Welcome!

If you're looking at this page I'm guessing you found it because you're already on an elimination diet and you're going crazy trying to find good food to make that doesn't involve a hundred crazy ingredients you can't find anywhere. This blog is an attempt to share my love of cooking... Ok, that's a lie. It's really more of an attempt to share my hate of bland food. There's plenty of good eats to be had even on this (crazy/stupid/annoying) diet.

You'll notice I don't give a lot of exact measurements, I think food is flexible - and recipes have to power to intimidate us. It sounds silly, but really, when you're making a new dish and it says one medium carrot you likely hum and haw over which carrot is the most medium before you purchase one. And if a recipe says to use one teaspoon of ground cayenne and you don't have any you may just run to the store, but really that paprika you have on your spice rack would do just fine. So I'm going to try and empower you a little more in the kitchen.

What is an Elimination Diet?

If you're reading this blog and wondering what on earth an elimination diet is, let me give you a brief overview. Many of us have "unexplainable" medical symptoms we just kind of live with because nothing is every really wrong. For me, it was that I was tired alllll the time and would catch every single cold/flu that I came near. I went to a private clinic with Doctors and Nurses that focus on natural healing instead of medicine, the most likely cause of my problems came down to the suspicion that I have a major food intolerance or allergy. Basically, every time I eat whatever that food is I'm accidentally causing my body to ignore whatever else it's working on (aka keeping me healthy and energized) because it has to fight this allergen again. The most common intolerance's are eggs, dairy and gluten. All of which I was eating everyday!

There are several different types of ingredients that different practitioners will recommend removing. At the very least you do eggs, dairy and gluten. But I figured since I was already changing most of my diet I might as well go all out. So for 21 days (to establish a new baseline of health) I cut out those three plus soy, corn, oranges, red meat, seafood, peanuts, alcohol, caffeine, and insulin spikers (all sugar, honey, maple syrup). After those 21 days I felt way better! The first week was a little rough - withdrawal headaches. But my energy and health are both a world apart from when I started. I've just begun adding foods back by continuing the diet but on every third day I add back one ingredient for just that day, then I monitor any symptoms over the next two days. Then on to the next potential allergen. So far I haven't had any major reactions, but my mom decided to do this with me and the first ingredient she wanted to add back, because she was missing them oh so much, was eggs. And guess what, she ate one for breakfast and instantly had a stomach ache and was sick all day.

So as annoying as the last month has been, I know it will be worth knowing exactly how certain foods effect me. There's only been a couple days where my husband pretty much had to hold me back! Haha, but really I'm not willing to risk losing all the hard work I've put into this because I just want one taste of that chocolate mouse, or because I don't feel like asking that waiter to make sure there's none of those ingredients in my food. In case you're curious, soy and corn are by far the sneakiest; soy oil masquerades as vegetable oil and corn starch/syrup are used in a ridiculous amount of things.

They don't make it easy on us, but is it ever eye opening to how many random ingredients go into food that should be simple. Hopefully this blog will help you cook some meals that make you forget you're on this crazy diet.