Originally posted by Modern-Day Ma on February 2, 2021
My first confession is easy: Until recently, I have been cutting off the stems of my fresh broccoli and throwing them away. The horror. I know. I actually hate food waste. And I am, apparently, a hypocrite. Why in the world would I spend any amount of time peeling and cutting the broccoli stems, those universally-hated dense cubes, in order to steam them with their adored cousin, the gorgeous floret? I wouldn’t. I haven’t.
I finally made an attempt to recreate the beloved Costco bagged broccoli slaw with poppyseed dressing and found a use for those useless stems. Once peeled, they shred easily with a hand grater or in a food processor and make the perfect base for a broccoli slaw salad. Thrown together with chopped kale and slivered cabbage, you can make four or five times the amount of slaw for the price of one Costco bag. No food waste, more slaw.
My second confession is harder to give, and much more difficult to explain. This site has become more of a place of guilt to me and less of a creative outlet. About two years ago, my body began betraying me. It was falling apart. An injury here and a sore something there turned into a full-blown health crisis. It took a year to get a diagnosis of a type of autoimmune arthritis. Please don’t tell me you have arthritis in your knee/ankle/wrist too and know how I feel. I’m turning 40 this year. We all have those creaky spots popping up. This is completely different. This is my body turning on itself.
For months, I couldn’t go up and down the stairs. My bedroom is upstairs and it was all I could do to make that trip once in the morning and once at night. Sometimes it took 5 minutes just to get from one floor to the next. I couldn’t go on a walk–literally couldn’t get to the mailbox 4 houses away. I stopped riding bikes, stopped exercising, stopped doing anything. Making dinner was nearly out of the question. Standing in the kitchen for more than 5 minutes meant my left knee swelled so much inside that I couldn’t put any weight on that leg. Cooking for fun was non-existent. I had never been a cereal-for-dinner mom (not that there is anything wrong with that–it just wasn’t me), but during this time, I had no choice but to answer back YOYO (You’re On You’re Own) when my kids asked, “what’s for dinner?” We did Dominoes, frozen food, quesadillas, nachos, eggs, and cereal (dad’s repertoire is eggs , nachos, and quesadillas).
As my abilities decreased, my medicines increased. I’m not a medicine taker. Not that I won’t, but I never wanted to rely on medicine (or caffeine) to make it through the day. I’ve taken a thyroid replacement pill since I was much younger, but that’s it. An occasional ibuprofen would get me through life just fine, thank you. But I was literally not functioning. I tried multiple anti-inflammatories and saw so many doctors I cannot even remember all of them. I had injections into my back under x-ray, I had multiple steroid injections into my foot, knee, and back. I took oral steroids, and anti-anxiety meds after my arms started tingling whenever I talked to someone outside of my family and when I began waking up at night literally tensed into a ball. I went to physical therapy. I gave up on doctors and found new doctors and begged them to figure out what was wrong with me. I was dismissed by doctors, one of which literally waved his hand back and forth in the air and said to me, “you’re going to be fine.”
Six months after that doctor told me I would be fine, my body literally gave up. During what I now know was a “flare,” the pain got so bad I did nothing but sleep and sit on the couch or front porch. I cried. I prayed. I begged God to either kill me or help me find out what was going on. I finally went back to an orthopedic about my disaster of a left knee and got a referral to a rheumatologist four hours away.
The rheumatologist was surprised to see me so incapacitated and gave me more steroids, which subdued the flare. Months of medication testing and the addition of a functional medicine doctor and a new PCP had me in a better place, at least doctor wise. I finally had a team on board who believed me and wanted to help.
During this period, I stumbled upon a crazy “diet” that was supposed to help with one of the types of arthritis the rheumatologist thought I might have. I was desperate. I had already given up gluten, sugar, and dairy with almost no effect. Although if I ate any wheat, I would definitely know it. This new food plan was zero starch. It sounds crazy. It was crazy, but I figured I was so miserable I would try anything. No food on earth could be worth feeling like I did.
I started out with a full elimination diet, going down to a list of only 15 items (yes, that included salt and olive oil as 2 of the 15 things) and I finally saw a glimmer of a result. This diet was supposed to help your gut heal as well as remove everything that exacerbated symptoms. After the first 4 days, I noticed a difference. After the first week I knew I had to see this process through. That was in late January 2020. It has been a full year since I gave up starch and I can say with certainty, I have seen a difference in symptoms. In combination with a cocktail of medications, this new way of eating has given me a life back. Not my old life, but a life that is at least worth living. Is it fun? No. There is not a day that goes by that I do not wish I could eat at least rice and beans. I’m simple that way and would live easily in the third world where that is all there is to eat.
I am not a carnivore by nature. In fact, I spent at least seven years of my life as a full vegetarian and I still cannot stomach eating most red meat. This is hard. Every single day is an exercise in willpower. I have friends that tell me I should just eat what I want because I’m sucking all the happiness out of life. My husband cannot (bless him) remember what I can and can’t have to eat. My diet is very basic: meat, most fruits, many, but not all, vegetables, eggs (thankfully), and a few nuts and seeds.
After about seven months of this way of eating, my daughter almost died. It’s not an experience I will relate here, but when all was said and done (she’s fine now), we found out she has some severe food “allergies,” which are what caused a portion of her intestines to completely stop working. This isn’t an anaphylactic reaction, rather one that builds up over time. What it means for everyday life is that she is now also on a restricted diet, which is similar to mine in some ways, but very different in others. She is also an athlete, so we are constantly looking for ways to fuel her with foods she isn’t tired of and that fit her restrictions.
Why am I telling you all of this? The guilt. I am now someone who eats very differently than most of the world. I am someone who doesn’t even eat the same foods as my family members most of the time. Dinner has spent the last 6 months as a four-letter word in our house. With a 16 year-old boy who is ravenous and loves his pasta and bread, a 13 year-old who cannot eat any of the top allergens (dairy, gluten, soy, eggs, fish, shellfish, peanuts, and most other nuts), and a husband who would rather eat PBjs and grilled cheese sandwiches sans a side veggie, it is nearly impossible to make a meal that everyone can eat (and like), letalone one that isn’t a 2-hour production.
Cooking for my family is not the joyful creative process it once was. It is now a challenging juggling act that often requires that I make at least two versions of something and often makes me want to cry. I was a decent gluten-free baker before this. For myself, I can make versions of pancakes and muffins using nut flours, but these must contain eggs to resemble a baked good. For my daughter, I’ve had to learn the nuances of egg-free baking and go through a long process of trial and error with the many new gluten-free flours and grains that are available now. She is picky about texture and taste, so we’ve found a lot of failures and a few successes.
These new recipes aren’t something I consider blog-worthy for the general public. Did you want a recipe for almond flour blueberry muffins made with no sugar? How about pancakes made with a blend of non-gluten flours and random starches with flax-egg standing in for the regular eggs? I didn’t think so. Honestly, this is all I have time for right now. I don’t have the constant parade of blog-worthy recipes flowing through my kitchen like I once did and I’m not the kind of person who is going to kid you and tell you that the gluten-free sourdough bread recipe I tested last week is “just as good as regular.” It isn’t. It’s heavy, and somewhat strange, but a reasonable stand-in for a girl who really wants some bread. When every recipe you Insta-stalk is either starch-free or made from some version of rice, it gets a little ho-hum.
Are there recipes that I am making that I could potentially share? Sure. This broccoli slaw is one of them. But they’re fewer and further between, and, frankly, the last thing I want to do after experimenting over random things is come here and write a falsely-chipper post about this delicious new cardboard cracker I invented or the 1001 ways I’ve found to eat broccoli. This blog was never intended to be an allergy-free or special diet gathering place. It was my place to share my modern kind of Ma Ingalls cooking and gardening. It was a place I could put all those recipes people asked me to share.
I have not decided what I will do with this site going forward. I won’t delete it, but I am also not committing to adding to it in any systematic or “normal” way. I may post some recipes that the general public wouldn’t think of eating or I may not. I might only post a couple of times per year. Either way, I hope you will enjoy the favorites that are already here. Make them with your families and sit down to dinner together. Bake up something fun and challenging on that next no-school Monday with nothing to do while we all still wait for the world to go back to “normal” (whatever that is). Look beyond this site for new and various ways to keep good, homemade food at the center of your family dinners and family gatherings.
In love, friendship, good health, and good food!
Jenny
Broccoli Slaw
2-4 cups finely shredded green cabbage
2-4 cups chopped kale
toasted sunflower seeds
toasted pepitas
dried cranberries
2-3 Tbsp honey or sugar
1/2 cup white wine (or plain white) vinegar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground dry mustard
1 tsp grated onion or 1 dash dried onion powder
1 cup oil (we use avocado, but vegetable or any mild-flavored oil works)
1 Tbsp poppy seeds
Peel the woody outer layer from all broccoli stems. This peeler
*Most commercial blends add raddicchio, which is welcome here if you have it. I’m not inclined to purchase it just for the color and it adds little flavor in the small amount that is normally part of the blend. If you have some on hand, please add it to your heart’s desire.
**This dressing is more vinegary and less creamy than commercial brands. It’s how we roll now with no dairy, eggs, or soy allowed in our dressing. Feel free to use your favorite store-bought brand or experiment with other recipes that include a creamy ingredient (mayo, milk, yogurt, etc.)
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