Tis the season to eat healthy

Hi there! I have so many great pictures to share with you, of all the yummy, healthy food we've been eating this month! Just to update - we have stuck to the SCD diet 100%, still going strong, with no plans of ever going off it! It's becoming a lot easier and even though there are times we miss our old favorite foods, we're finding new favorites and having a lot of fun doing it.


Although I will admit, a couple days ago I baked our landlord some chocolate chip cookies and was emotional for the rest of the day. I was standing there, smelling the delicious chocolate, complaining to Dustin the whole time - "Why, me? Why? I just want a cookie." But, nevertheless, I held strong .. even when that dreaded moment came and not all the cookies fit into the gift box. Four were left and it tore my heart apart when, having no other use for them, I threw them out. It felt like a sin, but I ate some pears and put on a brave face!


We've been ordering our food from a grocery store here called Ingles. They're amazing - they actually will do the shopping for us and all we have to do is pick it up. It's a really big help to us, because we buy A LOT of produce and it can be really exhausting, especially on days we're both not feeling well. 


Things have been pretty rough still for both of us with our health. Dustin, especially. We're not sure what exactly is going on, but tomorrow I plan to call all of his doctor's and really fight to get some answers. The good news is his stomach has actually been a lot better, and mine has been pretty good for the most part, too! We have no doubt that both of our digestive systems are grateful for our commitment to getting better.


So, here's what we've been eating:

Lots of pears!

We order 20 pears every 2 weeks. I boil about half of them, add cinnamon, and keep them in the fridge to eat during the week. (I'm still in the stage of the diet where I cook all of my fruit and veggies. Because my colon is still inflamed, it doesn't digest raw food well, yet.) The rest Dustin eats raw - pears are his favorite fruit.

Our fridge! Apple cider, water.

Spinach, more spinach!, tomatoes, bag of salad greens from our CSA, raspberries, Dustin's cute little pear, because he likes them cold, chicken, Applegate organic hot dogs, boiled carrots, bell peppers, bananas, more carrots, lots of ground turkey, some fish... 

We've been eating a lot of zucchini pasta lately. It's delicious and really helps with our pasta cravings. I usually season it with salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and a dash of paprika and then add whatever veggies we have. Here, we had our organic carrots that we get from the CSA. They have a really great taste. Also, some bell peppers and mushrooms.

This is some almond butter bread we made not too long ago! It didn't photograph well, but it was really amazing! I got the recipe from the amazing Ali (Souper Douper SCDer!) who got it from Z's Cup of Tea. It was so simple to make. I hate baking, but this was actually really fun and I was so fascinated at how few ingredients were used and the texture was still perfect. It's just almond butter, eggs, baking soda, and salt! Who knew?

We never did get around to eating it with anything but butter and cinnamon, because after being so bread-deprived (which, really isn't as big of a deal as it sounds!), neither of us could stop eating it. I loved heating it up for a few seconds and eating it warm. Yum!

Dustin made this one night in the steamer. It was delicious! I'm still learning how to use the steamer. My mom got it for me for my birthday and at first I was totally intimidated by it, but now that I've done it a few times it's not so scary anymore. In fact, it's actually really easy. I never realized you could basically use a steamer the way you use a crock pot. It's like an instant dinner!

These are chicken thighs (my first time trying them. Delicious!) with sides; mushrooms, bell peppers, spinach, yellow squash, carrots, and some type of greens we got from our CSA. Mizuna, maybe? Also, he covered the chicken thighs with lots of fresh herbs, including rosemary. Pretty sure he seasoned the thighs with salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and of course, paprika. That's a pretty common combination for us. Dustin LOVES paprika! He tends to use that and I always go for the turmeric. Recently I realized that the main reason I love turmeric so much is because I love that it makes everything such a pretty yellow color... I know... I need to get a life!

Also, I'm careful about not eating those herbs yet though! Too much for my poor colon just yet!

Another yummy dish made by Dustin. Tuna with bell peppers, mushrooms, and spinach. It had SO much flavor! I think he seasoned it with the usual: garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, salt, and maybe a dash of mustard powder. 

I've never been too big on tuna, but this time, it was really good. 

 

My favorite! Our Christmas feast!

We had craw fish (I bought them for Dustin as a Christmas gift. They're his favorite and he has a very famous story about buying himself pounds of craw fish from lousianacrawfish.com and that's exactly what I did. Five pounds and we went through about a pound these past two days! Yum!)

Craw fish, zucchini, bell peppers, spinach. You can probably already tell, but lots of turmeric in there!

Loved it! I'm officially as big a fan of craw fish as he is, I think!

Just so we wouldn't feel bad for ourselves, I made us some almond muffins. Just almond butter, bananas, eggs, baking soda, and apple cider vinegar in the blender, and then poured into a muffin tin. They came out surprisingly sweet and the texture was to die for. I topped them with a drizzle of honey. They tasted like banana bread. 

See my cute little plate they're on? Bought that at the antique store. 

 ...and just because I'm proud, here's the gift basket I made for our landlord. Yummy Betty Crocker gluten-free chocolate chip cookies... most likely they lead me into my last Colitis flare-up, so as much as I dearly miss them, they will stay missed and be given to others as gifts.

I wonder if he could tell they were gluten-free? Doubt it!

Alright, well that's it for our pictures!

Just a note - I know it seems like we eat pretty much the same meal all of the time, since it's the same veggies over and over. That's because I'm doing the SCD diet in stages, because I was in such a bad flare-up when I initially started. In the beginning I did the intro diet which was basically just a lot of soup and grape jello, and then slowly weaned myself onto real food.

Every four days, if things are stable, I introduce a new food. I've been meaning to introduce tomatoes and probably will next week. 

Here's a typical day for me diet-wise now:

Pre-breakfast 

(I have to eat as soon as I wake up, because I wake up with low blood sugar):

Banana

Breakfast: 

Ground turkey with pureed carrots

3 prunes

(I introduced prunes to *ahem* get my digestive system moving a bit more, they're working and guess what - I actually love them! I bought the organic ones from Newman's Own. Dustin laughed because I stocked up on like 12 packages from Amazon!)

Lately, I tend to skip over lunch, simply because our sleep schedule's off and we wake up so late! I'll usually eat my boiled pears with cinnamon or a scoop of almond butter. Depending on what's for dinner, I'll sometimes turn a couple zucchini's into pasta and eat that!

Dinner:

Chicken or fish

(Chicken breasts, thighs, salmon, tillapia, tuna, etc.)

with lots of veggies

Supplements: 

Dustin is taking an SCD multi-vitamin and Vitamin D and B12 drops.

I'm taking the D and B12 drops, along with fish oil. I introduced turmeric capsules for awhile to bring down inflammation, but cut them out when I felt like they may have been causing me pain. Looking back, I don't think it was that so I'll probably reintroduce them soon again. I'm still on the search for a multivitamin that I can tolerate, though.

Alright, hope everyone's having a fantastic holiday season! Here's to a healthy, happy New Year!

Soon I'll be blogging about the all natural cleaners I've been making! Good for health and saving lots of money!

-Kyli and Dustin

CSA & Diet Updates

"Would you like a radish or a turnip?"

So, our CSA isn't as grand as we'd hoped. LOL.

But it's been fun nonetheless! Here's what we picked up last week:

Cabbage, Turnips, a new kind of radish we'd never tried before, sunchokes, herbs, and some carrots

We love the carrots - they have a really different taste, much more flavorful than the ones we're used to eating from the grocery store.

Unfortunately, the SCD diet doesn't allow turnips or sunchokes. Not really disappointed about the turnips, but sunchokes are really good! We tried some when we lived in Jacksonville and actually really liked them. 

Read more about sunchokes!

This week we also picked up something called Mizuna, which I had never tried before. It's a type of mustard green and we actually really like it. 

It's high in iron and antioxidants, so we've been adding it in with our steamed veggies.

(Dustin has been going a bit Mizuna crazy - I think he ate about a pound of it last night!)

We're having a really fun time getting to know new, healthy foods and recreating our diets. We've been eating a lot of organic, ground turkey because it's easy on both of our stomachs and we love it! We puree carrots at the beginning of the week to add to it, and it vaguely reminds me of chili (except not spicy, of course). It's our new favorite comfort food.

I've also been eating a lot of boiled pears with cinnamon. It's funny how when you cut out all sugar and processed foods from your diet, your taste buds really start to appreciate the natural sugars even more. We're finding that everything tastes better to us. I was eating those pears the other day thinking "Wow, I don't remember pears tasting so amazing!"

As for our health, we're still struggling here and there. 

Dustin had a bad gastroparesis flare-up and had to go to the ER for fluids a few days ago, but since receiving them, he's doing a lot better. We think it was probably a combination of stress (he worries way too much about me!) and his body adapting to this new way of eating. 

My stomach has been all over the place. A lot of up's and down's, and it's discouraging at times, but both of us still feel really confident that changing our diet and lifestyle is going to result in better health. It may take more time than we want it to, but at least we're headed in the right direction and doing all that we can to ensure it.

More updates later! :)