A wash

I have to say, last week we came in on budget. We had great meals planned. Everything should have gone well.

Then I woke up Monday with a sore throat. By Monday night I was freezing and exhausted. Tuesday morning I woke up with a fever of nearly 102. It was pretty much downhill from there. Strep throat knocked me off my feet, and not in a good way. I got antibiotics on Wednesday, but I haven't been interested in eating since last weekend. Today is the first day I have really even thought about it.

I'll be honest. We didn't hold to the meal plan. When you're sick like I was, it's a matter of what your body can handle as well as what you want. I said from the beginning that our health was most important. So I allowed myself to eat on whim.

We're back on track for this week. The medicine is doing its job, and I've been fever-free for over 24-hours. (Fever started Monday, didn't go away until Friday morning). I feel wrung through the wringer. But as of this morning, we were on plan.

Lesson to be learned:

Don't always try to get the best price.

I know that sounds silly, but hear me out.

We wanted to have apples with lunch. Fujis at the grocery store were $1.99/lb (and they were big apples). There was another apple that was $1.79/lb. I'd never heard of it, but I figured an apple was an apple so I got it because it was cheaper.

Now we will be eating the cost of them rather than the apples. They're terrible.

I used some of our leftover money for the week to buy better apples. The fruit stand across from my work was selling fujis for $0.89/lb. I used $3.62, leaving us with $10.80 for the week.

Lesson learned.

Oops, I cheated. On purpose.

Being gluten-free sucks, at least for Alex and me. It sucks even worse when you're sick and the only thing you want to eat is saltine crackers. Of course, want is a pretty strong word.

Alex and food were not good friends last night, or today. I offered him several things to help (ginger ale, brown rice, applesauce oatmeal muffins) but in the end all he really wanted were saltine crackers.

When I was talking to him on the phone, he told me that saltines were all he thought he could handle. I said that was fine. Then he said, "But I can't because we're gluten-free." And I replied, "Eat some crackers."

Our health is more important to me than this experiment. Which is why I bought him some crackers. If that's all he thought he could eat, that's what I wanted him to eat. He needed some food, after all. (He also ate a single tater tot, but even that was too much for him). He did eventually eat some of a granola bar, but today he's been subsisting on crackers and Vitamin Water.

Oh yeah, and I couldn't resist eating a cracker. Just one. I wanted to smother it with peanut butter, but I refrained. I could have resisted, it's true. But I really wanted one, so I had it.

Alex had an excuse, but I didn't. Oh well. I enjoyed it.

So there you go.

Half-way point

While I enjoy the challenge presented by gluten-free baking, neither of us is very happy. We both agreed that dairy-free, while difficult, was manageable and acceptable.

However, half-way through March, both of us are gladly looking forward to April when we can eat gluten again.

Alex, who I think is taking this far harder than I am, told me today: I LOVE GLUTEN, AND I DON'T CARE WHO KNOWS IT.

Dairy-free we could live with. I doubt we'll ever be gluten-free by choice again after this month.

The ease of not needing to think

I've mentioned before how lucky Alex and I are. Excepting for tasting cilantro as soap, we don't have any good sensitivities or allergies. That means if we end up eating something we've chosen not to, we won't notice. That's not true of people with allergies or sensitivities.

We went to PF Changs yesterday for lunch. Since most asian foods contain soy sauce, they're typically a no-no for gluten-free folks. However, PF Changs has a gluten-free menu. It wasn't the most amazing food I've ever had, but it wasn't bad at all.

We went and made a point of ordering off the gluten-free menu. Our waiter saw and acknowledged that we were ordering gluten-free. When our food arrived, I asked for GF soy sauce, and the woman who brought our food looked at us and then at our waiter and asked, "Is it all supposed to be gluten free?" We responded that yes, it was, and they both profusely apologized and said they'd remake our food.

It came back, and was gluten-free and wasn't bad.

When we were paying, our waiter brought us fortune cookies. I raised my eyebrows and asked politely if the cookies, too, were gluten-free. The waiter, stunned, said no, they were not. Smiling, we gave them back (they were in packages, not loose). I explained about our project (he was worried about an allergic reaction) and he felt better. But you could see that he was thinking hard about he fact that he always brought cookies, even if people had specifically requested everything gluten-free.

For most people, the cookies wouldn't be a problem. And our waiter never really thought about what they were. Like I said, we're lucky that we don't have the allergies or sensitivities because nothing bad happens if we consume our "tainted" food. But this experience made me think, and I hope it made our waiter think too.

Decisions, decisions

Sunday is Valentine's Day. I'm sure you're all aware of that. For us, Valentine's Day has typically been a day where we indulge and treat ourselves to a nice meal.

There is a restaurant here in Seattle that is wonderful. It's called Tilth. We've eaten at Tilth many times and have always thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. This year, they are having a prix fixe menu. When Alex called to ask if they would be willing to make ours dairy-free, they readily agreed. They're just awesome like that.

However. We have given ourselves one amnesty day per month. And Tilth is rather expensive. Why, Alex asked, would we pay all that money and not eat what we want?

Why, indeed?

We are very lucky. We have no food allergies. We make enough money to eat what we want. That's the whole point of this exercise.

But Alex was right. It seems silly to pay a lot of money for a dinner that, while I'm sure we would enjoy, isn't what we'd really rather be eating.

So Sunday is Valentine's Day. It is also our amnesty day. And we will enjoy it. But the most important thing is this: we will appreciate it for what it is. And that is actually what this is all about.

The reality of the situation

I commented last month about how I was aware that dairy was everywhere. I was worried about sinning unknowing.

Here's the reality: it happens.

Alex's latte got mixed up with someone else's on Tuesday, and he got one made with milk. He sipped it and knew right away it was wrong (though it had more to do with the fact that it was flavored, and less to do with how the milk was).

Last night, I baked a cake for a coworker. The cake is fine for me to eat because it doesn't contain any dairy (remember, for our purposes eggs are not dairy). However, when I went to make the icing, I realized I had three choices: make the icing and put it on the cake untasted, make the icing and snatch someone from outside to taste, or taste it myself.

I take a lot of pride in my cakes. I most definitely wasn't going to put it on the cake untasted. Icing is finicky, and it has to taste just right. I didn't want it to be too tart (it was cream cheese frosting) but I also didn't want it to be cloying. No way to tell without a taste.

I could have grabbed someone to taste it. It might have been difficult, it was 9:30pm after all, but I'm sure I could have done so. However, again, this is pride in my cake. I know what the cake tastes like so I know what I need the frosting to taste like.

So I tasted it myself. I only had two small tastes (think the size of a nail head). It was enough to get an idea what the icing needed.

Day three and I had dairy. But you know what? I don't regret it. I'm sure my lactose-free friends would back me up.

Easy choices and difficult ones

Vegetarianism is a relatively easy food choice. It's well understood and fairly easy to work around when you're going out. As Alex put it last night, "There is not a lot of hidden meat."

Excepting the few times that I've already mentioned, not eating meat has not been difficult. And even my cravings were easily avoided.

Next month we're going dairy free. No milk, no butter, no cheese.

I'm not worried about my daily latte because I'm fond of almond milk. Since Alex and I typically make them at home, it's an easy switch.

No, the area where I'm most worried is butter, cheese, and milk and going out. Restaurants use them in everything.

I've rather enjoyed being a vegetarian, though I do appreciate meat a lot more now. But I'm afraid of being dairy-free. Not only do I love dairy, but I am worried that if I go out to restaurants, I'll sin unknowing.

Any recommendations?

The emotional experience of food

What food do you reach for when you're sad? When you're happy? When you're bored? The answers to those questions really tells you a lot about how you think of food.

When I didn't get into graduate school in 2009, I was devastated. I wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball and disappear. And when Alex sought to coax me into eating dinner, the only thing I wanted was pork dumplings. Today, when I was distressed about graduate school, all I wanted was bacon and hash browns.

When I'm happy, all I want it popcorn or Thai food (sans meat, for the record).

What does this say about me? Meat is my comfort. What else did you learn about me? Graduate school drives me crazier than anything else.

Thankfully, I have a wonderful boyfriend who supports me in all things in my life. He also is a big part in this year of conscious eating, because we dreamed it together. While I curled on the couch and stressed out and raged, Alex cooked the vegetarian dinner we were supposed to have tonight. Had it been left to me, I likely would have turned to meat, in the form of pizza or carpaccio, or bacon, or all three.

We're in this together, Alex and I, and I'm thankful for that. I'm proud of myself for not succumbing to my need for meat comfort. Though, to be honest, had I cooked dinner, I likely would have cooked up the chorizo in the fridge.

On cravings and unforseen difficulties

"I think that allowing ourselves fish has made me not really miss land animals," Alex said to me, when I questioned whether or not he'd had any cravings.

He's right for the most part. I think we'd both be a lot worse off (craving-wise, anyway) if we'd decided to cut fish out. I have a lot of respect for people who are able to do this, but we were being realistic when we outlined the first month of conscious eating.

We have, however, been more thoughtful with regards to the fish we've eaten. Check out the sushi post for more details.

We went out for dinner last Friday with a friend of ours and her friend who came with us ordered a steak. Smelling it and seeing it (and hearing him rave about it) was definitely hard, but we stayed strong and persevered.

My only flirtation with undoing (so far) came in the form of a tweet from a delicious pizza restaurant in Seattle. It was simple but it made my mouth water.

I immediately reported it to Alex, part of me hoping he'd say, "Okay let's go!" But, when it comes to carpaccio, he has more will power than I do and held strong. The sad thing is that I won't even be able to eat it next month because I think we'll be dairy-free.

The hardest thing so far has been finding lunches to take. This seems like such an easy thing, but has proven to be difficult. We used to take leftovers for lunch the next day but since I started volunteering we stagger our dinners and eat leftovers the next night as dinner. This works fairly well, dinner-wise, but makes lunch difficult. We may reevaluate this soon.

The first week we thought we'd make it easy and just take cans of soup. As we stood in the aisle, reading ingredients, we were surprised to find just how many vegetable soups contained some form of meat, if even just chicken or beef broth. We managed, but it was an eye-opener.

This week we've been taking pitas and that has been tasty and filling. I already have a recipe to try for next week to mix it up. But, like I said, I have a new respect for those people who live this lifestyle.