See ya, wheat.

People keep asking me how my diet is going, and have I learned anything yet? I figured an update was due.

Today is the 40th day since I began my investigative eating. I have grown pleasantly accustomed to "no symptoms at all" being the default entry in my journal. I've got a list of about 30 things I can eat with no problems, and another list of several things I'm in the process of re-testing, because I either had a bad reaction the first time, or I ate the item in combination with other things and so couldn't really tell which food was the issue.

I keep the list of things I can eat on a post-it on my wall. Grocery shopping has become much easier. Harris Teeter Express: produce section, dairy case, peanuts from the snack aisle, and I'm out the door.




My ability to DO things hasn't been limited in weeks, which is great. I haven't had to put off a run because my knee hurts, or wash my hair with one hand because my shoulder hurts, or leave the dishes dirty for a couple days because my wrists are too sore to pick up my cast iron skillet. Normal has become the new normal. Which is what I wanted in the first place.

Bad news... I re-tested wheat on Sunday and had two giant bowls of shredded wheat before going to bed. After several straight days feeling 100% fine, I woke up the next morning with both wrists stiff and sore. So I won't be eating wheat for a while, which sucks, but I at least feel confident that I'm not giving up one of my favorite foods for no reason. The relationship between food and pain was pretty clear. So I bid a sad farewell to my cereal collection. It was like the post-breakup purge of things that remind you of your ex. It was hard to do, but I feel better with them out of my house.

I also re-tested beef last night. Same reaction. Later that evening and into the next morning, my hands and wrists were stiff and sore. By this afternoon, I felt fine again. It hurts throwing away the perfectly good leftover beef in the fridge, but it hurts more having pain shooting up the backs of your hands when you're trying to brush your hair. So...I can deal.

Apart from these two specific tests, I had one cheater night last week that confirmed the existence of a relationship between what I eat and whether my joints hurt. I recently have gotten involved in a small at church and there's always snack food. The first time I went to the group I just didn't eat anything, but this past Wednesday I decided I was tired of being rude and not eating their food. So I had potato chips, ranch dip, mixed nuts, red wine, wheat thins...I don't even remember what else. Some chicken salad spread, or something? Anyway, the next morning my wrists were both puffy and sore, a knee hurt, a shoulder hurt, and an elbow hurt. Tada!

So, what now?

I've been trying a new food every day or two, and recording how I feel every day. Today I tried bacon. I REALLLLYYY hope I feel fine tomorrow. Pork has been okay, so I'm hoping that the handful of unintelligible additives in my Oscar Mayer bacon don't trigger any problems.

According to the magical Dr. Mansfield and his book, and everything I've read on the internet, what I need to do now is cut out any foods that cause problems for a period of at least six months. During this time, allegedly, my body has the potential to "heal" itself, or to repair my "leaky gut" or "intestinal permeability" or in some other way get its shit together. After I've given it a break from whatever was causing problems, I should (again, theoretically) be able to reintroduce problem foods slowly and gradually, and hopefully then be able to tolerate them in moderation going forward.

I guess I'll see what happens. At this point, I'm not madly craving carbs the way I was for a while. As long as they're not paraded in front of me (someone brings brownies to a meeting, or there's leftover cake sitting around at school)...I don't really miss them very much. I've been kind of amazed at how your body can really learn to stop WANTING certain things - it really feels like kicking an addiction. I've stopped feeling like I need to have a pile of starch to feel full by the end of a meal. Today for lunch I had an orange, a banana, a bunch of grapes, a bunch of carrots, and some cheese. I felt perfectly satisfied by the end, whereas I used to feel like I needed a muffin or a granola bar or some bread to feel full. So it's reassuring to know that my body seems to be impressively capable of adapting.

So I guess we'll just keep seeing how things go. I'm incredibly thankful to feel solidly and consistently GOOD on a daily basis. I'd kind of gotten used to having one knuckle or another be stiff on any given morning, or having my shoulders feel sore every morning, or having my wrists twinge with pain if I moved them too far in one direction. I've started running regularly and I'm trying to actually get in some kind of semi-adequate shape for the first time in a while. I can finally rely on my body to be fully functional all the time, instead of thinking "Well, I can start thus-and-such exercise program but it's all going to get screwed up if my [insert critical body part] starts acting up."

I've got an appointment scheduled with my rheumatologist in March, but I'm going to cancel. I'm much happier eating food than I would be taking drugs. Until I have cause to do otherwise, I'll continue giving my body the benefit of the doubt, and trusting that it's much more capable of taking care of itself than I (or the medical establishment) give it credit for.

"Maybe I'll be a poemist"

A poem written after school by a student, who was supposedly staying after school to do homework. I accepted this as a satisfactory substitute.

Our 3rd block may seem boring, but thats OK
We still have fun In a Good type of way
When Mis Anderson laughs she gets real red
Some times even tears shed
I think my civic teachers get wasted during school
but At West Meck, who dosent do it when dey in the mood
My teachers are cool
But the students can be a fool
In now In some times our class is exicting
A few months our class was about fighting
Things we learn is endored with intrest
Im curious about new things every day before Entrace
I just want to say Yall make my day
By developing me into a informed, intrersted, and empowerd citizen of today.

(That last line is taken from a slogan we have posted in the classroom...kid knows how to win brownie points.)

Why sometimes teaching is hysterically funny

Collected from the last several weeks, here is an assortment of exchanges with my high school students.

Today, one of my students, who is black, had just spent twenty minutes sitting in a classroom while an ESL class of Vietnamese students gave presentations on famous civil rights leaders. He speaks very deliberately, and knows he is hysterically funny.

"So they're talking about Martin Luther King," he tells me. "Only I can't understand what they're saying, because they sound like 'Mah-tin Loo-teh King Joon-ya' and then one of them asks me if Martin Luther King ate a lot of fried chicken. And you're laughing Ms. Andersen, but they didn't ask you, they asked me, and I didn't laugh because that would have been rude. And they wouldn't have asked you, because you're white. But I know all about Martin Luther King. And fried chicken. Obviously."

And also today, we were reading an article that used the word "macro." So, we explained what the word "macro" means.

Me: "Macro" means "big."

My student: So what do "roni" mean?

He explained further: "I was thinking like, if 'macro' mean big, then maybe macaroni means like, 'big cheese noodle.'"

This is the same kid, who last week was suddenly awestruck by the fact that we live on a planet. "I'm tellin you, we're living on a PLANET. Like, we're living on top of a rock with water and dirt on it. Planet earth, man. And you think like, we're just a speck of dust in the whole picture, like I bet we're like a speck of dust in an alien's closet. One of these days someone's just gonna blow dry us out the way!"

Later in that conversation, he comes out with...

Student: So if you get all that money, you gonna be comin' in here and make it precipitate?

Cliff, my co-teacher: What?

Student: You know, makin' it rain?

They're so smart! I love my kids.

In addition to commenting on my eyes (which happens with some regularity, for some reason) my kids will also comment on how small I am ("Ms. Andersen, you look just like a little kid!"), or on how long my hair is (today, for instance, I was asked if my hair had grown, because it was "looking pretty long.") These are at least relatively reasonable things to notice, I guess. Last week though, one of my kids looks at me and makes the following observation: "Ms. Andersen, you look like you was outside this morning selling lemonade or something."

Moral of the story, little kids say super cute things that make you swoon with their adorableness. High schoolers just say the absolutely most ridiculous things you've ever heard - and I love it. Not to say my job isn't really hard sometimes. And not to say it isn't stressful, and there isn't a lot of pressure, and a lot isn't at stake for these kids. But sometimes all I can do is stand there laughing hysterically. Because I love my kids, and they are some of the damn funniest people I've ever met.

Food Hangover

Last night I splurged. Real dinner. Real restaurant. No substitutions or "can I get it without the butter, sugar and anything with flavor, please?" Alcohol, for the first time in almost a month! To explain a little further (am I this afraid of being judged?) I was asked out to dinner, and refused to be the girl who eats lettuce ungratefully and asks if she can substitute tofu for the meat. So instead I ate myself silly...and my joints into rebellion. Within about two hours of dinner I felt one wrist start to get sore. Then a foot. Then an elbow. I have no way of pinpointing what did the trick, of course, but that's okay. It was the best meal I've had in weeks. And now...I'm back to the foods I know don't cause problems (sweet potatoes are in the oven!) and will start testing new foods again in a few days. To be honest though, I'd have been more upset if I'd had a big, bad meal and then felt totally fine today. This at least serves as confirmation that what I eat and how my joints feel are related in some (albeit ill-defined) way.

As a side note, Bailey's, coffee, milk and butterscotch schnapps make one heck of a drink.

How to make rice pudding.

Yesterday I was craving something sweet, had run out of grapes, apples and pears, and had already eaten three bananas. I hadn't tested cane sugar yet, but since honey, rice and milk are on the okay list, I decided to make rice pudding. Here's the simple three-ingredient version.

some milk (a little less than 2 cups)
between 1/3 and 1/4 cup of arborio rice
honey!!

Err on the side of less milk, rather than less rice. If it gets thick before the rice is fully cooked, you can just add more milk to the pan.

You can also add a pinch of salt, which make it less cloyingly sweet.

And if you're not into honey's flavor, you can use white sugar instead. Or a little white sugar and a little honey.

And if you aren't presently in the midst of attempting to determine the affect of different foodstuffs on your unexplained rheumatism, you could add vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon, raisins, orange zest, or anything else flavory.

Boil the milk and the rice, stirring often to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. It doesn't have to be boiling like crazy, just a nice simmer to keep it cooking. About 15 or 20 minutes. The rice will start to leak starch into the milk and it'll get thicker and creamier, like a risotto. Taste the rice at this point to make sure it's as cooked as you want it - soft and a little chewy.

Once the texture is what you want, stir honey into the rice by the spoonful, tasting as you go. I went crazy and unleashed a good quarter cup into mine the first time - this was a little overly sweet.

The rice pudding in the photo below is done. I only made about half the recipe, which is why it doesn't look like very much. If you want it a little creamier than this, just add more milk.

A bittersweet tale of bread.

Last night I made bread. The plan was to make the bread last night, wake up this morning, evaluate how I felt after two days plain wheat (i.e. without yeast), and then assuming I felt good and with that data safely tucked away, embark on my bread trial. I knew this would mean baking the bread and not eating it immediately, but for some reason I thought that would work. I'm not sure at what point I realized this was NOT going to happen on quite that time line... I think it was when I started eating the bread dough off my fingers.

Because all-purpose and bread flours typically have barley in them (I had never noticed this), and I was trying to control variables by testing only wheat PLUS yeast, I used 100% whole wheat flour. Most bread recipes call for some mix, because 100% whole wheat is heavy and grainy and kind of abrasive. Okay, so I was trying to control variables, but kind of failed. I omitted the molasses called for in the recipe (because I hadn't tested it), but I didn't have enough sunflower oil to substitute for the olive oil, so I went ahead and used the olive oil. It just seems like such a benign ingredient, right? (The recipe as at the bottom of the post.)

So, cheat number one: using olive oil. Cheat number two: the bread looked so damn good there was no way I could not eat it right then while it was hot.

At first I said I wasn't going to put butter on it, since I hadn't tested butter specifically (although I tested milk without any problems). So I poured honey all over it instead. It was incredible.
The bread turned out wonderfully soft and fluffy, although the whole grain graininess of it kind of made my tongue feel a little bit roughed up.

The honey was so good, and the bread was so steamy and hot, that cheat number three just became inevitable: I slathered butter all over it too.

So - poor experimental design, but amazing baked good that tasted like heaven. I was okay with that.

But...this morning the back of my left hand was sore when I woke up. Nothing extreme, and no sign of the infamous lump, but still enough to be noticeable and make me think, "Crap, I guess I cut out wheat again."

If I had WAITED until today to try the bread, and my hand had NOT been sore this morning, and then it had become sore only AFTER the bread, I'd have been able to say "Oh, okay, it was just the yeast" (or olive oil, I guess). However, because I couldn't wait, now I don't know if my hand is sore because of the wheat I'd been eating for two days already, or the bread I ate last night. Or the olive oil. Or, I suppose, the butter (although that seems unlikely as butter is typically less allergenic than milk). Which means that now I have to re-eliminate them all for at least five days before testing any of them again.

So, because the bread test requires you eat it for three meals for one day, I ate bread all today, loved every minute of it, and will see if my hand is still sore tomorrow. But the extra loaf is, tragically, being relegated to the freezer until such time as it seems logical to test it again.

Frustrating, sure, but not so terrible really, as I've learned to eat quite nicely without wheat by now. Still, I'm annoyed at myself for not being more precise and thorough. And there is still the nagging worry that nothing I'm eating is having any effect on anything and I'm tilting at windmills.

What really DID suck was that our TFA group leader tonight made these amazing, gooey, caramel-filled brownies that were still warm when our meeting started. Everyone got up and helped themselves. The bastards got seconds. Every time they peeled back the tinfoil the room smelled like fudgy brownie. And I sat there sipping on my tea and trying not to drool sadly. THAT'S when I think, "Is this completely bogus? Am I controlling my diet as some kind of control-freak proxy for not being able to control my symptoms? Am I going to turn into a crazy(er) hypochondriac who freaks out about everything I eat?"

PLUS the arch of my foot has been sore and a little swollen the past week; I have not been recording it or relating it to my arthritis symptoms because it's done this before when I've worn bad shoes or started running after a long hiatus (both of which I've been doing recently), and it feels like soft-tissue and not a joint. Back in Chicago I had a podiatrist make me custom orthotics for the same issue. But now I'm thinking, "Crap, what if it's somehow related and I've been ignoring it all week and thus have rendered this whole venture quite useless?" Not to mention the more obvious fact that it's aggravating because I'm trying to get back into shape and be able to run a few miles and I'm just getting into a good routine and I don't want to hurt myself MORE by overdoing it.

Sigh. So, I pray that this experience will help me in some way, and that my arthritis will, perhaps, just magically vanish forever, and I'll finish out the next three weeks of food testing and see what happens I guess. I got Dr. Mansfield's book from Amazon finally, and it's helped to reassure me that this whole idea isn't complete hokum. Still, it's a little frustrating to feel like I'm on my own trying to figure out something that might not be figurable.

100% Whole Wheat Bread - Two Loaves

2 3/4 cup hot water (just from the tap)
1/3 cup oil (olive or anything else)
1/3 cup honey
1 TB salt
7 cups whole wheat flour (max - I probably used closer to 6 1/2)
(2 TB molasses - I didn't use it, but it'd probably make it better)
2 TB dry active yeast (this was a little more than two packets)

Put the water, oil, honey, molasses and salt in a bowl and stir to mix. Add 2 cups of flour, and stir to mix. Then add the yeast (two packets, plus a pinch or two, although you could probably get away with just two packets.) Stir to mix in the yeast.

Add another 4 cups of flour. Stir it in until it starts to look like consistently sticky dough. Don't stir any more than you have to to mix it evenly. Add another 1/2 cup of flour and stir it in. Your goal is to use as little additional flour as possible to get the dough to stay in an even ball like dough, and not stick all over the sides of the bowl. I didn't use much more than 6 1/2 cups. Don't mix any more than you have to.

Once your dough looks like dough, cover it with a towel and leave it someplace warm. (I stuck it on top of the stove and pre-heated the oven early - 350). It should rise a lot (almost double) in about 30-40 minutes.

Grease your two bread pans (or one bread pan and a baking sheet for mini-loaves).

Divide up your dough into whatever pieces you're baking - half the dough is one loaf.

You don't really need to knead it, just shape each piece into a nice ball by stretching it back around itself, so all the seams wind up on the bottom of the ball and the top surface is nice and smooth and stretched.

Put the dough in your pans, and let it rise for another 30-40, or until almost doubled.

Bake at 350 for about 35 minutes, or until it's nice and golden brown on top.

When you take it out, you can rub butter over the crust to make it nice and shiny.

Eat it with massive amounts of honey. Or just with butter.

Greenville and Wheat.

Yesterday was the first day of the two-day wheat test, in which I'm supposed to eat wheat (shredded wheat cereal or whole-wheat pasta) at every meal for two days. If I don't run into any problems with the wheat by the end of the second day (today), I can try whole wheat bread tomorrow. Shredded wheat cereal is about as boring as cereals get, but as someone for whom cold cereal is a go-to comfort/convenience/snack food, sitting down to two giant bowls of the stuff yesterday morning felt pretty great. Coupled with the fact that I've been drinking tea for a few days - it felt like a real breakfast.

I decided to visit my sister yesterday, two hours south in Greenville where she's in school. Through the wonder of facebook, I found out that an old friend from my freshman hall at Wake also lives in Greenville, and so I caught up with Ms. Jess Held (now Martin) for lunch! For all the creepiness of facebook, and the immense drain on productive time that it can be, I have it to thank for an increasing number of real-life reunions with old friends, for the ability to keep in touch with people I would probably not have kept in touch with, and even for becoming good, real-life friends with people I knew casually from years ago. Hannah and I had a lovely afternoon in Greenville, and although eating in restaurants proved a bit of a challenge for me still (I had steamed vegetables and plain baked sweet potatoes at one place, and a very boring build-your-own salad at Mellow Mushroom) I was able to enjoy an Oolong and milk and honey drink at a little tea bar. Post-tea, we realized we had not taken any photographs to document our sisterly weekend, and so we quickly took a slew of awkward self-shots on the way to the car.

Today's agenda includes a long overdue trip to the laundromat and, barring any sudden onset of symptoms, baking bread for tomorrow. I haven't baked anything in ages, so that prospect is pretty exciting. I figured, for the full experience of enjoying bread, nothing beats baking it at home, where the oven heats up the kitchen and the bread smell fills up the apartment. Mmmm... Minus my brief encounter with my wrist bump, I have continued to be essentially symptom-free, which is really nice after spending most of November and December wrapping my wrist up in an Ace bandage and taking NSAIDs. I still have no evidence to tell me whether feeling great is a result of the diet, or whether my on-again-off-again arthritis was just about to start an off-again period that happened to coincide with my diet experiment. I keep introducing new foods until February 16, after which point I just keep careful track of what I eat and how I feel going forward. I guess we'll see.

Dinner tonight will likely be sweet potatoes roasted in the cast iron skillet with chicken, which has proven incredibly delicious in the past. Plus whole wheat pasta, I guess, since I'm supposed to have it at every meal. I'd never really known how to do savory sweet potatoes, but roasting them in an oven in a skillet of chicken fat makes them kind of extraordinary.

You need:

Bone-in, skin-on chicken quarters/thighs/drumsticks
Sweet potatoes
Oil (I used sunflower)
a little salt for the chicken once it's done

Brown the chicken in a skillet with oil. Add peeled, cut up sweet potatoes, turning in the oil and chicken fat so they're coated. Cook until the chicken is browned on both sides, and the sweet potatoes are starting to look slightly cooked/brown on the edges. Throw the whole skillet in the oven at about 375. Cook for another 30-40, or until the chicken is done and the sweet potatoes are soft. (If you use thighs it'll take less time as they'll cook quicker. If you use big-ass quarters like I did below, it'll take closer to 40-50 minutes.)