Ramble On

My laptop is broken, or defective I suppose. A bit of it got recalled so I have to ship it back to Sony to get it fixed which, apparently, is going to take a while. I'm borrowing my husband's MacBook Pro for a few moments at a time and I'm not completely comfortable using it yet but I did manage  to get on the internet although the whole one-button-mouse thing is completely throwing me off.

In addition to my laptop issues my 2-year-old came down with what my oldest had approx a week ago yesterday a 4 o'clock in the afternoon. It was a long night. She's in a much better mood today and I'm tired but happy that so far, no one has thrown up today.  Still waiting on the rest of us to get it, and drinking as much water as I possibly can. No idea if that will help but I tend to dehydrate very quickly so I'm taking very precaution. 

I have not gotten much done in the past couple of days that I would have liked, but really, who cares. I'm so thankful that I'm able to take care of my children even if that means cleaning up vomit (really tired of cleaning up vomit), but I did it, cause I'm mom and that's what we do.

This will make approx 6 pieces of French Toast. I usually make two pieces for myself and store the rest of the batter in the fridge for another time. It'll keep for about three days in the fridge. You're going to need bread for this preparation and since I can not eat nuts I've used souffle bread, and coconut flour bread. You can use anything you'd like though, it'll work with any sort of bread. For my family if we're all eating French Toast, I make my portion first and then use the remaining batter for the rest of the crew. Everyone likes it.


In the photos I'm sharing I've used souffle bread.

French Toast Batter
1 egg
1/4 cup yogurt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla



Place in a hot pan and allow to cook until the side that is down has browned. Flip (like a pancake) and cook until the other side is brown.


Syrup
Go ahead and put about 1/3 of a cup of honey into a microwave safe dish, make sure it's tall because honey likes to climb, and microwave it for approx 30 sections to break the honey and create a syrup. Yum!

I didn't set out to be a success story for any diet or lifestyle or anything like that. I started on this journey to get better and to reclaim my life. I'm so happy that SCD is working for me thus far, I'm happy with how far I've come comparing my life now to my life before the diet, it's so much better. So much better in fact that I now refer to my life before diagnosis as my "previous life".

I've mentioned before that I've suffered from depression for many years as well as carpal tunnel syndrome. Now that I've been on the diet for a considerable amount of time those symptoms too have lessened, which is amazing to me. My wrist pain kept me from doing things that I wanted to do, it kept me from knitting, it kept me from cooking, writing, and picking up my children. That pain is gone now, just gone! It took months for this to happen but as I continued to follow SCD it has gradually diminished. I now can knit for several hours a day, I'm cooking a lot (obviously!), and I'm picking up my kids, well at least the ones that I can lift (the 5-year-old is teetering on the edge of that right now, 9 year old is nearly as tall as me so..).

As far as my depression. I can say that it's less sever than it has been in years. It's still there, lingering, I know it's something that I will struggle with for the rest of my life but now that I'm reclaiming my digestive health I feel like my mental health is also improving. I go outside and play with my kids now, something I never did much of simply because I was too tired. It was a vicious cycle. I was tired, so I didn't go out and play with the kids, then I felt bad about it, so I'd cry, and that would make me more tired. No good.

I went on this diet and started this journey to lessen my Crohn's symptoms. I had no idea taking care of my gut would improve the rest of my health. I'm so grateful that I took the chance and tried the diet. It is hard but it's doable.  I'm so grateful for the people who've gone through this before me that showed me that it could be done and now hopefully, I'm showing others that they can do it as well.

Here's what I want to say: It's easy to get upset, to beat yourself up, to stop taking care of yourself, of your family, your finances. It's easy to give up. Facing a diagnosis, whatever it is, is hard. But please, please try to find the positive in your situation. Don't let your diagnosis take you, you're more than just this disease.

Tomorrow, I will be posting a guide to French Toast including a SCD legal batter recipe. I will post links for breads that will work with it (I also think my banana bread would be really good as French Toast as well but it's not something I've personally tried yet, adding it to my list!) 

It snowed today and I finished this. I thought it was fitting to photograph it draped over and ice covered cherry tree. My 3rd shawl for 2011 (of 11).

Today my son no sooner got to school when the nurse called me to come pick him up. I hate when my kids are sick, but because of his illness I started thinking about comfort foods. In my past life when I got sick I would turn to mashed potatoes, and hot buttered noodles with salt and pepper. Now, I can not eat any of those things. I think that maybe a butternut squash or cauliflower puree, souffle bread for sure, the noodles? there is really no replacement for those as much as I try, I just got nothing.

After my second pregnancy I started getting sick. Looking back on it, maybe part of the reason I always got sick and stayed sick for so long was because of the food. Of course initally the virus would throw me through a loop but it would drag on for a weeks at a time and probably because of all the high starch crappy foods I was putting in my body.

I'm prepared as I can be for what may be to come. I have coconut water (re-hydration), souffle bread, chicken soup, peppermint tea, and a butternut squash hanging out on my counter. 


And by the way, he is feeling much better now. 

My 2-year-old is taking a nap, we switched her to a toddler bed this weekend so I'm going to have to get her up with the older kids now that she's not safely in her crib while we're running around the house getting ready for school. I'm excited because this might mean an official return of "nap time" for her. I'm sitting now but when she first fell asleep I was straight on to the laundry, I even folded it and put it away while it was still warm, that is unheard of for me. It was rainy and gross out this morning. I was honestly shocked that it was not snowing it was so cold, waiting for the bus was hilarious we were all huddled into a circle around the umbrella (it was a large golf umbrella but still) tripping our way down the driveway. We had to just laugh, it was ridiculous.

Over the weekend, it was gorgeous. We made up a new game, well sort of. We made "Epic Hopsctoch" (so named by my 9-year-old son) it started out as a normal hopscotch game and then we started adding squares, curving the path around the cars, going diagonal, we ended up going from -3 all the way up to 100. It went nearly the entire way up the driveway. We played and worked on it for hours, the 2-year-old running up in down the path, the older two using their scooters, and jumping. We timed each other to see who jump the course the fastest, then the slowest. My hands were blue with chalk. The next morning, my legs hurt and I was confused for a minute until I remembered I had spent the better part of the afternoon jumping. 

I'm so grateful that I'm feeling well enough that I can go outside and play with my kids, jump around, and not feel like my insides were going to fall out. I didn't have to fake it, I was there, I was present. I know it probably sounds stupid but last year I could not do that, physically, I just simply could not. I was so sick and I had no idea what was wrong with me. It makes me so sad to think about. 

I've been making stew that features butternut squash as a sub for potatoes and it's a pretty dang good one. The recipe only calls for half a butternut squash so I always have some left over which I chop up and store in one of my beloved lock n' lock containers in the fridge until I'm ready for a snack. I think this would be really good for breakfast along with some over-easy eggs. Yum.

Oven Roasted Butternut Squash Home Fries

1/2 of a peeled, de-seeded and chopped butternut squash
tablespoon olive oil
sea salt & pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Toss the squash in the olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spread out on a jelly roll pan and place in your oven for about 45 minutes  to an hour. It's going to depend on how thick your pieces of squash are. I actually sort of prefer them on the burnt side cause I like the crunch.