Food Allergy ALERT!

     First off, Sorry this post is so long but there was no short way to say it all.

     For the past six months I have been dealing with health issues. It all started with frequent infections that I couldn't seem to shake for good. I was also having more sinus issues than normal and headaches. I also felt tired often (but I never really use this as a symptom for anything because I feel like who isn't tired often? haha). Anyways I saw probably five different doctors for the infections and was finally told that I would be given a 12 month supply of a prescription and I should just take a pill like clockwork every time I could feel an infection coming on. So for the rest of my life basically I would be swallowing pills and dealing with the side of effects of an antibiotic....something about this seemed messed up so in one last desperate effort I decided to go see a Naturopathic doctor (something that was easier now that I lived in a big city with tons of them). Basically after a variety of tests she ran on me (including allergy test, hormone tests, thyroid, adrenal etc) it was discovered that I had a pretty serious allergy to milk.
     An allergy to milk is different than lactose-intolerant. I am literally allergic to the proteins in milk (any kind of animal's milk) and apparently I'd be allergic my entire life but it had slowly gotten worse. My allergy was not the kind that showed itself with rashes or stomach issues like many peoples. An allergy is essentially when your body does not recognize something (in my case milk) and your immune system attacks it. So basically I was constantly forcing my body to be at war and I was quickly tiring myself out and causing all sorts of problems on the side because my entire body had gotten so out of whack. I also was on the verge of developing an allergy to gluten, but it wasn't quite at that point yet. At first I was like "well it's only milk, that's fine, I can live with that". But then when I realized all the things milk were in it started to look very hopeless and depressing (MILK chocolate, butter in anything, cheese! that means cheese ravioli, macaroni and cheese! any kind of cake made with butter!)
     My doctor suggested that I go on a cleanse to help "reset" my body. The cleanse would last four weeks. At first all I could think of was the celebrity diets you hear about where they just eat grapefruit and juice or vinegar for days and they lose tons of weight only to gain all of it back when they stop. However she quickly explained to me this cleanse was more about detox than weight loss. I could eat as much as I wanted, but only certain foods. Immediately I began to wonder if this was all worth it (and I might add that before I finally started the cleanse the boyfriend and I went out for Mexican and I proceeded to spitefully consume half a bowl of cheese dip- which later I will confess gave me a headache) It was christmas! and everyone knows the holidays are an intense time of eating haha and baking and candy and I could go on but I will only torture myself haha. Regardless I weighed my options, slowly watch my body fight itself into exhaustion or suck it up for four weeks and try this cleanse. I decided to try the detox cleanse. Initially I wanted to do it on my own by researching a cleanse on the internet instead of paying my doctor for a plan and the supplements but it was all so confusing and most the cleanses I found were about weight loss which is not what I wanted so in the end I chose to do it the safe way with my doctor.
     The weirdest part about learning about my allergy was realizing how many people have food allergies. It's kind of scary. There are various controversial ideas on why this is. If it's the toxins were being exposed to or how our food is too modified etc. All I know is either way I don't get to eat chocolate chip cookies haha. Anyways! My main point in posting this was to share some of the awesome resources I've found, I'm still searching so I will be posting more and more but there are a lot of good options for people with food allergies or intolerances. It especially helps if you live in a city because there are more health food stores, vegan bakeries, raw food restaurants etc. Eating right can be costly but in the long run if you do it right it's not that much more expensive and your health should be the thing you want to spend money on. I read somewhere that eating healthy only costs about 2$ more per food group so in the long run, not that much.
   Also there are a lot of people (like myself) who have seemingly unrelated medical problems that no one can seem to figure out and then it turns out it's a food allergy and voila problem solved!So if you've been struggling with some health issue or headaches, fatigue etc you may want to do some googling and if it seems to point to a food allergy go to an allergist and talk to them. I felt SO frustrated and helpless because I could not figure out what was wrong with me. I felt like I was going crazy. Even though giving up dairy (and for the most part gluten) and going through this cleanse is going to be tough at east I found out what was going on and that there is a solution.

    Here's a link to my Pinterest board in which I've started posting some gluten-free and dairy-free recipes and tips: CLICK!

these are gluten-free, dairy-free and egg free! AND they actually look edible!!

    Also I am going to be posting about my cleanse later and giving tips etc so you can follow it and feel free to join in. Like I said, when I researched cleanses, everything said something different and I didn't feel confident enough to do it correctly without a doctor's supervision. However, I will be posting exactly what my doctor has recommended I do so people essentially can follow along on their own. A detox cleanse is not just for people with allergies but everyone could benefit from a cleanse at some point. It helps "purify" your body of all the crap you've put into it either by eating unhealthy food, or drinking, smoking etc etc. People claim to feel much better afterwards and more "connected" with themselves. I'm not at that point yet, I'll be honest. The only thing I want to connect with is a cheeseburger and a milkshake haha but I do notice that my body is healthier and I can already tell that at the end of this cleanse (2.5 more weeks to go!) I will feel much better and have a clean slate to start my dairy-free life!

Split Pea Soup

To me, split pea soup has always looked gross haha there's just no way to dress it up (as you can see from my lovely picture here haha-I'm pretty sure my blog wins least appetizing food pictures ever, but its ok I'm getting a decent camera for Christmas. all is not lost) but it always tastes SO good.

Anyways, pea soup is another perfect recipe for leftover ham, so after I made the Chunky Fleechky I used the ham bone to make the pea soup. Apparently you can also get really cheap ham bones from the Honey Baked Ham Co. stores.

It was my first time making it and I used the crock pot again, but there are ways to make it without one (my mom never made it in a crock pot and hers was always delicious). We got to enjoy ours with some of my boyfriend's aunt's homemade bread- SO GOOD. It's also a relatively cheap recipe depending on how fancy you want to get. Ours was pretty basic and still tasted delicious.

Ingredients:

• Ham bone
• 1 bag of split peas (1 lb)
• Carrots (I used about 9 baby carrots chopped up but you could use 2 large carrots instead)
• Onion (diced)
• 1 or 2 cloves of garlic (minced)
• 2 tsp of dried parsley 
• 1 tbs salt
• 1 tsp ground pepper
• 6 cups of water
• 1 c diced ham (OPTIONAL, I didn't do this, but if your ham bone is really clean you may want to add in some diced ham for more flavor)

Steps: 

1. Rinse peas in a strainer
2. Layer ingredients in your crock pot in this exact order: Peas, ham bone (and diced ham if you want), carrot, onion, garlic, parsely, salt, pepper. Then pour water over the top of all of it. (I checked to make sure the water could get to the bottom of the crock pot so my peas wouldn't burn and stick to it- my crock pot can get pretty hot) DON'T STIR
3. Cover and cook on HIGH for 4-5 hours or LOW for 8-10. You will know it's done because your peas will be very soft and mostly disintegrated and any ham left will be falling off the bone.
4. Turn off heat and pull out the ham bone. I also pull out any chunks of gross fat or bits of bone that have fallen off into the soup. I then pulled any good chunks of ham I could off the bone and chopped them off and re-added them to the soup. 
5. Stir soup and let sit uncovered for 10 mins so it will thicken. 
6. Serve! (Preferably with a side of homemade bread haha)

*Something I also learned, when I refridgerated the leftovers they turned almost jello-like in consistency. I just added a little water and stirred and microwaved and repeated until I got the consistency back to somewhat normal*

Chunky Fleechky (yes you read that right)

So this is a truly original recipe. Don't bother googling it, no matter how you try spelling it, you won't find it haha (trust me I tried already). I don't know how long exactly this recipe has been in my family. I'm pretty sure its a Czechoslovakian recipe but it could be Irish. It's a great recipe if you have leftover ham.
I made mine in a frying pan but an electric griddle is the best thing to make it in. As you make this recipe you're probably going to be like, this doesn't look right...and that means that you've perfected it. It's the weirdest recipe and it's not going to seem delicious until you take a bite and then you'll be very surprised. I tested it on the boyfriend last night and I even made sure I burnt the crap out of it and he still liked it and was asking for more. (yes this is another plus to this recipe- the more you burn it the better it tastes, its pretty much foolproof). This recipe is also perfect for me because it's so cheap (cabbage is 64 cents!), it's pretty much impossible to mess it up and it doesn't take long at all to make.

Yes, this is ugly food but didn't your mama tell you not to judge a book by its cover!

Ingredients (serves 2)
*The amount of all of these is flexible- again this recipe is pretty much foolproof so just use these as a guideline

• Ham (about 1/2 cup, cut in small cubes, more or less depending on how much ham you want)
• Cabbage (1/2 head diced in small pieces)
• Onion (1/2, diced)
• Medium egg noodles (about 2 cups cooked)
• Ketchup (this is a must! In fact we didn't have any and I ran to the store mid-cooking to pick some up)
• Butter or oil

Steps:

1.  Boil water and cook noodles al dente (basically soft but still firm, use the minimum cooking time on the package as a guide)
2. Put about 1 tbs of butter (or a little oil) in a frying pan (or electric skillet), then add cabbage. Let cabbage cook down until its soft.
3. If you are not doing this in an electric skillet, saute your onions in a separate pan then add them to the cabbage. If you are doing this in an electric skillet add onions and let them cook until they're transparent. 
4. Add your ham and cooked noodles to the pan
5. Fry the crap out of everything. Don't burn it all the way black but crispy edges and brown bits make this dish better (for my family at least but we're probably weird)
6. Enjoy (and serve with ketchup- I squirt mine liberally over the top of it all! SO good!)

Tomato and Goat cheese sort-of panini

I'm not a sandwich person- too much bread. But this is my favorite thing to make for lunch. EVER. Tweak it all you like and have fun with it. Mine varies according to what I have in my refrigerator but the basics are still there.

Ingredients:

• pita  bread
• greens of some sort (I use baby spring mix)
• goat cheese
• balsamic vinaigrette (I make my own with olive oil, honey, balsamic vinegar and a little garlic powder)
• tomatoes (sliced large ones or sometimes I split in half cherry or grape tomatoes)
• prosciutto (if you want the protein- I've done it before and it's delicious but prosciutto isn't really one of those staples in most households haha)
• 2 tbs chopped onion

Steps:

1. Put a little oil in a frying pan and add chopped onions and saute (if you don't know what that means its basically pushing them around so they don't burn until they turn somewhat see through and flimsy)
2. Slice your pita bread in half then seperate the top and bottom to form a kind of pocket (See picture). I don't like that much bread but if you do you could just use two whole pieces of pita for a top and bottom instead of splitting one into a pocket.
3. layer greens, goat cheese, tomatoes, onions and anything else inside of pita pocket then drizzle a little balsamic vinaigrette. (If you'd rather you can keep out vinaigrette and just dip your sandwich later)
4. Put your two pita pockets in the already greased and hot pan and cook (flip every now and then and squish down with your spatula)
5. ***If you have a george forman*** put the pita pockets on your george foreman and squish down the lid, watch carefully so they don't burn
6. DONE! Enjoy

Crock pot Chili

The weather is getting chilly here in Atlanta! I like it because I get to wear my boots and layers (I am SUCH a girl) but I dislike it because warming my lovely house gets expensive so I've been keeping the thermostat at 65 and walking around the house in various robes and blankets haha.

BUT! another pro about cold weather is all the fun food. Hot tea, hot chocolate, the salted caramel mocha at starbucks haha, apple cider; thanksgiving is right around the corner so that brings lots of delicious food and another winter favorite is CHILI!

My mom makes the best chili (if you've been reading any of my posts then you would understand that her chili recipe is probably on the back of some package at the supermarket just like her cookie and jam recipes haha that I grew up thinking were some secret special recipe). However, this is not her chili recipe this is brought to your from your faithful friends at google ("crockpot chili")

It got good reviews. It was easy and it was cheap and as poor post-grads we intend on eating it for the next 2-3 days. (these are all of the reasons I started this blog- to bring to you delicious, fast, somewhat healthy and preferably inexpensive recipes)

So since this recipe is not original in any way shape or form you can access it here!

Also keep in mind:

• you need a crock pot (if you don't have one, you should invest in one- my mom is awesome and got me a nice one from Sam's club that came with a cute mini one for fondue BUT! my old roommate found a perfectly good one at Goodwill for 5$)
• It takes 7 hours to cook
• If I did it again I would add a can of corn 
• This recipe is for VERY mild chili (I'm a complete baby when it comes to spice and this is perfectly fine- so if you like spicy chili add some peppers or red pepper flakes and more cayenne pepper than the recipe calls for)
• I also made corn muffins to go along with the chili straight from a box of Jiffy :)

Grandma's Apple Cake

So here's another awesome fall recipe! I just moved and I wanted to take something over to my neighbors. I decided it should be something a little more fun than just cookies so in the spirit of fall I decided to try to make my grandmother's apple cake. This is my favorite thing that she makes and my grandmother is an awesome baker. It was my first time trying it but it turned out delicious! Set aside a good amount of time to make this as it took me a while to peel, core and dice up my apples but if you have one of those awesome apple peelers or even an apple corer (is that a word?) it'll probably go a lot faster...

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1 3/4 c sugar
• 2 c flour
• 1 c oil
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 c chopped nuts ( I used pecans. They were delicious but expensive! 15$ for a bag)
• 4 or 6 diced and peeled apple chunks (My chunks were about 1 inch and I used about 4 Granny Smith apples which worked perfectly) *Fun tip: Freeze the peels then add them to post-workout smoothies for some added fiber

Steps

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Mix sugar + oil, add eggs and beat all really well together (I used a mixer but you could use a whisk)
3. In seperate bowl stir baking soda, cinnamon, salt and flour together.
4. Add dry ingredients to your sugar, oil and egg mixture and mix together but don't blend (basically use either your mixer on the lowest setting or just stir it all together by hand)
5. Add apple chunks and nuts (I wasn't sure how much apple to add and thought I had added too much as there didn't seem to be enough batter but it ended up working out perfectly)
6. Bake for 60 minutes (this may seem like a long time and I kept checking it but it worked out perfect. Touch the top of the cake and if it springs back up it's done, if it causes a dent it's not)

yummy apple batter- I swear these pictures will get more appetizing once I get a better camera haha

Pumpkin Seeds (in flavors!)

So it's fall (more specifically it's halloween time) and that of course means pumpkin carving which of course means pumpkin seeds!

Don't judge me for what I'm about to say- I still can't scoop out the inside of my own pumpkin. It makes me gag. It's a texture thing I think. When I was young my parents did it. In college I bribed my friends to do it. This year the boyfriend refused to do it so I wore rubber kitchen gloves and managed to make it through. The only good thing about the disgusting inside of a pumpkin is the seeds. The lovely boyfriend redeemed himself by picking out all the seeds of both our pumpkins (he says this took him 3 hours, I think this is an exaggeration but regardless those 3 hours were well worth it.

I made three batched of pumpkin seeds with different seasonings (something I had never heard of until my friend was talking about cinnamon sugar pumpkin seeds. Between a mix of google and common sense and learning from my mistakes I have come up with 3 recipes for the variety of roasted pumpkin seeds I made.

PREPARATION:
We stored our whole mess of pumpkin pulp and seeds in a mixing bowl in the fridge for 2 days until the boyfriend had time to pick all the seeds out. Then he stored them an additional day in the fridge until I had time to bake them. Put seeds in a colander then rinse them and get the big pieces of pulp off. Don't worry if some pulp stays; it adds flavor. Spread the pumpkin seeds out on a pan or towel and let them dry overnight. DO NOT let them dry on a paper towel. It will stick to them.

For each flavor I used about 1 1/2 cups of pumpkin seeds.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Melt 1 tbs of butter in small bowl
3. Add 1 1/2 cups of pumpkin seeds
4. mix all together (clean fingers work best)
5. Add seasonings (as follows) mix altogether again
6. Spread out on greased baking sheet (I used tinfoil for quick cleanup)
7. Cook for 30 mins (Stir now and then during baking so the seeds cook somewhat evenly)

CINNAMON SUGAR PUMPKIN SEEDS:
2 tbs granulated sugar
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tbs cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

SPICY PUMPKIN SEEDS:
1 tbs red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

CHEESY PUMPKIN SEEDS:
1 tsp ground pepper
1 tbs garlic powder
*Mix these together in the bowl, then once you've spread the seeds out on cooking sheet (make sure it's well greased) sprinkle 1/2 cup of shredded cheese (I used a blend of parmesan and asiago that came in a convenient shaker from my local Kroger and is normally used on top of spaghetti, so fancy- just kidding)