Friday 27 June 2014

Re-Introducing Another Tasty Beast

One of the many things I love about living the UK is the easy availability of local, fresh lamb. I love lamb. Not only are they adorable as hell, they are tasty too!

This baby has the right idea about lamb
In Canada, the only lamb we ever seemed to get was frozen and imported from New Zealand, which just isn’t as nice as fresh lamb which comes from a farm only a few miles away. Sadly, I wasn’t able to get lamb down since the start of the Crohn's flare-up last year. Being on the slightly fattier side of beasts, it isn’t one of the easier ones to digest, so I stayed away from it for a very long time.

But I was in the butchers yesterday, and he had some very tasty looking lamb steaks. And as my tummy has been slightly more agreeable as of late (may that continue!), I figured “what the hell!” and got myself some small lamb steaks. As I went with some pretty lean steak, it should fit with the whole low-residue thing.

My personal favourite way to do lamb steaks is to smother them in harissa paste, but that’s probably still a bit too chancy for me, so I stuck with something a little simpler and just did a basic steak rub for it.

I mixed 1 tsp of dried mint, ½ tsp of garlic powder and 1/4 tsp of fresh ground pepper with 1 tbsp of olive oil.

Then I brushed over both sides of the steak.

I cooked the lamb under the grill for about 8 minutes, flipping once half way through. I served it with steamed spinach and couscous.

It was a truly tasty beast! And it didn’t upset my tummy, which is even better! Lamb is back on the menu!!

So cute! So tasty!

Thursday 26 June 2014

2K and a Bit of Controversy

I went camping for a few days and came home to discover that this blog has now had more than 2000 hits! Who’d have thought that people were actually interested in my witterings about having Crohn’s Disease and my adventures in sorting out a low-residue/low-fibre diet. It is likely that a good chunk of the hits have come from various “bots” trawling the internet automatically, but maybe there are people reading this because they want to learn more about IBD.

And on the subject of learning more about IBD, it was certainly in the media last week. Crohn’s and Colitis UK have recently done a study on the affects of fatigue on IBD (and vice versa) -
http://meandibd.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/new-crohns-and-colitis-uk-study-offers.html and were on the BBC last week to talk about it. Of course, that discussion got usurped by the comments of a gastro in the BBC Breakfast bit about the increase in the rate of Crohn's Disease amongst children and young people where she effectively said that Crohn's is caused by the overuse of antibiotics and eating too much junk food. Here is the full segment here, including the retort from both reps from Crohn's and Colitis UK -


The claim that Crohn's Disease is caused by junk food is, well, bullshit. Despite my love of chocolate, prior to this whole Crohn’s mess starting last year, I ate way healthier than most people. I rarely had takeaways or ready-meals. I only drank alcohol in moderation (and usually with food). Despite disliking veg, I found many creative ways to force it into me make it part of my diet. My daily dose of chocolate did not cause me to get Crohn’s Disease. In fact, the implication that I, and everyone else with IBD, somehow brought this upon ourselves due to our “lifestyle choices” is, to be frank, rather insulting. The rep from Crohn's and Colitis UK in the above interview wrote a fantastic retort to the implication that Crohn's is caused by "lifestyle factors" - http://adventuresofthebaglady.wordpress.com/2014/06/19/crohns-and-ileostomy-go-viral-after-unfounded-junk-food-claims-your-amazing-reaction-to-bbc-appearance/

Other than knowing that there is a strong genetic tendency involved in IBD, the cause is otherwise not understood. At all. Like most auto-immune disorders. In fact, in all of the controversy about the comments of this one gastro (who, by the way, very quickly published an apology after this all hit the media -http://meandibd.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/apology-from-dr-mitton-over-junk-food.html), everyone seems to have forgotten that IBD is an auto-immune disease. Yes, the symptoms are mostly gastro related (fatigue aside), but ultimately, the problem starts with the immune system.

And who has advised me to eat more ice cream, put sugar on my cereal in the morning, keep cans of Alphabetti (shudder) in the cupboard because it is “safe food”, and to stay away from nuts, seeds and most fruit and veg? MY HOSPITAL DIETITIAN!!!!!

And the other irony of the junk food controversy? Five days away camping does not preclude one to a super healthy diet. Cooking on a one burner camp stove makes cooking veg to a pulp a bit of a pain. So with very rare barbecue weather for camping, meals consisted of lots of barbecued beasts (chicken, venison and beef, to be precise), side dishes easily cooked on a one burner stove (like rice and couscous), the requisite marshmallow roasts and banana boats on the barbecue, Pringles (it was hot and sunny, I needed the salt), the odd cheeky half-pint of ale at the pub next to the campsite and being a National Trust member, copious amounts of cake from various National Trust tea-rooms. And you know what? My tummy was pretty happy the whole trip. Go figure.

Clearly, veg is just bad for me. Maybe the Arrogant Worms were right about eating vegetables all along.



Monday 16 June 2014

Marinades

I played around with some new marinade recipes this weekend, one for Bambi venison and one for chicken. I had to make a few adjustments to make them “ low residue”, but generally they turned out pretty well.

Normally, I don’t marinade venison because I actually really like the taste of the meat, but I came across this recipe  - http://www.food.com/recipe/venison-steak-marinade-119158 and thought that it was worth giving it a try.

Using two venison steaks, this is what I did -


In a small jug, I mixed -

1 ½ tbsp of olive oil
½ tbsp of lemon juice
1 tbsp of soy sauce
1 tsp of garlic powder
1/4 tsp of fresh ground pepper

I put the steaks into a resealable bag and poured the marinade in. I sealed the bag and left it in the fridge for six hours.
 When it came time to cook it, I let the steak come up to room temperature for about 40 minutes. I pre-heated the grill on high, then seared the steak on each side for a few minutes, then turned the heat down to medium and cooked it to medium. I served it with steamed potatoes and carrots. I forgot to take a picture of the final result, but it was tasty!

The other recipe I tried this weekend was for chicken. This one came out of the Co-op’s Food magazine. I adapted the recipe like this -

In a small jug, I mixed

1 tbsp of soy sauce
1 ½ tbsp of clear honey
½ tbsp of lime juice
1 tsp of garlic powder
½ tsp of ground ginger
1 tsp of all spice
½ tsp of chilli powder



I removed the skins from 4 chicken drumsticks and put them in a casserole dish. I cut deep slices into the chicken.
 
I poured the marinade over the chicken and put the lid on it and left it in the fridge overnight.

I pre-heated the oven to 180C/350F, and put the chicken in the oven to cook for 40 minutes.


I served it with rice and steamed carrots. Very tasty!

I think this is two more for the keep box! 

Thursday 12 June 2014

You Don’t Know Crohn’s . . .

“Are you the lady with Crohn’s Disease?”, one of my colleagues, who I don’t know very well, asks over the open plan office desks yesterday. “Yep, that’s me”, I say. She comes over, very eager and interested.

“What are you taking for it?”, she asks. “Humira”, I say. “How are you finding it?”, she asks. “It makes you feel like crap for 24 hours after you take it, but it seems to be holding things steady at the moment. And it beats the hell out of steroids, which made me crazy.” “You should try blue-green algae! You just mix it with water and drink it!”, she says.

 Isn't this the plague of the Lake District? And seriously, you want me to drink this?!!
She continues, “I have pancreatic cysts and they want to take out my pancreas because of the risk of pancreatic cancer which is the worst, but my friend told me about blue-green algae and it really works and I’m feeling so much better! You should try it, all you do is mix it in water in the morning and drink it. How are you getting your vitamins?”

I tell her, “I’m still on calcium and vitamin D3 tablets because the steroids sucked the calcium out of my bones and I couldn’t get dairy down for months. And I use multi-vitamin drops because vitamin pills don’t agree with my stomach.” “Get a juicer! Juicing is the best!” she squeals.

I almost used up a whole spoon trying not to roll my eyes or be rude. I talked about the craze for juicing for Crohn’s in an earlier blog post -http://foodlovingcrohnie.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/experimenting-with-v8-juice.html While I know lots of people swear by it, I’m still not convinced I would use it as I couldn't even get on with V8 juice (I just really don't like it), and I can think of much more fun kitchen porn gadgets to buy with that amount of money.

“And you should eat lots of kale and spinach, it’s great for you. And have you tried ancient grains, like quinoa?”
You just really don't get it . . .
While I do really appreciate her concern for my health, especially as I hardly know her, all I can think is “Honey, You Don’t Know Crohn’s”. The problem with her suggestions? One word - fibre. While fibre is ‘part of a healthy diet’ for most people, for the most part, fibre spells absolute hell for people with IBD.

And I absolutely hate kale. I mean, I really hate kale. So much so that “Thou shalt not eat kale” made it onto a list of Ten Rules for Living some high school friends and I put together on a slightly drunken evening along with “Thou shalt not date those on the never-date list”. (Long story, but still good advice 20 years on). 

Kale. When cooked, it looks suspiciously like blue green algae. I'm sure it smells and tastes like it too.
So telling her how much I dislike kale gave me a slightly easier way to gently refuse her advice. I had to explain to her that I am under the care of a dietitian and what a low residue-low fibre diet is and why I am on it. I’m not sure if it was a look of horror or bewilderment that she had on her face as I was telling her what I was being instructed to eat by the hospital. “I know, it’s totally counter-intuitive”, I told her, “but strangely enough, this isn’t bothering my guts.” I then explained how much more restrictive it is for my father who has an ileostomy. Amazing how when a conversation turns to stomas, people seem to make themselves scare pretty quickly.
I bet half of you have just stopped reading this post.
Really, I do appreciate her concern, but I really wish people would learn more about someone’s health condition before touting out great ideas for dealing with it. If she had IBD herself, or knew someone with IBD, or even had IBS, I may not have been so irritated, because at least then, she would have had a better starting point with me. I’m in no way underestimating how serious pancreatic cysts can be (anything with the pancreas can be very serious), but there really is no comparison with IBD here, especially when it comes to diet.

I’ll admit that I have been equally guilty of giving out (lots) of unsolicited advice about health over the years, but I have a lot of personal experience with chronic illnesses and have a lot of friends and family with other chronic illnesses, so I have unfortunately had to learn about a lot of things over the years. And failing that, there is always Google. The internet is full of crap, but there’s lots of good information out there too. Like this- http://www.crohnsandcolitis.org.uk/information-and-support/information-about-ibd and this - http://thegreatbowelmovement.org/

So here’s my unsolicited advice; please do a bit of homework from reputable sources before deciding what’s good for me. Or better yet, why not just ask me about my condition and how it affects me? I’m not afraid to talk about it!

I need to get this hoodie.

Monday 9 June 2014

The Trouble with the Word “Remission”

It’s pretty much been six months since I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease and according to the results of the blood sucking work taken this past Friday, I am now in “biochemical remission” from the Crohn’s.

Happy Dance!
This, naturally, is very good news, because it means that my immune system has finally dampened down enough that it is doing the job its meant to be doing (attacking infections of various sorts) and not the job it thinks it should be doing (attacking me). This was the whole point of that horrible experience with the Prednisolone and why I subject myself to self-injection and the horrible Humira-yucks.

It also conveniently proves to that bastard first consultant that I was right about biologic drugs being the right course of treatment for me, but I digress . . .

Of course, this doesn’t mean that I am in anyway ‘cured’, it just means that the disease is not currently active. Which is good. But it doesn’t mean that the symptoms are totally gone. I still have good days and bad days, and if you asked my digestive system this past Saturday what it thinks, it made a very clear statement that it was not happy with me. Why? I have no idea. I didn’t eat anything out of the ordinary, but it sounded like a scene out of Alien and it was a miserable day.

Seriously, this is exactly what Crohn's Disease feels like
And that’s the trouble when it comes to the word “Remission” and IBD. All of the scientific markers, like your CRP (inflammation marker in your blood), White Blood Cell Count (elevated levels indicate that your immune system is fighting something) and the Calprotectin in your, well, let’s not discuss that, can indicate that everything is “normal”, but you can still have symptoms. For some doctors, the definition of ‘remission’ is based on the above. Some define remission as the reduction of all inflammation of the muscosa (the lining) of your guts, except the only way to prove that is by biopsy, which is a pretty invasive way to prove a point. For others, it’s the complete elimination of all symptoms, which is known as ‘clinical remission’. The trouble with that goal is that one mild case of food poisoning could mean that you no longer fit that definition. The other problem with that definition is that, although very different illnesses, IBD and IBS can (un)happily co-exist. So you may have taken care of the problem that is destroying your guts, but you can still have the “functional” problem.

So as you can see, there is lots of debate about what the definition of Remission is. But in the meantime, I’m just going be happy that my over-active immune system has been turned down a notch.

You just can't get away from cats on the Internet

Thursday 5 June 2014

Beer

I have been meaning to write a post on this for months. There have been a few references to beer throughout the life of this blog, but it really deserves its own post.

I’ve never been a huge drinker. I’ve never liked being drunk, and being on the smaller side of life, my tolerance to alcohol isn’t particularly high, which makes me a very cheap date. However, I am a complete, unabashed beer snob.

My love of beer started very young when my father used to pour me a bit of his Molson Export into a plastic Tupperware tumbler for me when I was little. Around age 5, if possibly not younger. My love of good beer started when I was about 17 when I discovered the early days of “craft” brewing in the form of Upper Canada Rebellion. (My geeky love of Canadian history had nothing to do with its appeal.)

Yes, I know it's lager. I come from a lager drinking country and had to start somewhere!
This beer is known as "Sex in a Glass" in some circles
After that discovery, no mass market Canadian beer ever tasted the same.

I’ve never been able to drink wine as I’m allergic to grapes (yes, seriously!). Spirits have never liked me. I've still not developed a taste for cider or perry. So beer it has always been. As other cooks cook with wine, I cook with beer. Very well, might I add. I make killer Chocolate Porter Cake (I'll post that recipe sometime), never mind what I can do with a bottle of best bitter, a slow cooker and Bambi, I mean, venison.

When asked by Brits why I moved here, one of my frequent responses is that I moved here for the beer. The discovery of Upper Canada Rebellion eventually lead to the discovery of proper English Ale. The handful of bars in Toronto that served Bass on tap became favourite haunts. My first trip to the UK as an adult in 2001 led me to discover proper English, cask-conditioned porter.




That sealed the deal, I had to move to the land of warm, flat beer served from a hand pump.

After I moved to the UK, a friend suggested that because I enjoy beer, I should join CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale), as it would be a good way to meet people. It certainly did a good job of introducing me to some ‘interesting’ people. For the most part, I mean ‘interesting’ in the best possible way, although I will never understand the Morris dancers among them.


CAMRA has introduced me to a lot of things, in particular different styles of beer like Milds, which became firm favourites. It also made me a lot more aware of the “politics” of the pub and alcohol industries, like how some landlords at pubs are pretty much disadvantaged to the point of personal bankruptcy by the pubco overlords who they lease their premises from. It also introduced me to a volunteer career of being a “bar wench” at beer festivals. A British beer festival is truly fun experience and a chance to try lots of different beers. And despite the reputation of the British as being unruly drunks, people at beer festivals are generally a very merry and well-behaved lot.


On the upside, my cleavage is beginning to look like this again!
What finally got me writing this post was a call from a mate from my local CAMRA branch this week wondering why I haven’t been around for so long. The truth is, Crohn’s has stood between me and beer since last summer.
No, I'm not pouting . . .
 I started getting sick about this time last year. Not really sick, but my tummy was not happy. When I started getting really sick was after a beer festival last July. I hadn’t had much to drink, only two 1/3 pint glasses of ale. With food. But it was very hot and sunny, with no shade at the venue and I hadn’t brought a hat. I started feeling like I had heatstroke, so I left early. And then I was very very sick. And I’ve never been sick from alcohol. Whether it was genuine heatstroke, food poisoning, bad hygiene at the bar (all it takes is one volunteer who doesn’t use the liberal quantities of hand-sanitiser provided), or was just the start of that massive flare will probably never be determined, but I was never the same again.


After that, it just seemed sensible to get alcohol out of my diet for the next little while. And by the time I was under the care of a consultant and saw the results of my liver function tests in December, it was a damn good thing I did. That 'little while' ended up being 10 months of being completely tea-total.

As much as I love good beer, I found it much easier to give that up than to give up dairy when that stopped going down a few weeks later. Beer and cheese are a wonderful combination, but faced with a choice between the two, I will always take cheese. I don’t need alcohol to have a good time. I like it, but I don’t need it. I made the mistake once of drinking alcohol while on a short course of Prednisolone for asthma and swore I would never do it again because it made me feel so awful.

But I will admit that after a while, not drinking became emotionally difficult. I don’t mean that how it probably sounds, it’s not that I’m in anyway emotionally dependant on alcohol. But seeing my beer stash in the cupboard under the stairs every time I opened that door just reminded me of how awful I was feeling and how I couldn’t eat or drink what I wanted anymore. A friend promised me a bottle of Orkney Brewery Dark Island Reserve (one of the best beers I have ever tasted) for Christmas, and I had to tell him not to bring it when he visited because I just didn’t want it in the house. I couldn't handle going into pubs anymore because the smell of beer and knowing that I couldn’t have any just made me depressed. It was just a constant reminder of the many things (and more to come) that I had lost. I knew it was really bad when I was at a gig in February at the cheap crap lager they served at the venue started to smell good. It was just depressing.

As beer drinking is generally a social activity, and going to the pub is a favoured social venue, this not only impacted my emotional life, but also my social life. I stopped going to CAMRA meetings because they are always held in pubs. And more than once, during the darkest days of the past six months, my tear-stained cry was, “And I can’t even have a fucking drink!!!!”

At the end of January, I got so fed up with that constant reminder in the cupboard under the stairs that I gathered up all of my beer collection in a box and put it in the downstairs toilet which I use as a storage room (Crohn’s aside, I live alone and I really don’t need two toilets. Or at least, I don’t want to clean two toilets regularly). That’s also where a stashed a bunch of non-perishable food I couldn't eat at the time. That room became known as the “Cupboard of Banishment”. As the recycling bins are piled up next to the door, I almost never go in there (other than to clean occasionally), so I could ignore its presence. Both an act of desperation and of self-preservation.
The contents of the Cupboard of Banishment
Other than having a look at best before dates when I was in there cleaning at the end of March (some of it was about to go off, so it was taken to very appreciative friends who have been brilliant through all of this), I haven’t looked at my beer since. I know it’s there, but I try to ignore it (and try to forget that I have not one, but two, bottles of Traquair House Ale in there).

Last month, I did have my first foray back into beer. I had been off the Prednisolone for several weeks and my liver function tests were back to normal, and the registrar I had at my last hospital appointment with okay'd it after giving me a lecture about limits (he clearly didn't know who he was talking to). My first beer back was a half a pint of XT Pi, a lovely mild, at my favourite pub.

Oh, how I missed beer! It went down okay, but my tummy wasn’t not overly happy about it afterwards. I’ve had a few other halves since (three in total, all on separate occasions, life of rock n’ roll, me!), with mixed results on my stomach. Alcohol and Crohn’s don’t generally mix well.


The future of me and beer is pretty uncertain at this point. Between all of this and the constant fatigue, I had to tell my CAMRA mate that I am still pretty questionable for helping out at the branch beer festival in a few weeks. I suspect my days as a bar wench are becoming numbered. And I should pass on the contents of the Cupboard of Banishment to fellow beer lovers. Although possibly not those bottles of Traquair . . .

Wednesday 4 June 2014

Chocolate Cinnamon Cake

I’m back at work full time now and have been too knackered to do much kitchen experimenting or keeping up with this blog. I’ve been meaning to post this recipe up for several weeks, but hadn’t managed to get around to it until tonight. I had taken pictures of the process, but then realised after I had deleted them off my camera that I hadn’t loaded them onto the computer first.



So you’ll have to do without pictures!

We had a cake fundraiser at work a few weeks ago for Macmillian Cancer support and this was my contribution. I rather like the combination of chocolate and cinnamon, so this recipe rather appealed to me - http://silk.com/recipes/chocolate-cinnamon-cake

Here’s what I did -

I pre-heated the oven to 200C/400F, and greased a 9x13 cake pan.

I mix the following dry ingredients together -

2 cups of flour
1 ½ cups of white sugar
1 tsp of cinnamon

In a saucepan, I melted 1 cup of dairy free margarine (I used Stork margarine).

Then I added 4 tbsp of cocoa powder and 1 ½ cups of almond milk.

I brought the pan to a rapid boil, then removed it from the heat.

I then poured that over the dry ingredients.

I then added 1 tsp of baking soda, 1 tsp of rice vinegar and 2 eggs and mixed well, then poured it into the pan.

I baked it for 25 minutes.

While it was baking, I was going to make the icing according the recipe (as I still need to re-gain weight, I figured there was no harm in that!). Of course, I would be leaving out the nuts as it needs to be low-residue.

I went to fetch the ingredients out of the cupboard, and realised that I had barely any icing sugar left. I thought that I could make some kind of a chocolate glaze with it, but then realised that I had used up most of the cocoa. Oh well, it will have to go without.

So along with cocoa, I made sure that I put icing sugar on my grocery order (one of the only positives of the last 6 months has been the discovery of Sainsbury’s home delivery. Nothing like doing your grocery shop in your PJ’s!) When I was putting the groceries away the following day, guess what I found -




Oh well. I have lots now and really need to do more baking!

Overall, this recipe was fairly good, but I will say that the cinnamon flavour wasn’t particularly strong, and next time round, I would add more than a teaspoon. And it was perfectly fine without icing. Especially with this -

The ultimate comfort food combination
Yes folks, that’s ice cream! I actually ate ice cream! And it didn’t hate me! Clearly, I’m moving up in the world!