Bye Bye (Normal) Baking

For mother's day I made a lovely meal which included these beautiful meringues for dessert. Yum!


Unfortunately, this was my last weekend of eating normally for a while, as last Friday I spent all day being tested for food allergies. I was diagnosed as having the following: yeast and mold (T.O.E.), dairy, and wheat allergies.

As soon as I got the verdict I went out and bought wine, chocolate, and ice cream, and spent all weekend indulging in them as well as baked goods (Wild Oat scones, Art Is In bakery bread -fab fab fab bakery in the 'Wa- and croissants). Oh, it was good.

Since Monday though, I have been yeast, sugar, wheat and dairy free. It is both good and bad. I have do clean eating and vegan eating before, so it's not so bad. I certainly know what there is to eat and am wise as to what to avoid, and generally how to plan my meals. That said, I have to stay on this diet for 4-6 months before I can resume normal eating (and this time there's to be no sugar or alcohol over indulgences). Yup, no kidding.

Apparently, part of the problem is that there is some sort of disbalance in the bacteria in my digestive system that can be fixed by ridding myself temporarily of things that irritate me (thus the sugar, yeast, wheat and dairy exclusions). FYI, sugar is just pure fuel for bacteria, so if you have too much bad bacteria in your gut eating sugar will just help more of 'em grow. Bah. Happily (luckily!!) my body will heal given some time, and then I will be able to eat yeast and sugar, and drink wine, and use soy sauce, and even have cow's milk dairy products and wheat as long as it's not days in a row.

I miss desserts, but my understanding is that this will fade quite a lot the longer I avoid sweets. Three days down, 119-180 to go.

One saving grace on this diet is that I am allowed to have honey, molasses and fructose, as well as goat's milk, butter, and yoghurt, and spelt and kamut flour. So, starting this weekend I will bake one thing a week to try to appease my sweet tooth. I shall be posting them, of course, but I am not certain how good they will be. So, for the time being, this blog will be more about me and my cooking and not me and my baking which seemed to be the direction it was going. Maybe I will even get enough of a life to post about other things. We'll see.