Blueberry Mango Chutney

This is a terrible picture, I know.  My children were both melting down after a day at the zoo and the wading pool, and I was just trying to slap food on plates as fast as possible and get it on the table.  I didn't even set it down to take a picture of it.  And it's alone on the plate because nothing was done at the same time tonight.  Oops.

Dinner Menu:

Pastured Pork Chops with Blueberry Mango Chutney (Olsen Farms, Whitehorse Meadows Farm)

Steamed Green Beans (Oxbow Farms)

Sauteed Zucchini (farmer's market)

Rainier Cherries (Oxbow Farms)

I did not have the chutney tonight.  After my gut-wrenching episode with honey awhile back, I've sworn off honey and high fructose foods like mango.  Chutneys in general are troublesome.  

But they are delicious, or so my three year old and husband tell me.  

My plain pork chops, though, were still fantastic.  Pastured pork is just *so* much tastier than conventionally produced pork.

And let me make an addendum to yesterday's post about my health issues: I think I am incredibly blessed.  If you saw me on the street, you would NOT think I was sick in any way.  Sure, I have to avoid a LOT of different foods right now while we're waiting to figure out exactly what is going on, but I still get to have amazing days with my children and enjoy an amazing life we've been blessed with here in Seattle with great friends.  The kids and I got to have a great day at the zoo and at the wading pool.  I just made sure I didn't eat any of the peaches we got in our CSA today.  And we spent time with friends today.  I just made sure I had a big enough breakfast with eggs, cream and butter so I wasn't needing a snack and in a tough spot because apples are off limits right now.  I just have to avoid foods.  Really, isn't that so simple compared to health problems other people have?  I should be thankful!

Bottom line: I don't mind drinking two cups of bone broth per day if it means that I can live my life.  It's just food, after all.  (Ironic coming from a supposed "food blog", no?)

So I will keep posting our dinners.  (Or Will's dinners.  I'm eating a super plain boring version right now.)  And I'll keep you all posted on my appointments, the first of which will happen later this week.  But for now, we'll just keep on enjoying our lovely Seattle summer.  Bad pictures and all.  :-)

Lamb. Every. Single. Day.

 

Dinner Menu:

Slow Cooked Lamb Shanks (Olsen Farms)
Sauteed Bok Choy (farmer's market)
Olive Oil Roasted Yukon Gold Potatoes (farmer's market)

For real.  I could eat lamb every single day.  I also really like to go on nice hikes and kayak.

I think I should move to Auckland.

But for now, Seattle and Olsen Farms will have to do.  These guys are probably my favorite farmers at the market.  I don't think I ever miss stopping by their booth when we're there on Saturday mornings.

On a more slightly less awesome note, I'm headed to the doctor this week.  For too long I've been ignoring obvious stomach/intestine issues.  After I had my second baby about a year ago, my food sensitivities have gone through the roof.  Despite all the bone broth I drink and all the coconut oil I take, I can tell something is still askew.

Thankfully, a research GI MD happened to be in our Spring Community Group at church.  After he spent 40 minutes grilling me on every poop I had ever had, ever, he told me I should get tested for both fructose malabsorption and Crohn's Disease, as well as a few other intestinal/gut disorders.  I'll never officially get tested for Celiac Disease, because I've been gluten free for too long, and in order to get tested, the gluten antibodies have to be present in your system.  This means a four week "gluten challenge" where you eat gluten every day and then get tested.  Just to confirm or deny Celiac and then go back to a gluten free diet... either way.

No thanks.

Darn.

Couldn't say I was surprised, though.  I had read about fructose malabsorption awhile back and wondered if perhaps this was a possibility... but of course, didn't want to stop eating apples and pears, so tried to ignore it.  And it's not just tummy troubles, which means that Crohn's or UC, etc. is also possible.  It's major auto-immune type flare-ups, with neuropathy, nausea, vomiting, loss of motor skills, extreme exhaustion... we might be looking at something bigger here.

So here's hoping.  And here's praying.  Fructose malabsorption would be an easier fix, for sure.  (Though I would mourn the loss of peaches and nectarines for ever!)  But with the right diet, the right lifestyle and the right doctors, and with God's grace, we are hopeful that we can manage whatever this turns out to be. Don't get me wrong.  I still ran after the kids today, I still walked several miles to the playground and back with the double stroller, we still read books and had a normal day.  I don't look sick and I really don't feel *all* that sick.  But I know that my food restrictions aren't normal, and I know if I were to have soy, gluten, peaches, raisins or apples... I would be doubled over tonight and very sick for the next week.  That's just not normal.  And even if extreme food restriction are my reality for the rest of my life, I just need to have a working relationship with a GI doctor in the Seattle area.

And this was a rather dull and rather poorly written blog post.  I'm tired.  I'm hopeful that the doctors I will see won't just tell me "this is all in your head" or "here, just take these pills" or anything like that.  And through all of this, I just need to remember: food restrictions aren't the worst thing in the world to have.  Especially when you live in such a beautiful city with such amazing friends and an amazing little family to love.  :-)

Post-Camping Cooking Haze

Dinner Menu:

Lamb Liver Pâté, Red Curry Zucchini & Steamed Green Beans (Olsen Farms, farmer's market, Oxbow Farms)
Blueberries (Whitehorse Meadows Farm)
Chicken Bone Broth (Stokesberry Sustainable Farm)

We made it back!  We had a blast!  Camping was a lot of fun!

And now we are surrounded in a mass of laundry.  I wore the same pair of pants and the same shirt basically all weekend.  (I smelled great when we got home, by the way.)  How in the world do I have so much laundry?

In any case, camping was great.  It was a LOT of down time, and when you have small children, this means a lot of time spent moving rocks/dirt/seashells from point A to point B.... and then back to point A again.  Our 3 year old loved it.  The 11 month old spent the entire weekend sitting in dirt, getting progressively more and more filthy, and as a result... more and more happy.  I've never met a baby who loved to be dirty more than ours.  The kid would just splash in a mud puddle all day if we let him.  We just played with the kids, went to the rocky/seashell beach and went for a small hike.  We walked around a lot.  We ate lots of snacks.  We *sort of* slept, about as well as you do when you are camping at least.  We came back refreshed and recharged and really relaxed.

But we're back now and it's back to normal foods.  And I needed some normal.  In the span of 36 hours, I had hot dogs, sausages AND bacon.  And eggs scrambled in bacon grease.  Because we're novice campers, I didn't really pack complicated foods.  And because I'm paleo and don't eat much fruit anymore, that means I did some intermittent fasting and had some coconut oil here and there... and basically just ate meat.  Which was awesome.  But now I need some vegetation.

So tonight I had veggies and a bit of pâté for dinner tonight.  (It was frozen, made from some lamb from Olsen Farms that I had gotten a few weeks back, so it made for a quick and easy dinner.)  Your whole family eats pâté, you say?  Of course!  Will and the 3 year old prefer it on some Nut Thins, but the baby and I just eat it by the spoonful.  

I'm well aware that pâté and curried vegetables and green beans is an odd dinner.  I realized that when I sat down to take a picture of it.  I blame post-camping brain.  The kids and Will were getting really hungry by 4pm, and so I threw together what I had as fast as possible.  Let's call it fusion-style, perhaps?

We did manage to stop by a Sunday farmer's market today and pick up some blueberries, which were an excellent dessert.  And since I was tired from two nights of sleeping on the ground (no air mattresses for us, sadly!) I drank a big mug of nourishing chicken bone broth with my dinner as well, courtesy of a lovely chicken we purchased from Stokesberry Sustainable Farm a few weeks back.

Good to be home!

"Good Intentions" Cheeseburgers

Dinner Menu:

Jericho Romaine Salad with Hard Boiled Eggs & Aged Feta Cheese (Oxbow Farms, River Farms, Glendale Shepherd)
"Good Intentions" Cheeseburger, Pickles & Roasted Beets (Olsen Farms, Appel-Farms, Parker's Pickles, Oxbow Farms)

When our daughter was 14 months old, we went to England for a week as a family.  Will was *finally* doing his graduation ceremony at Oxford for his master's degree, and we had some friends in London we wanted to see.  So we packed up the family and hopped the pond from Boston.

We ate at Gourmet Burger Kitchen at least four times during this week.  This was before my diet got really strict due to health issues and I could still have restaurant food, provided I just asked for a burger without the bun.  (These days, since there's so much soy or vegetable oil or fillers in things, we just eat at home.  I hate restaurants; I hate it when other people make my food.  I'm just terrified they will use an ingredient that will make me sick for days on end.)  And the baby could just munch on pieces of our burger, color with crayons, and eat copious amounts of sweet potato fries and make as much noise as she wanted since it was a family-friendly chain.

We loved it there.

And our favorite burger there?  The kiwiburger, sans bun, of course!  Cheddar cheese, beets, beef, fried egg, pineapple?  Sounds gross?  We loved it.

So I thought for sure I could easily replicate these guys for dinner tonight.  I had the best of intentions.

And then our first family camping trip with a 3 year old and a 11 month old packing frenzy took up too much brain space, and I realized I had used up all of my eggs earlier in the week.  And you really need the egg for the kiwiburger.

So we had what I called my "Good Intentions" Cheeseburger.  It had lovely intentions to be something else, but in the end... it was just a plain and simple cheeseburger, with roasted beets and a salad on the side.  The sharp cheddar cheese, however, was what made the burger.  Will commented how amazing just good meat and good cheese can taste: you don't need anything fancy.  You just need good quality base ingredients for an amazing, simple, nourishing dinner.

But I promised Will I would make the kiwiburger for a burger night soon.  :-)

My Local Table will be taking a break for a few days for our camping hiatus!  See you next week!