cleanliness and my favorite penguin

[rootofnewt]

i realized after boy left for the Terminal Ready show that I was too out of it to safely take a shower alone in the house, so i waited up for him. i'm about zombified now, but i'm clean. CLEAN.

it feels good.

i'm going to finish my cocoa (some meds have to be taken with food, i suppose milk counts, even if i don't really digest it that well) and go to bed.

and can i just say that the side effect of HICCUPS is the most annoying "harmless" one I've encountered? it was torture the last few days when i had the chest pain, now it's just a twinge, but it won't go away. i need to look at the paperwork and see if anything besides the diazepam is causing them. it's crazy and near constant.

and there's only one sure-fire cure for my hiccups (other than time)--drinking from the opposite side of a glass while leaning all the way forward. it's easier now that it doesn't hurt so much, but it's barely working.


And klwalton: Peach Oo-la-long.
I bought it today to quell a bout of hiccups (was being bad and went into a store (didn't touch stuff or people) to ask boy to get a couple things... I'm keeping the bottle. I'll fill it with beads or sand or something pretty.


An Opus of Your Own
In keeping with the playful taste combination of Peach Oo-la-long, the bottled tea label features America's favorite penguin, Opus, from the Bloom County comic strip. Berkeley Breathed, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist and creator of the strip, is both one of Honest Tea's earliest customers and an investor in the company. "There will never be a penguin as beloved, innocent, offbeat and hilarious as Opus," said Seth Goldman, President and TeaEO of Honest Tea. "We are delighted to have him front and center on our newest addition and hope our customers can take as much pleasure in the taste, name and character behind Peach Oo-la-long as we had creating it," added Goldman. Opus appeared in the syndicated cartoon strip, Bloom County, nationwide from1980 to 1995.

slightly better picture of the front

And the back label has an amusing anecdote. I liked the tea. Most of the Honest Tea line is too diluted for me--I like strong tea and sweet teas. boy enjoys the subtleties of Honest Tea and will buy them when we're travelling (the very low sugar is of appeal to him, too). This one, though. It's worth it... And it has OPUS!!!!

If Honest Tea isn't sold where you are, I can see if your visitor this weekss is willing to bring you a bottle. I want to pick up another for myself, anyhow. If I use sand or beads, I can use them as bookends, especially if I glue felt or silicone mat to the bottom. I know it's a Maryland company, but I don't know if it's nation-wide. The bottles are glass, but not terribly large, so perhaps it wouldn't be a problem if she has room in her carry-on (packed in a sock and a ziplock bag).

Yay! Now boy is clean. I shall start a load of wash... or maybe not. We'll just go sleep. Oh, i must drink my last quarter cup of cocoa. and take out my contacts. doh!

Comments

[knkdyke.livejournal.com]

I don't know how you are with sugar, but the only thing that cures hiccups for me is, literally, a spoonfull of sugar, swallowed all at once. It works every time.

[krasota.livejournal.com]

doesn't work for me. not at all. in fact, i'm more liable to hiccup before the sugar is completely swallowed and spew sugar everywhere, which leads to a five minute coughing/hiccuping fit. now, if i thought you knew i had a webcam, i'd wonder if you were suggesting this for your own entertainment. ;)

[ismene.livejournal.com]

That's the only thing that works on my hiccups, too.

Honest Tea is sold at Wild Oats here. They do not, however, sell that brand of cookies I like that Whole Foods has.

[cutopia.livejournal.com]

Heh, eating milk products usually gives me hiccups.
I try pressing really hard into my diaphram to stop my hiccups. I read that tip online someplace, but it stopped working in recent years, so now I just suffer. :(

[krasota.livejournal.com]

I know a lot of celiac folks who can't tolerate casein at all. I take it you're one of the lucky ones?

I haven't had a bout since my nap, which ended recently. We'll see how long it takes. ;)

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

I'd buy it for the name alone, but it also sounds yummy!

[cutopia.livejournal.com]

I seem to do fine on cheddar cheese. I do not normally consume undigested milk, but occasionally cheat when there's a particularly decadent gluten free dessert around.
Although doing so definately makes me feel sub-par.

I see your entry about not eating bread on the day you made your lentil soup. Have you tried many dietary experiments on your autoimmune disease or are you following a known recommended diet for controlling it?

I have this skin condition (the one that made those red patches on my forhead during my senior year of highschool). Modern medicine says it has no known cause or cure (a lot of help they are) and they gave me stuff to control the symptoms. Of course, in actuality, it is diet-based. I found that canola oil and corn are triggers, and high sugar intake also worsens it (by feeding the yeast that's growing in the red patches). I think there's probably another trigger I haven't discovered or maybe I get traces too often, but all the same it is greatly improved.
All this really impressed me even more that many supposedly incurable conditions are diet related. So, I just thought I'd encourage your dietary efforts at good health!

[krasota.livejournal.com]

Basically, a year or so after getting sick, I developed new food allergies: soy (anaphylactic), strawberry (which has gone away), peanut (not so severe, thankfully), and wheat (must rotate, but it might be getting worse). I already had airborne allergies and allergies to papaya, natural rubber latex, and penicillium molds (the kinds used in moldy cheeses like bleu and brie).

I also spent five years with a severe UV allergy--I reacted to sunlight, direct fluorescent lighting, and sometimes direct halogen lights. It disappeared as quickly as it started, though it started to recur last year after I had surgery. It didn't manifest fully, thankfully.

I initially only had to give up obvious soy and soy protein additives. I wasn't getting better (hives, throat constriction, other fun stuff). After giving up all forms of soy whatsoever, my lifelong eczema disappeared. My doctors had told me all my life it wouldn't ever go away--I was on soy formula in infancy, when it started.

Recently, I developed dishydrotic eczema... my doctor gave me ointments that just barely controlled it... turns out that a drink the new guy at Starbucks swore was soy-free was not. I discovered this after one of the regular baristas said,"HEY! You can't have that! It's got soy in it!" Sure enough, the thickener they add to that drink has some sort of soy oil way down on the list of ingredients. No more blisters, thankfully the reaction was never worse.

So yeah, I watch my diet carefully. I'm really hoping I don't develop problems with corn. Corn syrup does seem to upset my belly, which is disconcerting. When I stick with organic corn, I seem okay, but with the spread of GMO corn, we can't be sure of its purity. Corn is truly ubiquitous and nearly impossible to avoid in total. I don't seem to have any sugar issues. I've tried cutting it out and don't have adverse effects either way. I do try to use stevia for my tea, simply because my teeth could handle less sugar.

I rarely use canola oil, though I sometimes do. I tend to buy organic sunflower or safflower for anything that requires heat and olive oil for anything else.

Have you experimented with limiting soy? I know a number of celiac folk who have discovered they're actually intolerant of it.

And, just in case you don't know--Living Without (http://www.livingwithout.com/) magazine is aimed at folks who are on GFCF diets, but also addresses other limitations. It seems more aimed at parents of children, but there are some fun recipes here and there. The latest issue has a lot of reprints/updates from previous issues, so it's a slightly different format than usual. I also have a decent free-of-everything-i-might-want-to-eat cookbook. ;)

I'm staying wheat-free until tomorrow evening--this is a longer spell than usual. I think I had a piece of pizza a couple days ago, but that was it. I usually go two days on, two days off. I initially just had to give it a break a couple times a week or not eat it at every meal. Fortunately, I have access to lots of different kinds of pasta (asian ones) *and* I finally found a rice pasta which is darn close (in consistency) to wheat pasta and can fulfill my pasta cravings. Woohoo!

[cutopia.livejournal.com]

I used to get this wonderful rice pasta that was made with white rice. Then they stopped offering it and only offer ones made with brown rice! Brown rice is really too heavy for me. It gives me gut cramps--ouch! Plus, the white rice pasta was indistinguishable from real pasta! The stuff was amazing!

Heh. I can't eat bleu cheese either because the mold is bread mold and can be a source of gluten contamination.

Oh, I may indeed have to try no soy for a while. It would be sad to not be able to eat it because it has some really good properties. For example, my mom started eating a ton of soy milk and she actually gained bone mass! She had been losing it and for some reason had to go off of the drugs that was preventing further bone loss. So it was quite amazing for her to get bone back. Although the bone-mass properties do not affect pre-menapausal women.

So you cannot eat soy, but lentils are not a problem for you? I have a recipe for a great chocolate cake made from potato mix, rice flour, eggs (I sometimes wonder if I'm somewhat allergic to eggs), and lentil puree. Is there a form of chocolate or similar enough substance you can eat?

I am getting to the point where I may soon permanently shift to just preparing everything myself from unadulterated vegetables and meats. Food labelling just isn't sufficient. Of course, I find it troubling that I don't know where the ingredients in shampoos, soaps, and the like come from either. I could be rubbing wheat on my skin without knowing it. It is hard to find a conditioner these days that doesn't have wheat germ in it. Fortunately, I don't condition my hair anymore.

We make pizza a lot. I use potato mix and rice flour to make the crust. It turns out really nice. Even Matt looks forward to this wheat-free pizza.

What made you develop all those food allergies? My mom has tons of food allergies because of her celiac disease. She got bowel perforation from years of wheat that let inappropriate immune contact occur with the food... also, she used to wolf down her food and, at least with rabbits, food contact with the cheeks from chewing is what disables the immune response (and helped mess up my PhD efforts). I'm thinking I need a cat dander chewing gum...

I need to get a new round of allergy shots designed for the pacific northwest. There are new trees here and one of them, the red alder, is my new ragweed.

[krasota.livejournal.com]

My doctors have no clue why I suddenly developed the extra food allergies. I'm one of the people prone to allergies--I've always had tons of skin/respiratory allergies and I was diagnosed with MCS when I was younger, though it didn't really get to the severe point til I got older (though I did often have nasty reactions in HS from folks wearing perfume).

I'm worried that my increasing sensitivity to wheat could be due to the drug I'm on for reflux--it might be allowing larger food particles into my gut, which could lead to the extra reactions.

I did have a large congenital cyst discovered (and removed) last year. It was near my thymus, but not in contact with it. My surgeon did surmise that the constant battle with infection/inflammation my body was under for 27 years could have something to do with it and my hyperimmune system. he said things might start going a little wacky as my body heals... I've had the flu twice this year, after probably never having it in my life. And I *rarely* have caught anything since developing the fibro.

Allergy shots actually made my allergies worse. :/ I'm one of the people who isn't helped by them at all.

I don't know if my shampoo is wheat-free, I just asked the company about soy. It's made by Heritage (http://www.caycecures.com/) and is olive oil based. It's their olive oil shampoo, unscented. My conditioner has only ingredients derived from coconut in it (well, there's water, too, and I dilute it slightly). It's made by Granny's Old Fashioned Products. There's no local distributor--I buy it from NEEDS (http://www.needs.com), but you might be able to find it to try out locally. It's the Soft & Silky Creme Rinse Conditioner, also unscented. I did ask specifically about corn, wheat, soy, etc. I buy both of them in large jugs so that I don't need to buy so often. And once boy switched to my stuff, his dandruff disappeared. I think the Selsun Blue was aggravating/perpetuating a problem he may have had when he was a young teen, but had outgrown. I make hair gel for boy out of flaxseed and water, since it's hard to find aloe-free unscented gels. It works pretty well--I make a new batch every two weeks or so.

A friend of mine just uses olive oil for her hair. She mixes some olive oil with shampoo, shampoos, then shampoos lightly again, then rubs olive oil over herself when she's done showering, buffing her skin with a towel that's set aside for this. She has gorgeous skin and hair (it's a lion's mane of hair--coarser than mine and wavy/curly).

I can make chocolate from baking chocolate and there are one or two soy-free brands I can buy. I'm fine with lentils and eat them quite a bit. It's hard to find instant potatoes which are soy-free, but I think the local WFS might have one. I have lots of recipes, since I belong to a few groups for folks with multiple food allergies. You might like to check out the recipes on FAST (http://www.angelfire.com/mi/FAST/recipes.html), if you haven't already seen them. Some of them might rely on barley flour instead of wheat, which would be a problem for you, but there tend to be substitutions available. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of yeast-free breads on there. I eat a lot of yeast-free flatbreads, though.

And I eat lots of indian food, since it's easy to prepare a lot of the foods without wheat or soy. I just use non-wheat flours for my flatbreads those days.

The rice pasta I like is made from whole bran rice. This is good for my husband, who only eats wholegrain pastas and I like it. I'm sorry the one you liked is gone. That's always annoying.

Is your household GF, or does Matt keep a stash of wheat-filled treats?

I can remember making (well, attempting) a potato crust for you that night we were snowed in at Chuck's. That was fun.

[evilrumor.livejournal.com]

I found organic corn rotini at Wild Oats a month or so ago. I haven't cooked it yet, though. I'll let you know how it is.

[krasota.livejournal.com]

Uh-oh. rat_bastard's suspicions that you are a sweet, sweet, adorable kitty cat who never eats human flesh are confirmed!!!

[ismene.livejournal.com]

Dammit, I hate it when that cat doesn't log out. First she gloats in her journal about trying to prepare me as food, then this. *grump*

Will should know better, because Rumor gnawed on him a bit. She just didn't take big chunks out of him like she does with most people. I think she just doesn't like Asian food.