Home-made Icecream

With some lovely warm weather our thoughts turned to ice cream today. So we whipped out our icecream machine and away we went.

 Look at the lovely yellow yolks - nothing like free range home grown eggs

We used a really simple recipe which can be adapted to any kind of milk (cow, rice, soy)

100g caster sugar

1 tsp cornflour

4 egg yolks

2 cups milk

* Put caster sugar, cornflour and eggs yolk into a bowl and cream together until egg yolk gets lighter
* Heat milk until it just starts to boil. 
* Pour into bowl and mix with egg yolk mixture. 
* Put back in saucepan over low heat and mix together until it feels slightly thicker (dont let it come to the boil or simmer). 
* Put in fridge to chill for 6-12 hours.
* Add 1 tsp vanilla or 1/4 cup cocoa to mixture.
* Then put into ice cream machine and voila you have ice cream.

For an egg free option - replace the egg yolks with 1.5 tbsp rice brain oil (as it has no flavour). I make rice milk ice cream this way.

Elimination Diet Update

Well the last month has brought more surprises than most. I abandoned my elimination diet with my allergists approval when my weight bottomed out at 45kg (the lightest I've ever been during this illness). I am however still dairy free as I can really feel the benefits.

But my mold battle took a turn for the worse so my neurologist has put me onto an anti-inflammation diet. Quite simply, I am now basically vegan with a certain amount of fish each week. The key thing is to avoid all dairy, meat, saturated fats and eat lots of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, fish and most of all omega 3's. I'm taking lots of flax seed oil as well as the fish as omega 3's reduce the inflammation response in your body.


I have to count my saturated fat intake each day and cannot exceed 10g. This is surprisingly easy once you take out dairy and meat. Having been vegetarian before Little B was born, it's not such a stretch to return to this way of eating and I've already been off dairy for 6 weeks so that's only annoying in the sense that I need to adapt recipes. I'm only sad that all my gorgeous vegetarian cookbooks had to be thrown out because of the house. Yay for the internet and family have said I can have a veggie cookbook birthday LOL.
 
Now here's the irony. Though it's early days, I'm gaining weight consistently day to day. Which could just be an anomaly or because my weight was so low. I'm keeping positive and think it might on the up and up. Only time will tell if this helps all my other problems but I have all my fingers and toes crossed :-)

For the ladies

www.gettyimages.com

A really interesting discovery from being dairy free is that I no longer have period pain. Now for me normally that time of the month is associated with main lining Panadeine, drinking copious amounts of raspberry leaf tea and being surgically attached to my heat pad. It is not unknown for me to vomit or faint (or both) from the pain and I have to say it’s been like that for me since my teens.

While having a baby got rid of my PMS forever (see you later moody b*tch), it did nothing for pain and if anything I feel it got worse. Remove dairy and bam the pain is history.

After doing a bit of research, I’ve found that this actually isn’t that unusual. While women need calcium to have a menstrual period, dairy products contains arachidonic acid which increases the prostaglandins in your body which are responsible for uterine contractions. They also cause an inflammatory response in the body. More dairy = more pain in some cases.

Melinda at One Green Generation has commented on a similar response during a 3 week cleanse. Anyways, I have to say the longer I’m dairy free the more I’m not sure if I’ll ever go back to it.  I do miss milk as a drink and am a bit bored of drinking water LOL – but am experimenting with different things to try and get a new smoothie happening (it’s a good filler for me). So far rice milk is gross in a smoothie no matter what yummies I put into it.

Dairy Free - Week 2

Picture courtesy of www.blog.loadedsmoothies.co.za

And onto Week 2...I've now been joined in going dairy free by Granny B & Little B. A few tastes of rice milk and Little B refused all cow milk and hopped on the rice milk train. With some surprising results - nearly all his extraneous tummy pain has gone (for now), and his mood has improved ten fold. The tummy pain thing is interesting as he has suffered from this his whole life but in hindsight it has probably been worse in the last 12 months.

But in regards to mood - we thought we had a wee bit of a challenging child recently because he started 4 year old preschool. He has been quite anxious, moody and very prone to pushing the boundaries. Removing dairy and he is none of these things. He is literally thriving at preschool and has become very confident with other children (he has always had a tendency to be scared or unsure of other kids in recent years). At a playdate last week, he went and played football down the back of the yard with another boy. Now to put this in perspective, I seriously felt like taking a photo to show Mr B as Little B would never do this without one of us present.

As for me, I actually prefer being dairy free (who'd of thought). I have way less bloating and gripey tummy. Though I'm still not convinced that is from the removal of dairy. I will start doing mini food challenges in about a week's time so it will be interesting to see what that shows up.

But one drawback to this elimination diet is I'm losing weight again (grrrr, aaarrggh!!). So in consultation with my allergist we are trying very hard to get me through the next week without resorting back to other foods not on the diet (read: dairy).

Dairy free - Week 1

Picture courtesy of www.soundmindfulness.blogspot.com 

Well I'm one week down in being dairy free :-) And so far I'm really enjoying it and have got into the groove of making different choices.

It actually hasnt been that much of a hardship. I love oat milk and have finally found a brand of rice milk that doesnt turn my stomach. I've given up smoothies in favour of porridge with oat milk for breakfast and use the rice milk mainly for cooking or other cereals. Luckily I'm a dab hand with allergy recipes having had to cook that way for so many years for Little B.

The harder thing has been the elimination of other foods. The only fruit I'm allowed to eat is pears (which are soooo boring). And the vegetable range is fairly small too. Thankfully beans are one of them ;-) but luckily everyone else can eat the vegies from the garden or it would be such a waste.

Hilariously, Little B has decided he wants to drink rice milk again...'it's my best kind of milk in the world mummy". We weaned him onto A2 cow's milk about 14 months ago and he didnt look back. We were so chuffed that he'd outgrown part of one allergy (he still has a few issues with other kinds of dairy). So it's quite ironic for him to voluntarily want to go back to dairy free. We're sort of playing it by ear at the moment, but he's drinking both throughout the day.

And how do I feel?? - well not that much different really. I feel better in some areas but that could be the removal of anything really as this elimination diet is so strict. My gripey and swollen tummy has disappeared so that's a bonus. But they say it can take 2 weeks minimum before you feel a difference and in some cases the first week can be full of the symptoms of withdrawal (depending on what your intolerant or allergic to). So here's hoping the 2nd week is so much better!!

Allergies here we come

I finally had my appointment with an allergist late last week (only took 5 months). With my battle with unwanted weight loss, and one of the side effects of mold exposure being the development of food allergies, the docs wanted to check out if this is contributing to my inability to gain weight. In keeping with that, I of course have developed some *sigh*. Over the last 6 months I kind of knew that nuts seemed to be a growing problem for me - burning and swollen tongue, coughing, hoarse voice.

So after a 2.5 hour appointment, skin prick tests, and general examination where has it left me?

I'm most definitely allergic to brazil nuts, penicillin, peanuts (but with peanuts it's from the aflatoxins - mold again). I already knew and have had it confirmed again, that I am allergic to soy. I'm also allergic to hazlenuts, pecans and sesame seeds. But wait there's more...a free set of steak knives. LOL. Seriously though, they think I might be allergic to dairy.

Yesterday I started the RPAH Strict Elimination Diet to try and see whether dairy is my evil archenemy (or if it's something else). I've always had dairy in my diet (except when breastfeeding Little B because of his allergies). Having said that I've never been able to eat yoghurt and dont eat cheese as it's a mold, so I only really drink about 2 cups of milk a day. These have now been replaced with oat milk (yum) and rice milk (blech - it is such an acquired taste).

The allergist was really interesting to speak to and seemed very knowledgeable (we've been in the allergy medical system for Little B for the last 3 years, so I consider this important, you'd be surprised how many dumb asses there are out there with medical degrees) but he said a few things that made me raise my eyebrows. 

I'm a huge advocate obviously of growing your own food and organics, but he was adamant that the leading allergists/coeliac specialists in Australia (Anne Swain, Sue Shepherd, Mimi Tang) believe that people with allergies should under no circumstances consume organic food. This is because the natural food chemicals in organic food are so high that it impacts dramatically on the body plus new research is showing this can impact on the gut.

But I cant find any research to back up the notion that people with allergies should never have organic, so at the moment I'm reserving judgement and just thinking hmmmmm?!?!?!? I kind of find it hard to believe that pesticides/BPA etc are better for you than whole food?? So we are just putting it in the wait and see basket.