Exclusion diet, day in the life

I came back today a little knackered having ridden around all day on M____’s bike - I dropped off my car this morning with my Dad to give it the once over before having it MOTed. It was on then to a day servicing one of the old wagons with Colin. I had been enjoying this kind of work as a break from the old routine up until not long ago, but it is really beginning to drag now having become a routine itself and with my increasing realisation I am doing a job which wastes my intellect and in many ways doesn’t play on my strengths at all. And which, of course, pays abysmally. At almost thirty I’m still unfamiliar with the world, and even my own country, and should really be having far more experiences. A little extra cash would also go a long way. I am starting to feel the need to move on again.

Immediately I cut up an apple into a bowl, spooned on some soya yoghurt and crashed on the sofa. Of course, I turned on the TV! I ate up quickly, enjoying every spoonful, and then of course convinced myself that I could watch just the start of Ready Steady Cook just to get a few more ideas.

Unusually, there was a guest with a few allergies, to wheat and cow’s milk, as well as having a strong disliking for tomato sauce, and so I watched a little longer. She, the woman from the Clothes Show, had brought along a bag containing prawns, spring onions, coconut cream and a mango. I sat glued to the TV for those twenty minutes and managed to take little in. The show is entertaining, but often time passes in a whirl of interviews and very rushed explanations of what is being made and how and so at times only an already proficient chef could really take it all in.

Anyway, the first section finished I got up, a little disgusted with myself for having wasted so much time (perhaps more so than usual having read the introduction of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything at work in which he states that the average human life consists of something like 650,000 hours, something which when written like that seems so short*) and went into the kitchen. When I had first got back I had realised that I hadn’t taken out any meat from the freezer and so I had taken out a pork chop. Of course it wasn’t defrosted, and wouldn’t be defrosted for a long time yet. And I don’t like nuking food from frozen. So, with my new exclusion diet it was a case of opening and slamming doors all over the kitchen in search of inspiration. I found some gluten-free, dairy-free pesto I’d got on the reduced trolley at Asdas the other day and so took that out, finely chopped some peppers (the remainder of a green I had had for lunch, half an orange and half a red), albeit on a chopping board I had bashed some chicken into at lunch time and left out rather than the one I had set out, and started lightly frying them in a saucepan with some finely chopped broccoli. I had some spinach on standby to throw in and give it all a little substance, though I was wondering how it would affect the taste. I then realised that pesto contains pine nuts (actually cashews in the recipe list!), and that my exclusion diet forbids them. I was rationalising this to myself semi-consciously (more or less as subconsciously as a hunter with a duck on his head is submerged, if that makes it any clearer), telling myself that I could right it down and explain it as that I had already started cooking before realising that the jar contained nuts, put I pulled myself back with a reflection of a passage of a book I had been reading the night before.

Last Xmas M______ bought me a Polish book that could be translated as We Children of Zoo Station. It is a non-fiction account of the lives of a number of young people but particularly a young girl who in her early teens wound up selling herself at Zoo Station on the Berlin underground to fund her addiction to Heroin. I have been reading it on and off, as my priorities waxed and waned as they always do, ever since. Yesterday I was reading it aloud, as I often do when reading Polish, trying to improve my pronunciation, when M_____ rang from upstairs having gone to bed. She told me the telly was on too loud and she couldn’t sleep. It was me, declaiming the drugs experiences of a young girl, in Polish. This particular passage concerned Christiana when just before her fifteenth birthday she wound up in a Scientology detox unit and when, having gone cold turkey for a few days and starting to see off the worst of the effects (which she knew well having gone cold turkey twice before, both times seeing it out apparently until the end of the physical dependence), she found herself a punter in an unfamiliar part of town, and scored some heroin. Having put some heroin on her dying cat’s food, and the needle hovering over her arm, she realised what she was doing. This was one of the points I lost the plot, my Polish not quite up to the question of whether she had actually managed to stop herself in time or merely thought about the significance of the act, unable to summon the will power when she had the ability to defeat any bad feelings; and this is a book where the reader is so powerfully empathising with the protagonist, angry with her, crying out to influence her though they know they can’t. She did go on to inject, and once again on entering the unit. I had cried at her thoughout the book, and yet I continue to eat foods I know to be bad for me, from flapjacks to chocolate, to coffee, and even to smoke. And now, on the exclusion diet I could defeat all excuses for me to do so, by demolishing, more or less, the doubt that surrounds the types of food which are bad for me. For a while I was unrepentant, determined to use the Pesto sauce, to have something differant from the roast veg I have been having, but then I pulled myself back. I added some paprika and basil leaves to the sauce, throwing some vegetable pasta into the veg stock left from where I steamed some broccoli, beans and carrots at lunchtime, seasoned, and then thickened it up with rice flour. The reason I used riceflour, incidentally, was because on Ready Steady Cook they had been talking about arrowroot, which is something I have picked up on the programme in the last week or so. One chef had used it because of the woman with an allergy towards wheat, and this they emphasised a couple of times, you can use arrowroot if you have an allergy to wheat and cannot use cornflour. That sent me out to my cupboards and got me thinking, since I had always used cornflour assuming it be flour from corn, but then there is buckwheat which has nothing in common with wheat, and cornflour could conceivably be from wheat could it not. I checked the box: “ingredients: cornflour. Allergy information: contains sulfites[].” I was rather puzzled by this. Now I’m sure it must be ok. Aside from my exclusion diet of course. Indeed, I just saw the sheet for the reintroduction phase of the diet and can see “Corn: test cornflour or corn on the cob.” but it is so easy to get so confused over things like this, becoming suspect of all kinds of foods.

In any case, the news flash. I served up the dish with a little canned tuna - organic, dolphin-friendly. It tasted great and I really enjoyed it. I can now barely move. It was a massive rush of high GI food for the system perhaps, but it did restore my faith on being able to make something edible, even enjoyable, from the least promising ingredients on the most restrictive diet. It also restored my faith in my own cooking, which has been seriously knocked of late. Most importantly perhaps, there were none of these g/f d/f concoctions of imitation foods. No dairy-free soya-based parmasan.

 *This was a fact which once led me, in Venice, into an almost classically Aspergic argument with an ex of mine. Something I really should write about elsewhere.

Sprouts and veg

I’m very much playing catch up with my experiences over the past few weeks having been busy moving house and the like. One new development has been my attempts to grow sprouts. More

Eat. home-made salad in chain eaterie.

We took the train out to Brum today to do so shopping. Horrible horrible weather! Saw N____ on the way and tried to make conversation with him. Not always easy. He probably thinks I have been ignoring him since I’ve come back from Prague. Probably doesn’t know I’ve been ignoring most people. He seems to have come over a little bitter again, but he was as chatty as he gets.

Anyway, it being horrible outside I couldn’t just grab my lunch - a home-made salad rustled up before we took the train in - as I usually would outside somewhere. We went to Eat., around the corner from Selfridges, which my brother informs me, incidentally, when I texted him to tell him one of our students, one of the best high wire artists we’ve had, had been seen climbing up the outside of it, was designed by the Czech architect that has now designed the Octopus, a radical design for a new library in the otherwise conservative city. Anyway, I said I would ask if I could eat my own food there, since I had food intolerances and was buying food for my girlfriend and both of us were having drinks, and eventually, on finding one of the staff who wasn’t rushing around, I did so. He thoughts for a second and said, ok, so long as I didn’t make it too obvious.

Ok, so this may not be any great epiphany for many who would no doubt routinely ask, but many people might not think to do so, and I am perhaps not always up for asking such things, and I was quite impressed by the way it was handled by the guy behind the till, who didn’t ask anything else and quickly aquiesced though he hadn’t heard of the food intolerances I mentioned.

I sat there eating, and enjoying my quinoa salad, and wasn’t remotely selfconscious despite the pair of us speaking Czech and the probability that people were looking over thinking that we were thrifty Poles.

I had a couple of reveries of persuading staff at various establishments that I should be able to eat, or helping out others who happen to be asking the same question. Pointing out that with my drink I would be taking up a place anyway, and that I cannot eat the food they sell, and would be happy to do so would they only introduce a range, pointing out that the food is home made, and not branded, and offering to put a token amount in a charity tin, which might be similar to their mark-up on food.

In any case, it was far more pleasant than hiding away somewhere in the Bull Ring with people rushing all around and eating it off my knees.

I would encourage anybody with food intolerances to try this. It is an entirely reasonable request if you are having a drink or with others who are eating, and it raises consciousness of the issue, and points out a vacuum in the market companies should be only too glad to fill.

Polenta crutons

I made polenta the other day for my tagine. I could have saved just a little to put some crutons in soup. Of course I didn’t, though. I need to be more creative in terms of planning what left overs can be used for what, to always have some kind of momentum behind me. My schnitzels, for example, could be followed by stir fries, since I always have egg left over from the wrapping that could go into egg fried rice.

It’ll come, given time.

Wednesday 22nd May, 2007

I woke up at five-ish this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. I needed the toilet but was wide awake. I did get to see a young fox strolling around - too slow to take a picture - and get Alf some CDs burned for his birthday. I was even thinking how it might be a good thing to get up so early every day given as you can get so much done with few distractions, and I always get up a good hour before I have to leave for work to have a decent breakfast, but also to do a couple of things before I go in, because I can’t stand getting up and going straight away. Many writers use that morning time when nobody is up. We’ll see. Not sure I’ll get into that routine, even if M____ does do many shifts getting up at stupid o’clock.

This morning I had a coffee, and then tucked into a chicken breast and an egg after my alarm went off at the normal time, 7:30.

I had a green tea when I got into work.

At lunch I couldn’t have either of Gizmo’s efforts. I felt bad in a way asking if his fritters contained gluten - he doesn’t tend to understand intolerances and sees people who have them as fussy, but he tries hard to cook food the lads will eat. I went to Tesco and had their humous and carrots. This after an investigative programme yesterday found that Tesco’s food, along with other major names, is far from subjected to the standards we might expect. A manager came in, finding me eating, and reminded me of it as I was tucking in.

So lunch consisted of a little salad, carrots and humous, Kettle crisps and cashew nuts.

For dinner, I made a tagine with polenta and fish. Relatively easy and, I thought, very tasty. I did use butter but it was otherwise gluten/dairy free.

I had to cook it with a cat in the house, and with a M____ having left in a huff because I couldn’t give her a lift due to said cat. I have “borrowed it” to try and convince M____ et al that it’s a great idea. Of course I am spending much of my time at the folks - like today, since the sun has been on the caravan all day, the fridge is playing up and I couldn’t face it. My dad in particular doesn’t like cats, and said so, though he has just been won over a little by the little guy going up to him as he tried to go the the toilet just now.

On eating dinner (and ignoring the sleeping cat by his side), Dad remembered how he used to eat Corn Meal as a boy in Ireland (with the many cats his mum tended to take in). They would have it as supper, and call it stirrabout, as they would put it on the fire and keep it stirring to prevent it becoming lumpy. They used to call it Indian meal - he doesn’t know why - and it came in bags so big they would use them as pillow cases.

I didn’t sleep last night, or rather, got off, finally, to sleep, but woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep as I normally would in part perhaps because of the muesli I had after a craving for something sweet, or something out of my new routine after dinner yesterday. Of course, being late May, it was also bright by that time.

Sunday 20th May, 2007

I got my car off a friend of mine. It came cheap and full of goodies, mainly consisting of toe ropes, jump cables - since lent out and disappeared - and various liquids stored in old lable-less pop bottles. One bottle, containing a blue liquid, looked to me to be screenwash. It foamed a little, just a little, when you shook it, and smelt if not detergent-like, then not like any other liquid that might belong in a car’s engine. Ok, so my friend off-loaded this old car he had and couldn’t be bothered to shift, onto me because it was reliable, just right for a man in my condition, that is, somebody who knew damn all about cars and couldn’t work his way through a one-spanner repair in a hayne’s manual for all the tea in China. Having tipped it into the screenwash container after several days of having to pour flat fizzy water over the front windscreen myself with the wipers going, I was driving along and had to pull over as I tried to clear the sap and pigeon shit from my window only for it to all smear up. I texted him. He rang back. It was anti-freeze. I could have carried on pouring water over the screen except that I do occasionally ferry students about and I didn’t want to take any chances. It was late last night and I was in procrastination mode. I don’t think it was food, it was being around the same people still, and it being a Saturday night and wanting to get away and not be seen or drawn into social life. Finding no tube to siphon it out in my caravan except the one from my Platypus which I might one day use for walking, and not wanting to go round too many people in case I would be compelled to say what I was using it for, I became restless, as I do when I set out to do something, however unimportant it may be, and find I have not the means to do it. I looked around for something to do, but in that state I’m not able to write and unable to settle down to anything else productive, nor to think up something else I could do. I drove home to my folks.

This morning it was no tea and millet porridge. It doesn’t hold me out too long in terms of hunger, but it satisfies me for the time being. I had no tea.

Lunch time Mum had some fish, some salmon, and put it on with broccoli and new potatoes. I really do dislike potatoes now, but I ate the few on my plate.

Just a while back, having written for only an hour or so, I remembered I had some buckwheat pancake mix. I looked up the internet - something I have been doing rather more of today than yesterday. There I discovered that the original French crepes were in fact made with buckwheat.

It was almost a year ago I discovered a recipe book while waiting awkardly at Mork’s place last summer. He looks after a few of the students over the summer when they have nowhere to go. It keeps him out of mischief, he says. He’s quite a cook. It was unstained, unlike those in his kitchen, had no flour or breadcrumbs and the like in the seem and didn’t open on any one page in preferance to another, and it was on the bookshelf in the lounge where I gauchely stood as I usually do in other’s lounges. It was a book from the food doctor that I imagine the organisation gave out at one time or another. In it was a recipe for buckwheat pancakes. It was the first time I saw such a recipe, and possibly even the first time I heard about buckwheat. (It may only be something psychological that made this flour easier to get into cooking with than other alternatives, since it has at least the name wheat and feels like a cheat, like it is less alien, less rebarbative than gluten-free cooking was intended to be, but you have to use whatever psychological boons come your way.)

It became my most regular meal. Breakfast, lunch, dinner sometimes was a buckwheat pancake most often with banana and peanut butter, but sometimes also with sauted apples, chopped mixed nuts and dried fruits and yoghurt, before I outlawed that (I was making home-made yoghurt often at one point, and got to be hooked on it, thinking live yoghurt might work wonders; I even made it with soya milk once before I outlawed that too.)

You should always be wary of such meals that become a crutch, that you find you have cravings for, and that you use in place of more or less anything. I think excluding gluten and dairy too suddenly may be a mistake, since few of us have the both the time, the energy and patience and the organisational skills to learn the new recipes that we will needso quickly. What is more likely to happen is that there will be an over-reliance on those first few discoveries.

And so for months I have been eating far too many buckwheat pancakes with banana and peanut butter. Peanut butter is said to be bad for candida due to it being full of mould. This I was sceptical of. I couldn’t accept it for any period of time. All this talk of mould being bad for candida was all very well, but no mechanism was described, no process by which it exacerbates the fungal infection of the gut. The same was true of mushrooms, which were said to be bad.  Since so many people were sceptical about candida, and since so many of the practitioners who talked authoritively about it, as if there were no place for doubt, spoke also of things like reiki and homeopathy, and used words and concepts I had long found deeply suspicious and specious, I couldn’t hang onto the idea enough to alter my lifestyle for it. If only there was something credible there to hang on to I would be able to get somewhere. Bananas, now, I can see that bananas are full of sugars and can look back and see the number I was eating, and how it was surely doing me no good, and that it was most likely a craving for something that was doing me harm. At any rate, I was eating too much of this stuff, and this cursory look on the internet was all it took to free me of that.

I broke a couple of eggs into a glass bowl and whisked them up good before sitting them over a saucepan of water over a medium heat gas ring. I made a couple of pancakes, keeping them warm on a plate separated by sheets of kitchen roll, and then quickly fried off some chopped onions and red peppers  with a little grated ginger, throwing in some chicken at the last minute - this was already cooked since Mum had bought a whole load of chicken she had no space for in the freezer.

It was nice. Very nice.

And just what I needed, since I had earlier prepared a salad for M____ to go to work with since she was dreading the chips they would serve up with the chef away, and she asked me to put in some cheese. I do quite regularly make some sandwiches for her with cheese when she has a morning shift, but it was this time, cutting into slow-matured extra mature cheddar that I was a little resentful. I love cheese and there was a time that I would rarely have cooked a meal without it! Ok, so I say myself that the body needs only adjust to new sources of nutrients and will adjust its taste accordingly, and I think I believe it, but I would give up chocolate forever to be able to have a block of cheese once in a while with no ill effects.

I did slip up at around half three and had a green tea, though I didn’t leave the bag in, but I have so far resisted the urge for a cigar and, fingers crossed, I’ll stay on the straight and narrow.

breakfast: millet porridge with flaxseed.

2 decaf coffees!

Lunch: salmon, broccoli, potatoes!

a pear! (I think I have been eating too many and may have to cut down for a while)

green tea

Dinner: 3 savoury buckwheat pancakes with scrambled egg, chicken, onion and pepper.