Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Finally, An Energy Bar that Tastes Good!

Well, as you could tell from the previous post, Lara bars were not a huge success.  Today I tried the Pure Organic Cherry Cashew bar.  Yum!  This I can live with.  A little itchy now though - maybe cherries are one of my culprits.  Nooooooooooo!  I'll keep you posted.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Lara Bars

Ever heard of Lara Bars?  They are everything-free.  As far as I can tell they all have the same ingredients: dates, nuts, and sometimes some unsweetened fruit.  Then they put a different color wrapper on them and tell you they are different flavors.  That said, the lemon was not bad.  However, the banana bread flavor tastes like burned banana bread.  Not the taste I was going for.

On the plus side of this diet, rice milk, frozen strawberry, kale and agave nectar smoothies are really good - no kidding!  The color is not too appealing, but the strawberry sorbet flavor more than makes up for it.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Lessons Learned for Tuesday

Decaf coffee is not worth it.

Millet rice cereal contains barley malt (man, does my face itch now!)

Back to Nature Sesame Seed GF Rice Thin Crackers are actually very tasty and have none of the things I can't eat  - hooray!  My old GF cracker standbys contained soy.

Rice milk is fine on cereal, but only if it is cold.

So there you have it.  Learn from it, grasshoppers.

A (Hopefully Temporary) New Way of Life

After a visit to my wonderful doctor (not kidding, I really do love her!) I am now on what is technically called an elimination diet.  I call it the "eat nothing that tastes good" diet.  In an effort to get to the root of some of the health problems I have been having, I have to spend 4 weeks NOT eating the following:
Oranges and orange juice, all dairy and eggs, wheat, corn, barley, spelt, kamut (don't even know what that is), rye, pork, beef/veal, sausage, cold cuts, hot dogs, shellfish, any soy products, peanuts and peanut butter, corn, butter, margarine, shortening, any processed oils, salad dressing, spreads, alcohol, coffee, soft drinks, refined sugar, white/brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, high fructose corn syrup, evaporated cane juice, chocolate, ketchup, relish, chutney, soy sauce, bbq sauce, teriyaki sauce, etc.  Bored yet?

Did you know that baking powder usually contains corn starch?  That the vinegar in ketchup, mayo and mustard is usually made from wheat or corn?  Canned tuna often has soy in it?  I know that now.

I'm not going to kid you, this is hard.  Thankful I like grilled chicken and veggies and rice.  I'll be expanding my (non-yogurt based) smoothie menu and reintroducing myself to my juicer, if only for the sake of variety.  Wish me luck!  At the end of the 4 weeks I reintroduce each type of food, about 1 new one every 3 days, to test for reactions.  I've got a bad feeling about dairy.....

Monday, August 22, 2011

Time Lapse

I didn't realize it had been so long since I had posted.  Lots going on work-wise, which is good, but it doesn't leave much time for blogging.  Oh well.  Making this one brief, just stopping in to say hi.  I'll leave you with a fun picture from our trip to Alaska: