Rice Update and Elimination Diets

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.