Trial and Error

At first when I started on this journey it was easy to contain my food change to just myself.  As much as I wanted my husband to jump on board, I didn't want to force it upon him.  The further I got, though, the more my cooking changes seeped into his "food world".  Luckily I am blessed to have an amazingly supportive husband.  Not only has he been very open to trying new things, new versions of old things, and just plain weird new things, he has also opened up and adopted a new way of eating, as well.  That being said, you can still find him cracking open a can of coke every now an then.

I knew from the beginning that the key to me successfully adapting to such a big change in the way that we ate, was to be able to incorporate things we have always eaten, but with a newer, healthier approach. Sure, we eat a lot more organic veggies, we cook with coconut oil, we loosely follow a Paleo diet, but what about when your sweet tooth comes a'callin?  As much as I would love to be, I am not someone that can satisfy a craving with a few almonds and peanut butter chips or something of that variation.  We want our future kids to eat even healthier than we do now, never knowing McDonald's and not rewarding themselves with food,  but we still want to celebrate occasions with cake, right!?   That has sparked the biggest motivation in me, I love a challenge.  Lately I have tried my hands at gluten and sugar free banana/chocolate muffins & banana muffins, GF, SF, and Dairy Free raspberry lemon bars, gluten free and sugar free sandwich bread and today I am taking my second crack at gluten and dairy free yellow cake.

The first time I made this cake, it turned out phenomenally well!  I want to keep trying it and changing it so I can make it GF, DF, and sugar free.  My first go-round, the only sugar was in the icing and the pudding mix I put inside the cake.  Today, I am trying the same recipe, however I subbed in sugar free pudding mix and subbed coconut oil for olive oil.  I also wanted to mix the flavors up a bit.  I have become a huge fan of our local Farmer's Market and I bought a pint of fresh strawberries from a vendor yesterday, so I decided to make it a strawberry cake and then try out some homemade strawberry buttercream frosting.

This has proven to be a day of lessons in the kitchen.  The cake has turned out great, once again....I think I have the recipe nailed down.  The icing, however, is a whole other, fishy story.  Lately I have been using Earth Balance Buttery Spread in place of any butter that we would have once used.  Anyone that has used this stuff, would probably agree with me that it has a bit...ok quite a bit, of a fishy taste and smell.  When cooking with it or spreading it on something, I don't really notice the taste or smell, so I figured I could easily sub it for usual butter in the buttercream recipe.  WRONG!  I creamed the "butter", cut up and added my fresh strawberries and then added the powdered sugar.  It looked delicious, for a moment I was quite proud of myself, I must say.  Then came the taste test.....fish food all the way!  I even added every last bit of strawberries that I had in hopes of the added flavor covering up the 'fish essence'-no such luck and my frosting became to liquid-y.  Thankfully, I have learned over the past few months of eating well that Pillbury icing is actually dairy free....even the buttercream!  Now, of course, this leads me to wonder what in the world they put in it then, but at this point, I just wanted to have my cake and eat it, too. 

The cake turned out great, other than being slightly overdone, but now I think my next challenge will be dairy free buttercream that doesn't taste like it came fresh from the nearest lake and then eventually sugar free icing of some sort.  I now sub Agave nectar in all recipes when they call for sugar, however since it is a liquid, I don't think it will make for good frosting.  Stay tuned!

Yep, I've really started a blog

So here it is, in all it's glory-my first post.  My first, of hopefully many posts, for something I swore I would never be interested in.  It's funny how things can seem so foreign and unnecessary at one point in your life and, given some time, can turn into something you are insanely passionate about.  That is where this blog has found me.

I have lived most of my life like the majority of people, bowls of pasta, cans of pop, lunch snacks teeming with sugar, oils, and chemicals with names that, even as an adult, I can't pronounce.  I loved holiday parties and getting together with friends, not just because of the company, but also because of all the FOOD!  It's what we ate, what I knew, and what I loved.  It wasn't until about 4 years ago that I started realizing my gut "issues" weren't things that everybody experienced.  I went from counting bar food as a staple of my diet to living off bottles of Pepcid and learning what anxiety felt like.  I was soon diagnosed with GERD, which explained the heart attack-like chest tightness.  I had begun to surround myself with positive, healthy people, but as much as I bought into the fitness aspect of "healthy living", I had yet to grasp the concept of making a lifestyle change in the way that I ate. So......my "issues" continued and only worsened.

Fast forward to the past six months and I have undergone more tests than I ever imagined for myself.  Now, by no means am I comparing myself to some one who has a serious illness, but for a while with all my tests and symptoms and feeling so sick, I was really beginning to think and treat myself as if I was seriously ill.  That only led to depression and anxiety, which, of course, fed my stomach issues.  Through a stomach scope we learned I had an ulcer and gastritis, through a hyda scan we learned my gallbladder was perfectly normal, through trial and error we learned I had IBS and issues with dairy, through an echocardiogram, EKG and numerous ER trips over the years we learned my heart was perfectly fine.  Even through all of this I still find myself a ball of nerves everytime I feel a spasm in my stomach or throat, I have to convince myself for the millionth time, IT'S NOT MY HEART!

All of these experiences have finally forced me to consider my diet as a contributer/cause of my gut issues.  I started trying to change the way I ate in a serious way in February 2012 and really hit it hard for a month.  Within that month of no dairy and gluten, I found myself developing a passion for healthy food.  For someone that loves to cook and bake already, it became almost a game and challenge to me to take recipes I have always known and loved and turn them into something that I wouldn't regret eating later.  I heard a great quote from Wayne Dyer that I has been running through my mind lately, "when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change".  It's so odd for me to look back at things I used to shovel into my mouth and now look at them with no want or desire.

Through this blog I hope to share my experiences, good and bad, on my journey to a healthier, guilt free way of life and eating.  The greatest joy of this journey, so far, has not come from the changes in the way I feel, but from the changes that I have sparked in others.