Allergic to Sitting

Best Beans and Tricky Trails

2012-01-20T11:56:00.000-08:00

With the topics of obesity, diabetes, and heart health on the mass media radar for more than a decade, we're obviously not getting 'er done and we need to start thinking outside of the box. I think our local state park has a great wellness program that more organizations and cities should utilize to motivate the populous into staying active. Let me share with you their exciting new discovery. I think you'll be inspired to start a program in your own community.

Our local state park has many trails of all different types of terrain and distances, but what's unique about their program has everything to do with cartography (maps) and way finding (signs). Imagine yourself on a run in the park and let's say a 6 mile run is your goal. With the superior state park wellness program, your six mile run will end up turning into ten miles. It's not because you've made the choice to keep running. But it's because the map they hand you at the entrance hasn't been updated since the 90's, it's as clear as mud in some areas because of the number of times it's been photocopied, and the signs along the trail are either missing their stick-on wording or they bare no relationship to the map or current reality.

There are several staggering benefits that spreading this type of miscommunication can provide .

you'll run/hike/bike farther than you ever anticipated
your body will learn to cope with far less water
you'll learn to do without nutrition (food is quite pesky and pricey anyway)
you might even get lost for a day or more, and therefore maximize weight loss
you'll increase your chance for injury and therefore workout your body's repair system
you'll commune with nature: you'll truly "feel" the dirt (or maybe it's "feel like dirt" when it's over)

In an age of GPS watches, Google Earth, and the Internet, wellness programs don't need to take advantage of new technologies to improve their communications. From our research this past weekend, we've concluded, here at the Allergic to Sitting Institute, that the best solution to the bad-health epidemic is bad technical communications.

Don't have a state park near you where you can get lost? No problem. Create a local park of your own. All you will need is:

miles of land with lots of trees and bushes (the pricklier the better)
signs (doesn't really matter what's on them, just put them out there)
a bike or two to start marking down the trails (the more trail intersections the better)

With these tips in mind, you'll gain maximum confusion and increase the amount of exercise in your local population. I hope these tips and ideas have inspired you action. Together, we can all make a difference.

Best Beans
So this weekend, I attempted to create (for like the 3-4 time) gas-less beans. This is one of my ultimate cooking goals, you see. I believe I have succeeded. My recipe is below and I must say that I stole the idea from my mom and souped it up a bit more for maximum cooking power.

But remember, "friends don't let friends eat beans and run." We consumed these beans the day after our 6, I mean 10 mile run in the the park this past weekend. :) Thanks Kevin for suffering with me. I'll remember our adventure as, Lord willing, I run the Austin Marathon. Enjoy!

Ingredients

1 cup of beans
2 cups of water
1 tsp salt
1-2 cups of chicken or turkey broth

Directions
Soak dried beans in water over night. Rinse beans in a strainer. Cook them with broth and salt for at least 8 hours in a slow cooker on high. Add more water to make sure that all of the beans are submerged throughout the cooking process. Make sure you use fairly new dried beans. The older they are, the less they'll want to soften.

Gluten-Free Peppermint Almond-Coconut Cookies (what a mouthful!)

2011-12-16T07:37:00.000-08:00

So when I make up an impromptu baked-good recipe, I rarely get it right the first time.

Good example: for Thanksgiving I modified a oatmeal cookie recipe by Bob's Red Mill and ended up with about 4 versions and 4 dozen cookies. The texture still didn't end up like I wanted.

Lots of tweaking is involved in baking: there's the alternative flour mixture, how much stick 'em is needed (eggs, egg alternative, etc), oils, rising agents, the pan and greasing, location in the oven, bake time, bake temperature, elevation, etc. Baking is chemistry and art.

But for this recipe, I got it right the first time! These cookies are moist, super sugary, easy to make, and we're bringing them to my parent's place for the holidays. Yum!

Ingredients

2 cups ground plain coconut
1 cup almond flour (or ground almonds)
1 cup rice flour
1 1/2 tsp of baking powder
2 tsp of cinnamon
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup coconut oil
2 tsp vanilla
Crushed peppermint candy canes (or pre-crushed from the baking isle)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix the first 5 ingredients in one bowl then mix the rest (except the peppermint) in a larger, separate bowl. Add the flour mixture to the other ingredients gradually. Place teaspoon-fulls onto a greased cookie sheet. Top with peppermint sprinkles. Makes about 45 small cookies.

Okra-home-a, Dieting Misconceptions, and a Carb-fixated Nation.

2011-11-23T09:55:00.000-08:00

They never say it's easy.

What makes for a good diet? And by "diet," I mean Merriam-Webster's definition:

"Noun: 1. The kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats."

What I consider a "diet" is a long term meal plan. You could either be trying to lose weight, gain weight, maintain weight, not get sick (from food allergies, food sensitivities), train for a marathon, or kill cancer. But this kind of diet is a "habitual," day after day, long-term selection of foods that creates a healthy functioning you.

Probably tried the bacon diet.

Many studies have shown that the best diets share the following common characteristics:

Matches your daily activity levels.
Encourages a balance between several food groups.
Is sustainable over a long period of time.
Provides you with life-sustaining/encouraging vitamins and minerals.
Satisfies your taste-buds.
Is Affordable.

Did you see any quick fixes in that list? No! Do the items on this list look easy? No! It's hard work. If it wasn't, everyone would be as healthy as an ox (minus those with hereditary health problems and those without an exercise regimen). It's hard work that is quite often thwarted by the latest and greatest food fads, and, in my opinion, a nation obsessed with carbohydrates.

One heart attack for table 2.

Let me pick apart #1 on my list. Think about it. When you go to a restaurant, any restaurant, what meals don't have a major carbohydrate like taco shells, bread, chips, french fries, mashed potatoes, and rice? Some salads and water are probably the only items without carbs. That's it.

The American way.

But do we really need it? Carbohydrates are the "go-food" of choice. It gives us the ability to be physical for long periods of time during the day. Farmers, cowboys, extreme athletes, regularly get up early and eat the larges plate of pancakes, biscuits, and whatnot before they go to work, and they need it.

What not to buy.

But if we're working, or studying, or just sitting there watching TV, we don't need much of it! At least the majority of us with average to low metabolisms don't. What I think quite often gets lost, even when trying to adhere to those 6 characteristics of a good diet, is that we not only need to match our activity levels with the amount of food we eat, but also with the kind of food we eat.

Don't go too extreme either.

This is also a very important thing to keep in mind for those of us (specifically me) with wheat and gluten problems. We shouldn't just replace and substitute our carbohydrates, we should question whether we need them at all for every meal we have. That's a large part of why I haven't blogged so much recently. I haven't been baking and making all those gluten-free but carb filled foods. I'm trying to balance a job where I sit for 8 hours with my stocked shelves of Pamela's Bread Mix and Bob's Red Mill's Brownies. Bob and Pamela have not helped me with #1.

Okay, I'm off my soap box. Here's a recipe. :)

Okra-home-a (aka okra at home).

Gluten Free Fried Okra
When you think fried okra...let's be honest...when I think fried okra, I think okra, dipped in some sort of egg and flour batter, and cooked with oil and butter in a pan, served with creamy mashed potatoes and fried chicken.

Stop. Stop right now.

Although some people don't always like the slimy texture of okra in it's more natural state, there are many recipes out there that are tasty and don't call for added carbs/gluten-filled products. In my opinion, the best okra recipes add something slightly sweet (like corn or ham). The okra side dish below is my own creation and requires no oil.

Ingredients
15 oz or 1 lb of frozen okra
1 can of tomatoes, no salt
1 large onion, diced
1 cup frozen sweet corn
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Directions
In a large sauce/frying pan, cook frozen okra, onion, and corn on medium. The okra should turn from bright kelly green to a more brown or muted green when cooked. Add the tomatoes, salt, and garlic powder and heat for another 2-3 minutes. Serve with chicken, fish, or that Thanksgiving turkey.

Eating Around Normals during the Holidays and Cranberry Relish

2011-11-17T11:28:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years are the most food-centric holidays on our calendar, and they all happen within about a two month time frame. If you have food allergies or any food digestive issues like me, that means adding food stress to your already full holiday plate (or maybe it's empty like mine above).

To avoid my favorite conversation, where someone looks directly at me and yacks away for about 15 minutes about how "this [insert cheesy wheat filled food] is so tasty. Yum! I love this food. I'd give my life for this food," I've thought about all the food strategies and coping mechanisms that I've used or heard of in the past and evaluated them for their effectiveness. This is my personal opinion of course. Maybe with a little self reflection and a little humor we can get rid of some stress together.

Strategy 1: Leave it All to Chance
Don't make and bring anything that you know is safe to eat to the holiday meal. Don't help the cook prepare food for the meal so that you know all about each ingredient. Don't bring any allergy medicine, pain relievers, tums, pepto-bismol, or a last ditch laxative. Don't even forewarn people about your food issues. Just show up, eat what "you think" is safe, or what other people think is safe, and live with the consequences. Fun!

Grade: F (is there a grade Z?). Yes, maybe you're in a hurry and don't have time to communicate or participate in any of the cooking or maybe you're shy. Oh my goodness! Make time! Join a Toastmasters Club! It's not worth getting sick over. In fact, if I were to try out this strategy, which I thankfully never have, I know I'll end up not only un-happy, but also with a 90% chance of a three-day headache and "potty-trots." If this is my strategy, I personally believe it's my own fault for not having anything to eat and I deserve to watch other people eat cheese and bread while I eat my lonely, no-butter squash (or at least I think it has no butter since I never saw the ingredients with my own eyes). This strategy is also great for making cooks feel bad. No one wants to poison their guests!

Strategy 2: Medicate
Bring the medications with you so that if your run into trouble or you choose to run into trouble, you can maybe salvage part of the holiday.

Grade: D. I used to practice this strategy while pretending that I didn't have any food allergies. Yeah, that worked out swell. So, maybe the headache or digestive issues get smaller with medication, but I'm not myself. I'm either wired from the caffeinated Excedrin Migraine or I have digestive issues that are still pretty bad, but just preferable over those when I'm not medicated. With this strategy, I know I'll probably end up with less food on my plate, some kind of body pain, and, again, an unhappy host/cook.

Strategy 3: Tell People about Your Food Sensitivities
Give your host a list of your food issues and hopefully they'll come up with some alternatives. Send your holiday host a list by email. Personally hand them a paper with the items you can't have! Give them the general picture and some specifics. I personally like to write things like:

Katherine's Food Allergies:

cow milk: often an ingredient in cheese, yogurt, ice cream, sausage, salad dressing, canned soup, bread, TV dinners, sandwich meat, and hotdogs. Milk is often identified on labels as whey, lactic acid, and other 'lactic' terms." Substitute with goat milk, soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, and coconut milk. If it's creamy or says cream, use your brain; it probably has milk. [...maybe leave out the last sentence...]

Grade: B-C. Yea! Communication feels good don't it? However, make sure that you can trust your cook. Not everyone is familiar with reading food labels and not everyone has a great memory when it comes to making a 15-year-old traditional family dish (auto-pilot often kicks in). After using just this strategy, you could end up being told,

"I just cooked you a plain chicken. Nothing on it. I just put a little bit of [insert allergen food here] on the pan so it wouldn't stick."

Lovely! I'll just have a little bit of headache later! However a cook's good intentions, if they're not familiar with cooking for alternative diets, then they might need a little more help then just a list of no-nos. But then again, the main cook for your holiday meal could be a pro (I'm thankful to have many in my family) and you'll have no problems whatsoever. Also, don't write them a novel! If it's over a page of information (which I've seen before) it's too much information. Give them the highlights and show them your bullet-point skills.

Strategy 4: Bring Food
Hit the main food groups that you know will keep you happy and your gut satisfied. Maybe bring a dish with some protein, then a carb, and maybe a desert. Most cooks tend to make a variety of veggies for Thanksgiving, and more than likely one of them will be safe to eat, even if it's just the salad.

Grade: C. You know you'll be able to eat the items you cook. Whahoo! But that means a lot of cooking for you, limiting the foods you can eat, potentially alienating the family cook because you've brought redundant dishes, and, again, making the cook feel bad because you didn't tell them about your problem before hand. But hey! You're not going to end up sick.Yea. . . .

Strategy 5: Help the Cook
Watch them like a hawk and ask if they could use different ingredients real time.

Grade: C. You're cook will probably not be prepared with alternative ingredients if you just show up and start making suggestions. Plus, they'll be that awkward conversation about your diet the day of a family get-together. I'm not a huge fan of making my diet the sole topic of conversation (I don't mind talking about it, but I don't want to wine or focus too much on what I can't have). I just want to eat and talk similar to most normals.

Strategy 6: Combo Pack of Strategies 2-5
Tell your family cook about your food issues, help your cook fix the meal, and bring food. Also, if your reactions are bad, you might still want to bring some medication as backup.

Grade: A. Yes! Yes! Yes! This is my strategy of choice. It's better to be over prepared for family get-togethers in my opinion. However, I have to keep in mind that every food situation will not require all of the best strategies and sometimes they will. Strategy 6 is a balancing act based on time, place, and the people involved. I must say, it's always nice when I don't have to bring anything to a meal because I know the cook is really informed. Not required or necessary, but nice. That's my favorite type of "eating out." :) This is also a good strategy even if you don't have any food problems, but are on a diet to lose weight. The less things you leave to chance, the smaller your chances of eating something you shouldn't.

Cranberry Relish
If you're thinking about bringing something to your family Thanksgiving meal next week, you might try something like the recipe below. It's a traditional side dish, but it can also operate as a desert if the need arises. For the next blog posting, I'll probably be sharing versatile and simple holiday recipes just like this one.

Ingredients
2-3 oranges, peeled and separated
1/2 cup sugar
1 bag of rinsed cranberries

Directions
Rinse your cranberries in a colander and throw away any squishy berries. Blend up of the ingredients in a food processor. Try processing the oranges first then adding the other ingredients so as to avoid hang-ups in your mixer. To make the recipe a little healthier, try adding more oranges and less sugar.

Sack of Potatoes and Hot Carob

2011-10-28T11:12:00.000-07:00


It's in the cards.

If the love/hate relationship most runners have isn't enough, preparing for the first run in cold weather always comes with a bag of mixed emotions for me.

Nada moo here.

On the one hand, my gut is telling me to make a cup of hot carob and coconut milk with just a touch of honey and cinnamon, curl up on my recliner with a comfy blanket, and read the Harry Potter series for the 4th or 5th time while I wait for Kevin to get home. What a perfect way to wind down after 8 hours under florescent lights and a marathon in front of a computer screen!

I hear you.

Instead, I'm rummaging through stored winter running clothes, squishing my atypical running legs into a pair of dry fit tights and shorts, tugging on my high neck and long sleeve top, fighting off goosebumps because we've had the heat off in the house all day, and wondering what pocket my favorite blue and black striped headband/ear warming machine got stuffed into...6 months ago.

Fun.

Instead, I'm peaking out our back door, checking to see if, yes indeed, Kent the mild mannered boarder collie is muddy because he lives in a semi-grassless wasteland where he's found out how fun it is to dig a hole in the mud as a result of our lack of grass, and now he must be carried through the house so as not to make a mess on our living room carpet.

Good to eat. Difficult to hold.

Instead, I'm picking up said 45 pound Kent who turns into a limp and awkward blob not much different than a sack of potatoes, and I'm rushing to the front door only to realize that I haven't opened or even unlocked the front door and must do so now while attempting to hold Kent one handed...unsuccessfully.

Some of this was on me.

But then I have to laugh because, as Kent slips through my left arm (partially because he's heavy, partially because we're now both muddy, and partially because I'm giggling) and slowly melts to the floor as I attack our deadbolt, I have a feeling that this first winter run will be fun and fast. This run, like most cold weather runs, be over before it even begins.

Why not.

Once upon a time Kevin ran something like a 12-13 minute 2 mile with Kent. That's close to his best high school time. When I asked him "how many cars did you pass" (Kent's a car chaser), he replied,

"I don't remember much of what happened."

Well, I don't remember much of what happened. I know we made it back in 23:25. You can see my running log to the right. We did have a few short stops so that I could keep Kent from lunging into oncoming traffic (remember: Kent = car chaser). However, I do distinctly remember being pulled through the middle of a puddle with Kent at some point and I also remember saying out loud to no one in particular, "...run through a puddle? We don't care!" Other than that, not much else to report.

What a great way to start the fall/winter season of running! I got my hot drink later that evening and I wore my mud splattered outfit with pride for Kevin to see when he got home. Oh, and I watch the Pentatonix for like the hundredth time in the last couple of weeks.

Hot Carob Drink

Ingredients

1-1/12 cups of coconut milk (from the refrigerated section; soy, almond, or goat milk also just as tasty)
1-2 heaping teaspoons of ground carob powder (coco powder just as good, but not for me after about 5 pm)
1-2 teaspoons of honey
sprinkle of cinnamon

Directions
Heat milk first in microwave for 1 1/2 minutes on high. Stir in rest of the ingredients. (Hint: You might try some other spices in the drink like pumpkin spices, nutmeg, ginger, etc, but don't try adding pure mint extract unless your want to taste mint for about 2 years after drinking. I've tried it and I had to pour the rest of the drink down the drain. I hardly ever waste food. You know it was bad.)

Allergic to Sitting Must Sit

2011-09-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

My right foot after two weeks of sitting, limited biking, and one run. Those aren't varicose veins.

Running is my drug.

[Cue the Ke$ha music "Your love, your love, your love, is my drug..."]

How have I come to realize this?

For the past two and a half weeks, I've been forced to sit for long periods of time in my recliner with my foot propped up on a pillow and a bag of frozen spinach wrapped around my ankle. I've regretfully watched my husband leave out the front door with his Asics, Kaiya, and blinky light, night after night. I've had to stare into the eyes of a panicked border collie as he realizes that he won't be able to pull me like a tow truck along the road, but instead made to retrieve tennis balls 60 times in a row. I've been sidelined during two races (and now a third this weekend) with the great "honor" of filming family members as they huff and puff their way to glory, half of a banana, and a paper cup of Gatorade. I've been forced to stop running (temporarily) because of a sprained ankle.

http://l.thumbs.canstockphoto.com/canstock3273766.jpg

For almost four and a half years, I've made it my duty and my pleasure to run at least three times a week. Colds, stomach viruses, post-marathon slumps, traveling, tornado alerts, weddings (morning of even), nothing keeps me down for more than about 5 days. It is my attitude adjustment, my flu shot, my counselor, my reprieve from boredom, my group workout, my alone time, my allergy medication, my vacation, my itch that needs to be scratched, my time in the sun, my rainy day activity. It's who I am! Not everything, but a whole darn bunch.

http://aroadmorebalanced.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/dsc_0057-edit.jpg

Everything became a chore after the sprain. I started scooting around on an office chair around the house. Simple tasks like getting dressed, cooking, driving, going to the bathroom, taking a shower (and shaving, legs not face), became time consuming and overly complicated. My poor husband's to-do list was doubled (if not tripled). When I finally got crutches, my puny arms hurt and reminded me how much I like using leg muscles versus arms. And the random headaches and itchy eyes of pre-running Katherine, they came back with a vengeance.

But there's good news! No, I haven't saved 10% or more on car insurance.

I'm baaaakk!!! Whoohoo hoo haa ha ha ha.

http://www.bondiband.com/product_images/a/784/I_LOVE_RUNNING._I_HATE_RUNNING._(purple_ink)__15327_zoom.jpg

It's been two weeks and one day since I haven't gone for a jog. Yes, this sounds ridiculous even to me. Like, "two weeks off of running." That's nothing. But it means a lot to me. Yesterday was my first jaunt after work. I ran one mile in 11 minutes and 4 seconds and then I biked for another 30 minutes. I felt like a had a pillow for a right foot (didn't seem to react like I wanted) during the run. Also, during the first 400 meters, I probably looked a little gimpy. It's a start though, and I'm so happy! I'm ready to get off of bike!

http://www.stillmanphoto.com/Crazy-Faces-web.jpg

Here's to all of you who have a love affair with your exercise routine or want to and are struggling with health problems and time crunches. Keep it up! Like Jesus said, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). Thanks, Kevin, for the great insight and for listening to me complain. Thanks to my other family members for their thoughts and prayers. I know I'm insanely single minded in my exercise and I hope I'm not too much of a hindrance. I'm kind of hoping everyone I know joins me on my trip to the "funny farm" and visits on a regular basis.

Herbs and Drought

2011-08-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

Smells good!

Want to start an herb garden, but it hasn't rained in years because of some Nino person that they keep mentioning on the news (who is this Nino person and how do you type the Spanish "n" on Blogger)? Well, your in luck! Rosemary is the right plant for you. If you plant it in the shade, and it will stretch towards the sun even in 109 degrees. It loves sun! Don't plan it in the shade!

Recently, we had to clip tons of branches off so that our sprinkler system would reach the grass on the other side of our rosemary bush. Now we're learning how to dry herbs. I read an article online that says I just need to rinse off the branches, tie them up in small bundles like you would if you were trying to dry flowers, and hang them upside down in a cool dry place for 4 weeks. It's been almost a week so far and I'm thinking we'll end up with a boat load of the herb when it's all done. I many have found my retirement job. :)

Other herbs that have been taking the heat in our yard have been our chives (as long as it's mostly in shade)...

That ain't grass, so keep your dogs off.

and our sage.

Soft, velvety leaves. Mmm...

Our oregano is looking pretty sad and our garlic bit the dust sometime in July. But rosemary is boppin.' We love adding rosemary to our eggs, stir fry dishes, homemade spaghetti sauces, baked turkey, baked chicken, and Italian dishes. It's tasty, and it's relatively cheap seasoning from the garden. These herbs are also a great way to stay away from the more processed, high calorie, and allergy prone sauces and marinades found at your local grocery store. And most wildlife don't like to eat them. They're strong!

So, try some today!

***This has been a paid advertisement by the "Nino person."

5K Tour de Texas

2011-08-04T11:24:00.000-07:00

http://images3.cpcache.com/product/16967673v3_480x480_Front.jpg

This September marks the return of Kevin and Katherine to the racing scene after a much needed hiatus from marathon training. Please, if you come, take pictures only before and after the races, otherwise the flashes might distract us from our task at hand. If you bring flowers, make them be pink and odoriferous. Clap only when we're done. By the end of the season will be selling autographed sweat bands (sweat included) and snotty Kleenexes (snot included) to raise money for allergic to sitting research, which may or may not go to a down payment on a cabin in the mountains. Please give freely. :)

Races currently scheduled to be attended (by us) are as follows:

More than likely there will be t-shirts aplenty, medals to be won (not necessarily by us), and Gatorade to be had.

In the meantime, I'd like to share the following Haiku in honor of my former Slam Poetry days (which a friend reminded me of recently on Facebook). Not that I ever read aloud, or was very good at poetry, but I was very inspired by those who did and were.

Gut Rot

Piff on you, you milk
From cows that turns to gut rot
Goat milk is my friend

Kabobs a la Katrina

2011-07-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

Balsamic vinegar smells really good. But not when it's in a puddle on the pantry floor after falling out of a ripped grocery bag. So the following is a recipe from one of my sisters-in-law after a second go around with a new bottle of vinegar. It's mighty tasty and pretty fun to make, especially if you have everyone construct their own kabob. Just remember to double bag your glass items. :)

Ingredients

2 mostly cooked boneless chicken breasts (cut into 2" cubes)
1/2 or whole green bell pepper
1/2 or whole onion (cut into chunks)
Balsamic vinegar
Any other veggies you want (yellow squash, zucchini, tomatoes, potato, etc...)

Skewer chicken and veggies. Brush w/ balsamic vinegar. You can dip the ingredients in a bowl of vinegar intead of brushing, but it gets kind of messy and balsamic tends to stain. Broil on low for 15 minutes (5 kabobs). Serve w/ rice.

Allergies, allergies, and more allergies. Where do they come from?

2011-07-08T11:19:00.000-07:00

I just had a great question this week on an old blog entry of mine and I started to type a short answer, but then got carried away! So, as to reap the benefits of several hours of contemplation, I'm re-posting my answer here, but with some pictures for illustration. First is the question and then my answer.

____________________________________________________________
Jen said...
I was wondering what you thought might be the cause of the escalation in food allergies reported in the kids in this study? http://www.dailyrx.com/news-article/peanut-allergies-appear-more-prevalent-14145.html

Why do you think it seems that there is such a higher instance of this in recent times?Do you think it is because of better medical tracking giving a more accurate picture or changes in the environment?

____________________________________________________________
Katherine said...
Jen,
Good question! I'm definitely not an expert, but I have heard several theories about why people have allergies. The most prevalent one is the "hygiene hypothesis" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergy#Hygiene_hypothesis).

At least this person uses a toilet.

In case you're not familiar, this theory suggests that our society has become increasingly too clean and therefore our immune systems do not develop properly as it shapes and changes throughout our lifetime. Somehow fighting off diseases and infections and gaining more experience with unfiltered air and un-washed foods is somewhat essential to our growth according to this theory.

Some scientists behind this theory go so far as to say that our immune system is built off of that of "early man" where it was necessary to have an extremely high-functioning immune system.

"Early Man" hadn't invented wipies much less the wheel.

Some say we still have that same immune system, but it's no longer getting a complete workout (like having a V8 engine with a bazillion horses, but never going above 30 mph). As a result, it's "bored."

I think it's the hat that's the problem.

I'm not sure how these theories fit with the idea that we can also inherit allergies from our parents. Genetically speaking, what our parents' immune system "learns" while they are alive does not pass down to us. If they get a cold before we are born, we won't somehow be magically immune to that same cold after birth (otherwise I'd be like "my parents version 2.0").

Me 2.0. Don't I look dapper?

We can still become infected by the cold our parents once had. We can only inherit their genotype or the blue prints of an immune system. So "hygiene" can't be the only explanation for why there may be more cases of allergies today.

Like you said, better medical tracking could also be an influence on the statistic you found. Doctors might be keeping better track of this information. Also, it's common knowledge in the medical field that once a pharmaceutical company advertises a drug for some medical problem, people will see their doctor and ask about that medical condition at higher rates than during the previous time period before the advertisement.

Disturbing. Click to view a large image.

Knowledge of allergies and medications for allergies have grown exponentially in the last decade (according to my own observation). More and more people might see information in the news media, infomercials, books, etc, and then realize "hey, you know that problem I've been having? It might be allergies." Then they go to their doctor.

Yes, because I always equate fiber with a sexy stomach. I'm going to go now and talk with my doctor about Benefiber [said sarcastically].

In summary, nobody really knows why we have allergies (and as a result, why there are different trends in allergies). I'm sure you were anticipating that answer. :) Allergies have been a pseudo-scientific area of study for quite some time.

My husband and I are planning to have kids in the next few years, and it's a real concern what genes their going to inherit. All I know is that, Lord willing, we're going to encourage our kids to be as active as possible and to be healthy eaters because I know that's what has really helped me.

Thanks for your question Jen!

I Hate Numbers, But I love Salad.

2011-06-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

So, you may have noticed that I haven’t been keeping track of my exercise using my handy little widget on the side of my blog. The marathon didn’t kill me or my interest in working out. I’m still alive! Exercise-wise at least. However, I haven’t been keeping track of times. I need a break. I can only take so much of the numbers game before I burn out. Keeping track of my times just makes me want to improve each and every time I’m on a bike or running on the pavement. That’s mentally tiring not to mention physically impossible.

Most of last year I was constantly thinking, “that’s my third mile at a 10:30 pace. I need to pick it up a little more so that by mile 8, I’m not so behind my target time.” Instead, I’d rather be thinking one of the following.

“I’d like to make spaghetti tomorrow night. Maybe I can use that new recipe that calls for basil.”
“Should I watch ‘My Princess’ Korean drama or “My Girlfriend is a Nine Tailed Fox’ Korean drama after the run? That Nine Tailed Fox is going to eat somebody’s liver at some point. I know it!”
“I wonder if I can fit more clothes in my closet if I organize mementos from childhood a little better.”
“Hi! My name is Tonje. I’m a little pretty girl trapped inside a grownups body. I don’t wanna be. I don’t wanna be a crappy house wife.”
“That was three miles. I’m done!”
“I shouldn’t eat beans before a run.”
“Man! Kent just farted.”

These are all preferable topics to consider while I work out rather than numbers. Well, maybe not the beans...or Kent's farts.

Plus, I’m no long running like a gazillion miles where it’s fun to look back and think how cool/insane my previous 15 mile run was.

A few other reasons to lay off the record keeping: I’m not training for anything, I don’t like math so much, I’m not keeping track on my weight, and also, my watch broke.

All of these things have contributed to my hiatus. I’m sorry if I’ve let you down. Please don’t cry. I’ll be back sometime next year with more number crunching. But right now, it’s fun to just run/bike/dance/weight life/whatever with no set goals.

So, instead Kevin and I have been working out regularly almost everyday. We do keep to a schedule to some degree, but it’s not fixed by distance, sets, or time by any means (see below). You might say this is crazy, but keep in mind that I sit at work for 8 hours during the day. I’m ready to move when I get home!

Monday: Run
Tuesday: Strength training for 45 minutes and 1 hour dance class
Wednesday: Run
Thursday: Strength training for 45 minutes or freestyle swimming
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Bike
Sunday: Bike

To fuel our hot summer exercise, I've been getting pretty creative with cool salads. Here's a list of my favorite ingredients for salads that make my meals jam packed with taste and energy. If I had a salad every night for dinner, I'd be happy. But I have a husband. I think that would kill him. :) I want him around so I have to make all my salads count.

Ingredients
cool winter squash (my favorite is butternut)
raisins
carrots
cooked (and cooled) zucchini or yellow squash
cooked onions
cooked broccoli
bell peppers
celery
cucumber
cooked (and cooled) brussel sprouts (from fresh, not frozen)
radishes
sunflower seeds
MEAT

For a Non-traditional dressing

tbl spoon grape seed oil
tbl agave nectar
salt and pepper to taste

Forbidden Pizza Love

2011-05-19T12:56:00.000-07:00

Love.

Have you ever made a pizza that you'd sell your car to eat? I have. Just now. Of course, I have the supreme honor of co-owning (with my husband) a 1995 Ford Taurus. But that's still saying a bunch considering it's still worth a couple of hundred smackaroos. Maybe five. I'm not good with numbers.

Anyway, back to the pizza.

The pizza that I made this weekend was freakin' awesome!!!! Da bomb!!!! I basically mixed the best ingredients from all previous recipes together in one insanely cool, yummy in the tummy, MASTERPIECE. I'm totally not bragging. Kevin loved it too.

But it's all gone. And now all I have is the picture above picture. And two other pictures that aren't quite as good.

Darkish picture of whole pizza.

Strange lighting picture at an oddish angle.

The dough was a perfect combination of crispy and chewy. The cheese didn't taste like the way goats smell. The veggies were well done, but not burnt. The sauce was super spicy and plentiful in every bite. But there's no more. I ate the last two pieces yesterday. I'm not sure what else I have to live for.

Wait a minute! Wait a minute. It's just pizza. Get a hold of yourself girl!

Here's the recipe

chopped zucchini
diced onions
chopped brussel sprouts
shredded sheep cheese (yes, sheep, the hard cheese, from a wheel)
3/4 pound all natural pork sausage
chopped celery
1 small can tomato sauce
1 package of Bob's Red Mill Pizza Crust Mix (Gluten Free)

Cook according to the Bob package.

Side note:
I just noticed that I have a tag called "pizza dogs" (see list of tags on the bottom-left of the page). That's wasn't intentional. I've never eaten a pizza dog in my life. Truly.

Summer Night Runs and Bean Bloat

2011-05-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

Watch out! They may be small but their feisty!

It’s hot. It’s summer in Texas. So the runs outside have been pushed to the time slot after sunset. That means what I eat after I get home from work is super important for a pleasant run. And like placing a keepsake in a safe spot and then forgetting where it's located, I've evidently misplaced all of the important techniques of late night running. Hey! What can I say? It’s been a while. So let's review the disasterous consequences of poor food choices before a run.

My wake up call came on Wednesday night of this week. Kent, the Super Border Collie, and I start off at a respectable sub-9:30-minute-per-mile pace on our 3 mile run. Kevin’s close to the curb with Kaiya. We’ve both got a buddy system (leashes tied to belts). Kent’s breathing like an asthmatic. Kaiya’s sniffing everything in sight. I’m feeling the cool breeze that’s missing while the sun is out. We’re having fun. Then a mile into the run, I develop a sharp little knife pain in the gut and it dawns on me...

Oh yeah! I need to watch what I eat before these evening runs. Crap. Literally.

During the second mile, that sharp knife pain in the gut turns into a larger knife pain (let’s say a cleaver or bowie). Then ye olde rock in the gut appears. That’s the rock that makes you feel like you’ve gained about 10 pounds around the middle. It’s also the rock that, like molten lava from a volcano, likes to push upward towards the lungs, providing an itty bitty working space. But it's not a rock; it's gass in the stomache. Then, because I had beans for dinner, bean bloat rears it’s ugly head. I look like I’m a couple months pregnant. But no, family peoples! It’s the beans.

This is a man-gut. Mine's not this bad.

So I'm about to resign myself to suffering through it all. And it dawns on me. I’m not training for anything. There is no half-marathon or marathon in my future. I’m not living off a schedule ("schedule" reads “torture”). I can walk off my aches and pains. So that’s what I did. I don’t like walking during my runs because I like to maintain a good steady workout, but hey, one walk is not going to kill me.

They're not that bad! Just don't eat'em before running.

So my dad likes to keep several things in mind when he’s buying or selling retirement stocks/mutual funds or the like, but one of them is the old saying “buy low, sell high.” It’s a good mantra for forcing one to think before one acts. I think I need to find something just as catchy on days when I run after dinner. How about the following. Perhaps they could be made into t-shirts? Perhaps you can come up with better ones?

"Eat smart, run smarter."
"Eat smart, don’t fart."
"Feed the run, not the tum-tum."
"Want to run? Don’t eat a ton."
"Run to end bean bloat."
"Don’t eat and run."
"Friends don’t let friends eat beans and run."

While I decide on the best slogan, here’s my personal list of guidelines for when I’m running after dinner. I really need to force myself to go through this list before each run! If you want more tips on digesting beans in particular, try out this great article at http://www.lbveg.com/Articles/digestingbeans.php.

Don’t eat nuts, dried fruit, chips, beans, or milk products (goat or otherwise) for dinner.
Eat foods low in sodium and fat for dinner.
Don’t go back for seconds during dinner.
Drink lots of water during and after dinner.
Don’t drink a lot during the 30 minutes right before a run.
Wait at least 3-4 hours after eating dinner before running.
Don’t get frustrated by digestive issues on the run. It'll be okay, little one. It'll be okay.

Oatmeal Morning Mash Up

2011-04-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

That Ain't Mud

What tastes like oatmeal cookies, but it's healthy for you? That'd be hot oatmeal cereal. My latest good friend...for breakfast that is. Ha! Thought I was going to say something brilliant like "a rainbow, because it's pure and refreshing" or something, didn' ya? No. People. This is a food/exercise blog. :)

Oatmeal is gluten free and I make it up cheap and quick. I love it. L-o-v-e it! We buy the largest tub of whole oats we can get our hands on. Here's my current favorite recipe. Use whole oats or steal cut oats (the less processed the better).

Big Tub

Ingredients
1/2 c whole oats oat meal
1 tbl Splenda or Truvia
1 tbl coconut flakes
1 tsp cocoa powder (or carob powder, a cocoa replacement)
¼ tsp cinnamon
1 tbl dried fruit or nuts (optional)
1 c water or low fat milk (cow, soy, coconut, almond, flax—you’re choice; it's all good)

Microwave Directions
Mix all ingredients together and microwave on high for 2 ½ to 3 minutes. Make sure to use a microwave safe container that can hold at least twice the amount of ingredients listed here (it'll expand when cooked like a creature surfacing from the black lagoon). Feel free to mix and match ingredients. You might try adding a little allspice, ginger, nutmeg, rosemary, turmeric, or cloves. Slice up some fruit like strawberries, peaches, pears, or apples. No two oatmeal bowls need to be the same. Just add a little spice at a time at taste it before adding more and cooking (raw oats are safe to eat).

Calories
About 250 according to http://caloriecount.about.com/ and http://www.quakeroats.com/

Dying in Dish Detergent, Help Wanted

2011-04-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

Do you have this problem?

Or this problem?

We do. On average, with just the two of us we'll (I'll) typically do about 3-4 full loads of dishes a week. A week! That's just us! Insane! But eating out is not so much fun for me, so I (we) cook a lot, which creates a lot of food like this.

White and dark turkey meat baked this past Wednesday. Yum!

And this.

GF Pancakes a la Gluten Free Pantry

And this.

Japanese Sweet Rice. Have some? We've got plenty.

And this.

Katherine's typical dinner during the work week (lately).

But it also creates a lot of these.

Typically, I'll eat out once every other month (food allergies don't make it very fun). No joke. My husband eats out a bit more, but not by much (poor guy). But according to the US Department of Agriculture, not everybody eats at home as much as we do. According to their findings, "Spending on food away from home was 48.6 percent of the $1,182.0 billion in total food expenditures in 2009." That's almost 50% of people's food monies!

Are we eating healthier because we're not eating out? Yes. Are we saving monies? I think so. Even with the cost of washing dishes, we're still saving money. According to the GE Web site, a dishwasher costs on average about $8 a day to use in Texas. So we're spending approximately $24-32 dollars a week to wash our dishes. Dude! That's a lot. But it's only the cost of eating out for a meal or two for two people, which equates to very few dishes (two-four plates or bowls and silverware, plus a cooking container or two, not an entire load).

But we still wash a lot of dishes, and that means a lot of pre-washing. So, I'm taking out an add in today's blog. See below.

Magic Dish Washing Tutor Needed.
Teaches spells that make dishes wash themselves (see example).
Preferably has white beard, reading glasses, and wears blue robe (oh, and a hat).
Jazz band included.
Will work for home cooked food.
No squirrel or fish spells, please.

Might look a little like this. Wand is necessary.

YouTube Video Update

The sound quality and video angles weren't quite what I was hoping for, so an upgrade is needed before the next AllergictoSitting video extravaganza. Looking to purchase this. And thinking about this.

Gettin' Jiggy Wit It

2011-03-31T08:31:00.000-07:00

I haven't been experimenting with food lately, but I have picked up a new fitness hobby. DANCE! I took a lot of dance classes as a kid and I never knew just how much I missed it until wonderful husband got me a gift card to the Civic Ballet.

Over the past year or two, I've been collecting different dance shoes and randomly surprising my husband with impromptu dance workouts. For example...

Kevin was working on the computer one evening after work, when I decided to break out the ballet shoes and some 90s music. The scene reminded me a lot of that Garrison family video of the Christmas Carol, where the Garrison trio were eloquently playing their roles a la the Mickey Mouse version. There's a couple of shots of Glenn reading the news paper totally ignoring the spectacle. Well, Kevin was Glenn and I was the trio. We're goofballs!

Anyway, I guess I finally drove him crazy enough that he wants me out of the house when I'm dancing. Ha! Not really, but it makes for a good story.

Speaking of story, let me get back to it. Locally they offer hour-long "community classes" for people who are not in training and just want to have a good workout. So far I've taken a Broadway dance class where we learn the dance steps to a Broadway musical each week. Lots of spirit fingers! Several of the people in that class were in their 30-40. I even went out to eat with several of the ladies after class. They were all, "what are you 20," and I'm like "no, closer to 30." That made me feel good. They talked a lot about their kids, but it was fun! I did borrow my knowledge from my visits with my new nephew. Came in handy, Kayla and Terrell! Sorry for using your son!

Two nights ago I took their modern dance class, which is a mixture of Jazz and Ballet. I liked it even more than the Broadway dance class because the dance moves weren't as corny, but more fluid, and the other students were more my age with similar backgrounds. One of the girls graduated with a minor in dance while in college. I was in really good company! And the language of dance is coming back too (slowly, very slowly).

In terms of a workout, it's pretty good. Nothing can come close to running as a high impact sport, but dance can be pretty intense. Mainly a lot of controlled, anaerobic muscle movements coupled with periods of aerobics. I actually feel more fit now in these classes than I did when I was a kid because I've got more power. When we were doing several jumps the instructor commented on my "air time." So cool! Then in the same sentence she reminded me to point my toes while jazz walking. Darn!

I think there's no doubt the strength I'm feeling is from the running. I wish I had developed a love for the run at a lot earlier age. But that's okay! There's no pressure now to memorize, practice, practice, improve, and move to the next level. Now it's just DANCE! Fun dance. Plus it's really motivating me to stay fit now that we've regained our sanity and are not training for a marathon.

After the dance workouts I'm so pumped that I get home and have to show off the routine to my husband and sometimes I have to ride the bike so that I can get out all that excitement and energy. So I think I'm still driving Kevin crazy, but now I can say that I'm not nuts and that "other people are doing it tooooo!!!"

Thanks Mom and Dad for encouraging me to dance!

Spring Fever and Peachy Chicken

2011-03-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

I've been on a hiatus. Sorry! But it's spring time and my husband and I have been spending a lot of time outside and not by a computer. To make up for it, I have a peachy keen recipe to go with the lovely weather and a picture montage of our outdoor work!

Peachy Chicken

6 skinless, boneless chicken breasts

1 oven safe pan (at least 1-2 inches thick)

2 cups of orange juice

1-2 cans of sliced peaches (in 100% juice)

salt and pepper to taste

aluminum foil or oven-safe lid

Place chicken evenly spread apart in pan. Add orange juice and sliced peaches (the tops of the chicken should not be completely covered in juice). Add salt and pepper to chicken. Cover with aluminum foil or lid and bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes.

microwave recipe

Use a microwave safe dish and vented lid to cook chicken with salt and pepper (15-20 minutes). Add 1 can of peaches during the last 2 minutes of cooking. Orange juice is optional.

Picture Montage

Here's a bush that we planted in the back yard between the two windows of our master bedroom. It's a Hawthorn bush that has white blooms in the spring. Should get pretty tall and wide.

Here's a better view of where we planted the Hawthorn (attempt number one). It's also a great picture of the dog who dug it up 24 hours later. She also kicked half of the mulch into the grass. Glad we started with one plant and not two.

Great picture of our retaliation efforts (attempt number two). We built up the stones around the bed so that if digging occurs, it all stays inside. That's wire used to keep out rabbits (Kaiya's an awfully big rabbit) and wooden stakes for support. And we have a success now. A new Hawthorn (with pink blooms) is now planted in the center of this new fandangled contraption. It's been over 5 days now and everything still looks pretty good.

Here's the front/side yard landscaping attempt number one. We've planted a new Oleander bush up front since the old one died a horrible death. Then side by side, we've planted three grape vines! Two are red grapes and one is white. They're all seeded, but should be tasty just the same. We also installed another hose and covered up our sorry looking air conditioner. Currently the grapes are doing great (they've already grown a couple of inches) and have another successful yard project accomplished. Yeah us! \

Doesn't seem like much, but that's about two weeks worth of planning a construction. Lots of trips to Lowes and Wal-Mart.

Gluten-Free, Cow Milk-Free, Soy Free Beef Stir Fry, on YouTube!

2011-03-03T06:14:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

1 pound of beef

2 medium onions

1/2 large can of green chillies

1 cup frozen green beans

1/2 can of mung bean sprouts

1 cup frozen peas

1 large sweet potato

dried minced garlic

fresh chopped ginger

caraway seed

Instructions:

See my video! Or visit my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.allergic2sitting/ .

Stir Fry Veggies

2011-02-24T10:49:00.000-08:00

Sorry to miss last week! I'm working on a new blog project that I'll post shortly (or post about it's failure). :)

Ingredients:
1 can of sliced water chestnuts
2 sliced green bell peppers
1/2 can of La Choy mung bean sprouts (found in the Asian section of Wal-Mart)
2 medium sliced onions
Pam cooking spray (your choice of oil, but I used the original)
1/2 to 1 tsp of gluten free soy sauce (I like La Choy's)
Salt to taste

Directions:
Spray pan with Pam and cook onions and bell peppers on medium high heat. Might have to cover the pan temporarily to cook quicker. Once cooked, add bean sprouts, water chestnuts, soy sauce, and salt. Cook for about 10 minutes more. Easy peasy!

Chicken Veggie Quinoa Mixer

2011-02-10T14:32:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

Boiled chicken
Boiled (from frozen) corn, peas, water chesnuts, sugar snap peas
Quinoa
Orange Ginger Sauce (La Choy) - personal favorite

Calories: 350

_________________________

So the 400 calories per meal diet wasn't doing much for my weight. I stalled at about 132. And my goal is 128. Then I got annoyed and started snacking again. So I'm trying out 350 calories per meal. A sample lunch is above. Since I've started the new diet I'm back down to the stalled weight. We'll see what happens. In the mean time, enjoy a pic of a snow day with the dogs.

Turkey Pasta Cassarole Heaven!

2011-02-03T13:56:00.000-08:00

So I was looking at a couple of recipes online. There was an article on MSN about easy meals to freeze and eat later. Well most of them are gluten-filled and cheesy, but they sparked a recipe idea of my own. So I went home and got to cooking. Oh man is it good!

Ingredients:
1 pound low fat ground turkey
1 box of quinoa Pagoda style noodles
1 onion
1 package of frozen chopped spinach
1 can of diced tomatoes (no salt added)
1 package of cream cheese style goat cheese
salt
onion powder
garlic powder

Make the noodles according to package instructions. Cook spinach and onion together and drain the water. Cook turkey in microwave with salt, onion powder, and garlic powder to taste (stronger is better). Add noodles, spinach and onion, cheese, tomatoes and turkey together and mix well. Place in a greased pan and cook at 375 for 30 minutes or until the top noodles turn slightly golden. Have as the main meal or add a veggie side like I did above (that orange stuff is baked butternut squash). I love cheese!

The 400 Calorie Meal Diet Plan Thingy

2011-01-28T06:42:00.000-08:00

For the next few weeks, I’m going to show you what’s in my lunchbox, and sometimes my breakfast. Approximately 400 calories a meal. What I bring to work tends to be high in veggies, fruits, and protein by necessity. They also tend to be generally low in fat, carbs, and refined sugar (donuts are an exception and a treat). But everything’s high in taste. No sense in eating cardboard.

400 calories is not a whole lot. Take that donut pictured above. That’s 220 calories! I apologize for the bite; I got a little excited. So I only ate one donut knowing that I’ve got to fill up my gut with more than just two tiny pieces of fried and glazed, gluten-free dough otherwise I’ll be hungry long before noon. I added the grapes and raisins on the side. Not pictured are a handful of plain almonds. Again, I was a little short on the patience.

So here’s my lunch:

3/4 cup boiled chicken (de-boned) – 204 cal.
1 cup frozen, boiled broccoli marinated over night in 1 tb. of La Choy Orange Ginger Sauce-110 cal.
1 roma tomato, sliced-20 cal.
1 small orange, sliced-60 cal.

Calories: 394 (according to http://caloriecount.about.com/)

One of the best parts of the meal above is that it’s made up of 50% leftovers from the night before. No extra planning. I just sliced up a tomato and orange and added the sauce. This meal took me about 10 minutes to prepare after Kevin and I finished eating dinner. 10 minutes!

Water is Life, And Maybe Death

2011-01-20T13:09:00.000-08:00

So I've been drinking a lot of water lately, more than usual because of the new diet. Ahh, gasp! Not possible you say? Very possible. But I've been a lot more conscious of the water I've been drinking for two main reasons: (1) Kevin and I got a Reverse Osmosis system (thanks Mom and Dad) because our water tastes pretty bad and (2) because of the following.

That ain't what you think it is.

This is what water looks like where I work. This is the reason why our drinking water filter (at work) has been changed out twice in the past 2 months. I've been told this lovely rust color in the water is due to construction in the area. But can this be healthy? If not, where are the alerts to say it's not?

Water is the numero uno important substance that our bodies need. But we channel it, we pipe it to our homes, we bottle it in factories, we add fluoride and chlorine to treat our waste that gets pumped back into the system, we filter it, we boil it. But when we diet or try to get fit for our health or to train for a race, how often do we ask ourselves, "Did I drink healthy water today?" I know I don't. I'm usually focused more on taste, color, and convenience. Bottled water is easy to grab on the way out of the house. Our city water tastes bad, so in order to enjoy water we have to filter it. And then there's the rust colored water. Yuck. But these are all surface level issues.

Most articles that try to identify healthy water aren't unanimous. Take this one for example. Bottled water is handled by man-made equipment just like tap. And anything that's "handled" could be contaminated with all sorts of chemicals, fungi, bacteria, and on and on. So, unless we live near glacial waters, I wonder, could water effect or possibly encourage allergies? In addition, think about all of those calorie free or reduced calorie powders that we stick in our water. Think about my RO system. Are we just covering up the problem. And maybe even adding more chemicals and new problems?

Can we even stop?

Note: This has been a philosophical rant to some degree. Our regularly scheduled recipes will come back shortly.

The Weight Challenge

2011-01-13T10:38:00.000-08:00

Yummy Breakfast for Work

So, I've been keeping track of the calories for the past two weeks. And I've settled on about 1200 a day. It's not bad. I'm hungry just a little bit before lunch and dinner then I'm a little hungry before bed, but I'm not constantly thinking about food or uncomfortable. I think I've hit on some good food choices. I'm no longer eating breakfast items for breakfast unless I want to. For example, I had a gluten free cinnamon roll and almonds for breakfast one day, then a ham salad the next. Here's my current weight log. I'm pretty excited. We'll see what happens.

135.6 1/6/2011
136.8 1/7/2011
135.4 1/9/2011
133.8 1/13/2011

The cool thing is that Kevin and I have stumbled on this really cool new show, on MTV of all places, called I Used to Be Fat. It's a really cool improvement over the Biggest Loser, in our humble opinions. It's about teenagers who want to lose a large amount of weight (we're talking like 60 pounds) after high school and before they start their lives away from home. Within an hour show you get to see the whole journey of weight loss (no cheesy drum roll or competition). It's all about the kid and their trainer and their daily food and exercise choices. We never thought would have though we'd watch something on MTV, but it's really inspirational. And it's not just about the losing weight part. We love how the trainers really try to teach the kids to push themselves and make healthy decisions everyday. Love it! Love it!

New Year, New Goals

2011-01-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

After our long stent in marathon training, Kevin and I are both want to spring into something new and fun! So here are some of my goals for 2011 (not necessarily associated with a New Years Resolution, just a coincidental time):

Cross Train/Fun Train-Short fun runs, swims, more aerobics of all kinds, biking, hiking, etc. Not just running please!
Find a Church-Connect! We need connection with some fellow believers. Preferable within our age group and with similar intersts. Would be fun to joing a choir and get back to my roots.
Weigh What I Want-Looking to see if I can weigh 128 comfortably and I've never counted calories before. We spent all of last year turning our bodies into running machines, not I want to see how efficent my bodies is. Never tried it before, so why not now.
Travel-More time off this year means more fun with family and relaxation in fun places.
Surprise Adventures-A plan for spontaniousness with with hubby! A contradiction of terms, I know! I'm goofy!

Marathon. Been there. Done that.

2010-12-16T12:09:00.000-08:00

So here I am in my first ever marathon. This is the White Rock Marathon in Dallas to be precise. Can you see me in this video? Ha! Yeah right! The race was organized in waves according to our estimated finishing times. I was in group "N," as in the 14th letter in the alphabet. There were 22,000 runners that day. I'm way back in the back beyond camera view.

So really, here I am.

My results are below.

This race was a once in a lifetime experience for me. Thanks Kevin for helping me make it happen! We have so many great stories that came out of training for this race and just as many surround the event itself. And thank the Lord we're not too worse for wear. For posterity's sake, I'm going to give you the blow-by-blow of the race day. Several funny/absurd/interesting things happened that I don't want to forget. So here we go!

Early Wake Up Call
Kevin and I both woke up at 5:00 am the morning of the race. We got dressed and I put on my new tights that I bought especially for the occasion. My plan was to wear tights with shorts on top, a long sleeve wicking shirt, a short sleeve wicking shirt, arunning jacket, and then a trash back on top. I had also planned to bring my water belt (with Gaterade), my stretchy bib holder with bib number, and my electronic chip already tied to my shoe the night before. We left Kevin's uncle's house at 5:30 after I crammed down about 5 rice cakes with jelly. Thanks Alan for driving!!! We had a few comments in the car about "why are we doing this again," and "why are we here," but I've heard worse. :)

The Wait
We got to Fair Park about 2 hours before the race, so we hung out in the car and stayed warm for a bit. We watched people in shorts get out of their cars and jump up and down as though they were warming up (I'll say it again: 2 hours before the race). After hanging in the car, we decide it's finally time to brave the crowds and make sure we knew were we were supposed to wait. This includes my 20 minute wait in line to go to the bathroom where several nice ladies were sharing their kleenex. Thank goodness more toilet paper arrived just before I stepped into the stall. We were originally going to meet with other family members who were running the relay, but we quickly realized that it wasn't going to be feasible. So then we hung out for a bit in one of the staging areas (in doors) until they started making announcements outside. Then Kevin and I split up and I went looking for sign "N" and waited with my group.

The Race Begins
I didn't start the race until an hour after the starting gun went off because of the staggered start. The "elite" group went first, then group "A" then "B" then "C" and on an on. Keep in mind that the temperature was in the 30s-40s around this time. So I'm trying not to waste too much energy, but I can't help but shiver and waste energy. I felt the need to go to the bathroom about 30 minutes into to wait, but I was afraid I'd miss out on the start. So, I made some nice conversation with one of the ladies waiting with me. She said that this was her second marathon, she ran one in Austin, and she was hoping to just break 6 hours. After hearing this, I decided to make my way to the front of the pack as we got closer to the start. No sense in having to pass a lot of people. Right before my group got to the start (like 5 minutes before), I found an empty port-a-potty. Impeccable timing.

On the Road
Minus the wait in the beginning, this was one of the best organized races I've ever seen. Every aide station had Gatorade and water. People handing out the drinks would often encourage me by name (it was on my bib). There's nothing better than hearing your name in a race! Some guys at one aide station all dressed up like women. They must have had at least 10 to 15 different bands playing along the way, most of them playing in people's front yards. Some people held up generic signs encouraging everyone. Others were more specific. One said "I love holding up signs!" Another one said, "Because Running 26.3 miles Would be Crazy." In big races like this, some runners also wear interesting outfits and unique t-shirts. I passed one girl diressed up like a carton of french fries and on her back it said something like, "At 100 calories per mile, you'd have to run 26.2 miles to burn off 2 large french fries from MacDonalds." I told her that I thought she was making a great statement. I saw several women with tutus. Not sure what that was about. Saw a couple of interesting wigs too. Several people saw my t-shirt and assumed it was my team name or something. Nah. It's just a local running club. :)

My friend.

At about mile 10 I felt the need for a bathroom. And low and behold, a port-a-potty appeared on the left side of the road. Only one person was in the bathroom, so I waited a bit. While I waited, I looked around at the houses in the neighborhood and caught my breath. Then it just dawned on me that this wasn't a racing pit stop. This was set up for construction on one of the houses. Ha! Oh well.... Had to get the job done.

As expected, the first 13.1 felt better than the last. My left foot started to hurt a bit like I expected during the last 8 or so miles, but everything else hurt just the same in the end. I had just enough Gatorade and honey along the way that I never felt like my legs were cramping. I have a feeling it might have something to do with the formula of Gatorade they used too (Pro Endurance). I felt pretty good, and I even sprinted towards the end and across the finish line after I saw Trina, Kayla, Brian, Cheryl, Kevin, and Seth. Overall, I couldn't have asked for a better marathon experience. I didn't meet my goal, which was to finish in under 5. But I'm not so sure it's worth it to train for another 6 months just to chop out 2 more minutes. I'm pretty satisfied.

After the Race

Medals and bibs looked like this.

This guy put a "finishers" medal around my neck and said to me "This is it. This is what you've been working for," or something very similar. I would have cried I think had I not told myself that I wouldn't cry just earlier that morning. It was a pretty emotional experience. But first things first, I went to the bathroom. Then I picked up my finishers t-shirt, some oranges (they gave me two, but I took 4), and then I went to find my family. Kevin gave me the biggest hug! I think that was what I was waiting for; the medal was just a consolation prize. I'm only sorry that our family of relay racers missed the buses to the hand-off points! But now they're all inspired to run their own marathon. And I'm sure glad they were there and could cheer us on.

After the race, I was sore. I walked dreadfully slow. But I didn't have any collapsing issues. We took a nap after the race and ate with abandon. Alan made the best tacos I've ever tasted. Ever. I can still taste them. With their beefy, corn chipy, tomatoey, lettucey goodness. I must qualify this statement, though, by saying that I think Alan could have made us oatmeal and we would have been in heaven. Kevin had more strength than I did after our nap so he packed up our supplies and drove the first section home. I was so very thankful.

The trusty travel mobile.

Day after the race
I felt pretty good! A little sore, but not too bad. Kevin's usually more sore than I am, but my worse days are usually the day of the run. So I made sure we had plenty of food. And we did nothing. Not a thing. The whole day.

The week after

I got the worst cold I've had in years. But we hear that getting sick after a marathon is pretty typical. I've still got symptoms, but at least I'm back at work and I'm able to run a bit again. My athlete's foot is back again, so that tells me two things: (1) yes, my imune system is fairly low (2) still haven't gotten rid of the nasty fungus that Kaiya shared with us last year at the exact same time. Lovely. Yet another reason for me to be thankful for the marathon experience, and yet never do it again.

Two weeks later
I ran two miles on monday in the 9s. Felt pretty tired still, but it's mainly because of the sicknessessess. Then yesterday I ran 2 miles in 16:06. That's an 8:03 pace. Wahoo! I'm looking forward to working on more speed rather than distance. I think I've got distance down. :) Unfortunately, Kevin's now sick with a cold. So I'll repeat this for his benifit: "Yet another reason for me to be thankful for the marathon experience, and yet never do it again."

Future
Not sure what we're planning on doing next in terms of exercise. But for now, we're going to relax! We're done! We did it! Been there. Done that.

White Rock Marathon This Weekend!

2010-12-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

Kent: "Can I eat it? Will it move? Can I chase it?

I'm baaaaaccckkk! :)

See our new Christmas Tree? That means it's time to run! This Sunday, December 5, I will be attempting my first ever (and probably last) marathon in Dallas, TX and Kevin will be attempting this 3rd. We've been training hard. We've been eating good. We've rested up various injuries. Now is the time to perform. I'm excited, but very nervous.

Shiny! Must touch shiny!

The Run
Kevin and I have been talking and we've come to several conclusions about this race:

We're not going to do a marathon again, if not for a very long time.
We're bringing our own food for the day before the race, so no potty trots, headaches, or loss of lung capacity due to funky foods in the gut.
If Kevin's going to meet his goal race pace, it'll be because he's having a good running day and he's eaten that magic quantity and type of food that sits well on his stomach, so flip a coin.
If I'm going to beat my goal race pace, I'm going to need to pay extra attention to my race pace at ALL TIMES, which is hard to do when I normally like to zone out and just run.
I'm going to need to ignore foot pain for around half of the race. I'll see a doctor later if I need to.

#1 and #2 are pretty certain. Everything else is going to depend on us. I just hope to finish in under 5 hours.

The Food
In terms of food. I'm going to be cooking up some rice and bringing along some turkey and a few other easy to digest things for Saturday. I personally have to stay away from fiber the day before an extremely long run otherwise I'll end up spending more time in a port-a-potty than on the pavement. Kevin's probably going to follow my example as well. For the morning of the race, I'll be eating rice cakes with jam. Tasty? Not so much. But it's pure carb and pure sugar. So my inner chef is going to be on vacation, and in her place is Katherine "the machine."

For all the family peoples who will be running the marathon relay, hope y'all all have a good race and lots of fun!

Turkey Day Vaca

2010-11-19T07:50:00.000-08:00

"I'm a beauty!"

I'm out for Turkey day, but I'll come back to blog the week after Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Ready for Some Relaxation

2010-11-12T12:49:00.000-08:00

I don't know about y'all, but Kevin and I are tired and ready for a break from marathon training, house work, yard work, work work. A few holiday breaks will definitely help. Kaiya needs a break too. She's got it rough.

My new lap dog. She barely fits!

One Pot Wonders

2010-11-04T07:15:00.000-07:00

Gingery Chinese Wonderland

I was born into a household of one-pot wonders, microwaves, TV dinners, 30-minute meals, and leftovers. Don't get me wrong, all the food was hand picked to be rotated often and it was all healthy. But food was always made to minimize time in the kitchen and maximize time elsewhere in life. So in case you're wondering, that is why I quite often create a lot of one pot wonders. Thanks mom!

Like the one above.

This one is courtesy of the shrimp my parents brought the last time they were here (thanks Mom and Dad!) and some fresh ginger that my mom chopped up and placed in our freezer (easy to use and way more tasty than the dried powdery stuff). Yummy!

Ginger Fried Shrimp
Ingredients
1 lb pealed shrimp
2 chopped bell peppers
1 chopped large onion
1 can of salt-free tomatoes
1 tsp of chopped ginger root
1 tsp of salt
1 tbl spoon of grape seed oil

Chop up all the veggies and fry them at the same time. When the potatoes are almost cooked, add the tomatoes and shrimp and stir well before the final cooking. Tastes great on spaghetti squash, vegan Mac and Cheese (with added goat cheese), rice, or spinach leaves! Serves 5 (leftovers, yeah!!!).

We used vegan Mac and Cheese

Cream-Cheese made out of Goat Milk makes this Stuff Taste Good!

On the Running Front
During my shorter runs in the middle of the week, I'm running a lot faster. I'm averaging in the 8s. That's just insane! If you think about it, I did my two mile run yesterday in less time than it took me to run my first mile, which took me around 16 minutes, in 2007. Never thought it would happen. Ever! Thanks Kevin! You said in the beginning that I could get it down in the 8s if I tried really hard. And I did!

Of course I've got two great motivators on my runs right now:

Muddy Buddies

The brown nose on the left is particularly helpful. Kent's still pulling a lot in the beginning. Kaiya (right) is more of a casual jogger like myself. She likes to stop and sniff the flowers (and poop) on the side of the road. No, I don't sniff poop. That's all Kaiya. I'm not a poop sniffer. No sir.

We are a day and a month away from my first marathon. We'll be tapering off a bit as time goes on (running more frequent 3-5 milers in the middle of the week and less extra-long distances on the weekends). Our final 22-miler will be two weekends from now. If we can survive that, we'll be ready for the White Rock! I'm pretty confident that I'll beat my expected race pace of 11 minutes per mile. My 20-miler (RP) was at a 10:35 pace and my last 11-miler (FP) was at a 9:53. Yeah!!! Whoop, whoop!

Miscellaneous
Next on our list of first-time home ownership is to purchase our first Christmas Tree! I'm excited!!! Doing the Katherine celebration dance! La la la la la! The tree we're looking at looks a lot like this one at Target (but ours is not going to be that expensive).

Quick Fix Tacos and Allergy Mythbusters

2010-10-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

Fast beefy goodness.

There may be a good reason why people with food allergies are often the objects of ridicule in movies and other works of fiction. How we treat and mitigate our food allergies is not an exact science. So many bodily functions are interrelated to food allergies that I might not be 100% even if I stay away from the foods that bother me the most. Also, I can say that I know what will push me over my threshold, but that may be very different for someone else or it may even change over time for me. So where does that lead us?

To some good practices and some absurd rituals and myths.

For example one day: "Oh, I've been getting lots of headaches lately! This is a sign that I'm eating something wrong. What have I eaten in the past few days that's new? Or possibly old but problematic? Throw them out, throw them out! The ship is sinking! Abandon ship! Let's eat nothing but acorn squash and baked chicken for forever! That does my body good."

Two days later: "I have no energy! Need carbs! Food not digesting! Slowly melting, melting, melting...oh wait...I just had my period...that must have been the problem. Oops."

While it's good to utilize the elimination diet to get rid of bad symptoms, if used improperly it can screw up my life. In order to determine allergy fact from fiction, I always need to keep two people in mind: the Mythbusters.

Yeah, these guys are rock awesome.

Back in the earlier episodes they had this specialist, Heather Josheph-Witham, who'd help describe the background to the myths that there were about to test. She's a "folklorist." Below is an example of something she might say.

"Women's bodies, particularly their breasts, have been held in high esteem since the beginning of time. This is due to our ability have babies and provide them with life through a mother's milk. Our children then go on to idolize milk and milk products to the point that now, milk is in everything. It's a comfort food to which we are all emotionally attached. This is in a large part why we use that old adage 'No sense crying over spilt milk,' largely because we have to remind ourselves that milk really isn't that important." [And then they go on to test whether people cry when they spill milk.]

Yes, I wrote that in jest, not Heather. :)

But the history of an "adage" doesn't make a myth true, just like my known history with a certain food doesn't make my diet the law. While I might throw out one problematic food I might throw out five good foods at the same time. While I might be tempted to stick with certain foods, allergy medications, exercise, etc that have worked before, I could be limiting myself to a safe but very boring place and hurting myself in ways I can't even imagine.

It's no wonder our rituals are made fun of in movies and fiction. They look silly even to a person with allergies. There's a lot of truth to our quirky eating habits, but there's a lot of myth too!

To avoid living my life based on ridiculously stretched reasoning like those in my examples, I've got to keep an open, yet scientific mind while self medicating. I've got to be a Mythbuster and a scientist! I need to make sure that I'm only eliminating one thing from my diet at a time. I need to make sure that I don't grab onto one food like my life depends on it. When a doctor suggests only eating certain foods during certain pollen seasons, I've got to test it out for myself with no preconceived notions. I need to test and retest and retest my theories again, no matter how old my food traditions may be or how much I fear the pain! Because who knows, I might pleasantly surprise myself. Just like I've done a hundred times before.

So, here's a prayer for all of us with allergies, food and pollen. May God inspire us to constantly re-examine our rituals and never let us settle for traditions because their just "comfortable."

Quick Fix Tacos
Here's a tasty recipe for a quick and easy Microwave taco meat. You can substitute Turkey for Beef and throw in even more veggies if you'd like. Just make sure to cut up every thing small and stir often so that everything cooks uniformly. We like to make lots of toppings for our tacos while the meat is cooking. Or we use all the toppings as part of a salad instead of tacos.

Sides cut up the way Momma taught me.

Ingredients:
1 lb low fat beef
1 small onion (chopped)
1 bell pepper (chopped)
1/4 tsp salt
pepper to taste

Directions:
Microwave all in a Pyrex dish (so it doesn't melt the plastic) on high for 2 minutes. Stir and then microwave for another 2 minutes. Make sure you have a breathable lid on top to contain any splattery messes. Continue to microwave and stir until all meat has turned brown.

Eating Out this Weekend

2010-10-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

I rarely rant, so please bare with me...

We should have done something similar...

The Conversation as it Happened this Saturday:
Waiter: What can I get for you?
Me: I'd like the BLT salad with
Waiter: No you don't.
Me: Yeah, I do. I'd like the BLT salad with
Waiter: No you don't. Really you don't. It's not one of our best items.
Me: Well, uh, I have several food allergies and I'd like to avoid them by ordering the salad.
Waiter: We're going to work on your food allergies here because that salad is not that good.
Me: I just want the BLT salad with the grilled chicken and a side of potato with nothing on it. Is that okay? [I can't believe I asked this as a question]
Waiter: That's like a $4 plain baked potato. You'll end up spending like $15 on no taste.
Me: Right, no butter or anything.
Waiter: Any dressing?
Me: Nope.
Waiter: Okaaayyy...[moves on to next order, while I excuse myself to the bathroom so I can cry]

What would have been fun if I didn't have self control:
Waiter: What can I get for you?
Me: I'd like the BLT salad with
Waiter: No you don't
Me: Yeah, I do. I'd like the BLT salad with
Waiter: No you don't. Really you don't. It's not one of our best items.
Me: Well, uh, I have several food allergies and I'd like to avoid them by ordering the salad.
Waiter: Well we're going to work on your food allergies here because that salad is not that good.
Me: Look you JERK, I've been "working" on my friggin allergies since I was eating solid food and pooping in diapers and it doesn't take a genius to realize that I might know a bit more about what I can and cannot eat when I look at a menu. I'm not an idiot. I'm not timid about trying new things like those high school kids in the corner. And you're not funny! Sure, I could have your steak, but your sides are either battered, buttered, or cheesed all of which I'd be happy to eat as long as you get to suffer with me to see how it feels to have a headache and diarrhea for three days. No? Oh, you don't want three days of torture? Oh, so you want to see if we can change another menu item to suit my needs instead?

NO!

See, I also learned at a very early age that you waiters have a limited amount of RAM when it comes to "special orders." You forget to leave off certain things if the list is longer than 2-3 items, which my list would be considering the amount of crap you have on this menu; the amount of crap that fills almost all restaurant menus. It may be tasty, but it's crap for all I care. Then I'll have to send back your pile of poo twice while my family finishes eating and I'm staring at their gravy, cheese, and chicken fried whatevers. Then someone will mention how great their food tastes; "mmm...this is good." Then I'll excuse myself so I can go outside and eat dirt from the front flowerbed to fill up my hungry gut.

I DON'T THINK SO.

No, I'd like to order something else. Something like maybe a SALAD and POTATO. You can't kill a salad or a potato when you order them plain. People like to eat out. People like to eat to socialize. I realize that. I'm hear to visit with my family not value what I eat, especially not YOUR food you righteous, pompous horse's rear-end. I will never enjoy eating out as much as I enjoy eating in. Ever! It's always, "let's modify this" and "let's cut out that." Until we have something with no taste that I could have made for $2 in the comfort of our home.

Do you think I LOVE salads? Does anyone just say instead of this mouth-watering chicken fried steak with gravy, buttery mashed potatoes, breaded okra, and mac n' cheese, I'll have this salad DRY? NO! But because I see crap that I can't have on your food and I know there's crap that I can't see on your food, I choose to eat salad when I go out. Unless by some miracle my 28 years of food allergies decide to take wing and fly away at this very moment, eating out sucks. It sucks! And so do YOU and all RESTAURANTS. But I do this for my family and friends. So give me the LAME salad and potato and MOVE ON! ...IDIOT!

INCONSIDERATE MORON WHO THINKS HE'S FUNNY BECAUSE HE'S TALKING BACK TO ME LIKE THIS IS WILL AND GRACE, AND HE'S WILL AND I'M GRACE. CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE AND GET AWAY FROM ME.

What should have happened (because what I said above would have been, of course, hypocritical):
Waiter: What can I get for you?
Me: I'd like the BLT salad with the grilled chicken with a plain baked potato
Waiter: Are you sure you just want a salad? We're really great at steaks, mashed potatoes, gravy...
Me: Yes, I'm sure.
Waiter: Any dressing on that salad?
Me: Nope.
Waiter: Okay, and for you sir...

What would also have been acceptable:
Me: I'm sorry, I can't do this. Let's leave.

Or:
Me: I'd like to speak with your manager.

Good Idea. Bad Idea.

2010-10-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

Apples

2010-10-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

When Lindsey came to visit last weekend she came baring gluten-free, milk-free gifts! Whahoo! One was a bag of Ginger Snaps by Mi-del. That's a definite yummy in the tummy that I've had before.

Then she brought two packages of cookies that I've never sampled. One box has snickerdoodles and the other one's the "No-oat Oatmeal" recipe. Both are made by Enjoy Life and both have apple (apple sauce to be precise). Ahhh! But I haven't had apple in a long time so it was time to try it out again (based on the elimination diet).

I tried out both cookies on Sunday after refinishing our kitchen cabinets with a fresh coat of polyurethane. And they certainly are tasty! The cookies, that is. Not the cabinets. Moist and chewy! I give them an A+ for yumminess. And did I have a headache on Sunday?

Drum roll please...No!

Alright! Wahoo! Yippidy skippidy! Doing the Katherine celebration dance. HOLD IT! Before we get too excited about apples, I'm going to have to try them again. See the next day, Monday, I did have a headache. But I'm not sure if it's related to the cookies or...

(TMI moment approaching so cover your eyes if you don't want to read and skip down to "Continued")

...because of the monthly bill that I'm currently paying.

Continued...

But I'm very optimistic. Mi familia will will be visiting this weekend. Looking forward to that. We'll probably do a lot of cooking, touring, and maybe a little fall planting. Should be fun!

On the running front, I ran my first sub-8 minute mile this past Monday. Two of them to be precise. Some person, and I'm not naming who (hint: they "tried" to beat my half marathon PR this summer), will need to work out a bit more than just a couple of times before the big Turkey Trot 3 mile. No pressure or anything. :) That would be tacky.

Kind of like...

In the meantime, I hijacked a recipe for fruit oatmeal bars from one of my old gluten-filled cookbooks. It's super quick to make and substitutions galore are possible. I took this batch to work to share as a going away present for one of my coworkers. Nobody seemed to notice that it was cow-milk-free and gluten-free. Yeah! The original recipe calls for a super cool fruit filling, but I tossed that idea out to reduce prep time. Anyway, the recipe was basically calling for a thick, jelly-like substance and that's what I made, super-sonic style.

Fruit Oatmeal Bars

Ingredients

1 c. flour (Pamela's gluten free bread and baking mix)
1 c. oatmeal
¼ tsp baking soda
½ cup brown sugar (or half sugar, half brown splenda)
¾ c. jelly (orange marmalade)
½ butter (coconut oil, or milk; might need less milk than oil)
1 tb flour (for jelly filling)
9/9/1 pan (sprayed with Pam)

Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

Mix flour, oatmeal, baking soda, and brown sugar in large bowl. Pour in butter/oil into mixture gradually until you have what looks like a big bowl of crumbs (may need to use hands). Take about a half a cup of the mixture and set aside. Place the remaining mixture in the pan and smooth out evenly.

Place jelly in a small bowl and microwave for about 30-60 seconds or until the jelly is more liquid-like (don’t boil). Add the tb of flour to the jelly and mix well. Spread Jelly over the crumb mixture in the pan. Then sprinkle the remaining half cp of crumb mixture on top. Bake for 30 minutes.

God's Unexpected Blessings

2010-10-07T09:37:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, and old friend came to visit: Lindsey. We reconnected after about 5 years of silence. Why the silence? That's a long story. But suffice it to say, we reconnected over tragic circumstances. Her brother just passed away from his battle with cancer. But where God closes a door he always opens a window.

If I hadn't pushed myself to move out of Austin for a graduate program partially due to a rotten relationship, I never would have met the love of my life.

figure 1: Love

If I had never acquired a food allergy, I wouldn't have decided to run a marathon and I wouldn't have made this.

figure 2: Goat Cheese

With these helpers watching over me.

figure 3: Assistant Cooks (the one on the left likes to nibble butts)

If I hadn't heard about Preston's cancer, I might have never found the "right" time to contact Lindsey and we would have missed out on our first ever run together (she ran at about a 9:15 pace! And she never runs! So not fair!), two hours in Lowes while Kevin, Lindsey, and I decided what flower bed stones we should by, and some really great conversations (especially on Sunday).

figure 4: Our Final Decision

Big problems and small, doesn't matter. There's always a plan.

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you hope and a future." -Jeremiah 29:11

A case in point:
Here is my food allergy life.

Here's everything else (click to view bigger picture).

Thank you Lord! Love you Lindsey!

Also, Dixie, we're going to miss you!

[Word Clouds by Wordle]

Homemade Goat Cheese!

2010-09-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

So about 2-3 months ago I found this really easy recipe for making your own goat cheese. I can't have cow milk products, so I've been enjoying goat milk tremendously. This recipe doesn't require that expensive rennet enzyme like your average cheese recipe, so I thought it was a good place start. I hadn't tried it yet for two main reasons: (1) our freezer's been stocked with goat cheese from our trips to Austin's Whole Foods, so why make it? and (2) they don't sell cheese cloths at Wal-mart, our main grocery station.

A few weeks ago, I removed both road blocks when I used the last of the delish mozzarella goat cheese (nom nom, yum) and we found cheese cloth at HEB. So this past Sunday I decided to take the plunge.

Now, keep in mind I've never made cheese of any kind before, so I felt a little helpless at times when the recipe called form me to make a judgement based on milk consistency. It's a lot like making candy: the look and feel are important.

So, I followed all of the directions about heating and adding lemon juice...

Side track...

Kevin and I went to Sam's Club on Saturday to pick up a few things, and I remembered that we were out of lemon juice. So we went to the cooking aisle thinking, if we find a container of lemon juice that's not too ridiculous in size we'll get it. Well the containers they had weren't bad (about half gallon), but they came in groups of two. We decided, might as well. So we now have about a gallon of lemon juice. Stop by our place if you ever need some.

Back to the main story...
Then the recipe said that the milk will be ready to strain in about 20 seconds after adding the lemon. The milk will curdle, the directions said, but not look like cottage cheese curdle. Okay, when I think curdle, I think lumps of some size, any size. I wasn't seeing lumps of any size in my lemon milk. So I chalked it up to a failed experiment and decided to let the milk cool on the stove and then use solution for ice cream.

30 minutes later...
I stick my finger in the milk and notice this fine white sand-grain sized pieces. Huh? Maybe that's what the recipe was talking about. So I pour the mixture into the cheese cloth (folded over about 6 times), and viola! Cheese! I took pictures, but they're not accessible at the moment so I'll have to post them next week. The pictures seen here are from other Web sites.

The cheese has the consistency of cream cheese and it's really mild in flavor! I also added in some fresh rosemary from our garden and a sprinkle of garlic powder. The only thing bad about this recipe is the waste. Lots of whey went down the drain and the quart of milk made less than a cup of cheese. Now I'm not sure if this is generally what happens with all cheese production, so I'm thinking that my next step is to get my hands on some rennet and try again with a new recipe.

On the running front...
I ran my first sub-9-minute-per-mile pace this past Monday. Wahoo!!! I've never run in the 8's before, so I must have hit a new mile marker in running. I ran 2 miles in 17 minutes and 13 seconds! The temperature when I got back home was 79 degrees. Way cooler than July, but still not quite cold, so there's hope that I'll go even faster once the temperature drops some more. Yes!!!!!

Cars, snakes, and Kent. Oh my!

2010-09-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

Snakes
Went fishing again. Won't bore you with the details of the hunt, but needless to say we started out in the reeds and left rather quickly because, to the right of our kayak about 5 yards away, out popped a nice sized water moccasin. Hello! Not that much later after we high-tailed it to more open water, I spotted a big fat spider getting ready to crawl on my leg. I yelped in horror while Kevin pulled anchor and started pattling away thinking I had spotted another snake. Nope! Sorry Kevin, just a flesh-eating spider. Then the bees seemed to be really attracted to the bright colors on our life vests and the kayak. That was another tense moment. But I caught a 8 inch channel catfish. Yeah! Too small, so we threw it back. It needed to go back to school. Get it? Ha! Yeah...And then we lost our lure while Kevin was switching them around. Boo!

Cars
So after hour Power Hour class on Tuesday, Kevin and I left the parking lot in our separate cars. I made it home, Kevin didn't. I thought, hmm maybe he bumped into a student on the way or went back to his office? Wrong! Kevin called me at home. His car won't start and he thinks it's the battery because the positive connection is super corroded and might not be charging the battery properly. So I drive back to the parking lot. We decide we need to move his car backwards into the slot behind him so that I can bring my car around front. So we put it in neutral and we're rocking the car back and forward, back and forward and then get it moving off of the curb. Then we stop it and I go around the side to get in and steer. Noticed the car is locked. All keys are in said car. Right.... So we let the car roll back into position, call Pop-a-Lock, waste $30, then finally push the car into the right position. But does my car start his? Nope. So we call campus police and they come by with their battery jump start thing-a-ma-gig and we finally get it going. Rough day! But good thing we're in shape to push, we made it home, and we're were safe. Thank the Lord!

Kent
So I went on my first run of the week on Wednesday night with little "Clarp Kent." Decided to let him go as fast as he wanted for 2 miles. Well, that was fast indeed! Ran around a 9:27 pace. That's closer to my short distance race pace. He ran out of poop though towards then end and kept trying to take short cuts. I'd tell him, "come on Kent, you can do it, let's go, let's go." Then he'd reach down deep and pick up the pace again. Cute as all get out (not convinced, click on the pic to enlarge). Love it when he looks at me while running, like "Mom, this is fun!"

Thus endeth the week of extremes (so far).

After Run Wrap

2010-09-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

Food Heaven

Kevin and I have been l-o-v-i-n-g our new George Foreman Grill. Although we don't use it every week because we have to take a little more care to hand wash it, it's allowed us to really add that grilled flavor we've been missing.

Grilled to Perfection

So, if you've been reading, you know that I've added more carbs to my diet the day before long extra long runs. That's helped tremendously with my little issue! But AFTER long runs, it's good to pack on the protein and veggies to feed my broken down and tired muscles (pronounced mus-culls in baby talk).

This is one of my favorite meals that we've had as of late. You got your GF (that's gluten free and George Foreman! Ha!) burger wrap with dressing and tomatoes, extra tomatoes on the side with sweet cucumbers (seasoned with sugar, wine vinegar, salt), grapes, and fresh corn on the cob. Whahoo! That's a tasty meal! We cooked up a pound of 80/100 beef (got to have some fat so the GF grill doesn't create rock-for-burgers), mixed in some fresh rosemary from our herb garden, and it's a major wham-oh on the taste buds.

Sweet Cucumber Goodness!

Man! My stomach is a rumblin' just thinking about it. After run meals are the best!

Oh, and don't be fooled. I had many a hand full of grapes and almonds while we waited on the burgers to cook. Yummy in the tummy! Yummy in the tummy! [last two sentences must be read in a sing-song voice]

I Need Some Meat

2010-09-09T12:05:00.000-07:00

Kevin and I had a pretty rapid-fire Labor day weekend of good fun, food (Katherine friendly of course), company, and exercise. One of the main events was our first lake-fishing adventure in Texas. We didn't come back with any fish, but for several good reasons: we'd never fished that lake before, we'd never fished at that time before, we'd never fished for bass/catfish/crappie by ourselves before, we'd never fished with the bait and lures suggested to us before, and we'd never fished while in a kayak before. So here's a summary of our adventure in a nutshell. Feel free to chuckle or guffaw.

We rented a tandem kayak for free and piled in with our two poles and a backpack full of fishing goodies. We head out on the water and immediately noticed the difference that is "Labor Day weekend on the lake." Lots of boats! Lots of People! The water was choppy! But we coordinated our paddling efforts and make it to the reeds across from the lake house. In fact Kevin said we were way better than last time in the tandem.

Tandem Kayak (needs anchor)

We find a little alcove and start to start to take things out and set things up. The backpack is soaked at this point. We have a self-bailing kayak, that may be why... There's also the choppy water, that might have also contributed.

Kevin takes the first plunge at casting while I try to maintain our position in the water. And that's all I remember doing for about half of our time on the lake (total time spent was about 3 hours). Our conversation went something like the following. It should be noted that Kevin has a high frequency hearing loss, and depends half on his hearing and half on his lip reading to understand what I'm saying in places with a lot of background noise. It was very loud that day.

Reeds (not a good anchor)

Kevin: "Point me to those reeds."

Katherine: "Which reeds?"

Kevin: "WHAT?"

Katherine: "Which reeds?"

Kevin: "The ones on the right."
Kevin: "Can you turn me around?"
Katherine: "Okay."
[Katherine proceeds to turn clockwise]
Kevin: "Can you turn me around the other way?"
Katherine "Okay."
[Katherine proceeds to turn counter-clockwise]
Kevin: "We're right where I want to be casting."
Katherine: "Where do you want me to go?"
Kevin: "Left."
Katherine: "I'm having a hard time staying here."
Kevin: "WHAT?"
Katherine: "I'm having a hard time staying here."
Kevin: "Just push us to the right."
[This goes on for a while]
Katherine: "Kevin, I have to say that my level of stress is v e r y h i g h."

Kevin agreed. So we decide to paddle a ways up this clearing of reeds and try to anchor ourselves to the reeds using our stringer. That helped a bit. I was then able to fish using a jig for some crappie. I had a bite at some point. Wahoo! But neither of us caught anything. We still floated around a bit even while anchored, so we'll be looking into something a little more substantial for next time. But our good times we're over yet. Here's what happened within the last hour of fishing.

With my back turned I said, "Kevin I think I need to pee."

Kevin: "You need some meat? We'll I'm trying to get you some meat just as soon as I catch a fish."

I laughed for a good 2-3 minutes before I could tell him what I actually said.

Good times. Good times.

This is Tired

2010-09-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

Cutie Little Pups!

Kevin and I did our longest run yet this weekend. We went out to a country road and pounded asphalt for 14 miles. I was going at a similar pace to my original half marathon, and doing that with hills. I'm very excited! But after the run, Kevin and I were blobs. Big ones. We looked similar to the two lazy pups over there on the left. VERY similar.

As the runs get longer, I'm learning things about my body (what I should eat, when I should eat, how much sleep I need, how often I should train, when I need breaks, etc). This past weekend and directly after the half marathon a couple of weeks ago, I've learned that I have a form of this not so fun symptom. So my next tactic will be to eat low fiber meals the day before a long run. Hopefully that will lessen the after-workout problem for me. But it might set me back a bit on the losing a few pounds. We'll see...

Going Faster

2010-08-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

A Relative of Mine.

Okay, so my runs are going a little faster at this point. Last night, I ran 3 miles in 31:02 pace which is a bit faster than I've been running during the summer. I chalk it up to feeling more motivated because of the upcoming marathon. While training for the half, I was just moving forward at what ever pace felt good. It feels like I've had a mental break from the speed (not that I have any delusions that I think I'm fast or anything) and I'm ready to get back to it. Yesterday's run was also a mile marker for the year: it was cool and cloudy enough to run after work. Yeah!!! I love after work runs. Running right before bedtime tends to not give me the best nights of sleep.

On the diet side of things, I've slowly taken a lot of my "needless but tasty" carbs out of my diet. I'm having fruit and or nuts for breakfast, veggie and protein-filled leftovers for brunch and lunner (I've split my meal in half so I eat at like 11 am and 1:30 pm), a small snack at home, and a fairly good meal with a small portion of carb. My body's still growing accustom to the smaller portion sizes, but at least I'm not just craving buckets full of rice and GF pancakes the size of houses.

Run on allergy peoples!

Marathon Training Schedule and Fake French Fries

2010-08-24T09:28:00.000-07:00

Sucking air.

The Goal:
Kevin and I have decided on the White Rock Marathon in Dallas, TX on December 5. This will be my first (and possibly my only depending on how it goes), so I'll be writing a lot about it as well as discussing new recipes to keep me motivated in the months to come.

The Plan:

In order to maximize pain and increase the possibility for a mental breakdown, Kevin and I sat down this past Friday evening and outlined a training schedule for the marathon. Ha! No, it's not that bad. A training schedule is actually really necessary so that we don't wear ourselves out with unnecessary workouts or speeds. Take a look below, and I'll describe the reasoning shortly after.

8/21: 6 miles, Fast Pace (FP) completed, see my training log!
8/28: 14.5 miles,Race Pace (RP)
9/4: 7 miles, FP
9/11: 16 miles, RP
9/18: 8 miles, FP
9/25: 18 miles, RP
10/2: 9 miles, FP
10/9: 19 miles, RP
10/16: 10 miles, FP
10/23: 20 miles, RP
10/30: 11 miles, FP
11/6: 21 miles, RP
11/13: 12 miles, FP
11/20: 22 miles, RP
11/27: 6 miles, FP
12/5: Race Day

So basically every other week we'll be working on long distance speed work (fast pace runs) while the other weekends we'll be trying to stick with the pace we have in mind for the marathon (race pace). We might have to change it up a bit because we also have the Turkey Trot 5K on November 20, and that'll conflict a bit. This type of training will hopefully ensure that we can maintain our race pace throughout the marathon because we've actually trained to go faster. My goal is to run the fast pace runs in under 10:30 per mile while a pace just under an 11:30 will be my goal for the marathon. This is a finishing time of 5:00 hours.

AAAAHHHHHHHH! Um, I'm going to try and not think about how long that is....

These times might change as the temperature drops and my heart is using less energy trying to cool me down when it's in the 90s.

Now, this schedule does not include any cross training exercises (weight lifting, sprints, biking, swimming, etc) that we will be doing during the middle of the week. We have to do other activities Sunday-Friday so that we feel adequately prepared for the long weekend runs, but we'll be a little more spontaneous about those.

Questions? Concerns? Psychoanalysis?

The Motivation:

In order to make running as easy on my muscles, joints, and mind as possible, I'll be trying to loose a few pounds or as much as possible. It's the eternal struggle. So I'm still trying to reduce calories in all my meals and snacks. This weekend, Kevin and I decided to make some George Foreman-grilled hamburger patties with french fries. Typically french fry recipes have an enormous amount of calories especially in comparison to a regular baked potato.

Large French Fries from McDonalds (serving size is 5.4 oz, or 154 g) = 500 calories, 220 from fat
Ore-Ida Golden Fries (serving size is 3 oz, or 84 g) = 130 calories, 30 from fat
Small Baked Potato (serving size is 3" to 4-1/4" diameter, or 4.86 oz, 138 g) = 128 calories, 2 from fat

So how can you get the "beeest of both wooorlds" (Hannah Montana fans, please send me no hate mail)?

Fake the french fry! A childhood best friend of mine invited me over to spend some time with her and her immediate family at her grandparents house when I was in middle school, and they made this wonderful baked french fry recipe that I used this weekend. Given that I had been between 12-14 yrs old at the time, I've had to experiment few times to get this recipe right. But basically you can use Pam (with the oil of your choice) to make the fries in the oven and add only a couple of additional fat calories. Here's how it works:

Fake French Fries
Ingredients

Slice up the potatoes french fry style (1/4 to 3/4 of an inch wide)
Pam Spray Oil (I used the original version, but they also have corn oil and a few others)
Salt
Onion Powder
Garlic Powder

Directions

Take a baking pan and lightly spray with Pam. I typically cover my pans with tin-foil before spraying to save on clean up time, but whatever floats your boat. Add the sliced potatoes to the pan and spread them out to where they are only one layer thick. I don't peal my potatoes because there are a lot of nutrients and fiber in the skins, but you can to make them a little more authentic-like. When they're on the pan, the fries can be pretty close together and touching to get more in. Then spray a light layer of Pam on top of all the fries. Add salt and and other spices to your liking. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes, or until golden brown like the ones in the picture up top. You can flip them if you want all sides to be golden, but I haven't had the urge.

If you're really hungry, the fries are actually completely cooked in about 30 minutes, but they won't have that gold color or the taste that comes of it, like this picture.

By the way, Happy Belated Birthday, Lindsey! May remembering the happy times with your brother make this year and every year blessed.

Gluten Free, Milk Free Beef Stir-Fry Heaven

2010-08-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

I was on http://www.msn.com/ the other day and noticed a link for quick recipes. So I clicked on it, fully prepared for the cheesy, gluten-filled recipes that normally saturate these types of articles, but I was happily surprised! Found a few to to print out and I tried out one later that night with Kevin.

It's called "Orange Scented Beef Stir-Fry" and the original recipes is located at http://www.delish.com/recipefinder/orange-scented-beef-stir-fry-recipe-5178?click=recipe_sr.

To tell you how good it is, Kevin and I argued over the leftovers. Kevin is not a big fan of leftovers.

It's not as quick as they advertised. I think it took us about 30-40 minutes. And of course we made a few changes based on what we had and what we wanted to deal with so I've listed out an altered recipe below. The recipe below is doubled from the original.

Ingredients
1 cup chicken broth (homemade, stored our freezer)
2 tablespoons arrowroot
4 tablespoons soy sauce (La Choy's gluten free)
4 tablespoons orange marmalade
2 tablespoons wine vinegar
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (soy)
2 pounds beef top sirloin (trimmed of fat and cut into 1/4 inch strips)
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
2 large onions (slivered)
1 small green bell pepper (diced)
2 cups broccoli florets
2 cups peas

Directions
Combine 1 cup broth, arrowroot, soy sauce, marmalade, vinegar, and garlic in a bowl and mix well. Heat oil in a wok or large non-stick skillet over high heat. Add beef and stir-fry until brown. Transfer to a plate leaving the juices in the pan. Add ginger to the pan and stir-fry for 10-20 seconds until fragrant. Add onion, bell pepper, broccoli, and peas then add the remaining 1 cup of broth, cover and cook until the vegetables are crisp and tender. Push the vegetables to one side of the pan. Stir the sauce mixture and add it to the other side of the pan. Cook, stirring, until the sauce becomes think and translucent. Stir the vegetables into the sauce and return the beef to the pan. Mix well and serve immediately.

Comments
My mom came to visit a while back and fixed up some fried rice and she used some fresh ginger. She didn't use it all, so she chopped up the rest and froze it in a bag. Worked great!

Also, yesterday was my first run after the Hottest Half. It was a struggle to put on my running clothes and get out there with Kaiya. Once I did though, it felt so good to be moving again. Kevin and I have been a wee bit sore so we took it easy for a couple of days. I was pretty fast too in comparison to what I have been running (two miles in 20:06). Not sure what made the difference...

In the Words of Andrea...

2010-08-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

That was the "hotttttest runnn everrrr!"

Here's me getting ready to pass woman in pink shirt. (I've blurred her identity).

Here's me passing woman in pink shirt. Yeah!

Okay, so let's start with the statistics

The race started a little after 7:30 at about 87 degrees and I finished up at a little after 10:00 am somewhere in the mid-90s we believe. My time was 2 hours 30 minutes and 11.26 seconds. That's exactly 7 minutes and 11.26 seconds slower than my first half marathon last January. That's not too bad considering the heat. I finished 46 out of 95 women in my age group which is about the 48th percentile. I finished 615 out of 994 runners (62 percentile). For the first 4 or so miles I was running a little under a 11 minute per mile pace. Then it got hot. I walked quite a bit at the end, about a half a mile to a mile total overall. Katrina beat me by about 7 minutes. Immediately after the run, I drank 4 bottles of water 2 bottles of Powerade and split a large cherry slush with Kevin. I was still thirsty the rest of the day.

Discuss the feel
I was hot from beginning to the end. I had the "chills" for about half of the race even though I was sucking down Gatoraid (electrolytes) and water like there was no tomorrow. If you've ever been on a long run and you've had water or an athletic drink during the process, you know there is that certain amount you can swallow without getting a cramp. Sometimes you can drink more because it's hot, sometimes you have to drink less because your body doesn't need it. Yeah, I don't remember having to limit how much I took in. It went straight through my stomach to where ever it was needed. No cramping involved. I was sweating so much that my hands were prunes by the end.

Prune:

That said, I don't think I pushed my legs hard enough. I was able to sprint by like 4 or 5 people during the last 100 meters or so. So what was limiting me?

It was my head and heart telling me "you are burning up, you better not go too fast or we'll put you in a world of hurt. We will make you pass out. You will have the biggest headache you've ever dreamed of. You won't be able to drive home."

So I listened. Kind of had to because the racing coordinators ran out of water and Gatorade towards the end and I had to run without additional liquids during the last 4 miles. That was highly undesirable and not exactly helpful for setting a PR (not that I was expecting to, mind you).

The Sun.

When I passed the finish line, I couldn't find the finishers drinks or the family. So I'm walking all over the place and I just start to cry I was so hot.

[Editor's note: Katherine has never cried after a race before. That's darn crazy!]

Then I find the buckets of water bottles. Grabbed three bottles. Downed two immediately. Poured one over my head. Grabbed ice from the bucket and shoved it down my sports bra...front and back. That felt good. So I dried my eyes and looked for the family peoples.

I found them shortly after. I remembered them cheering for me right before I crossed the finish line. Then I cried a bit again. Then I was fine.

Sounds horrible, right? Nah. I was just thirsty and tired.

Thirst.

Normally I would be scared to death of having the world's worst headache after this type of run. Didn't happen. Whether it was the cold drinks during and after the race, my pace, the short nap on the car ride home, or my training, I'll never know. But that makes me so proud and excited. Plus, my pace wasn't too bad. By comparison, I think Kevin finished 10-20 minutes slower than his target. Keep in mind, Kevin's slower pace is still faster than Katrina's and all of the family members who were running that day and he finished in 2:00:38, 210th overall, 24 out of 80 in his age group.

Overall, we had a great weekend with the family, a new racing experience, and a good base for training for a marathon this fall. Would I have run this race knowing what it was going to be like? Yes. A lot of what I experienced was expected. Thanks, Trina! Will I do this race again in the future? No. There's a good chance Kevin and I won't be running this race again unless we're just doing the 10K.

And end with the consolation
I still hold the fastest half marathon time (female division) out of Kevin's immediate family. My first half in January was in 2:23:00! Sorry Trina. :) I know you were hot and I know that achilles was hurting. But there it is. Good luck next year! I'm sure you'll beat my time at some point.

And besides that, I'm an Aunt now! And Kevin's an Uncle! Welcome to the world little Cameron!

Race Day Tomorrow

2010-08-14T20:06:00.000-07:00

It's the night before the Hottest Half tomorrow. We have all our gear ready. Bibs pinned onto shorts and shirts. Racing chips attached to shoes. Water and Gatorade made and refrigerated. Race start and finished scoped out. I'm excited! Gotta rein it in though or I won't sleep. I'll post the results later this week.

Countdown to the Hottest Half Marathon, Dallas, TX

2010-08-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

It's t-minus 2 days, 20-something hours, and some odd minutes before the starting gun fires on Sunday morning at this year's Hottest Half! Kevin and I are ready at this point. His foot has healed up good enough that he's done a couple of runs this week, including a 6 miler. With his running history, I'm sure he'll do just fine.

I got a new pair of shoes (see picture at left); I got the ones that have the same coloring as yours, Kayla. They're called "Women's Saucony Grid Cohesion 3 Running Shoes." The previous model was just "Women's Saucony Grid Cohesion NX," which I've purchased around 4 times. They both fit exactly the same only they've changed up the apearance a bit. It's a nice shoe; $39.99 at Academy. My ankles and knees are thanking me!

My LogYourRun account says that I put 286.8 miles on the previous shoes that I bought on 11/11/2009. That's not accurate because I bought new shoes in May 2010, but I just forgot to enter in all of the information. There were also several weeks where I didn't enter in any of my running miles at the beginning of the summer. What can I say? Sometimes it's just good to run and not think about the details. If we do the full marathon in November, these will be the shoes that come with me, I think.

I went on my last run (before the race) last night. I did an easy 3 miles with Kevin and Kaiya. Kevin was on his bike this time. Didn't see any skunks, but we did see an armadillo towards the end of the run. Kaiya wanted to go play, but we thought that might not be a good idea considering they've got some pretty mean claws.

I was very cautious last night with Kaiya. Normally it's expected that Kaiya will stop, without warning, a few times to sniff at something while I'm on a run with her. But I tried to emphasize that random stopping was not a good idea in light of the upcoming race. I could just see myself trip or twist an ankle and that would be the end of it for me. So I tried to give her a wide berth and be a little more in tune with what she's thinking. "Uh uh, Kaiya," "Good Girl, Kaiya," "This way, Kaiya." I'm sure it was cramping her free-spirited style.

[Kaiya] "Why is Mommy micromanaging my life?"

Poor thing!

Run on Allergy Peoples!

Skunks!!!

2010-08-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

I went on a 6 mile bike ride (coast) while Kevin ran last night at about 9:30 pm, and we saw a little wild life. Three skunks (which kind of messed up Kevin's run with a jolt of adrenaline) and a bug that squeaked (which scared me to death and I screamed; which also gave Kevin a jolt of adrenaline). Quite funny! ...after the fact.

Gluten Free, Cow Milk Free Coconut Cream Pie

2010-08-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

When I asked what Kevin wanted me to bake him for our 4th anniversary, he said "Coconut Cream Pie!!!!" No hesitation. My husband and his family have been in love with this one recipe for forever so I called up his mom and got the specs (thanks Sandy!). The original version is full of cow milk and of course a flour-based pie shell. When it came time to make the pies, Kevin was like, I bet we can use that Pamela's Bread and Baking Mix to make you pie crust and then use goat milk for the filling! I hadn't even thought of making me one because I'm still trying not to focus on new pastry/sweet concoction recipes right now while I'm training for the half.

But we made me a version of the pie, and it's so good! I wish we had bought one of those throw away metal pie pans, because the one pyrex version we had was a little bit big, so the crust might have been spread out too thin and the pie filling didn't fill up the whole space. Other than that, we wouldn't change a thing. Kevin didn't even notice the goat milk taste and thought it was the real thing (although once he ate his version of the pie and went back to mine, he did notice a *slight* difference).

Gluten free, Cow Milk Free, Coconut Cream Pie
Filling:
1/3 cup of Pamela's Bread and Baking Mix
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups goat milk, scalded (microwave for 2 min)
3 slightly beaten egg yolks
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup shredded coconut

Crust:
I used Pamela's recipe except I used vegitable oil (soy) instead of butter (should be able to use any type of oil) and the recipe on the back of the package suggests refridgerating the dough for 30 minutes before baking. Poke holes in the crust with a fork around all sides and bottom (use a fork, one inch apart).

Mix flour, sugar, salt well in a cooking pot. Gradually add milk. Cook on medium heat until think, stirring constantly. Add small amount of hot mixture to the egg yolks (so not to cook the egg immediately). Stir egg into remaining hot mixture. Cook for two more minutes without stirring. Add vanilla and coconut. Cool and then pour into cooked pie crust.

Makes one pie.

Running update
My ankles and knees are telling me that I need new shoes. Kevin and I will be going to Academy today or tomorrow to pick up another one of my favorite pairs. Not normally supposed to get new shoes right before a race, but I'll break them in on a run on Wednesday and while walking throughout the week, and I've been getting the same pair for forever now and my feet are pretty much molded to shoe.

Also, here's a random word from Kent

"Life is best lived with eyes wide open." -A Word from Kent, mighty mighty Super Dog.

Ha! He's so cute, ain't he?

Gluten Free Breaded Turkey Fingers and More Kayaking

2010-08-05T07:46:00.000-07:00

So this past week, Kevin and I tried to make some delish turkey fingers with some of the new Pamela's Bread Mix and Flour Blend that we bought when we were in Dallas at the beginning of the summer, and oh oh they were goo-hood! The recipe called for deep-fat frying, but we decided to just fry them up with a little coconut oil in the bottom of the pan. Oh, they were tasty. As a kid, I'd usually order chicken fingers and french fries where ever we'd go out to eat (since it's quite often a staple kids' food item in most American-style restaurants). I've not missed the calories those meals packed, but I do miss the taste! Next time, we're thinking about baking the turkey (or chicken, whichever one is already cooked) so we can get rid of more oil.

On another note, I was doing some graphic design research for an upcoming project at work and I was looking at the Sonic Web site. I took a quick gander at their "allergen info" link (those things change quite often so it's good to check back every once in a while), and I noticed that their french fries and tots don't have gluten, milk, peanut, egg, or soy ingredients (not that I have a problem with soy or egg, but that's just an FYI for those staying away). Whahoo! Kevin and I might partake of some this evening along with the rest of our fourth anniversary celebration. Yeah us! Love you, Kevin!

On to the kayaking. Yesterday, Kevin and I tried out the single-person kayaks and had a lot of fun. We noticed that we could go a lot faster than in the tandem kayak and we had less, ahem, coordination problems. On the other hand, it's a little more of a solitary activity (even though we were fairly close together most of the time) kind of like jogging. Still had some drama though (hee hee).

Here we are, sitting on the peaceful lake, watching ducks swim by, fish jump, and birds skim the top of the water. Beautiful and relaxing workout. [sigh...] Oh, how wovely and momantic!

Then we head on back to the lakehouse and Kevin decides it would be great fun to chuck a stick at me (piece of rotting something...). I yell out in pain and surpise and give him the bull elephant-death stare characteristic of the "great cap gun incident" of '06 (which was actually our honeymoon). We've come full circle, I know!

Now the average person might say "oh, did that hurt? Sorry I was just trying to be funny. Ready to go back to shore?" This statement shows remorse, gives an explanation, and changes the subject so that negativity is not dwelt upon for too long. Right? Least of all he could have just said, "oops" and then moved on. But that's not what happened.

Kevin chucked another stick.

His explanation: "I wasn't sure if you yelled because of an emotional reaction or because you were actually hurt, so I thought I'd throw another one to find out."

Ha! Sadistic! Cruel! And as I think about it a day later, quite funny. But man did that hurt.

Half-marathon update: Katrina looks to be working through her injury (don't hurt yourself Trina!), Kevin's still staying off of his, and I've completed my last long-long run before the half (did 12 1/2 miles last Saturday morning). Felt good afterwards, and I might have felt better had we not watched Into the Wild later that morning. Depressing beyond depressing. My soul is still healing after someone tried to suck it out of my body and stomp on it. Thanks Trina and Brian!

Kayaking Fun

2010-07-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Kevin and I went kayaking for the first time yesterday. Used a two person kayak. Had lots of fun (!!!) except for one aspect.

So it should be pretty obvious that I've got loads slow-twitch muscles...and very little upper body strength. Kevin has long arms; they're strong. And, you have to be in-sync with one another in a two-person kayak.

Kevin and I will be trying out the seperate kayaks next time.

Sad Day for the Running Peoples

2010-07-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

Kevin and I visited with Kayla, Terrell, Brian, Trina, and Seth this weekend. We all went on a run on Saturday (minus pregnant Kayla, of course). Kevin and I did an 11-miler (whooo, that was humid and hot, but a lot of fun). Sad news: Trina, the fearless leader this summer, has hurt her achilles tendon and may not be able to make it to the half. We're praying for her right now!

Refried Go Power

2010-07-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the third day that Kevin, Seth, and myself have been eating off of a big pot of cooked beans (that's not all we've been eating, that's just a side that's lasting a long bit of time). It's got a mix of pinto, black, kidney, and red. Kevin cooked it up on Monday so yesterday I turned it into refried. Most recipes for refried call for like four cups of cooked beans and two cups of oil. Yuck! I've modified the recipe to where it's got like two cups of water and a table soon of oil (kind of like mashed potatoes). Way better.

Anyway, that's one of the carbs we've been running on lately. Yesterday, we took off toward campus around 8pm or so and played a little three-person football. I've come to realize that I need to work on two things in order to become the next Dallas Cowboy rookie of the year:

I need to work on acceleration and speed. I lose Kevin and Seth in about the first 3 seconds the ball is loose and it kind of looks like I'm not even trying hard; might as well just stand still and sacrafice the body with a good tackle...then die after a after short life.
I need to be able throw the ball farther than 12 yards...and do that accurately.

So, although I had a lot of fun running around like a chicken with it's head cut off, maybe pro football is not for me.

I'll always have the beans.

After sprinting around a bit, we came back to the house, I made refried for the next day, and then I went on a two mile run (see my time to the right). I'm pretty disappointed that I haven't sped up since I've been training for the half this summer (even by an average of 10 seconds would be great, please?!!). But I've come to realize that those large leaps of improvement only happen once a year. I had a leap around December-January where I started runing very long distances easily under 11 minutes per mile, so I'm not yet due for one.

But I'm having fun. "Run on" allergy peoples!

Long Road to the Marathon

2010-07-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

So I've been blogging off and on for a while this summer (can you blame me? it's summer!!!). I apologize! But for a while now I've been working hard at training for various races and the upcoming big two (the half marathon and the full) and it's been consuming my creative energy. Also, I've been avoiding blogging because I haven't really been thinking a whole bunch about food lately (trying not to so that I can loose a few pounds for the races). But just now I thought "Hey, this is my blog! I can do what I please! I don't have to always talk about food!" So I'll be blogging a lot about my training for the next two to three month and if food comes up, which I'm sure it will, then I'll talk about it. Sound good? Good!

So last weekend Kayla and Terrell witnessed our pain in the local sprint triathlon (300 yard swim, 10 mile bike, 2 mile run). I killed on the bike with my best time yet of 16 mph (even though we've gone biking only like 3 or 4 times prior to the race), which totally supports my husband's belief that I'm more of a natural biker than a runner. The swim would have gone a little better if I had remembered to take off my watch before hand and if I had put my goggles on before the horn. Needless to say, my mind was not in the right place for the open water swim and I was hyperventilating for about 1/3 of the distance. Then I just held on for the run at about a 10:30 or so pace. A triathlon is just such an interesting experience, lots of transitions, multiple sports, we have to do one at least every summer.

So now were ramping up for the big half marathon with the rest of the family. At this point, I've counted 7 people from Kevin's side of the family will either be running the 10K or the half marathon in August. All because little Trina wanted to run this summer. Crazy!

So this past weekend was our second long run in the training for this race. We went out to the favorite hilly country road and started running at about 7:15. Ran 9 miles in an 11:02 pace. Boy it was hot for the last half. I'm pretty sure it was at least in the mid 80s but the humidity was pretty high so it felt hotter.

Last night, Kevin's cousin Seth went with us on a 4 mile neighborhood run. It's always nice and cool around 10 pm, so I went a little bit faster and ran a 43:17 or a 10:49 minute per mile pace. I'm not quite up to par with what I did for my last half in January, but that's pretty much a given considering it's summer time and I'm a couple of pounds heavier from eating all those gluten-free, carb-filled, rice-based, ready-made foods I discovered all spring semester (mmmm...gluten free, 120 calorie for two oreo cookies!!!! Yummm!!!!). Anyway, it was really fun to run in a pack. We don't do that too often, mainly because Kevin runs at the speed of light, and it's not very convenient to find someone who's available and at your same speed for every run.

Also on the running front, Kevin and I bought these reflective running bands for our ankles at Academy sports for about $5. They seem to work really great for our late night runs and I feel a little more confident about not getting run over. That's always nice.

So that's about it. I might blog more often now that I've come up with a new strategy. And no need to fear! I'll come back to blog about food and recipes more often after the ordeal is over.

In the words of my boss with some minor modifications, "Run on" allergy peoples!

The Whole Foods Mother Ship

2010-07-08T08:44:00.000-07:00

I went to Austin this past weekend to visit the folks and we hit the gluten free, milk free, yada yada mother load! We picked up waffles, goat cheese, Oreo-type cookies, and bagels!!! I'll post pictures next week.

Season Training is Here!

2010-06-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

So here's my lofty set of goals for this year. The upcoming races I plan to attend are:

Lake Nasworthy Triathlon (July)
Dallas Half Marathon (August)
American Heart Run 3M (September or October)
Rock 'n' Roll Marathon (November)
Turkey Trot 3M (November)

The main goal is the Marathon (my first), so if I don't make it to the other two, then that's okay by me. I'm going to take it really easy and just increase my running distance by a mile ever week or every other week (this weekend I'll run 8).

Crazy? Maybe. But there's no time like the present. I don't particularly want to train for another half marathon because I kind of feel like I've already done that and I don't relish the idea of trying to beat my old time (that's so tough, mentally). I really like the goal of "let's just finish." Yes. Yes, I do.

So, beyond the miles, here's a few things that I'm planning to do this summer. This comes from my experience from my previous half marathon and a four-mile run I had this weekend.

Buy reflective tape/attachments. I'm going to have to do a lot of running after the sun goes down and before it comes up to beat the Texas heat and I don't want to get run over. This weekend, Kevin and I will probably go to Academy or Wal-mart and see what's available. Whatever we get has to be light, easy to attach, and add no additional clothing that my cause us to pass out from heat exhaustion.
Don't eat chips before a run. So I love to have my corn days on running days, but that presents a problem when the salt content leaves me with dry mouth and my tail hangs a little lower like Kent and Kaiya's after they've been run down. I'll either need to start using my rice days or other carb day for the run -OR- wait to eat the chips after the run (so hard to do when I'm running at 9 pm!).
Wear head bands, not clips. Since I've got bangs now (thanks Kayla!!), I've gotten a little fussy about the hair on runs. I like them, no doubt. But I'm sure I look like I'm slapping myself for motivation rather than moving hair out of the way. I tried clips this weekend, but that's not cuttin' it with my blow-away hair. So, it's back to the rubberized head band from college. Hopefully I won't loose this one. :)
Drinking water/sports drink no matter how long the run. It's hot and I can't get away with running a three miler without my water belt right now while my body is adjusting to the heat. Maybe later in the summer, but not right now. I'm going to go easy.
If I start to hurt too much, I'll back off on the miles. I can say that the Marathon is my goal for this year, but if I feel like it's too soon. That's okay. I'll just meet some of the other goal races on my list, and then see if I can't run a full another year. No big deal. No pressure.
New music. While I was training for my half, I started out with music from our own collection (you know, up beat stuff like U2). When I heard that music enough, I added a different selection after going through our less used collection. When I heard that music enough, then I went to the radio and used that mostly throughout the training. But radio stations put their music selection on a loop, so the longer I'm out on a run the more often I'll hear that whole loop, and that makes me think about how long I've been out there. That's no fun. So I'll need to do some re-thinking about the music.

Hopefully I'll be running injury free here and it will all be a matter of sheer will power.

Vacation Trout!

2010-06-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

Ah! Vacation was great. Hiked, ran, fished, ate, slept, and vegged with my husband and two silly dogs. Yeah! Glad to be back, though. I was having some problems with the dry climate (dry hands, nose bleeds) and the pine trees were pollinating big time (caked up our car's windshield every day). Kevin and I caught eight trout while we were away and we froze them in water so that we can have a couple of meals off them over the next few weeks. We'll probably be frying them up in Katherine's famous corn meal batter (see below).

Egg Free, Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Soy Free Fried Trout

Filleted Trout (scale free, please; you could also use talapia or catfish instead)
Corn Meal
1 Large Paper or Plastic plate
Salt
Pepper
Corn Oil
Small glass of water
Large Frying Pan

Since we freeze our fish in Ziploc bags filled with water, the un-freezing is the most time consuming but also the least labor intensive. Just rinse one side of the sink, add a drain stopper, pour in warm water from the tap, add the frozen fish, and about ten minutes later, POW! Defrosted fish!

Then it's time to take the fish and press them into the dry batter mix on the paper plate. Since the fish is wet, it'll hold most of the ingredients while it's frying. I generally eyeball the batter ingredients. I just make sure that I have enough corn meal on the paper plate to cover all sides of each of my fillet's (it's so annoying to have to wash my fishy hands to make more batter). I mix the pepper and salt with the corn meal on the plate before I cover the fish.

Next, I add about a teaspoon or two of corn oil to the pan, lay the fish in flat, and turn the heat to medium. I generally add a drop or two of water to the pan throughout the frying process to keep the fish from burning. The corn meal tends to soak up the oil underneath quickly and I'd rather add water than more oil to combat the burn. I usually flip the fish to cook on the other side when the majority of the fish has turned either white or grey (just push aside a little of the corn meal to test). If I wait until the entire fish is white, then it's harder to flip (crumbles).

Enjoy!

On Vacation!

2010-06-03T14:55:00.000-07:00

Back to blog June 17.

Three Year Anniversary (of Running), Bokum Bop (Korean Fried Rice), and the Home Improvement Marathon (Automated Sprinkler Edition)

2010-05-28T13:08:00.000-07:00

Here comes a trip down memory lane. So be prepared for a story...

On April 4, 2007, Kevin started keeping track of my exercise to try and see why I kept getting headaches after working out. We started noting that I couldn’t do any high-impact aerobic exercise (elliptical workout, etc) for more than about 17-18 minutes without getting a headache afterwards. I couldn’t run at all (not event a minute or two) without getting a headache.

On May 9, 2007 after Kevin’s pestering finally sunk in, I decided to take myself off of my daily dose of decongestant. I’d been taking Claritin D every day for about 13 years, so I thought, why not see if the decongestant (which is also a known ingredient for creating illegal/home-brewed speed, by the way) might be the problem. Then I increased my time on the elliptical by a few more minutes to compensate. I started getting less headaches.

And then I took my first baby step…

Three years ago, on May 15, 2007, I put on my first pair of true running shoes (they were a pair of green and white New Balance shoes that I bought at Academy with Kevin and his two sisters) and went for my first run, ever. Here’s what my log said for the day:

__________________________

Miles: 1.5
Time: 24 minutes
Heart Rate: Maximum was 161
Notes: FIRST RUN! Ran at XXX Park along the middle stretch. Ran at 1:00 pm. Warm approximately 75-80. Ran in new shoes.

__________________________

Did you notice I didn’t say anything about a headache! Crazy!!!! Obviously people can walk faster than 24 minutes per mile, but man I was just happy to be showing any type of running form! Not too long after (after we went back home to Lubbock) Kevin suggested that maybe we should do a triathlon. Ha! I told him he was crazy. But I told him I’d train and if I thought I could do it without extreme pain, I’d try it.

So here are the highlights since then:

Second Run: 5/17/2007, 1.5 miles, 21.16 minutes, max heart rate 163, “Second run. Ran at Concho Park along middle stretch with Mom. No walking. Felt good. Fourth workout in four days.”
Landmark Run: 6/2/2007, 2 mile, 33 minutes
Landmark Run: 6/11/2007, 1 mile, 12:15 minutes
Sprint Triathlon at Texas Tech: 9/2007, 1:26:3 (11:30 400 yard swim, 45:35 mile ride, 29:21 2.3 mile run)
Got off Claritin completely in May 2008!
First Road Race, Lunar Lope at TTU: 6/18/2008, 31:30, 3.1 miles, “Ran FIRST ROAD RACE!!!! Luner Lope 5K at Texas Tech's campus. Beat 52 people on her first race. The exact time is still unknown because she started her watch when the gun went off instead of at the starting line”
Sprint Triathlon at Texas Tech (second try, same distance as first): 9/2008, 1:22:2
Habitat for Humanity 5K: 9/19/2009, 3.1 miles, 29:15 minutes “Habitat for Humanity 5K. Finished 51/83 people.”
Turkey Trot: 11/21/2009, 3 mile, 28:53 minutes , “Finished 69/102. Beat Kayla by .6 of a second thanks to a woman with a baby. Got a pie and water bottle. Got 3rd out of ASU employee.”
Resolution Half Marathon: 1/2/2010, 13.1 miles, 2 hours 23 minutes, “First half marathon!!!!”
3 Mile Race: 4/10/2010, 3 miles, 27 minutes

I hurt. I hurt a lot during this process. But I hurt less as time went on. I started adding more carbs back into my diet that previously didn’t like me. I stopped having frequent headaches. No rashes.

And now I can eat thing like this.

And I can work for 12 hours for two straight days with mis padres and hubby on things like this (that's the hubby by the way).

Life is good. Thank you Lord for showing me the way!

Coconut in What?

2010-05-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

Another Southern staple food besides fried chicken is mashed potatoes. Their mmm mmm good! But when I was still staying away from rice milk, soy milk, and I hadn't discovered almond milk yet, it was really hard to make creamy mashed potatoes!

In comes the miracle ingredient (dah dah dah dah!) coconut milk:

Coconut in mashed potatoes? How can that be?

It's pretty good actually. It gives the potatoes a sweetish (no sugar), rich taste, much like butter and if you add just a little salt and pepper, you've got yourself a rockin' side dish! I've even found reduced fat coconut milk at some health food or Asian grocery stores. Now that I've started using the other alternative milk products, I still prefer the coconut milk.

Dairy Free, Soy Free, Gluten Free, Nut Free Mashed Potatoes

6-8 small to medium Russet Potatoes (or potatoes of your choice)

1/2 can coconut milk (your choice of reduced fat or regular)

1/2 tsp of salt or to taste

1/4 tsp of salt or to taste

1-1 1/2 cup of water

Chop up the potatoes (pealed or un-pealed) into a large pot. Boil until you can easily cut with a fork. Drain water (if you've got the "skills" you can try to leave in some of the water from boiling instead of adding more--will leave more nutrients in the mash). Add the milk, water, salt, and pepper and mash until your a fan of the consistency.

This recipe's great with gluten free fried chicken! I'll have to post my recipe some time soon. Oh, and next week I'll remember to have my camera with me so I can upload photos from this past weekend's cooking-fried-rice-while-fixing-our-automated-sprinkler-system-with-my-parents extravaganza!

Allergy Free Business Trips

2010-05-13T11:42:00.000-07:00

So last week I didn't blog because I was out of town at a conference for most of the time, and the other part of the week I was scrambling to do the things I would normally do if I had the whole week in the office. The conference was fun, but I got to thinking about the effort I was putting into making sure I was eating and exercising while on my trip.

For example, my meals were paid for, but I can't just eat out at every restaurant that's conveniently located near my hotel. So my first thought when I heard I'd be traveling by car was "Yes! I can take an ice chest!" You might, as a passerby, think me and my husband odd looking as we strolled through the elegant Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dallas with an ice chest, but frankly I could care less. In fact, I'm sure that the vallet parking dudes (yes, we had to vallet park in order to not get charged $10 each time I left the hotel and came back) gave us a few interesting looks. That wonderfully large, blue ice chest made it possible for me to purchase and store milk free, dairy free, apple free, and banana free foods in our hotel room. Not only was it convenient so that I didn't have to leave the hotel very often to go out to eat, but it also added some variety to my diet (i.e. so I wouldn't have to eat 400 salads from Subway).

Also, because I knew we'd get tired of cold food, I had to do some serious Internet research about local restaurants and their ingredients. It's amazing to me how much information a place like subway provides about their ingredients, but a place like Chipolte (horribly annoying Web site by the way), who prides itself on fresh Tex-Mex ingredients, fails to mention that they add butter to their rice (fortunately I asked before I added rice to my tacos).

I even made a point of discussing my food allergies with the travel office where I work so that, when they saw I went to several grocery stores (Walmart, Whole Foods, HEB), they wouldn't think I was trying to pay for a month's worth of groceries, but I was in fact paying the excessive amount of moola on allergen-free foods. The travel office ladies were very nice about it, thank the Lord!

In our hotel room, my husband turned the cabinet next to our television into a pantry of snacks and Katherine-friendly, non-refrigerated foods. It looked quite appetizing actually. At the end of the conference day, I'd come back to the hotel, watch TV commercials about pizza, and snack on pico de gio flavored rice chips. Quite yummy!

I even had a backup plan in case I had forgotten our large ice chest. Normally, these fancy hotels have little containers to store ice or chill wine... Yeah, that's right! I've done it before while in San Francisco! They're a great place to at least store some sandwich meat, bag of salad, and some carrots. But thankfully we had a little more room than that in our ice chest.

The only thing I could have done better was stay in a hotel with a kitchenette so we could heat up food. But that was pretty much out of the question for this trip considering the conference was held in downtown Dallas, where only the rich, and obviously, non-kitchenetty people like to stay when in town. I have to say, though, the peeps who cater to the rich really know how to put together an in-hotel fitness center! Lots of treadmills, elliptical, bikes, weight lifting machines, fitness balls, and free weights. It was awesome! Used it every day I was there! And getting a good allergy butt-kicking session in was quite easy.

In a nutshell, that's how I survived my trip last week and didn't once come down with a headache! It may seem like a lot of work and not as much fun as just going out to eat at like where ever, but I enjoyed the trip as a real healthy human being and my husband enjoyed it too.

End of Spring for San Angelo

2010-04-29T08:23:00.000-07:00

It's getting hot here. Today's high is expected to be 92. Not fun running weather. But Texas still has some pretty flowers in bloom! Kevin and I have been enjoying the ones on the highways. San Angelo seems to have a lot of yellow flowers. A few bluebonnets, but many more yellow flowers of all kinds.

Great picture, Dad! That's not San Angelo, but it's sure pretty. Ya darn tootin'!

Speaking of pretty, salmon patties are one of the ugliest but tastiest "corn day" foods that Kevin and I like to cook. They end up looking like pink/yellow burgers, but they melt in your mouth like butter, without the butter! They're super easy to make and take only about 15-20 minutes to prepare and cook.

Gluten Free, Milk Free, Soy Free Salmon Patties
14 3/4 oz. can of pink salmon (doesn't need to be fancy-shmancey)

1 egg (or egg substitute, or no egg if you don't mind the crumble)

2-3 c. of corn flake cereal

1 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

pinch of cayenne powder

Oil for the pan (your choice, but I tend to use corn)

Open up the can of salmon and drain the excess liquid. Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Add oil to pan. Create hamburger-sized patties (palm sized) but don't make them too thin (especially if you're not using egg). Hee hee, almost typed hambuger. Good think I didn't. Those aren't tasty unless your five years old and watching TV. Put them in a pan about a quarter inch a part (the salmon patties, that is) and fry them for 10-15 minutes on Medium High, flipping once half way when side turns golden brown. I don't add any salt, since canned foods tend to have quite a bit, but if you need to add more, please do.

So my belt broke yesterday.

2010-04-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

No, no, no, no! Not because I’ve gained weight, but because I was using the cheapest composite, genuine simulated pleather belt I own in order to experience hands-free running with little Kent. A friend of Kevin and me showed us a fancy hands-free leash several months ago and he seemed to really like running a lot more that way with his dog. So, I broke out an old belt that’s been collecting dust and looped Kent's leash around the belt. It seemed pretty comfortable, so Kevin and I went on a Burma Road run a few weekends back and I really liked it! Kent pulled me up the hills and I pulled him down at a blinding 10 min per mile pace for 4 miles. Lots of fun!

So yesterday I was planning on a neighborhood-three miles after work and thought it’d be a good opportunity to run Kent down a bit. We started off at a pretty fast pace as usual. Kent’s got his nose so far to the ground that all I can see is his back, his hind legs, and his floppy ears going up and down and up and down. We reach the end of the street to take a right and are moseying past our communal mail boxes when all of a sudden I lose all power. All thrusters shut down. And when I look down, Kent’s leash is trailing on the ground behind him and getting further and further ahead of me. And the worst part is that we’re both pointed in the direction of a major highway that’s about two blocks away.

“Kent! Kent!” I yell.

“Come! Kent!”

He finally slows his pace turns around and notices that I’m about 5 yards behind him, then he looks at his leash like he was just as disappointed as I was and starts trotting back over to me. Thank the Lord he came back!

N-E-Ways, Kevin and I will probably be investing in an actual hands free leash sometime soon (found an article at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/fashion/14physical.html?_r=1). Can’t be soon enough for me! I miss going extra fast!

The “Token” Allergy Guy

2010-04-16T13:23:00.000-07:00

I’m an avid movie watcher and I must say that there’s a lot of stereotyping of people with allergies in not only just movies, but pop culture in general. People are always talking about how “such and such” groups are under-represented in the movies, video games, television, books, etc. Well, that’s not our (“Allergy people”) problem at all. We’re represented. We’re miss-represented, and quite often. Here’s short list of the characteristics of allergy people in popular culture based on a random sampling of books and movies and such.

Allergy people are:

Overly intelligent or “dorky” in appearance and conversation
Small and/or sickly looking
Sneeze-prone with runny noses galore and other various snot and phlegm issues ALL THE TIME
Annoying
Boring
Comical

Let’s take a look at a few examples

(WARNING: I may give away a few spoilers, so read at your own risk)

The TV Show “The Cosby Show”

Bill Cosby (aka Heathcliff Huxtable) takes Rudy and a group of her elementary-aged friends during an episode called “Planning Parenthood” (on YouTube, it’s part 2, about 1:15 into it. After they eat the first course (salad), one of the little girls informs Cliff that she’s allergic to something she just ate. It’s quite funny. You have to see it. She’s so cute.

The Movie “Pure Luck”

A comedy that stars Martin Short as Eugene Proctor. He wears lots of button down shirts, looks goofy in any casual clothing, and get’s bit by some bug and blows up like a balloon at the end, literally. Sorry to ruin it for you. It’s such an intellectually stimulating slap-stick comedy. Wink wink.

The Video Game “The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker”

On the first “island” location, your avatar bumps into a little neighborhood boy that likes to follow you around, sucking on this glob of snot that’s hanging out his nose. He doesn’t provide any clues for your main quest in the game and, for the most part, he’s awfully funny and cute.

The Movie “The Diary of Anne Frank”

A Movie based on the book with actress Shelly Winters who plays Mrs. Van Daan. It’s been quite a while since I’ve read the book, and I’m a much more visual person so I tend to remember scenes in movies, so I can’t say that the comments that follow are comments on the “real” Anne Frank’s experiences. So please don’t take offense. Mrs. Van Daan is allergic to cats and her sneeze almost gives the two families away while in hiding. She also happens to be one, if not the most annoying characters in the movie, next to her husband that is.

The Movie “Signs”

Rory Culkin plays Morgan Hess, who has asthma (often related to allergies in the movies). Morgan’s pretty small, takes to reading books quite a bit, wears tin foil on his head to keep the aliens from reading his mind, and has an extreme asthma attack which almost kills him.

The Movie “My Girl”

Co-star Macaulay Culkin (real life brother of Rory Culkin). He’s small, wears glasses, annoys Vada a bit because he likes her, and he doesn’t always like to do adventurous things with Vada, if I can recall. He also gets stung by bees at the end and dies. It’s quite sad.

The Movie “Sleepless in Seattle”

Walter, played by actor Bill Pullman, is allergic to white bread and not wheat, sleeps with a humidifier every night, blows his nose before bed (Kleenex everywhere), has no personality and is evidently boring (i.e. the picking of plates) enough to run off Meg Ryan.

The Book “Pride and Prejudice”

Now I believe that allergies weren’t discovered scientifically until 1902, so Jane Austen probably had no knowledge of the subject. However, I would argue that the hanky toten,’ sad lookin’ face of Miss Anne de Bourgh, the “intended” for Mr. Darcy, has quite a bit of the same stereotypical characteristics of all the other characters I’ve mentioned above. This one might be a reach, I fully understand that. Maybe I just wanted to type Miss Anne de Bourgh in an English accent. What? Didn’t you notice the accent?!?

I’m sure if you can find more examples, so I’ll stop here.

Now, I’m not suggesting a revolution here or a call for political change. This is just a pause for reflection. I totally agree that if you were to take the allergies out of some of these books and movies, they might be just a little less funny or interesting. Some movies obviously portray elements of allergy truths. I get runny noses sometimes and there are obviously people who have extreme life-threatening allergies that require extreme measures.

What’s important here is that allergies aren’t cool, they aren’t sexy according to pop culture, and that gives people with allergies a bad rap. How many of you with food, pollen, or asthma problems have told people that you “just can’t tolerate something” or that you’re “trying to stay away from something” rather than state that you’re “allergic.” I know I’ve done it a few times. And this was just an exercise in understanding one possible reason why.

On the lighter side of things, I want to say that do know that I should never feel guilty about having allergies. This is just how God made me, and to think of all of the cool things that I’ve learned from the experience is pretty amazing. Too bad Hollywood can’t portray the beauty beyond the joke. I wonder what it would look like if they tried.

So Busy, I Forgot to Blog!

2010-04-16T07:27:00.000-07:00

For those of y'all who are sitting on pins and needles, there's no need to fear. I'm still here. I'll add a blog this afternoon. I've had so many requests that the phone's been ringing off the hook and I can't access my email it's so full (actually my husband just mentioned it once yesterday after work, but I was so distressed!). I'll blog later this afternoon. Wait...I am blogging. I'm blogging on a tangent............................................................................................................................................

I guess I should say that I'll blog with semi-substance later this afternoon. There. That sounds reasonable to me. Pleasing the peoples, that's me.

A Pug Bug's Life

2010-04-08T10:19:00.000-07:00

If life was like that of a 13 year old pug, it’d go a little something like this.

Napping in the morning.

Napping in the afternoon.

Food.

Mmmm…that sure beats my close-to-three-hour exercise routine yesterday because I felt guilty for eating too much chocolate. We're dog sitting Kent and Kaya's Aunt Dixie. She's goofy!

By the way, I made pizza last weekend again and this time I changed up the crust. Kevin bought me some of Bob’s pizza crust mix about a month ago and I decided it was time to try it out. Here’s my review.

Instructions were easy to follow, but the crust takes a little more time to make than the recipe I shared last week. The longer prep time is mainly due to the wait involved in the yeast rising process.
The dough wasn’t very easy to spread because it was very sticky, but that’s not too different from my own recipe. I’m used to it. No big deal. I used a large, clean medal spoon to spread instead of my using hands (just like I do for my own recipe). I might play around with the amount of water that I mix with the yeast in order to decrease the stickiness.
Cooking the dough was pretty easy. The recipe suggest that you bake the dough for a bit, pull it back out, add your toppings, then bake it some more. I got ahead of myself and started to put the tomato sauce on before I did the initial bake, then I remembered and shoved it in the oven real quick. I think it turned out just fine, but I’ll have to try the mix again in order to see if the sauce made a difference.
The taste and texture are awesome! This is the closest to real pizza crust I’ve had in a while. And the pizza doesn’t fall apart like my recipe can easily do. It’s got a lighter feel to the recipe too, mainly because I don’t think the mix has as much protein and fiber as the normal Gluten Free All Purpose.

Overall, I give the Bob’s mix a 9 out of 10. The taste and texture is a 10 for sure, but I think the sticky dough deserves a 9 for now.

I seem to be loving the pizza lately, so I’ll probably try Iris’ recipe one of these days.

What Melts in your Mouth and Your Hand?

2010-04-01T12:58:00.000-07:00

This past week was pretty eventful in terms of adding new foods to my diet. First of all, Kevin and I were looking in the baking section at Wal-mart and came across a bag of this.

So then I tried a single serving without anything else, and didn’t have a reaction. This is definitely another whahoo! moment. I mean, I love carob as a chocolate substitute, but it’s got a pretty powerful aftertaste and it doesn’t quite bake the same. But since the chocolate pieces did okay in my system by themselves, I decided to make a batch of these wonderful Gluten-free, milk free chocolate chip cookies.

I used Bob’s recipe, but I substituted vegetable oil (soy) for the butter, and I left out the xanthan gum and the walnuts.

Boy were they good! I haven’t had a chocolate chip cookie since…maybe middle school. That’s about 12 years ago at least. I had some more today. Yummy in the tummy! Having a little celebration dance right now (very close to the “sprinkler”). Very excited.

But wait! There’s more!

Kevin and I also found these products at the store.

So far, I’ve tried the salad dressing, which was quite yummy, but I need to go easy on it since it’s got some MSG. I also tried the Parkay, which I used to eat all the time growing up because my mom noticed that it’s the only non-dairy butter-like substance available in most grocery stores. Parkay brings back memories when my mom would boil up several pounds of fresh shrimp, cook some white rice, and broccoli, and then I’d add lots of Parkay and Ketchup, and…oh…so tasty. I’ve heard about other non-dairy butter-like substitutes, but I haven’t actually seen them. Have you? Do they have any that don’t have olive oil?

Kevin and I also tried our hand at carpentry again and made this.

I obviously did a lot of “holding.” I’m a designated holder, a job passed down through generations. I’m a third-generation German bowler and a multigenerational “holder.” I’m quite proud.

Also I received an award this past week from Farty Girl. Thanks girl!

Here’s how it works:

1. When you receive this award, please thank the person who gave it to you in a new post.
2. Name 10 things that make you happy.
3. Pass the award onto ten other bloggers and inform the winners.

So here goes:

One: Thanks again Farty Girl!

Two: “Here are a few of my favorite things” that make me happy:

Jesus
My husband, my mom and dad, and everyone else in my family including little Kaiya and Kent
Helping people
Playing The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Dr. Mario, and other similarly addicting video games that Kevin’s introduced me too.
Remembering the goofy mundane things that Lindsey, Lisa, and I used to do as kids (ie: music-video-making, hair-dying, movie-watching, and TGI Friday’s-eating good times).
Reading
Texas
Angel Fire, NM
Working out
Spring and Fall weather

Three: I’m about to break a rule. Since I’m a new allergy food blogger, and a new allergy food blogger reader (whoo! That’s mouthful), I’m still feeling my way around and falling in love with people’s blogs. Like everyone else, I usually find blogs to love through the blogs I already read, like Farty Girl’s, one at a time. Farty Girl has already named the blogs I usually follow (plus some new ones I haven’t followed), so that makes my blog roll pretty small.

So, I say this award goes to every blogger (and non-blogger) out there who reads this blog, especially you, Farty Girl. I doubt there’s more than ten people out there, so I can say, truly, that I’m not cheating. Congrats to you, reader, you make me happy! Just comment on my blog and accept your award. Yeah you!

Hmm… I may regret this if I get like 50 comments (highly unlikely). If so, I apologize to who ever created this award originally, if you want it back, please take it.

Whahoo!

2010-03-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

Just went for my first yearly check up in a long time since I've been in school. The results:

Resting Heart Rate: 52 bpm
Blood Pressure: 90/60
Doc's Recommendations: Make sure I'm getting all of the vitamins I need despite all the food I can't eat. [Duh!]

Many family members and friends have encouraged me to get healthier, but I want to thank Kevin for getting me hooked on running! After that first run in 2007 (what was it, like a 17 minute mile? yikes), I never thought I could say that: I'm not only off all allergy medication, but I can run 6 miles on a whim, my heart rate is way below the scary 90s where it once was, I can eat more than just "pork chops, salad, and squash" as you used to say, and I don't get headaches regularly. Love you!

Can you believe that HR! That just blows my mind! That's even with the "stress" of going to the doctor's office. Very excited! Very cool! I'm amazed at the human body! I'm "overcome with love" as Trina says!

Current Exercise Log

2010-03-26T06:50:00.000-07:00

If you don't have access to Facebook where I push my detailed exercise log, I've downloaded a version into an Excel sheet and posted it here. You'll find more notes than what I mentioned in Thursdays blog about little squirts, Kent and Kaiya as well as other meanderings. I love logyourrun.com! So cool!

Being Kent. Being Kaiya.

2010-03-25T09:15:00.000-07:00

When I exercise, sometimes I’m like Kent (pictured left).

I want to just get out there and get the job done. I’m on a mission. When I run, I’ve got my face and eyes forward, no sniffing or looking around (at lost gloves and socks on the ground), and I’ve got lot’s of drive (pulling). I don’t want to listen to music. I want to go fast (fast as I can!). I’ve got my eye on the ball, soccer ball in his case, and I have a purpose. Obviously, I don’t herd soccer balls like Kent, but I can have the same stubbornness and determination, sometimes.

And then sometimes I’m like Kaiya (pictured right).

When Kaiya’s on a run, she’s sniffing everything and quite often stops for interesting finds, like lost gloves. They’re tasty. When I’m like her, I’m not concerned about speed, although I know I want to run and play. I like distractions, although I’ll pass on the gloves. I want to listen to music. I want to go at my own pace. I want to experience lots of cool things on the run. Kaiya loves to be in new places and meet new people. Kaiya’s mission: lick as many people as possible. Like her, I want to go on new routes. I like people on the run. I like saying hello to strangers and I like other people running with me. Kaiya likes to chase balls, run, pull the rope, chew, chase, run away. I too want to do a variety of things like biking, swimming, step class, boot camp, long walks, weight lifting, ping pong, crunches, and running, for short periods of time, rather than one thing for forever.

So what was yesterday?

Yesterday was officially a Kaiya day! I've been having a lot lately.

Pizza Everyday! Whahoo!

Like I mentioned to The Allergic Kid, I would have eaten pizza every day when I was a kid if given the choice (thanks mom for stopping me and for also limiting my Mac-n-Cheese intake!). Although I’ve learned a little--a little I tell you--self restraint and don’t need pizza every day, pizza is still a good carb to have before a long exercise. I haven’t yet perfected my crust and I’m tempted to try The Daily Dietribe’s version next. But for now, I’ve been following the recipe below. The crust doesn’t have that chewy hold-together-nicely consistency of regular wheat flour. When I store the pizza, I have to pile them on top of a plate gently and then bag it, rather than just bag it. However the toppings are what I have perfected. I LOVE lots of onions and Brussels sprouts.

Gluten Free, Egg Free, Yeast Free, Cow-Milk Free Pizza Crust

1 1/3 cups Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp your choice of oil
1 1/2 cups water (or milk substitute).
1 tsp of McCormick’s no salt Italian Spice mix (optional)
1/2 tsp of onion or garlic powder

Toppings

Cooked sliced Brussels sprouts
Ground turkey or beef
Diced bell peppers
Chopped Onions (lots; the more the merrier)
Grated Goat Cheese of choice (added to only half of the pizza so that I don’t eat cheese too often the week following)
Diced Zucchini or Yellow Squash
Hunt’s Tomato Sauce: Basil, Garlic, and Oregano

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread onto a large, oiled pizza pan (preferably with vent holes). Add the sauce. Add the toppings. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Photo Round-up Extravaganza

2010-03-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

Kevin and I have been doing a lot and taking pictures over the last month. These are just a few dog/house/cooking/physical activity events we've dealt with. Here's our lovely garage after Christmas break when Kevin had more time off (since he's a fancy pants faculty member; Love you again!). Beautiful, just beautiful!

Here's Kent and Kaiya's first night together after 6 hours of rough-housing, err, I mean "socializing."

The "Yeah for Me and You" bar stools on our newly claimed bar off the kitchen.

Excellent thumbprint cookies via Food Allergy Momma. I replaced the wheat flour with Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour and the mix was a little (a lot) too runny to retain the thumbprint, so I added a little more flour and some powdered sugar (because I ran out of the regular sugar) and they turned out to be a lot like shortbread. Very good shortbread with all-fruit jelly in the middle (and a few had some pink and white nerds on top). If I did this recipe again, I'd, first of all, buy more regular sugar, and then probably use Bob's Red mill's recipe for sugar cookies perhaps. I don't know... We'll see...

Here's a momento from our septic tank extravaganza! Over Thanksgiving, Kaiya dug us a wonderful hole right over our septic tank. On closer inspection, this hole turned into a cave when she discovered that the top of our cement septic tank was disinntegrating. Smart puppy, Kaiya! Anyway, it took us a couple of months to schedule someone to come out and fix the problem and pump the tanks (two of 'em). They did a great job and now we're smell free in the back yard! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Perhaps someone is telling us that we need to cut back on the fiber...In the words of my dad, we've got our "poop-shoot" working properly again.

Kevin and I went to help Kayla and Terrell remodel (or should I say model) their master bathroom. Had lots of fun and learned a lot. After kicking up powder-like cement dust while sawing through their slab, Kevin aged 40 years (in appearance only, of course).

Oh my! I'm excited about this news. I made homemade mayonnaise (and got it right on the first try too)! Thanks to a recipe I found on Just Hungry.com, I was able to eat mayonnaise/miracle whip recipe for the first time since high school. I substituted wine vinegar for lemon juice and I used vegitable oil (soy oil). Had to add three eggs though because evidently, I'm even more impatient than the blogger. In my opinion, I would definitely only add that second egg after you have all of the oil dripped into the first egg. Goohood stuff, man! Kevin helped boil some eggs and made side dishes so that I could try deviled eggs for the first time.

See how I eat them:

See how happy I am!

Poor Kevin had to put up with about a billion comments from me like...

Katherine: "Do you know what I did today?"

Kevin: "No, what?"

Katherine: "I had mayonnaise!"

Kevin: "Oh."

[5 seconds later]

Katherine: "Guess what I ate today?"

Kevin: "Gee biligans..."

...And that's about all I talked about the rest of the evening.

So that about raps up this week's PHOTO ROUND-UP EXTRAVAGANZA [said in deep announcer's voice]. Stay tuned for the next PHOTO ROUND-UP [cough, cough] EXTRAVA [cough, cough] GANZA! Whoohoo! Just in time too! Too much announcer voice and I'll cough up a lung. Uh huh.

Dieting on a Limited Diet

2010-03-12T08:39:00.000-08:00

I’ve written a novel, so get ready.

Yes, at some point in my life, I was “chubby Katherine.” I quit dance classes (I was taking up to 4-5 hours a week) right after elementary school and ballooned to about 120 through middle school. I can’t tell you exactly how tall I was, but let’s just say that I’m now 5 feet 4 3/4 inches now and I grew very slowly. In fact, I grew so slow that I gained about another ¼ of an inch in college. Not until I was a freshman in high school, where I became so self-conscious that I limited my diet in a bad way (probably wasn’t taking in more than maybe 1,000 calories a day) did I finally take off the weight. Then I went to college and relaxed my diet due to the lovely pallet of resident hall food options. I’ve struggled with weight off and on since then, but not to that extreme.

Quitting dance classes was not the only culprit. I’ve often believed that having food allergies and a limited diet has often made me more food conscious, which is a topic Iris brought up. Thus, when I find a replacement for a favorite food that’s on my no-no list, I’ll eat way more than I should. When I add a new food to my diet, like rice, I’ll go a little overboard. Or when I start getting more headaches, I’ll start throwing food out of my diet like water from a sinking ship and be so scared of the pain that it takes me years to try the food again, and I’ll lose 10 pounds in two weeks during the process.

Within the past year, though, Kevin and I decided to start eating healthier. Kevin wanted to kick his candy habit; he’s one of those wonderful people who must eat about a pound of candy a day in order to gain any type of weight (love you!). I started training for the half marathon and needed to lose some weight to make it as pain-free as possible.

Now, there is one major thing that I have to do in order to maintain or lose weight on my limited diet.

Exercise.

I’m not talking binge exercising, where you go out and run your first-ever 3 miles at a scary pace each day for a week and then stop because you burn yourself out. I’m talking “slow but steady wins the race.” I’m talking a cardiovascular activity that you do at least three times a week for thirty minutes. Something that you know you can handle for years at a time and can maintain and, if interested, build on steadily. With that in mind, the following diet tips and tricks have helped me to lose weight and keep it at a steady 132 for the past year. Again, I'm not a dietition or have a degree in kinesiology, so these are just what I've found helpful.

10 Keys for Maintaining and Losing Weight on My Limited Diet:

Sugar free gum. This is something that I’ve seen promoted in pop culture (Biggest Looser), but, beyond the hype, we’ve found it quite helpful. Gum is great for three reasons: to chew while you’re making food so that you don’t snack, to chew right after a meal instead of going back for seconds, and to chew during those times that you feel like snacking for no reason other than because you’re bored or craving a food. We’ll eventually wean ourselves off the family-sized packs of gum at some point, but we’re not knocking it right now.
Water and plenty of Sugar free, salt free, and potassium free flavored drink mixes. I’ve quite often mistaken hunger for thirst in the belly, so I find it’s important to drink plenty of water. But water all the time can be rather…blah. So I sometimes add no or low calorie drinks. My favorite healthy soda used to be Diet Rite sodas because they’re calorie free, carb free, salt free, and caffeine free, but the local Wal-mart doesn’t have those here. So, I’ve switched to the Great Value brand drink mixes (gotta be picky because some add salt, caffeine and that makes me thirstier and hungrier).
No caffeine. Talk about a drug that can make you soar and plummet all within a couple of hours. Besides the nasty headache side effects, it’s just not good for maintaining a constant energy level in my body.
Limit the salt. What goes with tasty salty French fries? A 48 oz/gallon of sugary soda, of course. Then the salt makes you retain all that liquid. I personally can tell the difference in my running if I’ve had lots of salt beforehand. And if it shows up on a run when my body is forced to be as efficient as possible in order go, go, go, then it’s probably not so good for the bod at other times during the day either.
Fiber. Like Farty Girl suggests, it cleans the pipes. Now, if you’re staying away from gluten like me, chances are you’re already eating more fiber than the average person, so adding more might not be necessary. But let me just say that lettuce, carrots, and tomatoes have a limited amount of fiber in comparison to squash, celery, spinach, and beans. Salad doesn’t cut it for me.
Tums. Taking calcium in the morning and in the evening also tends to make me less likely to gorge. And berry flavored Tums are tasty for a girl who doesn't drink cow milk.
Frequent small meals. My metabolism speeds up if I split up my meals into smaller portions, especially lunch. I’ll have breakfast at 8:00 am, then a main dish at 11:00 am or 12:00 pm, then I’ll have another snack around 2:00 pm and then I’ll have a quick snack when I get home at 5:00 pm, then we’ll eat dinner. If I’m trying to maintain my weight, I’ll eat until I’m full for each meal, but if I’m trying to lose weight I’ll eat until I’m almost full.
Reduce the carbohydrate intake. Again, this is not so hard considering I can’t eat wheat, but it also means that I can’t just pile on the rice and corn products either. I’m placing sugar in this category too. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t eat candy unless someone gives me a piece or two or if I’m visiting someone and I treat it like a treat (love your after dinner mints Kayla and Terrell!).
Working away from home. I always make my lunch and snack the night before work. This also helps to make sure that (1) I don’t eat out and (2) I don’t over snack during at least 5 days a week. I’m limited by what I bring, so I just bring enough. Weekends are harder, but I can’t be perfect all the time!
Not eating after 8 pm (or three hours before bed). This deadline gives the food time to digest and do some productive things in my body rather than sit and fester in my gut as I sleep. Kevin and I both seem to actually feel hungrier in the morning if we eat too late. Again, this is easier during the work week and hard on the weekend or on vacations.

Whoo! Now, you’ll notice, a lot of my keys to dieting don’t actually take food away. For me, that is so important! I’ve had enough food taken away that I’m going to take pleasure in all food that doesn’t make me feel bad (in moderate ways, of course). Take salad dressing, for instance. Since I’ve started using wine vinegar I’ve been making my own salad dressing and it does contain sugar. But, as long as I don’t saturate my salads, it’s a healthy treat. See my recipe below. It’s been modified from a recipe I found only (sorry, don’t know where it came from).

Wine Vinegar Italian Dressing

6 tb oil
2 tb white wine vinegar
2 tb parsley
1 tb lemon or lime juice
1/4 tsp dried minced garlic
1 tsp dried basil
¼ tsp dried crushed red pepper
Pinch dried oregano
2 tsp sugar, honey, or agave nectar (might try Splenda as a sub)

Fitness Goals For 2010 and Beyond, Plus Yeehaw Pralines

2010-03-04T11:45:00.000-08:00

So now that’ I’ve accomplished the big half-marathon goal, what’s next and why? I have a few short-term and a few long-term goals in mind. It’s important for me to have fitness goals to keep me from growing stagnant, especially in my run. It’s easy to say, get sick with a cold (hmm…that sounds rather familiar), be forced to eliminate exercise for a week, and then not really go back out there for a run on a 35 degree day because it doesn’t sound all that fun. It’s really easy. But when I make a goal for myself, it forces me to get back out there and keep training. The goals don’t have to be extreme either. It could be, “I want to decrease my time running the mile by 10-20 seconds” or “I’m going to walk one more block in addition to my regular walk every three days.” So, instead of just running and generally exercising in order to ward off the allergies, which almost seems a little too much like popping a pill, I like to train for a race every now and then.

Now, I’m not sure if Kevin and I’ll be ready for the Striders Duathlon below on April 18 because we haven’t even aired up the tires on the road bikes. We’ve mainly been using the recumbent stationary bike, and that’s not quite the same; doesn’t use the same muscle groups and it’s easy to overheat and then lower the resistance because you don’t have that natural wind that comes from using a real bike.

Short-Term Goals

Striders Duathlon, San Angelo, TX: http://www.ironheadrp.com/striders/index.html
DF Ranch Triathlon, Sweetwater, TX: https://fastfeetracing.com/df_Ranch_Triathlon.html
Prude Ranch Races Half Marathon: http://www.halfmarathons.net/usa_half_marathons_texas_prude_ranch_races_half_marathon.html
ASU Turkey Trot 2010

Long-Term Goals

Run a 10:20 pace Half Marathon (don’t know if that’s going to happen with the hilly Prude Ranch Race that Trina is wanting to run)
Run a Full Marathon (preferably on relatively flat ground)

Now that I’ve got some goals, it’s good to have some comfort food too. Below is a recipe that my mom and I created on New Year’s Eve, 2006. It’s milk free, gluten free, soy free, and egg free. These are extra rich and sugary, but if you freeze the batch you can eat them over a long period of time and not feel too guilty like I did when I scarfed down at least 3 or 4 (or was it 5 or 6 or 7 or 8) after making them. If you’re from Texas, pralines are a tradition, and there’s no need to go without them when you’ve got food allergies! It’s been modified from a local German cookbook that my mom’s had for years (the recipe’s called Texas Pralines or Texanische Pralinen). This recipe is also good with walnuts and other similarly softish nuts).

Yeehaw (…I hence forth call them) Pecan Pralines

2 cups sugar
¾ cup coconut milk (in the can; look for it in the Asian food section at Wal-mart)
½ tsp baking soda
1 ½ cups pecans
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp coconut oil

Cook first three ingredients together in a heavy-metal pot (without non-stick surface) until the syrup forms a “soft ball” in water (which is about at 235 degrees F). Remove from stove and add the last three ingredients. Beat until mixture begins to hold its shape. Drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper and let cool.

Allergy or Intolerance? That is the Question.

2010-02-26T14:37:00.000-08:00

It looks like MSN took down the article that talked about allergies versus intolerances, so I’ve found another article on MSN that demonstrates what I wanted to talk about two bloggings ago. So why comment on either articles? Let’s compare this article’s descriptions of allergies and intolerances with my experiences with disagreeable food.

Food Allergy Symptoms

Hives
Swollen tongues or lips
Dizziness
Fainting
Death
Quick reaction
Small amounts of food trigger reactions
No cure

Food Intolerance Symptoms

Cramping
Diarrhea
Gas
Bloating
Rashes
Asthma attacks
Not life-threatening
Small amounts of intolerable food can be tolerated
Curable

Katherine’s Symptoms

Red face
Runny nose
Swelling nasal cavity (nasal headaches)
Migraines
Digestive issues
Rash
Quick reactions and slow depending on the food
Some problem food can be tolerated some can’t
Don’t have problems with lactose in goat milk or problems with beans

It’s articles like these that make me just shake my head. Where do I stand? I’ve got symptoms that fall in both categories and symptoms that don’t fall in either. Food problems, call them intolerances or allergies, are way more complicated than what this brief article suggests. They seem to be catering only two groups of people: (a) people who either have extreme reactions (ie. get me to the hospital before I stop breathing because my face now resembles something akin to Suffleupagus) or (b) people who can get a quick fix (ie. I’ll just pop a Beano and a Lactaid and horse down a plateful of refried beans and Ben and Jerry’s). I’m not in either of these categories.

So what do I do?

Move on. Doctors don’t know everything about the human body. Science is not exact and perfect. I take solace in the fact that only God knows how and why we are the way we are and maybe we can ask him a few questions once we see him. As for right now, I try to relax, eat a slice of GF Bread From Anna, drink a cup of soy milk, take a 3 mile run (after fully digesting said meal of course), and then watch some Little House on the Prairie (season 5 I believe). I do what makes me feel good, health-wise, and every once in a while, I try a new food, theory, or exercise to broaden my horizon.

By the way, I’ve confirmed that I’m good with rice.

Out Sick...

2010-02-25T10:36:00.000-08:00

I'll be back soon...hopefully.

Rice Update Again

2010-02-19T11:38:00.000-08:00

I didn't die yesterday. I didn't feel 100%, but there are so many factors that go into how I'm feeling on a day-to-day basis, that I'm relatively hopeful it had nothing to do with the rice. I felt like my sinuses were a little swollen (I know, Dad; TMI, right?) but that's pretty much it. And the symptoms only lasted a couple of hours. Could be spring pollen??? I'll continue to have a "regular rice" day here and there and enjoy a few tasty treats that I've been missing over the years (over 6 1/2 years to be precise) unless I start showing more symptoms. Yeah me, I get to eat regular rice! Yeah Kevin, he gets to benefit from me eating regular rice!

Rice Update and Elimination Diets

2010-02-18T12:29:00.000-08:00

If you are a Catholic or a part of another traditional Christian sect, right now you might be giving up something for Lent. Well, imagine if you had to give it up, in the words of Squints from the 1993 movie The Sandlot,

“FOR-EV-ER, FOR-EV-ER, FOR-EV-ER.”

Epic movie, I know!

Well, I’m hoping to bring back a food that I haven’t seen in a very long time: rice.

No, not Rice, Rice, or Rice, but rice as seen in the picture to the right.

I can’t confirm that I am not allergic to rice yet. I decided to wait until Thursday (today) to try out some more rice. I’m having it for lunch, so within 4-5 hours after I eat I should see whether I have a reaction or not to this wonderful form of carb. But this rice trial and Farty Girl’s comment brings up an interesting topic: the elimination diet. I’ve been practicing the elimination diet for years, so I’ve kind of forgotten that it’s “not normal” and may need some explanation.

The link I’ve provided above should give you the basics about the elimination diet. But I’ve diagramed this wonderfully nerve-racking process below.

Basically, you eliminate foods from your diet that could potentially be allergens, then you stay away from them for at least a week or so, then you add them back into your diet one by one. If you don’t have a reaction when you add something back, then you’re golden; birds are chirping, the sun is out, you have a million dollars, you’re HD cable is coming to you free of charge, you’re beautiful (or handsome), and the world is a wonderful place. But if you add something back and you have a reaction, it’s “goodbye tasty foodie.”

It’s relatively easy to remove things from your diet temporarily, like during Lent. But adding the food back during an elimination diet…let’s just say it's not quite a cause for celebration. It's a two-fold problem: you’re afraid of losing the food in the long term and your afraid of the pain (for me it’s always a migraine) in the short term. It’s a role of the dice, is a flip of a coin to see what’s going to happen and it’s such an emotional as well as a physical experience.

Hopefully I’ll have good news and post another blog soon. As a side note, Kevin and I will be going to purchase a stationary bike this evening. We did our taxes and know that we’re in the black, so now it’s time to celebrate. Yeah bike! Yeah for me and you and me and you and me and YO-U! If I have a reaction to the rice, I’ll be able to work it off in no time with this wonderful machine.

Because I’d planned long ago to talk about elimination diets this week, I’ll decline to “respond” to an article at http://health.msn.com/health-topics/digestive-health/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100244085>1=32023 (you might have to copy and paste), but I want to link it here just in case the article goes away. That’s something for next week’s blog for sure!

In the meantime enjoy this spectacular soy muffin recipe. It’s heavy on the beans so go easy on them until you’ve hardened your gut to the steal-like shape of those in Glenn, Katrina, and the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. This isn't my recipe, but it's been so long since we found it, I'm really not sure where it came from. Sorry!

The Easiest Soy Muffins You’ll Ever Make

3 large eggs (or substitute)
1/2 cup oil
3/4 cup honey
1 cup water
2 cups soy flour
2 tsp baking soda
1-1 ½ tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
Blueberries to taste (optional)

Mix liquid and dry ingredients in separate bowls. Pour the liquid into dry. Put in blueberries. Place into greased muffin pans or use the paper cup thingy's that Kevin and I never seem to bring home from Wal-mart. Bake at 370 degrees for 20 minutes. FYI: the more blueberries you put in, the longer it will take to bake.

Food Breakthrough!!!!

2010-02-15T08:50:00.000-08:00

I tried regular brown rice yesterday for dinner, and I haven't had any reactions as of late. I'm not counting my chickens until I try it again on Wednesday. I'd hate to have the same experience that I did with peanuts (I had peanuts and didn't have a reaction, then I had them a week later and didn't feel so hot). But this could potentially open up a wealth of gluten free recipes that usually contain some form of rice flour.

[This is Katherine trying very hard not to get too excited] WHOPPIEEE!!!! Um...ahem...I mean...I'm not holding my breath or crossing my fingers.....

Challenge Update #1 and a New Look

2010-02-11T13:14:00.000-08:00

Kaiya having fun in the bathroom while recovering from surgery.

Kent having fun in the kitchen because he was just too darn small to push out side.

Well, my blog’s been sporting a new look for a little over a day now. I wanted to make my blog a little more personal so I added some “allergic to sitting” bling. I’ll keep tweaking as I view my blog in other browsers and on other monitors. It may take a while before I get the look that’s just right.

I won’t bore you with too many Challenge updates; only those that bring insight into our lifestyle and health. But a couple of bloggings ago, I mentioned that Kevin and I entered into the “Spring into ASUFit” Challenge and we’re counting our minutes of exercise each week. In doing so, we’re finding that we weren’t actually spending a lot of “time” exercising before the challenge, just “effort.” For example, we’d go run three miles on Mondays (30 minutes for me, 20-something for him), rest Tuesdays, cross train on Wednesdays (30-60 minutes), rest Thursday and Friday, bust out on a long run on Saturdays (1-2 hours), then rest Sundays. It seems like a lot of exercise, but if you count all of that up, that’s only 2-3 hours of workouts each week. We were efficient, but not continuous fitness nuts.

Now, we’re continuously exercising. We’ve started attending a free fitness class on Mondays called “Boot Camp” and it’s kicking some serious booty (pardon the pun). My quads are still a little stiff from the billions of lunge-type moves we were bustin’ (at least I’m not wincing any more when I stand up or sit down). And the big thing that’s giving us minutes is the dog walking. Now that the puppies are outside and wittle Kent is getting bigger, we like to go on 30 minute walks around the neighborhood. Where before now our kitchen and bathroom looked like the pigsty above due to Kaiya’s surgery and Kent’s smallness. Those are shredded “wee” pads mind you…

In addition, we’re keeping track of other times that we’re walking about, like when we’re shopping for long periods of time. Take yesterday, I went to Hobby Lobby and walked the isles for an hour and 40 minutes after doing a 2 mile run. Now, I’m not reaching my target heart rate while shopping, but I can guarantee that I was burning more calories than sitting on in my recliner sippin’ diet Sprite. I’m all for a shopping diet.

I wuv Hobby Bobby [said in baby voice]!

So far my team has racked up an average of 348 minutes a week (we’re competing against weekly averages). My personal total for last week was 362 minutes (Kevin had 390, the cheater…hee hee). Although we’re not in first place by any means, we’re having a lot of fun and it’s inspiring us to get out of the house.

Speaking of out of the house, I’ve “sampled” some excellent home-baked, gluten free, milk free, soy free but full of taste cookies this past week. By sample, I mean “quality tasted at least 5 cookies in one sitting.” I found one recipe online and baked it last weekend by substituting almond butter for the peanut butter it calls for (see it at http://www.recipetips.com/recipe-cards/t--2736/gluten-free-peanut-butter-cookies.asp). This recipe is so simple it hurts! It’s got five ingredients if you leave out the chocolate chips. And it’s high in protein. Good for those laying off the carbs. The cookies turn out to be crunchy and salty sweet! The Food Allergy Blog recommended squishing down the cookies before baking, which I did, but I don’t think that was even necessary. Perhaps it’s a difference of nut butters…

The other recipe I kind of sorta forgot to get from my ma-n-law, but she took a recipe that also normally calls for peanut butter and she substituted almond butter as well (except she made her’s from scratch by using a little coconut oil and a food processor). Her recipe turned out to be oatmeal, chewy deliciousness! I’ll share the recipe as soon as I can get it next. Or Sandy, you could post it in the comment section if you’d like?

While I’m working off the cookie calories in the Challenge, I hope you have a great rest of the week!

Spices, spices, more spices, and more spices, and more spices, and more spices, and more spices, and MORE SPICES!

2010-02-04T11:04:00.000-08:00

People have mentioned to me that I have quite a few spices. Well, my name is Katherine and I come from a long line of spice-aholics (I also come from a long line of German bowlers and Potter Heads----Harry Potter that is, but that’s for another blog entry).

[ALL intone at the Spice-aholics Anonymous (SAA) meeting] “Hello Katherine.”

Yes, hi. Hi there.

My mom’s spice cabinet is always overflowing into other cabinets in the kitchen. But when I moved away to college, it didn’t really catch on. I had your traditional salt, pepper, onion/garlic powder, and chili powder. However, I started collecting more when I had to remove all gluten, corn, milk, yeast, grapes (a lot of which I’ve added back).

Why is that?

Well, just think about a meal stereotypically eaten by non-allergy prone, but well balanced dieters, John and Jane Doe. John and Jane like to fix some regular dinner rolls, fried chicken, and a salad with some carrots and celery. Let’s just say this stuff is all homemade so that they can choose not to deep-fry stuff or work with filler ingredients. What would John and Jane do once they’ve finished cooking and are ready to sit down and eat?

They break out the stick of margarine, maybe go for some gravy, add a little ketchup for John Jr. (yup, they’ve got a kid), and top off the salad with some thousand island dressing.

Holy cow! We’ve got a lot of ingredients here. Even if I replace the bread with a gluten-free recipe, try to batter the chicken with coconut flour (I’ve done it and it’s really good tasting!), and try alternate recipes for ketchup and salad dressing, the meal isn’t quite the same. It’s tasty, but it just doesn’t have that zing to it that comes with a tasty store-bought butter, dressing, etc. So basically, when John, Jane, and John Jr. cook up zucchini like my husband and I often do, they probably either fry it or steam it with butter, salt, and pepper. These simple ingredients have a lot of flavor and there’s really no need for anything else. But when I can’t have the butter, ketchup, gravy, etc . I turn to SPICES!!!

Here’s a look in my two spice racks. One picture is kind of deceiving because I’ve got the spices stacked up on two big turn-tables, so there are several rows not pictured.

I’ve also added a recipe below that’s heavy on the spice and quite tasty. This one’s a seafood salad modified from a recipe that my mom likes to use (which normally calls for mayonnaise and mustard). We like to double, triple, or quadruple the recipe depending on how much leftovers we want and the price of shrimp.

Seafood Salad
1 c shrimp
2 chopped hard boiled eggs
1/2 c of chopped celery
1/4 c chopped onion
1/2 c chopped cucumbers
1 chopped red bell pepper (or jar of pimientos)
1/4 c of your choice of oil (I like sunflower)
1 tbsp of your choice of vinegar (wine for me please, but no cheese…)
1/8 c dried parsley
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper (or to taste)
1 tsp of powdered mustard

Rinse your shrimp (very important! don’t want E. coli). Combine all of the wet ingredients with the chopped veggies and shrimp. Then add the spices and mix. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

Terrable, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Health Week

2010-02-01T11:00:00.000-08:00

Sorry to have missed the last blog. I didn't have such a great week health-wise and it actually has nothing to do with allergies. We're (yes Kevin caught it too) still using the vinegar treatments for the foot fungus which seems to be working, but I succumbed to a variety of other problems, including a case of UTI, digestive issues because of the antibiotic I'm taking to combat the UTI, my monthly bill, and headaches brought on by the monthly bill because I haven't been able to exercise because of the UTI. N-E-ways, the good news is that Kaiya has recovered from her surgery, Kent is outside with Kaiya after an all-evening counseling session on Friday between the two, and we have new bar stools. Yeah for bar stools!!!! Yeah for no "grunt" on the kitchen floor!!!!

I just wanted to provide a quick update. Kevin and I have joined a Fitness and Wellness Challenge team here on campus. Starting yesterday, we're counting all of the minutes that we spend exercising each week and then we're sending our minutes to our team captain, who then averages our minutes, and sends it on to ASUFit, who, after 10 weeks of Challenge, will give out a free lunch and medal and trophy awards. So far, I've got 46 minutes counting today and yesterday. Yeah for bar stools, no "grunt," and 46 minutes!!!! I'll post something more exciting Thursday.

Kent: The New Addition to the Family

2010-01-21T09:34:00.000-08:00

Causes sleepless nights, toy stealing, lots of mopping, additional trips to the vet, interruptions during CSI, but he's the cuddliest puppy I've ever known. He likes to wrestle with Kaiya and has the cutest little growl. His full name is Klark Kent (he's really shy when you first meet him, but he's Superdog when you get to know him). He's our new puppywuppy and he's all we can think about this week. That, and the fact that Kaiya's going to get fixed tomorrow so she probably won't feel like taking part in one of my long runs this weekend. In the next week or so Kevin and I are going to try to transition him into staying outside during the day.

Recipe for this Week: Boil Your Meats

Making meat dishes that have only the ingredients you can tolerate can be a part-time job sometimes. So, Kevin and I have taken to boiling chicken and hams (for boiled ham instructions see my previous post for Purloo). It's easy, you can do other things while it's cooking, it tastes good, and you can use the chicken broth for soups, in replacement for oils in stir-fry dishes, and it's healthy. Chicken usually takes about 2 hours to cook. I personally enjoy getting a pack of 8 to 10 thighs (good dark meat that's still healthy), rinsing them off, peeling off the skin, and sticking 'em in a pot of water. For a quick side, you might try making some mashed potatoes using this cool technique of peeling the potatoes. Thanks for the link, Mom!

Stomach Problems Galore! And Disaster Recipes

2010-01-14T12:54:00.000-08:00

Lately, several people close to me have been experiencing some digestion…let’s call them “inconveniences.” Bill, my boss got some kind of 24-48 hour stomach bug that was “really uncomfortable.” Kayla, Terrell, Sandy, and Glenn all came down with food poisoning after eating at one of their favorite restaurants. Dixie “The Pug” had to lend her body heat and moral support in order to help Glenn and Sandy recover. Kayla’s pregnant (Yeah!!!!), but that means some foods just don’t sound/smell/taste right. And even Maverick, Kayla and Terrell’s border collie, decided he wanted in on the fun and decided to eat himself some pecans with the shells still on them, which then led to an unfortunate drooling session, no appetite, and a very high vet bill (Kevin and I got the funniest/saddest email from Terrell narrating the whole unfortunate tale; we hope he gets to feeling better).

Now, I personally must puke once a year. It’s a tradition. I’ve given up fighting it. However, I haven’t come down sick yet. So, while I await the inevitable, I wanted to look back on some of my alternative food experiments gone wrong. Most of my cooking experiments have not ended in some sort of digestive disaster. But for the one that did, I will just describe the ingredients and not the graphic events that unfolded. Some of you who know me might have heard these stories already, but I thought they were worth mentioning again for posterity sake.

Chewy PancakesBack when I was dating Kevin, we discovered flour made from Tapioca. We thought, “what a cool thing!” A flour that’s not made from wheat or other grain is exactly what I needed at the time. So we ended up with several bags of the stuff and started thinking about what food we’d like to replicate. I love pancakes. I missed pancakes. So we tried to make pancakes with tapioca flour and our current knowledge about regular pancake recipes.

Let’s think about this for a second. What consistency does tapioca pudding have? It’s kind of a Jello or gel like substance, right? So we ended up making something that looked very similar to a pancake, smelled like a pancake, tasted like a pancake, but the consistency was quite “off.” The best tapioca pancake that we came up with was something akin to a round, flat pancake-flavored gummy bear. Would you eat a round, flat pancake flavored gummy bear for breakfast some Saturday morning? Enough said. After some experience with the flour, it’s best left in pudding and, sparingly, in soups and gravy to thicken them up a bit.

Whipped Goats Milk
Kevin and I recently discovered goat milk about a year ago. We’ve been able to find it at Wal-mart and most grocery stores that have any kind of an alternative food section. It’s a little bit stronger than cow milk, but I haven’t had the real thing in so long that it tastes the same to me. We also noticed that you can buy canned evaporated goat milk as well. Since we had such great success at making ice cream by substituting goat milk for cow milk (can’t taste the difference according to Kevin), we thought we’d try our hand at whipped cream.

So we invited our friend from graduate school, Lonie, over and made ice cream out of the refrigerated goat milk and whipped cream out of the evaporated milk. Let’s just say that the canned goat milk has a definite funk to it. I’d equate the taste of this stuff to that grass/dander smell that often hovers around horses, goats, cows and other livestock. Not a pretty picture. If you want to make whipped cream from goat milk, I’d suggest finding the fresh milk with a much higher fat content instead of going the canned route. Just an FYI.

Rapidly Multiplying Cookie Recipe
If you have a cookie recipe that calls for potato flour and you’ve run out of another ingredient required in your recipe, don’t add more potato flour. It’ll turn into burnt mashed potatoes on a pan. You’ll have to add so many more ingredients to compensate, that you’ll make 5 dozen cookies by the time you’re done. That’s what happened to me. They were good but we had them around FOREVER.

Coconut Pizza
About a year after the gooey pancake incident, Kevin and I found a new flour made from coconuts. This stuff smells wonderful and even tastes good by itself if you happen to get some on your hands while baking. We found a great recipe book online where you can make all sorts of dishes from chicken fried steak, to cake. However, before we got the recipe book and before we educated ourselves with the almighty Google, I decided to make a coconut flour pizza crust. I took a really simple no-yeast recipe that calls for water, flour, oil, salt, and baking powder and substituted the wheat flour for coconut. Easy? Yes. It tasted pretty good too (a lot sweeter crust, but still good).

The night that I made the pizza and the next day, I spent a lot of time in the bathroom with what I thought was just a random digestion problem. No big deal. It happens. But it just wasn’t going away. Kevin mentioned that maybe we should look at the nutritional information on the package of flour. Lo and behold, we found our answer! The serving size for coconut flour, according to the back of the back of the bag, is 2 tablespoons. In two tablespoons, you can get 23% of your daily diet of fiber. But, and here's the kicker, we used 2 and 2/3 cups of coconut flour for the pizza crust. I had 3 pieces of pizza (approx. 3/8 of the total pizza). Kevin did the math. With those three pieces of pizza, I ended up with approximately 225% of my daily fiber needs in one meal. If someone didn't know me better, they might think I was trying to kill myself with fiber. Too bad I didn't know about the fiber content until after I had another slice of pizza the next day and decided to experiment with coconut flour in a cookie recipe (I had ten small cookies the next day).

Instead of a RecipeAbove are just a few of the problems we’ve run into while trying to come up with new and tasty recipes. Cooking is a science: its chemistry. So it’s no wonder we’ve had our share of setbacks. If you’ve made a few alternative food recipes yourself, I’d love to hear about them. I’ve enabled the comment section so that you don’t have to have a blog in order to comment on my blog.Instead of providing a recipe for this week, I thought I’d list out some of the alternative foods that I have *successfully* used in replacement of common ingredients. There are many other substitutions out there; this is just the list of ingredients that don’t seem to give me any reaction.

Allergen: Oils/Butter/Margarine
Substitute: Corn, Coconut, Grapeseed, Sunflower, Nut Oils (i.e. Walnut), Sesame (strong flavor)
Allergen: Wheat Flour
Substitute: Coconut, Gluten-Free All-Purpose, Soy, Potato, Tapioca, Pinto Bean, Chickpea
Allergen: Cereals
Substitute: Corn Flakes (i.e. Frosted Flakes or GV), Buckwheat, Oatmeal
Allergen: Noodles/Pasta/Carbohydrates
Substitute: Corn Spaghetti Short-Grain Sweet Rice, Potatoes
Allergen: Cow Milk
Substitute: Coconut, Goat's Milk, Almond/Soy
Allergen: Artificial Sweeteners
Substitute: Sugar, Splenda, Honey, Agave Nectar, Beet Sugar
Allergen: Chicken Eggs
Substitute: Egg Substitute (preferable), Egg (in limited amounts)
Allergen: Flour Tortilla
Substitute: Corn tortilla, Tapioca Sheets
Allergen: Vinegar
Substitute: Wine Vinegar

Why Run So Long? And Mmm, Mmm Cookies!

2010-01-07T14:29:00.000-08:00

I completed my first half marathon last weekend at the Resolution Run. Yeah! I didn’t meet my 10:30 per mile goal, but I did make it just under 11 minutes per mile (check out my running log on the right or the race results here for detailed info). Thanks to everyone who inspired, encouraged, and helped me build up to the race!

I was thinking about doing another half sometime in the next few weeks while I’m still in shape, but I don’t think I’ll make it. All upcoming races are out of town (Austin and Dallas), they cost a lot more money, and I’m running out of mental poop for this season. I’m ready to move on to some cross training, which mainly includes swimming, hiking, and biking. Speaking of “mental poop,” this brings up the topic of racing in general.

Before the break, I had an interesting question posed to me by Chris at a Christmas party. He asked me "why would you want to run a half marathon." At the time I answered "because of health reasons and because it's a challenge." I went on to elaborate about how running has helped me and my allergy problems, how many foods I’ve added back into my diet, how using races help inspire me to keep running. But afterwards I got to thinking, there’s a billion reasons to run a half marathon. And I don’t think that any one reason can stand alone.

I love the feeling of complete exhaustion after a really long run. My lungs feel heavy and relaxed, I feel sleepy, I’m hungry, so then I eat a good meal, shower-up, and take the most spectacular nap ever.

I love how deep I sleep while at night while I’m training. No dreams. No waking up in the middle of the night. When I do wake up in the morning, I’m ready to tackle the day instead of sleep some more.

I love the alone time to think about things. All kinds of things. I can think about curtain colors, the color of the sky, or my coloring face as my heart beats hard and fast. Long runs are great for reformatting the old hard drive.

I love when other people run with me. Although it’s hard to find someone who runs at your same pace and who wants to run at the same time, but when you do find someone, it’s fun! Especially on long runs. I used to sing to Trina (although badly) while we were both training on Burma Road over the summer.

I love running long distances because it’s like reading a book that I just can’t quite put down.

I could go on and on and on about my reason for running long distances like half marathons. There is no one reason for me, and I’m sure that my reasons are a little bit different than other people. It’s a hobby, but a passionate one. You’ll rarely find someone out there running 13.1 miles because they “just” randomly felt like running. Anyway, I’m sure this won’t be quite satisfactory for skeptics out there, but if you equate running long distances to some other hobby or exercise that your passionate about, you’ll get it.

Below is my first ever successful gluten-free, egg-free, milk-free, corn-free cookie recipe that I developed after craving cookies like mad. I hadn’t been running for very long (this was about 3-4 years ago) and I hadn’t added so many foods back into my diet, so I’ve got a few funky ingredients in this recipe. The trick is to make the cookies small and bake them slowly so they don’t burn (so you might have to adjust the temperature a bit). Make sure to flatten the cookies and, also, don’t try to add more baking soda or powder in order to get the cookies to rise more. More rising ingredients will make them taste like metal.

Cinnamon Almond Cookies

1 cup almond flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup potato flour
1 cup coconut milk (canned)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp vanilla (optional)
Coconut oil for pans

If you can't purchase almond flour at your local health food store, just buy some raw almonds (make sure you get them without other oils) and use a food processor to grind them up as small as you can. Add all of the dry ingredients together first, then add the wet after. Grease two pans with coconut oil. Take a teaspoonful of dough for each cookie. Flatten each cookie once they’re on the pan.

Makes about 30 little cookies or so.

Um...was I blogging...

2009-12-26T07:04:00.000-08:00

Watching movies, shopping, and eating lots of Turkey [munch munch), homemade cranberry sauce [munch munch], and spectacular peppery, orange zesty, pecan goodness [munch munch munch]. I will return to blogging the Thursday after January 4th and report my results from the half marathon (unless I get the hankering for a good blog before then). Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!