Ugg…I fibro’d myself

All three kids were here last night for dinner so I wanted to make something special  (and cheap).  So I picked up some beef ribs and decided to make my own bbq-like sauce.  I’ve been doing so well that I got a little cocky thinking I could probably try making a tomato based sauce.  And if it’s done from scratch it would probably be safe.

Wrong.

It tasted okay, nowhere near as sweet and mellow as cheap store bought.  Man, they must have a ton of sugars in theirs.  The kids and Kevin liked it and the ribs were snarfed up in short order.

Then I woke up this morning.  And guess what?  Fibromyalgia…all over.  It’s kinda amazing if it didn’t feel so crappy.  A generous serving of tomato sauce and it causes my whole body to ache and be stiff.

The score is nightshade plants 1, Jacki 0.

At least it was a clear reaction and not one of those vague “I don’t feel too good but that’s about it” reactions.  So…no more tomatoes.  And that should probably go for potatoes and peppers.

Fine with me.  Now all I have to do is work this out of my system.  Ugg.

A little bit of everything

I was reading Elana’s Pantry and came across this post.  Another woman battling fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue who is seeking improvement via her diet.  It’s crazy, isn’t it?  How many of us are out here suffering, losing our hopes and dreams, and living in daily pain?  Who knows if our fibro, etc, caused our food intolerances or our food intolerances caused disease?  I have no idea.  But I’ve felt the difference in my body enough to know they are connected somehow.

It’s amazing how many people I’m reading about who are managing their fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, epstein-barr, lyme disease, ms and lupus through dietary changes.  It just blows me away.  Why aren’t more people talking about this?  Am I just listening in the wrong places?

I think about the heightened suicide rate in people with fibromyalgia.  Or the women with fibro that went to Dr. Kevorkian to die because they had no hope.  And I was getting there…I was getting to the place of “what’s the point?”  If living means pain and only being able to do the things I love about 5% of the time then how long do I really want to go on?

Well, help came in the form of someone else with fibromyalgia who told me that I had to change my diet.  It took me over a year to screw up the guts to try it.  That’s crazy, isn’t it?  I just never thought it would work for ME.

Even though I currently have shingles and have a long way to go on this road of tuning into my body, I feel better than I have in years.  It’s crazy…and wonderful, too.

Okay, a little food.  The other day I made something I’m gonna call:

Sticky Almonds

• 1 to 2 cups almonds
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• agave syrup
• sea salt
• optional spices…I used cinnamon and a little chili powder.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Mix the olive oil, the agave and the spices in a small mixing bowl.  Dump in the almonds and stir to coat them.  Spread them out in a single layer on parchment on a baking sheet.  This is when I sprinkled sea salt over them.  Stick them in the hot oven for about 12 minutes…but watch them because you don’t want to burn them.  Just get them warm and fragrant and utterly delicious.

Let them cool and then try not to eat them all at once.  Ha!

This morning I made myself gluten-free oatmeal with raisins, dried cranberries, a little almond milk and mashed up Sticky Almonds.

It was a little taste of heaven.  Thank you.

Rice tortilla chips

Leftover dried out rice tortillas, fried in about one-sixteenth of an inch of light olive oil.  Set in an open phone book to drain and salted with the big sea salt.   Nummmm…  tasted all greasy and salty and crispy!  I’ve been missing crispy.  I’m sure it’s not low calorie but I don’t really care.  I added the pepper jack cheese and zapped it in the microwave for one minute.

Now that’s a lunch.

Hey, am I the only around drowning in phone books?  I swear we get 3 a year or more including a little tiny one…what’s that?  Now phone books are my go-to waste paper.  Gluing in the studio?  Pull out some phone book pages.  Ditto painting little things.  Need something to put down before you peel those veggies?  Yep, tear out some phone book pages; they even compost.  When I was doing crafts with kids I always had plenty of need for waste paper so voila!  Phone books.

But I digress.

Last night I put the chicken in the oven for about 90 minutes, only to find it wasn’t cooked at all.  Warmed, yes.  Cooked, no.  I hope my oven isn’t going out.  I turned it up and cooked it some more but that didn’t work.  Finally, as we were all starving, I put in on the stovetop and boiled the h*ll out of it.  That worked.  I’ve been using those extra large packages of chicken thighs which I can get for $.99/lb.  They are the simplest to debone…just one bone and a bit of gristle at the end.  Easy.

Maybe I need to clean my oven?  It’s not like it would be a chore…it’s a self cleaner that actually works.  Plus, if that didn’t work I would know there was something seriously wrong with it.  Kevin says he’ll take a look but it might be more….ummm…timely for me to just give the cleaning a try.

Know what I mean?

Send in the cheese

Pepper jack cheese even.  And it tasted great.  Since I’ve been using eggs without too much of a problem, I decided to try some cheese.  Not to excess…just a little snack on the side with my chili.  So far, so good.

I’m having body pain but I think it might just be from the shingles.  I’m still doing better than I did before the Diet Experiment even with the shingles.  Go figure.

I’m tired and worn out today but still managed to do some errands and work in the studio.  For dinner, I just threw some chicken thighs in a pot, ditto quartered onions and drizzled olive oil spiked with spices over the whole thing.  It will make a lot of high protein dinner served with some fresh green beans that arrived in our Community Supported Agriculture produce box from Fresh Abundance. Ahhh…nothing better than fresh, locally grown fruits and veggies delivered right to your door.  I love it.

So it’s a short one for today.  Still tired but always hungry.

Story of my life.

Let me eat cake

Still in the battle of the shingles here at the Putnam household.  That and hunkering down for this godawful flu epidemic.  I keep going back and forth on Jacob getting the vaccine…yesterday I was sure they were rushing it and today I’m sure he needs it.

So what do I do when worried?  Besides breaking out in shingles, that is.  I eat.  Yesterday, I started off with a cold pork chop for breakfast.  I needed the protein!  And I also needed some cake.  I’ve got my new gluten free oats from Bob’s Red Mill.  A oat and applesauce and cinnamon cake sounded pretty healthy to me so I started looking for the recipe online.  What did I do before the internet?

Here’s what I found; Oatmeal Applesauce Cake from someone’s gluten free oats site.  For the GF flour mix I used:

• 2/3 cup sorghum flour
• 1/3 cup brown rice flour
• 1/3 cup arrowroot flour

That (hopefully) makes 1 and 1/3 cup.  The only other thing I changed was just dropping the white sugar and using 2/3 cup organic brown sugar as the only sweetener.  The cake baked up nicely with a lovely tan color.  It may be a little undercooked but I’ll just call that “extra moist”.

Mmmmmm….good for shingles.  Ha!

Little bitty pity party with treats

Nothing too extravagant.  Just p*ssed off because I want to feel well every day. I’m doing all this diet stuff and getting a huge benefit from it…and then I get shingles.  And it’s back to AcheyVille.  Argh….

I’m trying to feel compassion for my immune system instead of anger and rage.  There is a long story about the split I have between “me” and “my body”.  But suffice to say that I need to feel more integrated.  I am my body.  This may not be a weird concept to anyone else (though I bet I’m not the only one) but it is to me.  In my fifth decade and I’m finally getting the drift…hey, it’s all me.

So on to food.  What does one do when one feels like crap and can’t eat one’s old comfort food?  Make some new comfort food.  Today I was missing potatoes; chipped, french fried.  Something salty and warm and crunchy. Here’s what I did.  Got out the remaining mochi and sliced it lengthwise in about 3/4 inch strips.  Then I sliced each strip into little 1/16 inch pieces.  This made…uh…many little bits and they went into a small mixing bowl.  I tossed the little mochi bits with olive oil, sea salt, chili powder, and paprika.  Really you could put whatever moves you into the spice blend.  Just for funsies I also crumbled up a rice cake (the ones that are like puffed wheat smooshed into a perfect little wheel).  And last but not least, sprinkled in some sesame seeds.  The oil makes all the spices and seeds stick together.

The oven was preheated to 450 degrees F (I guess I should have said that earlier).  Spread the seasoned mochi and rice cake bits out on a parchment covered cookie sheet.  Stick it in the oven for about 8 minutes.  When it’s ready it’s got a beautiful salty, crunchy, warm, this-is-better-than-popcorn-anyway, satisfying taste.

I gobbled it up. And now it’s my favorite snack.

Shingles???

Yep.  And I’m not talking about our roof.  That funny little rash?  Well, it keeps getting worse so this morning I went to Urgent Care and got the verdict.  Shingles.

What the hell?

Okay, the good news is that maybe I can eat a little tomato and a little cheese every once in a while (see previous entry).  In any case it’s hard to judge because I keep feeling a little crappier every day.  So it might be the shingles and not my food.

Another plus is that my pain is staying real manageable.  I can’t imagine what would be happening if I wasn’t on my diet.  The doctors and nurse keep asking me if it’s really painful and I’m saying not too bad.  Nowhere near as bad as my fibromyalgia has been for the last 4 years.  How weird is that?

So I’m off to rest and let the antivirals work their magic.  I’ve got lots of herbal tea and organic bananas…plus my sweet husband who takes good care of me.

Shingles??!!  Who would of guessed…

Cheaters never prosper

Food cheaters, that is.  I didn’t so much cheat as just try something new…a challenge to the Diet Experiment.  Last night we had burritos with homemade salsa.

Tomatoes.

But man that salsa was good.  Ramsey and I made it…she was my little food processor since she can stir tomatoes with a spoon until they give up all their juice.  It was freshly made from chopped tomatoes (red and yellow), chopped green onions, chopped cilantro, olives and green chilis.  Hmmm…chilis, that’s in the nightshade family, too.  To the veggie mix we added cumin, chili powder, sea salt and a little bit of agave.

Nummy.

When I put my burrito together I used rice tortillas, refried beans (from freshly cooked pintos), a little hamburger (that was cooked in more tomato sauce), a little cheddar cheese (dairy), lettuce and salsa.

So really the tally of forbidden foods is more like this:

• Dairy from the cheese
• Tomato from salsa AND hamburger (nightshade plant)
• Green chilis in the salsa (nightshade plant)

This morning I woke up with a groan.  The pain isn’t too bad, probably a 5 out of 10, but it such a familiar and unpleasant feeling.  Body stiffness and general achey-ness.  Not worth it.

As a side note, yesterday I woke up with a rash on my forehead and my scalp is really itchy.  I tried some new “organic” shampoo…it’s probably made out of corn or something.  Did I read the label?  No.   That print is so small.  But I’m not going to use it again.

I have this morning to get my sh*t together because Jacob’s caseworker is coming over at 2:30 to go through his yearly Service Plan.  Ugh…an hour or more talking about what he can’t do.  Not my favorite.

Gotta eat clean today and get myself back on track.  I’m really beginning to think rice might need to go off the list.  Or at least be like soy and eggs where I try not to eat very much but allow little bits through because not to would be an extra level of vigilance that I’m just not ready to attempt.

It’s a learning thing.  But no cheating for today.

Restorative sleep??!!

This is still utterly amazing to me.  I went to bed last night after feeling crappy all day…migraine, low energy, some body aches.  My sleep was deep and restful and I woke up feeling good…even though it is raining outside! This blows me away.  For the past 4+ years a bad day was always part of a larger flare up.  Like three bad days in a row, three bad weeks in a row, and last winter, three bad months in a row.

I really needed those chocolate chip cookies 🙂

This whole experience has got me thinking about the nature of fibromyalgia.  There are so many related and overlapping conditions; chronic fatigue, Crohn’s, IBS, MS, lupus just to name a few.  I’ve been tested for neurological and immune system dysfunction with all my tests coming back normal.  In spite of that I’ve grown to believe FM is probably a neurological condition having to do with neurotransmitter regulation.  I know my neurotransmitters are screwed up from having PTSD and chronic depression (long story for another time).

But why would this diet make such a difference?  I’m eating more nutritionally for sure so that has to help my body work more efficiently.  What if FM is a problem of neurotransmitters AND immune system dysfunction?  I know this; the more pain I’ve been in, the more I crave carbs and sweets, the more I eat them, the more pain I’m in.

Or, what if the hypersensitivity that is a hallmark of fibromyalgia extends to the immune system in this way; foods that might previously given me some trouble now become big problems because my immune system is hypersensitive?  By eating a carefully controlled diet I can remove a lot of the food reactions and thereby reduce the overall effect of FM on my body.  Hmmmm…interesting.

I’m reading a new book called Twinkie, Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger.  He researched the processed food industry by studying the ingredients in a Twinkie.  It’s fascinating and also kinda gross.  And it makes me wonder what all we are doing to ourselves with our American diets.

I feel a cause coming on.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep on tweaking my diet and trying to learn more about processed foods, whole foods, organic foods…and cookies.

Two steps forward and one step back

It started at 4:00 am with the beginnings of a migraine.  And muscle spasms in my neck.  I’ve been pushing it, I know.  For dinner last night I had a stir fry with golden rice.  I think the rice might just be too much carb.  I also started eating gluten free oats which may be giving me some kind of trouble.  Though I ate it again for breakfast before I put that together.

So it’s been one of those migrainey days where I feel punched out.  Sigh…

To lift my spirits this afternoon, I tried out a recipe for Buckwheat Chocolate Chip Cookies from Karina’s Kitchen.  I put in walnuts and pecans along with the Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips. They taste great!  Totally chocolate chippy.  I ate three big cookies while they were still warm.  Nummy.

The Enjoy Life company makes foods gluten free and “free of the eight most common allergens.  They contain NO wheat, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, egg, soy, fish or shelfish.”  Thank you to them!

So I’m really dragging my butt along today and will keep this short.  It was a crappy day but, as it happens so often, saved by cookies.