There and Back Again

It should be obvious that life changes, but somehow it seems to catch me somewhat off guard when it does. I can truthfully say that being 30 has not been boring. A month or so before my 30th birthday in October my life started to drastically change, without the courtesy of asking me first.

Out of all the possible catalysts for change in my life, honey would not have been even close to my list of the top 1,000 reasons. By sheer accident I happened to painfully discover that I had suddenly become allergic to honey when I had some with a piece of cornbread. I had eaten honey last about six months before that with no adverse affects. Imagine my shock when I started breaking out in hives, formerly only known to happen if I eat pineapple. Never in my life had I ever heard of anyone being allergic to honey. After the fact my mother said that my grandfather (her dad) became allergic to honey about when he turned thirty as well. My FIL however finds no end to the amusement that honey gives me hives. :/

Hubby and I have still been learning how to work around the diabetes, the strange part to me is that he has developed a major “sugar-free sweet tooth” when before sweets were not a big deal. We were both very lucky to find Honeytree’s Imitation Honey that is malted from corn and is safe for diabetics. See my Amazon review for more info (Wife tested, husband approved!). In short, I love this stuff!

I’ve been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for about three years now and have been very proud that it has been a lasting change. One of the reasons I quit eating meat (other than the fact I don’t like eating something that could have been a pet, I love animals!) was because I was learning to listen to what my body said about what it did and did not like. Within these last few months I’ve been learning to listen again and finally admitted to my self that I’ve been punishing myself. For a LOT of the time that I’ve been vegetarian I have very well been aware of that dairy causes problems to my whole body. Finally I sat down to do some research about dairy allergies because it had gotten to the point with me that I would allow myself dairy, but in very, very small amounts because not only cause very painful reactions to my digestive system, I had known that it plugged up my nose to the point that it seemed I had continual colds. I have known for years that I cannot tolerate hardly any dairy fat, in fact I almost never ate ice cream, butter, and most cheeses because it would always give me problems. I was really floored to discover I didn’t have an issue with dairy, I have two! One is actually being allergic to dairy and my body would try to get rid of it (hence the plugged nose) and the other being that I’m actually lactose intolerant (digestive system totally being out of sorts after eating dairy, definitely not pretty.)

As for the eggs, I’ve honestly had a love-hate relationship with them for a lot of years. Sometimes they didn’t bother me at all. Other times they would gross me out so badly that I wouldn’t use them and would completely avoid them. I used them because that’s honestly the only way I knew how to do a lot of baking. And in an effort to make our home more allergy-free I told Hubby that I will be giving up most of my onions and peppers because of his severe allergy, but they honestly give me stomach aces. The exceptions are things like Salsa and Manwich (mostly things that can be easily left out of foods or done separately and do not need to be cooked fresh).

I never would have guessed that an allergy to honey would be the thing that would make me finally go vegan. I hadn’t realized that it was honestly the only thing in my mind that separated me from vegans as a whole, knowing that honey was off limits. I have been exceedingly lucky to have found my vegan home away from home so early into my vegan adventure. TONS of pictures, recipes sorted into meaningful categories and a lot of very friendly people. I think I have been vegan now for two or so months, although there is still the occasional thing in the cupboards that needs to be used. Not everyone has the luxury of chucking out all the old stuff and starting fresh with something like this.

I’m so excited that Hubby got a new camera that is totally fab! No more shitty food pics for the blog! Hmm, I may need to redo the cupcake pic so it’s not just a pink and brown blur.

And if that wasn’t enough major change, almost on a whim I decided to attend college in the fall. Specifically the Art Institute of Seattle that is half way across the state from where we are now. So far everything has worked out (I’ll be starting part time in October) just as long as we can make the finances work to find somewhere to live. I’ve never been to college in my life, and I honestly never expected to. So now on top of feeling like everything we eat has changed (hubby very graciously keeps the dairy at a minimum at home, and never liked eggs in the first place) I have to sort, pack, and catalog what we plan on keeping from the house we have lived in our entire 10 year marriage.

We have been having a fair amount of fun playing with our new vegan recipes, and hopefully some of them will make it on here once the kinks have been worked out!

p.s. The pic at the top was something I made when I still played the online game Second Life.

Scribblings from the human vegetarian.

I want there to be no misconceptions: I am not some food guru, health nut, gourmet chef, or any other silly notion of that sort. I'm just someone beginning (again) to work my way towards altering my eating habits towards more healthy options. I may not be a lone vegetarian in a family of meat-eaters (my MIL and SIL are both vegetarians) although I often feel as if I'm the weirdo in the family because of my choice.

I really don't like cooking for myself at all, perhaps I don't feel like I'm worth it, although DH would tell me differently. I think that's one thing I find very difficult, I've been married 8 1/2 years, 3 years ago I became vegetarian, Hubby is deathly allergic to onions & any peppers (and most related foods with some tiny exceptions), and very much a meat fiend. Last year we found out my Hubby is type 2 diabetic. I have done some personal research into the Blood Type Diet and found that I mostly agree with it. For those who know what it means, Hubby is a type O, and I'm a type A (who grew up with a mother and 3 type O siblings), further complicating the issue. For those who don't know, in short Hubby has a predisposition as a meat eater and my body functions better on a purely vegetarian diet.

Hubby has said that he would be a vegetarian except that we know for a fact that when he doesn’t eat meat he gets very lethargic and has difficulty functioning. Even at that, there hardly seems to be many vegetarian foods that don’t contain onions, black pepper, white pepper, bell peppers, fresh/whole tomatoes, eggplant, paprika, chili powder, etc. all of which trigger his allergy and his throat swells shut. There are a few exceptions like ketchup, tomato sauce, and the juice from mild salsa (I still don’t understand how he can eat that other than he does it in very small amounts).

Me on the other hand, I don’t want to eat dead animals, although I like veggie ‘meat’ alternatives (compared to my MIL who doesn’t even like the taste of meat), I'm allergic to pineapple, have a relatively low tolerance for greasy foods/too much oil, I like dairy but more than just a little of it will put me in a lot of pain so I try to limit my intake (mostly it’s dairy fat that’s the worst, I can have fat free milk without much notice). Hubby has been commenting recently on how sensitive my stomach is, I can’t eat a lot of overly spicy foods, vinegar even if its in mustard or ketchup), onion or bell peppers (these need to be eaten with some form of bread, rice, or light yogurt), baking soda, all of this as well as salt give me very bad stomach aches. I don’t drink pop very much because even the carbonation feels like it’s burning my throat!

Despite what the current trend is (on the Net at least), I'm not attempting to be a martyr for vegetarianism, only to spout how perfect I am in everything I consume. If I could do that I’d be a complete vegan. I'm human, I don’t eat perfectly, and god forbid I even eat marshmallows on occasion! I simply do my best, some days I fail miserably, and often feel miserable because of it, but at least I'm trying.

Perhaps this is just a silly attempt (yet again) to connect in my own way with the world at large, maybe find some encouragement, but if nothing else hopefully it will help me track back to being a healthier vegetarian.