Grateful in the Month of Thankfulness

And here we are again, my most (food) tempting and challenging time of the year.

This year’s been challenging all around, as far as keeping an eye on what I eat. But the holidays are the worst, as you can imagine. I wish I can say eating healthy is a way of life, after 33 years of knowing about my disease. But I am an FH patient who happens to love bacon and ham and eggs and French fries.

As you also know, no, I don’t eat all that every day, but even once a week or a month makes me feel bad about myself. The latest (September) numbers are below, and I was thrilled that my triglycerides are once again normal – which always tells me as far as I can control this, I am controlling this. The rest of the numbers don’t look too bad for an FH patient, I think. And without having had a drastic procedure, like an apheresis or anything like that, I think I am handling the numbers the best I can. 

Plus, you know what the doctor said last time: the numbers are not important anymore (till next time when they become important again!). They said the presence of heart disease and atherosclerosis is what matters. Not sure how they gauge the severity of that – but there you have it.

My quality of life has been pretty poor lately, although the cholesterol numbers are OK (for me). I have either a gallbladder issue or some food sensitivity that wreaks havoc in my body – my metabolism doesn’t seem to be quite happy lately: from skin rashes, to skin peelings, to bloating, stomach pain, fatigue, no energy, you name it, I’m going through it. Some people say it’s the stress. I think it’s yeast, gluten, fat, all of these, some of these, or something else … but I am not the happiest patient, for sure!

 Plus, living in a state where doctors print internet articles to have you read them at home, rather than knowing what is wrong with you, based on your tests and symptoms, doesn’t really move things in the right direction.

With all these symptoms and apprehensions, I am marching right along into another holiday season, and later next month into my 40^th year of life. 33 years or so ago, no one believed this day would come. But here I am. A third part luck, a third part modern medicine and another third part moderation in everything that entered my mouth and in lifestyle, in general, got me here. It’s more than I ever asked for. More than anyone planned for. And for that, I am grateful!

This, That and the Other at the End of Summer

It’s been a quiet but somewhat full summer, with lots of garden work, walks in the mountains around us, city walks for special events and festivals in open air, to take in the season and the fresh foods.

I have blogged about it on my general blog, just to give you an idea about the life I live when not concerned at all with my special disease – which is, really, most days.

I also blogged recently about the most amazing endeavor at pushing myself, physically, which is not something I do often. I am usually a wimp when it comes to endurance, and submitting myself to going out of breath. But seeing this beautiful natural landscape was plenty of reason for me to throw caution to the wind and just pretend I am a “regular” 39 year old, trying to take in life, and nature.

Altitude usually makes me dizzy and clutches onto my chest. Lack of air up there causes similar symptoms, but this one hike made it all worth it, and what’s even more important: I have lived to tell the tale!

I am writing this as I am contemplating going in for my 3 month blood tests tomorrow and in another week to my 3 month follow up, and realizing: I am not too happy with my current doctor, as it is, after all … He never once, in over a year examined me. Ever. Yet, he insists on pulling out my gall bladder. My pain on the right side of my ribs is still there although I know what to avoid to keep it numb and nagging instead of raging. But I still demand one blood test or one ultrasound to prove to me my gall bladder is really shot! Which – he would not provide …

As usual, I am taking one day at a time, and getting focused on what does feel good – the mountain air and the chicken seasoned to perfection that we just roasted in the oven that we’re about to eat with raw carrots and low fat ranch.

That’s the update on the summer for now, but stay tuned for more, after the blood test and the exam in the next couple of weeks.

Till then, I am still watching my tomatoes ripe. It’s been a horrible year for a good harvest!

Fake Food

Some people are obsessed, without needing to be, with gluten free food. Some are obsessed with vegetarianism or vegan-ism. Some with the Paleo diet ( I know, 50 years from now, this will not make sense). Don’t you hate those snobs?!

I have never been fixated on one diet or another, at any point in my life. And outside of this blog, I really don’t talk much, with emphasis, about what I eat. But I feel like the older I get, the more and more I am becoming intolerant about one thing: fake food! All the chemicals and crap that they put in our food nowadays! It just makes me sick, on top of scaring me.

One day, we stepped, hungry and sleepy, first thing in the morning, in a local bagel shop. The bagels and cream cheese were so good, we bought some. We ate the bagels pretty fast but we had a whole tub of cream cheese which we could not possibly eat in 2-3 sittings. A week later, the taste of the cheese started to turn. A week and a half later, there were big chunks of brown and blue spots inside of it –even stored in the fridge, in the dairy crisper. We normally buy Philadelphia cream cheese, and you know what?! I have one of their tubs in the fridge since March – and it’s still white and tastes the same as the first day. It’s August now. One thing I know for sure: that’s not cheese! It’s Philadelphia cream cheese, people! Do you know how much they sell a year?!

I was reading the label on my bread one day, and I could not pronounce 80% of the ingredients in that “product”. And that’s another thing … We watch a cooking show or more every day, and all the chefs talk about their “products”. It’s not food, or dishes anymore, it’s a “product”.

So, now, I spend two hours at the grocery store instead of half an hour because I read every label, and I nix 50% or more of the “products” I pick up to buy! It’s pretty counterproductive.

But seriously: I am not sure what’s going to happen to us. To our colon and our bodies, all filled up with all the acids and “solutions” no one knows how to pronounce. I decided there is no butter, no cheese that I can possibly buy that is 100% made of milk. There probably isn’t any natural milk in America anymore.

So, lately, I have been pretty picky about food and what I eat. My husband’s aunt died of colon cancer this spring – and I can’t help but think that that will be the end of me, too: forget cholesterol, I have been living with it for close to 40 years. What’s going to kill me is all the poisons in my food. I just imagine all these chemicals coating my body from the inside, unable to be eliminated, because my body doesn’t understand how to handle them.

I ask my husband to bake us bread more and more, because I can’t get myself to buy it anymore. I asked my doctor where I could get fat free and all natural butter or cheese. His answer was: “WOW! You do want everything, don’t you?!”

And I guess I do, but shouldn’t we? I tell my husband all the time that I’m going to go off the grid, completely. I’ll look into buying a plot of land in the middle of Nothing, Montana, and live off of what I plant and grow myself. Sure, it will still be full of pollution, but I feel like no one will add the crap on top of the pollution in my food.

I can’t even drink beer anymore lately. Wine, yes, it tastes close to my dad’s homemade wine, still. But not beer. I even can taste the chemicals in the filter that filters my water. I know our palates evolve as we age, but I hope mine is not going to totally keep me away from any food at all, because there is not much left out there to keep me full.

I am afraid that the older I get, the more I am becoming one of those snobs that talks all about how they only eat all natural things, all organic and untainted. I am not there yet, but once I find that all organic butter and cheese – you watch out, world! I’ll be even more stuck up than usual!

Summer

It's summer - almost, because today, after a long drought, we had torrential rain as well as snowfall on the mountains. But let's call this an "exception". 

The rule is ... that it's June, we have cherries and strawberries in the yard, and waiting patiently for tomatoes and peppers which are currently in bloom. A couple of more months or so. 

This is the first harvest of the year and yes, they taste as sweet and yummy as they look. 

Historically, it's been easier for me to eat healthier in the summer, just because everything is in season and everything tastes and looks so much more appetizing. But lately, working long days and being stressed out about it causes us to indulge in lavish meals at the end of the day and mostly the week. 

When we cook at home (which is about 75% of the time), we do try to be better about choices with make, with low fat, and good fat, but let me tell you: it is almost impossible to find no fat AND natural foods unless we turn into rabbits and eat 100% grass and carrots! I have been reading about all the junk there is in our foods, all the stuff they sneak in for the sake of "preservation" and increasing the shelf live while making bazillions, that I am paranoid about what goes into my stomach! Much to the despair of my husband who cannot stand me taking 2 hours in the  grocery store to read all the labels. 

No major change in my numbers, but I feel less "mobile" and I just feel ... fat. At 120 lbs and 5 feet, I am still not "very" fat, but I feel just aging and slow... A friend of mine put it right: "I feel like, as we are approaching 40, everything that passes by our lips has twice as many calories as when we were in our twenties". She speaks the truth, right there. 

The heat most days is not helping with feeling more agile, either. 

We have been camping once this year but our hike was not very strenuous nor very long. That's one thing I have in plan for this summer - more hikes and more camping.

No real news to report - just taking it one day at a time and doing everything other "healthy" people do: work, home, chores, seeing friends, and a trip or five in between here and there. 

I am due for another echo-cardiogram in 6 months, but until then, I hope I can just ... coast along ... 

Healthy summer, all!

Simple Food

Not unlike most Sundays, I woke up this morning with a huge craving for eggs. I have been trying to be really good lately, eating a lot of "clean" dishes, all fresh veggies, and if I buy anything canned, it has to be organic, or at least natural.
And I have been very good about avoiding fats lately - more so than usual.
 

My skin has been better, and I feel less guilt when I am done eating. So, fried eggs were not going to be part of the breakfast, if I could help it. I was not going to slip, not even for one little breakfast! 

So, I made a crustless quiche, with 100% egg whites, 0% fat, skim milk, almond cheese, kale and 90% fat free Canadian bacon. I added some onion powder, fresh ground pepper and a couple of drops of tabasco sauce, and ... oh my word, what deliciousness! 

I am really grateful for the out of the carton egg whites, because I don't feel like I am wasting an egg just to harvest its "healthy" part. The almond cheese sounded weird, at the store, but it's actually pretty good - it smells and tastes like a strong (real) mozzarella cheese. 

The whole dish tasted delicious, fresh and very flavorful - fresh from the kale, tasteful from the tabasco, pepper and onion, and it was light yet filling. And my egg craving was fulfilled.

 

Crustless quiche - kale, almond cheese, Canadian bacon, egg whites and skim milk. 

The Foods and Walks of Travels

I have already mentioned here before that I don’t try to be on a diet while I travel. I feel like a lot of the travel fun is in the food, not only because I personally find food part of the overall fun, but also because some places are defined by their food. How can you go to New Orleans and not get a beignet? Or a shrimp po’ boy? But healthy, they are not!

I constantly think of what enters my mouth every day of my life, and how it will affect me, but when I travel, I leave that at home.

We just got back from Oahu, Hawaii. It was really a trip of a lifetime because there are so many unique features of these islands that you will not get to know anywhere else on the Continental US or Europe. We loved many things about it, and food was just one of them.

Hawaii, however, is one of those places, like California, too, that offers a lot of healthy choices, right along the decadent ones.

Yes, you will have to at least taste a pulled pork sandwich. And you won’t regret it. Not sure if it’s in the smoke they use, or the marinade, or even what the pigs eat in these parts, but it was delicious. And not greasy at all, nor drowned unnecessarily in some goopy sauce! No mayo in the slaw – just raw red cabbage as a garnish and a slice of fresh pineapple on the side. Just pure goodness. 

Pork sandwich on Waikiki Beach - the bright red is pickled onion. Very yummy!

And speaking of pineapple: it’s one of the very few fruits I love no matter how you serve it to me, but the Hawaiian one is definitely the sweetest and juiciest there is. Sweet in a fresh kind of way, not in a it-hurts-my-teeth-fake-sugar kind of a way.

A lot of the restaurants allowed you to grill your own food, on an open grill – they called it ‘island style’. You ordered your ingredients and they would bring them to your fresh, then you’d grill them to your liking. You could control your spices, your salt, your sauces, as well as your done-ness. 

One of the self-cooked meals on the grill, at Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ Restaurant: steamed rice, with grilled chicken and grilled enoki mushrooms.

You find fresh fruit salads just about anywhere. We got some at a flea market and ate it as street food, while browsing the crafts and souvenirs tents. I ordered a fresh fruit salad for breakfast one morning, and I think that is a very first for me. I am not a fan of fruit, for sure, much to the demise of me, considering I should live on these to stay alive. But I had to “do as Romans do” in Oahu, and enjoy what this lush island had to offer. 

Our flea market snack.

 My fresh "bowl of fruit" breakfast. This was enormous -
there was no way I could finish this! 

Since you’re surrounded by water in this archipelago, sea food is, of course, everywhere, and plenty. One night, we went to Morimoto Waikiki, owned by the famed Iron Chef, and offering unique eats from the sea and turf alike. I had, for the first time, chirashi sushi: a bowl of steamed sesame rice, with a wide selection of all sorts of fish, roe and pickled veggies on top. Apart from the mercury poisoning I might have committed to myself, the raw fish was out of this world delicious and very light. The portion was huge, I thought, and although I was so stuffed that I could not finish it, I never felt guilty eating it, even a little bit.  

Miso soup, with chirashi sushi dinner

Another reason why this trip was a “feel good trip” was all the walking we did. We did rent a car, but we walked mostly everywhere. In the last couple of days, we drove to the mountains, and there, we hiked the rainforest towards Manoa Falls. The vegetation was unusual than anything else I have ever seen, fresh, incredibly overgrown with amazing blooms, and so green!

The trail was easy, but long enough to actually feel like we moved some muscles and burned some of that pork. Despite the high humidity in the air, I really enjoyed hiking at sea level again! My chest never clogged up, my throat never felt tense, and I was never out of breath. 

The mountains we live in surely are pretty and the hikes are challenging, but the altitude surely takes a toll on a cardiac patient like me. In contrast, there is something to be said for comfort, even when you push your body to exercise. Call me a wimp, if you want, but I personally feel much better when I can breathe freely and my veins are not screaming for oxygen. 

  

 Hiking in the rainforest, the Manoa Falls Trail