In Other News, I Am Now Gluten-Free

It's been a while since I've posted anything on here! I don't have any recipes of my own to share, but I can talk a little bit about what I've been cooking. Since I've begun making menus ahead of time and buying groceries accordingly, the quality of the food I cook has skyrocketed. I spend all of my free time cooking, and I just can't get over how much I enjoy it. I'm still cooking primarily nothing but recipes out of Veganomicon, and I am beginning to think Isa and Terry must be goddesses, because there's no way that two humans could create that many perfect recipes. I have yet to be disappointed with a single recipe.

Probably one of my favorite meals I've made from that cookbook was the Greek tofu benedict. I seriously cannot describe how much I loved it. I chose to serve it on top of home fries, which was a very good decision (and it felt most Greek to me, considering I ate roasted potatoes two or three times a day, every day, in Greece). The dill-tahini sauce was fantastic, and almost reminiscent of sour cream (I think I put too much lemon juice in it though, so it was more acidic than it was supposed to be - very good though). I might have to make that meal again soon because it was way too fabulous.

Another meal I made that I had to take a picture of because it was pretty was the Walnut-Crusted Apple-Cranberry Salad Pie from Vegan Planet. Essentially a waldorf salad in a walnut/date crust without lettuce. Unfortunately, it didn't serve well, and instead of looking like cute little piece of salad pie, it was more like a weird mess of apples and date chunks. I'm not sure what I did wrong. It tasted good though! I used raisins instead of cranberries, in case you care.

As of April 27th, I am officially gluten-free. My Crohn's is having a flare, and I'm hoping to stop the inflammation naturally. I usually get flares several times a year and, compared with the flares of typical Crohn's patients, mine are pretty mild. I've never gotten diarrhea, and typically only have bleeding (along with severe fatigue). It usually goes away on its own after a while, but this time it hasn't. So after talking with my GI, TCM, and integrative medicine doctors, we're going to try to take care of this using only alternative treatments. My TCM doctor prescribed a new herbal tea formula for me (the tea tastes like poison but hopefully it works), and I might see her soon for acupuncture. I'm also going to add boswellia supplements, in addition to the turmeric I'm already taking. But I've decided on my own to try for at least a couple weeks to eat a gluten-free diet. Gluten is a very inflammatory food, so even if it doesn't cause me to stop bleeding, it's probably still a good food for me or anyone with IBD to avoid. 

These are some gluten-free chickpea cutlets I made. My favorite recipe out of Veganomicon has always been the chickpea cutlets, and when I decided to go gluten-free, the first thing I thought was "oh my god, no more chickpea cutlets!". Thankfully, there's other people who have had the same horrible realization as me and have already come up with a gluten-free version. I used this recipe, and it was great. Instead of using the chia/flax slurry, I used xanthan gum, which worked well.

Unrelated to food, health, or veganism —— On the April 30th, I went with a couple of friends to see MGMT perform in Portland. Totally going to brag about the fact that I've been to that theater three times and gotten front row every time. It's actually ridiculously easy to get front row there; you only have to show up like an hour or two early. But seriously, MGMT was incredible. I'd seen mixed reviews online about how well they perform live, but they were way better than I ever could have imagined. I think the only reason they might not be best live was because they seemed rather uncomfortable on stage; they didn't move at all (well, to be fair, Ben was sitting, so he couldn't), and I don't think they ever made eye contact with the audience. The setlist was perfect, with a great variety from both albums plus several new songs. Siberian Breaks was magical. Electric Feel was fantastic, and the audience went crazy. This was possibly one of my favorite concerts I've attended. Also, shout out to Andrew and Ben for being the two most beautiful people on the entire planet. Here's some crappy quality photos taken on my crappy quality phone (I know my friends took better pictures, but hey, I don't have Instagram, so I'll never see them!).

Reflecting on My Health & Diet in 2012

I can't believe it's already a new year! 2012 seemed to go by so quickly. I spent the first half of the year totally focused on my trip, fundraising, shopping, daydreaming, you name it. After I got back from Europe and had finally accepted the fact that I live in America and not a beautiful city in the Mediterranean, I began to spend most of my free time researching nutrition and plant-based diets. Up until this summer, I was still eating Oreos, Ritz Crackers, and all junk food that can technically be classified as "vegan". I had never heard of seitan and spinach was my least favorite food (which is a shock, considering I eat it at least two times a day now). There were a few things this summer that sparked my desire to try a true plant-based diet. While I was overseas, I do remember the food being one of the most fascinating aspects of the trip. Everything we ate was so pure, whole, organic. I had always hated tomatoes, but in Greece and Italy the tomatoes tasted like an entirely different food. And so did the cucumbers, potatoes, peppers, apricots, cherries, plums... When I got home, I knew I had to find those flavors again and that was when I discovered I can get equally delicious fruits and vegetables at farmer's markets and farm stands. All of these exciting new ingredients challenged and inspired me to eat differently.

 

Another reason I started a plant-based diet was to get my health in order. Rewind back about a month or two before my trip. I was finishing up all final preparations to travel (I had my suitcase packed weeks ahead of time of course) when, in a matter of days, my entire body broke out in an awful rash. It didn't itch or hurt or anything, it was just there, and it was the most traumatic thing I could imagine as I was preparing to leave for three weeks on a trip where I had hoped I could truly be myself and make new friends. I rushed to a dermatologist who said I had developed psoriasis as a reaction to the Remicade I was on for Crohn's disease (which is awfully ironic, considering Remicade is often used to treat psoriasis). He prescribed some lotions which certainly reduced the patches, but it became a battle of chasing the psoriasis around my body, as it would come and go in spots but never truly go away. I had the most difficulty treating it on my scalp, and I began losing hair - lots of hair; eventually, I couldn't even go out in public without wearing a bandana or spending an hour trying to cover each bald patch with bobby pins. Anyway, this summer, as I dealt with the realization that I had been diagnosed with a second chronic auto-immune disease, I knew it was time for me to do something on my own.

My dermatologist and my GI doctor didn't get along. He wanted me to go off the Remicade, she didn't. My Crohn's had been in remission for two years, ever since I started the medication (also when I originally went vegan..hmm), so I definitely understood her viewpoint; but it was making me go bald, and as a fifteen year old girl I knew I couldn't stay on it. So that was when I started really getting interested in health, nutrition, and various diets. I watched about a billion health documentaries on NetFlix, dabbled in macrobiotics and gluten-free, and finally decided on a plant-based diet: vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, and healthy fats. Originally I had thought this diet would restrict my food choices even further, and I suppose it technically has, but it doesn't bother me at all because I no longer consider the things I don't eat as food. To me, animal products are not food - they are a sentient being's flesh, they are products belonging to the creatures who created them, they are not my food. Processed and artificial substances are not food - they look like food, they taste like food, but they are not food. This change made me fall in love with the vegan lifestyle all over again. Cooking became my favorite hobby and I even started a food blog to share my thoughts and recipes. :-)

After a few months of eating whole plant foods and feeling like an entirely new person, I had a endoscopy/colonoscopy, and my GI doctor said that my colon was basically as healthy as a colon could be for a Crohn's patient. She gave me her full permission to stop using Remicade (at that point I had actually not had a Remicade infusion for about four months, so it was pretty much completely out of my body). For the first time since I was ten, I was finally able to go off Crohn's medications. It has been so liberating. But at the same time, it's terrifying, knowing that if I ever mess up my diet significantly enough, I could send my body into a flare up. Since then, I have been working so hard to make sure I eat well, and my diet is improving every day. My psoriasis has been gradually improving too; around Christmas, I noticed that I could wear my hair loose without having any bald patches show for the first time since summer (which was odd since only a few weeks before, the hair loss seemed to be at it's worst). I only have a few patches now, and they are so minimal that I hardly notice them. I don't know if my psoriasis will ever go away completely, but I hope that as I continue to eat better food and improve my lifestyle, my symptoms will continue to diminish. Through these experiences over the past year, I've learned to willingly accept the challenges life presents me, and instead of letting them build up and overwhelm me, to face them head on and give them a challenge of their own.

Pictured above (my favorite things I cooked this week!):

Chickpea Romesco served on Garlic-Saffron Rice from Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero

No-Bake Brownie Bites (sweetened by dates, best tasting things ever actually) from Vegan Junk Food by Lane Gold

Hamburger Buns from this recipe, using vegan versions (so far this is the best hamburger bun recipe I've tried but it was much more dense then your typical store-bought hamburger bun..it was more like a roll)

Black Bean Burgers also from Veganomicon, served with those fancy hamburger buns and some homemade baked french fries