Food Storage Analyzer

Food Storage Analyzer

According to the Food Storage Analyzer, we have 24.55 days of food in our house. That is not including our frozen meat and milk, fresh eggs, and home canned meat. Also, there werent enough choices on the store bought canned goods.
I looked at the Add More Items option, but you have to know the calories, etc, and since this meat is not store bought it would have been too time consuming to figure all that out. Rabbit, deer, and goat meat are not your average freezer foods!
It was interesting to see how long SOME of this food will last us, and I am sure this would be a more helpful tool for those who have a more average pantry and freezer.

BABESIA

Doc sent me an ebook about Babesia.

Wow.

"The notion of "Lyme Disease" is a 1970's notion, since deer ticks and other vectors like fleas, dust mites, pet saliva, and flies carry a wide range of infections.
...the concept of acquiring a single deer tick bite is wrong. Still more flawed is the notion that any painless deer tick bite will deliver only one infection. Deer ticks and other infectious ticks never carry one infection in their saliva or stomach."

It's really long, so if you are interested, click on the link above.

Why I'm Gluten-Free (by Kyria)

(and how to start if you need to be gf too)

Gluten is not dangerous for everyone, but it seems like daily more and more people are being diagnosed as celiac or at least gluten intolerant. My daughter and I have a gluten allergy. We don't have celiac disease, but if we had not stopped ingesting gluten, it would have become that. I will never forget the first few months of my daughter's life. She colicked almost non-stop and we were both exhausted. I ate cream of wheat for breakfast almost daily, thinking I was being so healthy. She was getting it in the breast milk. I drank a lot of colic tea which helped ease her symptoms, but poor baby! I had no idea that what I ate was causing her intestinal pain!
Oh, how I wish I had known then to check for common food allergens. But I didn't and she was twelve before my doctor discovered the allergy in both of us. However, even after the diagnosis it took me awhile to fully accept it and take steps to change our lifestyle. We went through a period of mourning for what we could no longer have. I kept cheating, thinking that once in a while wouldn't hurt. But it's not like other things. When you are allergic to something, it is poison to your system. For us, it takes about 5 days to clear our system. Five days in which we have some horrible symptoms, some of them physical like stomach cramps and bloating, and some of it mental, like inability to think clearly, make simple decisions, or learn anything new. Each of those five days, I wake up depressed, thinking “what's the use?”. I fight with my husband if he forgets to leave me alone for the duration. Nothing is rational.
But when I'm completely gluten free, ah, the blessed relief! Not only am I in my right mind (for the first time in years, really), but I have more energy and more stamina. And my home is peaceful! I don't feel a need to pick fights, my daughter is able to handle her brother's teasing without a total meltdown, it's incredible! I can finally dream for the future and take steps to make those dreams a reality.
So now that I've experienced the results of being gluten-free, I will never intentionally poison my body again. That's what gluten is to me and my daughter. It's a poison. My doctor says if I had continued to put it into my body, it would have led to complications that include serious illness and even death. Our symptoms included brain fog, stomach cramps and bloating, diarrhea, skin rash and a serious personality switch. It was not pretty! Nowadays, if I suddenly go insane and irrational, we start a scavenger hunt to find out what I ate that poisoned me. Then we hunker down for five days and wait it out. Peace and quiet and not much interaction with the family helps me get through it without being just waaay too ugly to my precious loved ones.
There are incredibly informative websites all over the internet giving you all the information you could ever need about this subject. If you've just been diagnosed, or if you suspect you may be gluten intolerant, Karina has written an excellent article to read first. Then you may want to browse the rest of her blog, since it's all excellent. You'll find that most people who blog or maintain a website related to gluten free living have many links to other people doing the same thing. So there is no end to helpful advice and recipes out there, but read Karina's article first because she has some very important points, the main one being that you shouldn't try to eat gf breads and pastas in the first two weeks of your new life. This is because your taste buds have a memory. You have to let them forget the taste of gluten, then they will be able to appreciate all the new foods you'll be introducing to your palate. After you've stuck to very basic foods for a couple of weeks, you can start branching out and trying new things. There are some fantastic mixes in the health food stores nowadays. The gluten free industry is really starting to explode. There are wonderful cook books available also. Recipes abound online. One of my favorite sites is called A Year of Slow Cooking. When I was still dealing with brain fog, it was so nice to be able to prepare delicious meals in my Crock Pot with little effort.
If you've been diagnosed as gluten intolerant in some way, be encouraged. It's normal to mourn your losses, but don't get stuck there. As soon as your system gets clear, you'll feel so much better that life and your future will once again look bright.

I haven't updated this blog in so long because up until March of this year things were finally going smoothly with Mooky's health. Relatively smoothly.

We still have periods of time (3-7 days each) when he will be sick with fatigue, depression, brain fog and stomach problems and we are positive he didn't eat any gluten, soy, nuts, etc. Basically we have just learned to deal with it.

On March 15, 2009 Erinn got a fever. What followed was a week of ear infection, sore throat, cough, and congestion. At the end of that week all the symptoms except the fever went away.

She has had that low grade fever every day since then... and it has now been nearly 4 months! She had a lot of intestinal issues as well, which were gradually worsening. So, now Erinn is gluten free too!

Donut Holes

1 cup water
1/3 c. butter
1 c potato starch flour
1 TBSP sugar
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
oil for frying
Cinnamon/Xylitol for coating donuts afterwards.

Heat water and butter until boiling. Remove from heat.
Stir the combined dry ingredients into the butter/water all at once.
Continue stirring until the mixture forms a ball and pulls away from sides of pan.
Then use an electric mixer or stick blender to beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well.
Fry in hot oil. We dropped half teaspoon amounts of the batter in, because they double in size. If you make them too big they will be gooey in the centers.
Drain on paper towels and coat with cinnamon sugar, or cinnamon xylitol.

We really liked these a lot, but we rarely eat anything so greasy and we all agreed that we couldn't eat these donuts very often.

Gluten Free Gingerbread

The kids tried several different gingerbread recipes, and this is the one that tasted the best, and made the best gingerbread house walls with the least crumbling.

3/4 c shortening (we used real butter from Mad Cow's cream)
1 c sugar
1 egg
1/2 c molasses
2 1/4 c sorghum flour mix
1/2 tsp xantham gum
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp salt

Cream shortening, sugar, egg, molasses. Combine the dry ingredients, then add to creamed mixture. Chill dough thoroughly. We then flattened it all over the cookie sheet to make our walls, but you could cut out shapes, or whatever.

GI

Thursday we are going to the GI doctor in Austin. Three hours away.
I spent the day today printing up a summary of Mooky's last 17 months of misery. I also called the doctor in Kerrville whose nurse told me they couldn't fax Mooky's medical records to the GI because we hadn't signed a release! So, they faxed the release form to Kris at work, he signed it, and faxed it back. Then I called them to verify that they got it and asked them again to fax Mooky's medical records to the new doc. "Ok, no problem, please give us 2 weeks to get that done."
WHAT????????????????
I nicely explained that it needs to be done today or tomorrow and PLEASE do it. "Well, we're understaffed so I can't promise anything."
Talk about frustrating.

I feel such a heavy load of sadness right now for how difficult this is for Mooky. I guess typing it all up today really made it clear to me. I know that the Lord is in charge, and He has a wonderful plan for Mooky's life. And He can bring good from this. It's just hard for a parent to see their child suffer. It could be so much worse, and I hope it's not. I feel uneasy about what we may eventually find out through this new doctor... but there again, the Lord will get us through it.

I'm at a point where I am once again struggling with what to feed the boy... and struggling to keep his hunger at bay. He used to love to cook. Said he would be a professional chef one day. But, he hasn't done much cooking at all in the past year or so. Rare are the days when he feels good enough to spend that much time on his feet, and expend that much mental energy.

It's 7 PM right now and he is already in bed. That is very normal for him. If he feels nauseous in the night he will get up and sneak quietly into our room so as not to wake us up, and silently go in our bathroom and close the door. He will put a towel at the bottom of the door to cover up the crack of light that "might wake us up". Then, he will take a long shower until all the hot water is gone and hopefully his nausea will be gone too. Then, it's back to bed until 6 am or maybe 7 if he feels really bad.

The main thing to remember is that it could be worse!! And I am thankful it is not.