Thanksgiving food Ideas when you can't eat anything

The very first Thanksgiving I had after my allergies decided to go insane was pretty awful. I was down to less than ten foods, trying to figure out what to eat, and really came up with nothing all that palatable.

Although admittedly, the next Thanksgiving was more emotionally upsetting, what with being exposed to one of my allergens by my ex (just a whiff), to help prove to me that it was all psychosomatic. Yeah, that one didn't work too well, just made me sick the entire holiday, sigh.

But, anyway, back to foods. There are some AMAZING recipes for Thanksgiving foods you can make with substitutions. Awesome ones. If they help you, awesome. And I mean that - I'm all about the food porn here. I love seeing other people enjoy food, even if it's not something I'm likely to try myself (see the similarity here? Food porn - it truly is).

But if you are like I was, you may have so few foods that you just don't even know where to start. It's overwhelming. So, for those like me, here's some things that might help a little bit for Thanksgiving foods when you have very little you can have. I don't know if these will help anyone, but I hope that they may be of use for some.

Homemade sunscreen

This one looks pretty interesting - a homemade sunscreen bar:
http://wellnessmama.com/4844/sunscreen-bars/

One thing, though, is that it requires a lot of oils that many of us can't use. Might be able to find something to substitute with, though.

However, in the interests of the most natural sunscreen ever, I remind you of pigs. Who roll in the mud not only to keep cool, but as a kind of protection from the sun, too.

That's right: rub mud on your skin - the most basic form of sunscreen there is. 

Now, that sounds silly for folks who are going to, say, an amusement park or a picnic. Most of them dressed up and don't care to have mud all over. However, if you were, say, hiking, or gardening? You have a hat on for face protection, so typically you just need arms and legs. Which are going to be getting covered in dirt anyway, so hey, why not just rub them down with a little wet dirt and save the money on sunscreen? Or the possibility of a reaction, at least if you can find some clean dirt that's not, you know, contaminated by heavy metals or something.

I have a friend whose grandmother used to do this when out gardening, living out west and not having sunscreen at the time. Everything old is new again, I guess!

Making Tea

More information on brewing your own tea, both regular tea and herbal tea (herbal infusion).

(source)

Oil Cleansing Method

I have been using soapnuts liquid to wash my face and skin with, but I live in a desert and I have dry skin. The soapnuts cleans it, and doesn't strip the oil away, but it doesn't add any, either, and my skin simply never, well, glows.

That's what we all want, right? That glowy, lovely skin that...that I've never had, ever, so why I think I'll get it after 40 is a mystery. But I'll keep trying anyway!

Enter the 'oil cleansing method.'

Soapnuts 2

I've been using soapnuts liquid since November now. Here's the verdict so far.

What we can eat

I was reminded recently that there are lots of lists of what allergic folks can't eat, but much fewer lists of what we CAN eat. Our own list of 'can't eat' is pretty extensive, for example.

My son is gluten free and dairy free and can only seem to tolerate limited quantities of eggs, GF grains, dyes and preservatives, non-organic fruits and veggies, and palm oil.

My daughter is gluten free, dairy free, soy free, egg free, onion and garlic free, and grain fee. She can only seem to tolerate fruit, dyes, and preservatives in limited amounts, and some fruits are no good at all.

Myself, I'm gluten free, dairy free, soy free, egg free, grain free, sugarcane free, coffee free, chicken free, and sulfite and high-in-sulfur-foods free. I have to limit my consumption of legumes, potatoes, and sweeteners, as well.

But what CAN we eat? Well, in the spirit of looking at the positive, here's a few foods on a 'can eat' list.

I can eat this, for example. Probably.

Things to consider on an elimination diet

There's a lot of sites out there which discuss how to do an elimination diet, from medical sites to forums to personal blogs. There's lots of different ideas on what to avoid, how to avoid it, and in what order you should try to eliminate foods.

I'm not going to talk about any of that. In my family, we dropped the 8 most common allergens and cooked from scratch for a while, and changed that on subsequent elimination diets, based on what we learned.

And that's what I'm going to talk about right now: what we learned. Because even if you can find a doctor who is willing to help you with an elimination diet, many times they seem to be, to put it bluntly, pretty ignorant about the REALITY of an elimination diet. Most doctors I've met don't seem to have the barest clue about what your every day experience is going to be like, or what the food industry has been adding to your food.

I hope that knowing a bit more about the process, from someone who has been in the trenches, so to speak, might be of use for anyone who is going through the process.

Stevia Syrup

I can have stevia as long as I grow it myself, so imagine how excited I was to learn that you can make stevia syrup from the leaves!

This site shows how: http://lifehacker.com/5951453/diy-stevia-syrup

Stevia Syrup:

Keeping berries from molding

While keeping berries fresh is something we'd all like, keeping as many berries fresh as possible is even MORE important when you don't have a lot of food choices and those berries are essentially your sweet bastion against the boring food world.

No Shampoo

Shampoo has been a bit of a problem for a while - lots of allergies means more and more shampoos are making us react. My daughter has been having a lot of skin problems due to shampoo, so we've been a bit desperate lately.

Which leads me to here: cleaning my hair without shampoo. I know people do this. I hear about it; I read about it. So I decided to give it a try.

Figuring out protein

Chickpeas - protein of awesome

 If you have food limitations that include grains, beans, nuts, eggs, dairy, or soy, this can affect your protein intake, especially if you don't have a wide variety of meats you can eat.

How to succeed in your diet

When our reactions are life-threatening, it's very motivating to stay on the diet. But what about reactions that aren't life threatening? The ones where you feel like crap, but only for a day or two. Or those reactions that build up over a week or two, where your RA gets worse, your FM gets worse, you get more tired and feel terrible until you finally go back to eating like your should.

In the beginning, those can be much harder to stick to, especially when we're tossed in the deep end of allergen-free cooking and it's drowning us. We have to rely on our support and our own will, and sometimes that's just barely enough. 

Or it isn't enough. I still drown periodically, eating something I shouldn't, getting sick, and smacking myself in the head that I let myself be such an idiot. But, when I'm completely on track, here's some of the things that have helped me stay on track.

Adding Sour to a recipe

There are two flavors I have a hard time acquiring: sweet and sour. Today, I'm just going to list what I've found for sour, for others in that situation.

Vinegar and citrus are what most folks use for sour. Vinegar is out for me right now, and citrus only in very small amounts, as I have a limited supply from a couple farmers. So, here's a few other things I've come across that may work.

How-to: Roasted peppers

Time: 1 hour...maybe. It takes me a few hours, but it's greatly dependent on amounts.


Ingredients:
bell peppers or chile peppers (allergic folks, check on waxes and coatings)
(optional) oil with a flavor that won't clash with the peppers