Homemade Tortillas

4 C Flour (I do 2 whole wheat, and 2 white)

2 tsp. Sea Salt

6 Tbsp Oil (I use olive oil)

1 1/2 C hot water

Mix dry ingredients. Pour wet ingredients into dry. Knead until mixed.

Pinch off about a golf ball size of dough, and roll out onto a floured surface until as thin as you want.

Cook tortillas in a frying pan over med-high heat about 60 seconds per side

Bon Apetite! They're awesome!

Hooray for Tacos!

Mexican food has always been our favorite! But, it feels like ages since we've had any. If you think about it, almost every ingredient is an offender; corn chips, tomato salsa, cheddar cheese...it's almost as if it was designed for our demise. Even taco seasoning has corn starch in it!

Well, yesterday I made a big batch of seitan (I like using Bob's Red Mill, Vital Wheat Gluten), and I chopped it up fine like ground meat. I then found a homemade taco seasoning recipe, and sauteed it all up in a skillet. I had a stack of tortillas already made, so we threw it all together with a dollop of tofu-based sour cream and salad greens.

Oh baby, oh baby. It was fantastic! We had a Mexican Food Orgy! We've eaten little more than tacos for the last 24 hours. And, we still have a little extra for lunch tomorrow.

What a great discovery!

Seasonal Allergies

Three posts in one day, that's got to be some kind of record.

So I have seasonal allergies in addition to food allergies, but I don't usually even think about them anymore because they rarely bother me. Case in point, Rob and I went orienteering last weekend on a mountain covered in greenery of which I'm sure I was allergic. After several hours of traipsing up and down the mountain, we finished with no more than a few cuts and scratches. The pits of my elbows were a bit itchy and red, which is common for me when I have a slight allergic reaction, for a few days afterward, but that was it.

Not eating things I'm allergic to has made me barely even notice my seasonal allergies. Last summer, before the allergies discovery, that trip up the mountain would inevitably have ended badly. I would probably have had to take Benadryl 20 minutes into the hike. Because my body responses REALLY strongly to drugs, within a half hour I would have either ended up falling asleep on the mountain or Rob would have had to "help" (i.e. carry) my half asleep body off the mountain. After this, I would have fallen asleep for 12 hours and then woken the next day feeling hung over.  It would then take me an entire week to feel like I could think completely clearly (for me thinking on allergies is like trying to think through wet cement).

It is largely for this reason that we have been so vigilant about eating allergy-free. Not because eating these foods could send me to the hospital, I'm not that severely allergic to most of them, but because I can't think clearly and am extremely emotional, irritable, and irrational whenever I eat things I'm allergic to (like the last time I ate ice cream--a post for another day).

This hike reminded me how big of a difference not eating what I'm allergic to has made. I hadn't thought about how long it's been since I had a full blown allergic reaction.  Who knew I would be so happy to be mildly itchy?

How It Started

Michelle and I have been married for over six and a half years. We've known that Michelle had allergies for five years. We've been paying attention to those allergies for only one year. And, what a difference that year has made!

In the summer of 2006, Michelle and I went to an allergist to find out what chemicals she was allergic to. She kept swelling up whenever we walked by a sprayed lawn or ate a pesticide-ridden strawberry. We were sorely disappointed when the allergist didn't even test for chemicals, but instead looked for allergies to food. We came home with a long list of foods to avoid (that we ate regularly), figured it was a bunch of crap, and stuffed it away in some file somewhere.

In the summer of 2010, after finishing college and moving into a new apartment, I started going through our files to throw away all the junk that had piled up. Of course, I ran across the allergy list. By this time, Michelle had started getting itchy feet every time she used a treadmill, broke out into hives at the gym's "cardio cinema", and threw up at particularly stressful times. So, I wondered, would avoiding these foods make any difference?

So, together, we decided to cut out all allergy-laden foods from our diet which included (drum roll please): Corn, Tomato, Apples, Oranges, Barley, Rye, Peanuts, Almonds, Brazil Nuts, Sesame, Cow's Milk, and Pork.

This has been no easy task, and the challenge continues. But, we live happier, healthier lives, not to mention the amazing treats we've discovered! It's incredible how much possibility there is of great food when there are so many things to avoid!

So join us! Come inside, and share in the wonderful goodness we've found by being restricted in our selection.