calcium, and other important stuff

... went to a bonfire party the other day. My friend has a lively and enquiring mind, and had cooked pumpkin soup for everyone - but a bowl of celery soup for me. She had made a chili curry - but along came a bowl of prawn salad for me. By the time platters of cake were being handed round, which I politely refused, J asks me if I'm on a diet. No sugar, anti-Candida, I mutter. At which point J and I begin the interesting task of discussing her own anti-Candida diet, which has succeeded. She is (mostly) free of Candida symptoms, eats a well balanced healthy diet which includes bread, sugar and alcohol. She says she listens to her body more, nowadays, and when things 'don't feel quite right' she just cuts down on the bread, sugar and alcohol for a few days til she feels better.

We had a similar history - loads of random, apparently disconnected symptoms of things that were slightly wrong, but nothing worth bothering the doctor with, followed by finding out about Candida, and coming to the inevitable conclusion that this is what we're suffering from. Then some research, and the devising of a suitable diet.

J drank rice milk, and a product called Oatley - I neglected to ask why! but presume she had a cereal she liked eating it with. She cut out caffeine, alcohol, bread, sugar, sweets cake & biscuits, fruit and fruit juices. She pretty much carried on eating most veg, apart from roots, I think. And she took a tablet of some kind. There are two reasons I'm blogging this - apart from the THRILL of meeing someone who's going through the same experience, and has a POSITIVE RESULT - one of which is the great CALCIUM debate, and the other is to reveal her 'party trick'

J's strategy for eating out at friend's houses

She told them she was on a diet. She said she was happy to eat her diet food while everyone else all around her ate delicious party food. J's eating-out food was a jacket potato, with tomato & cucumber salad - easy and simple for the hosts to prepare alongside the dinner.

Now, I don't have either potatoes or tomatoes or cucumber (J's named foods) on my list. But, there again, J has got rid of her Candida symptoms, so this obviously worked for her...


CALCIUM

J managed the very restrictive diet for 7 months and lost a lot of weight, as well as improving her general health. Not having a plan for how to end the diet, she went to her practice nurse. Who buried her head in her hands, and said 'Calcium: everyone on this anti-Candida diet forgets they need calcium.'

Well, this was one of the factors I'd forgotten to think about. I'd forgotten that I'm a woman of a certain age, that I risk suffering from osteoporosis, brittle bones, if I don't keep up with the calcium intake. I'd forgotten that if I stopped drinking milk and eating cheese I'd be depriving myself of a major source of this metal... it's a metal! I'd always assumed it was a mineral, for some reason.

So I looked up calcium. It's also present in high to good quantities in...

Celery, Kale, Spinach, Sesame Seeds, Fennel, Almonds, Broccoli, Parsley, Romaine Lettuce (foods not listed in any particular order).

I worked out that the goat's yoghurt I'm eating would provide all my weekly needs of Calcium if I consumed FIVE tubs of it. I've increased my weekly supply to THREE tubs, and can now enjoy lashings of yoghurt with all meals, and even have a dish for supper, or as a dessert. I now make sure my weekly veggie shop includes ALL of the above (I have been alternating spinach with kale, but now I make sure I've both in the fridge; I also make sure I buy fennel whenever available), to make up for the other two tubsful of yoghurt.


AND THE FIREWORKS
fizzed and sparkled for nearly an hour, felt like...


FEATURE THIS

This week I has mostly been trying not to shop, (International No Shopping Week), but fresh veg and yoghurt had to reach the house somehow... and, also, feeling even better ever since NO SUGAR CONTENT DAY.


QUICK LUNCH

ADUKI BEAN CURRY

Oil, goosefat. Garam Masala (I put two knife-blades worth in, but it should have been two teaspoonfuls for my money), stir til smells right. Add chopped root ginger, leek (about an inch per person), fennel, a few bits, celery (one stick pp), fry for a bit, not too long. Add one tin aduki beans, but not all the liquid. Stir well. Add spinach, don't stir. Put the lid on, and leave for about 5-10 mins. It's nicer when the celery and fennel are still a bit crunchy. Serve with goat's yoghurt (of course). I forgot, but it would have been more interesting still with mint or parsley chopped onto the yoghurt. I ate all of this. Add more veg and eat with some rice if serving two people. I just love aduki beans, they always feel good.



Pie, anyone???

Foods with No Sugar At All Day

All this going away...

Away again for a week - more coping mechanisms, or not, to report on...

Met an EX CANDIDA SUFFERER at a bonfire party - she also did it her way. Talked too much and picked up important info about keeping calcium levels topped up. More later.

Have at last done something I've been promising myself I'll do for a long time - have a whole day where the foods I eat have no sugar in them at all. Briefly, meat, fish, kelp (a seaweed), quinoa (good stuff, but not so attractive solo), and spelt, an old fashioned grain which I've never cooked before. All of these foodstuffs are listed as containing no sugar. Whatsoever. It's so stringent, and not at all fun. I could never quite bring myself to do it.

The reason is because, to put it delicately, my tummy growls a lot. Like having a little dog sitting on my knee. Not. But as noisy as. This has been happening to me over the last five years or so, and I've been politely ignoring the racket, hoping it would go away, pretending it was normal... I don't care whether it's a sign of old age or not, I don't like it, it's noisy and obtrusive. When I checked out the candida symptoms, there it was, along with bloating, gripey pains, etc., etc., and I was also beginning to get the gripey little pains. No further details will be published. If it's happening to you, you know enough and you want to get rid. If it's not happening to you, you don't want to know.

Now, although many of my candida symptoms have disappeared since I started this treatment, many of them are still present, simply lessened; the growly tummy, for instance, has become a remote gurgle (I should get out more - or maybe not). I've been making allowances for this - this is a two year treatment, after all, but decided in August I would have a go at a complete starvation day - for the Candida, that is, not for me. I bought in stocks of Spelt, Quinoa and Kelp (unfortunately, I could only obtain powder), and planned to do this for one whole day. Starting with Spelt porage for breakfast. I even wrote up dates on the calender, when I'd be at home all day. Somehow, on those days, the prospect of cooking up a lumpy little grain for breakfast never appealed. Neither did fishy green kelp powder to sprinkle over it. So, I kept cancelling them.

In the end, it happened almost by accident. Week away (of which more later), followed by weekend with friend, when we ate roast dinner with five vegetables, lamb steaks, cooked breakfast (scrambled eggs for me), and I invented a new fried rice dish (probably been eaten in the Orient for thousands of years, but there you go). She packed me up with a picnic for the way back - hummous, rice, sesame seeds, yoghurt, with celery sticks to use as edible spoons. My journey got longer and longer, with many detours. I had to stop at a motorway service. To use the cafes would be a waste of money. I carried on driving til I reached the oasis known as M&S SIMPLY FOOD. It is indeed just that. I bought plain poached salmon, and a packet of prawns in oil and spices, no sugar or vinegar. I ate them in the car. There was a packet of prawns and a slice of salmon left over by the time I got home. And, at my friend's, I'd found instructions for cooking spelt grain - just boil in salted water for 20 minutes.

More importantly, when I arrived home, I realised the fish supper had been a no-sugar one - and I wasn't hungry. So I decided to start counting the hours from just after lunch time on Monday. When I got up on Tuesday, I was approx 19 hours away from having eaten food with sugar in it. Simple! all I had to do was another 5 hours. In the end, I ate Spelt Porage with yoghurt, followed by late lunch with more salmon and prawns, followed by a dish of yoghurt later on, and a hot sardine supper. The kelp got sprinkled onto the yoghurt. Very late Breakfast next day was porage, by which time I'd done nearly 48 hours of eating foods with absolutely no sugar in them. I could have eaten anything - steak, chicken, different fish, lamb, don't let my heavy diet of fish put you off!

My stomach has calmed down. A lot. I'm back on my normal diet now, because the above regime is lacking in vitamins, minerals and variety. It makes my normal diet feel luxurious, and a privilege to be eating. I'm seriously considering making the non-sugar event a regular feature in the calendar, though - as again, I feel better for it.


THIS WEEK, I HAS MOSTLY BEEN THINKING ABOUT... how unfair it was to spring my diet on the cook less than a fortnight away from the week away... with a bunch of other people who I knew would also be on strange diets...


RECIPE - FRIED RICE SUPPER

Heat Olive / sesame oil in frying pan: add left over cooked rice, make it crispy.
Add chopped celery, cloves garlic and ground cinnamon. Add egg, and a good shake of sesame seeds, salt & pepper. Stir in the egg as it cooks.

Before serving, add chopped parsley. And yoghurt, if you like. You can make this for two - all the anti-candida stuff, serve it up, leave some rice in for the next person and add all the sugary items...

We got back around ten, my friend ate oatcakes and cheese & tomato, I made egg fried rice, it was good! No pic... so here's someone else on a very weird kind of low-fat dairy-only diet...