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Whatever Wednesdays – Page 6 – surviving the food allergy apocalypse (archive)

Category: Whatever Wednesdays

All our series, all combined.

  • Whatever Wednesday: Food Allergies – Time, time, time, see what’s become of me

    "Every year is getting shorter, Never seem to find the time" - Pink Floyd
    “Every year is getting shorter, Never seem to find the time” – Pink Floyd

    I could do a food allergy parody of Simon & Garfunkel’s Hazy Shade of Winter or Pink Floyd’s Time, but that would take an awful lot of effort and creativity, and frankly, I don’t have time as you will soon see from this post.

    When I first went off milk, hazelnuts and scallops, I thought my life was difficult and I had to make a lot more from scratch, but there were some dairy replacement products I could buy. Then when I had to remove egg, coconut, almonds, clams, crab, and flax in addition, I was pretty annoyed and I had to make a lot more from scratch. I thought my life had gotten exponentially harder again. But frankly, with adding corn, wheat, chicken and sunflower (based on a recent near anaphylaxis reaction to sunflower oil, still needs some verification, but I’m kinda afraid to test due to the severity of the reaction) to the mix most recently, I didn’t know how good I had it back then. At least back then I could buy vitamins, condiments, food in jars, pickles, food in cans, some vegan dairy replacement products, soda, candy, fruit juice, baking powder, vanilla and other extracts, vegan margarine, hot dogs, some broths, soup stock or bouillon, salad dressings, some convenience foods and some deli meats.

    I live in a second story two bedroom apartment in the largest city in New Hampshire. You’d think I lived on a farm with the number of jars of canned food and condiments, empty jars, the pressure and water bath canners, and the other cooking equipment in this apartment. Why, you ask?  Because of the corn allergy, I can’t have anything with citric acid, xanthan gum, distilled white vinegar, and about 5 single spaced typed pages of other corn derivatives. I am something of a foodie and a chili head and/or hot sauce junkie, so the thought of having to eat nothing but salad or steamed fresh veggies (I’ll save the “why frozen foods can be bad for someone with a corn allergy” explanation for later) and beef or pork for the rest of my life was fairly disturbing. As a result, I’ve had to learn to make and safely store and/or preserve the things I still want to eat. So far, this has meant learning to can (both the water bath and pressure canning methods), pickle, and ferment; making other things that everyone takes for granted; and making my own milks out of oats, rice, and cashews.

    So since June, I have made and canned the following things, modifying the recipes to replace distilled white vinegar for either safe-for-me apple cider vinegar, white wine vinegar or rice vinegar:

    • Jalepeno Hot Sauce
    • Essential Habanero Hot Sauce
    • Djion Style Mustard
    • Peach Citrus Ginger Soda Syrup
    • Dill Pickle Sandwich Slices
    • Chili Garlic Sauce
    • Sweet Pickle Relish Recipe
    • Traditional Bread & Butter Pickles (spicy version)
    • Dill Pickle Relish
    • Thai Hot and Sweet Dipping Sauce
    • Garlic Dill Zucchini pickles
    • Vietnamese Carrot & Daikon pickle
    • Strawberry Citrus Soda Syrup
    • Hoisin sauce
    • Sushi ginger
    • Plum sauce
    • Dilly beans
    • Vegetable Stock
    • Cherry Pomegranate Lime Soda Syrup
    • Peach Citrus Soda Syrup
    • Beef Bone Broth
    • Ketchup
    • Marinara sauce
    • Hot Pepper Pickle Mix
    • Banana Peppers Pickled
    • Tomatillo Salsa
    • Green Cayenne Hot Sauce
    • Barbecue Sauce
    • Green Chili Garlic Sauce
    • Honeyed Cayenne Chilis
    • Spicy Tomato Salsa
    • Kidney beans  (I can use dry beans, but that means I have to remember to soak them ahead of time, and I really wanted some “convenience” foods)
    • Boston Baked Beans
    • Eggplant Caponata
    • Ratatouille
    • Black beans
    • She Simmers Hot Sauce
    • Yellow Hot Dog Mustard
    • Classic Dijon Mustard
    • Garbanzo beans

    When I do a batch I’m generally canning between 5-9 pints of something, although the some of the pasta sauces are in quart jars. It’s my hope and intention that when I can something, I do enough that I won’t have to do it again for a while. I’m hoping to get a year out of the condiments, but the food items will last for less time. The soda syrups get me though maybe a month and a half out of each batch. I may have to decide at some point whether the time involved to make fruit soda syrups is worth it, and decide whether to make huge batches of homemade ice tea instead, since I won’t just drink water apparently. The time involved for making each of the items above depends on the level of preparation and the canning method required, so it ranges from about an hour and half at the minimum to about five hours at the maximum. I’ve been keeping track of everything I’ve made on a spread sheet so that I can figure how how long it takes to use something up. Eventually after I ‘finish’ making everything I want to have available on hand, I want to be able to figure out how many weekends a month I will have to continue canning to keep everything in stock.

    Also since June, I’ve tried fermenting the following things, because I either still wanted to eat them, or because I need probiotics, because there are no safe vitamins anymore:

    • Sriracha (two versions, made one with cider vinegar and one with rice vinegar because I was afraid I won’t be able to get the peppers in winter and because I wanted to see if I liked the rice vinegar one better)
    • Sauerkraut (two batches, although in my overly warm apartment it takes about a week to two weeks rather than four to six)
    • Kombucha (my apartment was just too hot, so this was a fail)
    • Water Kefir (my apartment was just too hot, so this was a fail)
    • Green Cayenne Tabasco style sauce
    • Red Cayenne Tabasco style sauce
    • Habanero Tabasco style sauce

    Also since June, I’ve made the following things because I can’t buy the commercial products anymore, or because I’m trying to make something else I can’t have anymore:

    • Vanilla extract
    • Lemon extract
    • Lime extract
    • Orange extract
    • Mint extract
    • Baking powder
    • Vegan margarine (which was a major fail)
    • Various gluten free flour mixes
    • Various spice mixes to replace commercial versions of things I can’t have anymore
    • Chocolate
    • Various salad dressings
    • Various attempts at gluten-free, corn-free, dairy-free and egg-free bread (all of which have been a fail)
    • Cashew milk
    • Oat milk
    • Rice milk

    Notwithstanding the above, I am also making my own laundry detergent and shampoo, which, admittedly, I was doing before the corn thing went down, but is still annoying. Prior to the corn thing, I was also making lotions and lip balm, but now those recipes are unsafe, and I’ve got to do some research to make new corn-free versions. Also, don’t forget to factor in all the research time it has taken me to find safe versions of certain recipes, and figure out my reality as to what things I need to avoid. We’re talking hours and hours on allergy sites, canning sites, blogs, Pinterest, and so on. Other than this blog, my writing (I was working on revising my first novel) has ground to a screaming halt, my knitting time has been drastically curtailed, and I missed the summer. I spent almost every weekend canning things or making things, and sometimes weeknights too. I’ve been at a dead run since June.

    So here’s the thing I guess I want to say about time. I’m still figuring it out and sometimes it sucks. To feed yourself safely, the reality is that you’re going to spend way more time to feed yourself than you did before you had the allergy, and that’s just the way it is. I went through a mourning period for convenience foods and for being able to eat like everyone else can, every single time I had to eliminate more foods and that’s normal. Mourn, vent, cry, scream, but the fact of the matter is, you’re going to have to get over it and do what you need to do, or eat the same boring crap for the rest of your life. And you can decide to eat the same boring crap for the rest of your life if you want to do that. I just couldn’t stomach it (no pun intended, haha).

    Here’s some stuff I’ve figured out:

    Research, research, research. Know what you can eat and what you can’t. You don’t want to waste time making something only to find out that there’s something in it that makes you sick because you didn’t recognize the name of something in one of your ingredients as being your allergen, or that there’s likely cross contamination because of processing.

    Plan, plan, plan.  Every social event that you attend is going to take thought and planning. Maybe you’ll have to find out if there’s safe food there, maybe you’ll have to bring your own, or maybe you’ll have to plan to eat before you go or eat after you go to the event. Everything you want to make at home will take planning if you have to make ingredients ahead of time in order to make the actual thing. For instance, if you want to use vanilla extract, you need to steep the vanilla beans in safe alcohol for 4-6 weeks before it’s ready to use. I’ve wanted to try to make candy for months, but I’m still working on my lemon, lime, orange and mint extracts. There are still some things you can be spontaneous about for food and some that you can’t. Figure out what are the ingredients/foods/cleaning products that you use regularly, that you can’t buy commercially and that you need to have on hand as a general proposition. Research, figure out a way to make them, and then keep an eye on the amounts you have as you use it. If you’re running out, make it ahead of time before you do. For example, my shampoo takes 24-48 hours to make. If I run out, that means I have to wait at least that long to have shampoo because I can’t buy it. Don’t run out. Plan ahead.

    Make big batches. It’s a lot easier to make a big batch of something once than to make a lot of smaller batches of something, as long as you can use it before it spoils, and as long as you have room to store it. (Which is why I’m canning instead of freezing, in addition to the fact that we lose power most winters for at least once for 3-4 days in a row and I lose all the food in the freezer.) For example, when I make laundry detergent, I have to use my food processor to grind up the soap, and that means I’m going to have to wash the food processor exceedingly thoroughly. It makes more sense to make up 3 to 4 batches of the stuff and wash the food processor once than to wash it 3 to 4 times for single batches.

    Make big batches, part II. If you make stuff you can either freeze or can, and you put the leftovers in single serve containers, guess what? You have some convenience food!  Woo hoo! It’ll be there for emergencies, such as when you forgot to plan, make stuff ahead, or when you’re just so sick of cooking you’ll kill someone if you have to make one more thing.

    Buy what you can in bulk amounts.  If you have storage space, if you can use it before it spoils, and if you have the money, buy what you can in larger amounts. I’m talking mostly dry goods, such as flour, rice noodles, rice, dried beans and peas, etc. If because of your allergies, you have to make trips to multiple stores to get your groceries, the fewer trips you have to make, the more time you save.

    Think about buying appliances or tools that make your life easier and save you time. Sometimes your pocket book can limit your options here, but the thing is, your time is precious too, and for most of us, this is a permanent lifestyle change whether we like it or not. My food processor, Kitchen Aid mixer, and my All American Pressure Canner are all expensive tools, but save me a lot of time, or save me from making something from scratch and/or losing stuff in the freezer when I lose power and from having to make stuff again. Someday, I’m going to have a performance blender like a Vitamix or a Blendtec, but right now, other things are a priority for my hard earned cash.

    Anyway, that’s all I have for words of wisdom right now. If you have ideas for saving time, please let me know. I seriously need all the help I can get.

  • Whatever Wednesday: Food, Allergies, and Knowledge, a series of thoughts

    Mt. Washington's Cog Railway
    Mt. Washington’s Cog Railway

    This is part one of a series I’ve been discussing with Denise talking about some of the many things we’ve learned via the “fun” of food allergy diagnosis and lifestyle. Some of what we’ve learned is about food and food production. Some is about psychology, some about culture, and there are probably some life lessons in there somewhere. These posts will come up irregularly, but given that a huge part of the challenge of living with food restrictions is not about actual recipes, we thought it was an important part of our blog mission to talk about “life, the universe, and everything” a bit, too.

    One of the weird things about food allergy and food intolerance is that you all of a sudden become a student of our modern food system. It starts with reading labels, but it doesn’t end there. Read a label. Go on, pick up something close to you and read it. Wait, no, never mind, I’m mostly preaching to the choir here. You already know most of this.

    On your average* labeled food in the US, your average* non-chemist citizen will be able to identify, if she’s lucky, maybe half* of the ingredients as actual foods. The information on fat content and calories is pretty clear, but actual ingredients are less so.

    [*Editorial note: all references to anything like numbers are, for clarity’s sake, completely made up.]

    There are entire labs devoted to figuring out how to create tastes and smells and textures that may or may not be based in nature. And these labs aren’t kitchens. To be honest, I think it’s kind of cool that we have this kind of science — that we can make something like a Twinkie exist and be shelf-stable for, well, let’s just assume that it would survive an eternity with all the “freshness” it was given upon creation. I like the idea that sometime, in our post-apocalyptic future, some bedraggled but strong survivor may discover a secret cache of a 7-11, with enough calories to power her through the next month or two, trying to preserve some vestige of the human race.

    The point of bothering to share that (admittedly grim) future vision is to primarily give you my bias in this matter. I think science is cool. I think science in food is kind of cool, though I can’t speak to the health impacts of it. And therein lies one of my problems — for the most part, none of these scientists are speaking to, or even studying, the health impacts of their culinary science experiments. Science for the sake of science is one thing. Science for the sake of corporate profit with an unsure safety record, or science that uses the populace as a large pool of guinea pigs isn’t something that makes me sleep soundly at night.

    In the US, regulation of food descriptors is next to meaningless. “Natural” doesn’t actually mean anything, and let’s be clear — human beings are “natural” so if we create it, it is also “natural.” And that’s as much as that word means in marketing. Also, as we the food allergic know, most of us are allergic to “natural” things. My first allergic food reaction (or the first one I clocked as such at the time) was to a hazelnut, right off the tree, at a hazelnut farm. You really can’t get much more natural than that.

    Organic”** and “gluten-free” are now defined terms by the USDA and the FDA, respectively. Not much else is.

    [**USDA’s page on the National Organic Program is currently down due to the Federal shutdown. So you get wikipedia.]

    As I’ve read more and more food labels, and as I’ve looked up all the ingredients I didn’t know, I’ve become more conservative about what I choose to eat. I don’t judge anyone else for making a different choice. We all need to be in charge of our own health — and, indeed, in figuring out what that is. These days, when comparing products, I will generally gravitate towards the product with the fewest number of ingredients — the fewer things I have to worry about, the less stress in my life. And the less I need to read. Given that companies make no efforts to let you know when they’ve changed a recipe, I have to remember that I need to read all labels, even for products I’ve been safely buying for the last few years. It gets tiresome, and so I find it easiest to mostly buy products without labels when I can. Ah, broccoli.

    The other thing that I find to be a truth of the food allergy world is that we are pretty constantly learning from one another. With Denise’s corn allergy, I’ve learned so much about processing and how our foods can be contaminated with things that don’t need to be listed because they are part of “processing.” Or ingredients that can be derived from a variety of different source materials, but don’t need to be labeled (lecithin can be a derivative of egg, soy, or sunflower, though the latter two are usually labeled as such). With recalls, I’ve learned how often it is that things go wrong in the manufacturing process and how easy it is to be exposed to something you take all the care in the world to avoid.

    This part of the food allergy life is the scary part, and at times, I know fear is a huge driving factor in decisions I make about travel, eating out, and socializing around food. Working through this is not a one-time thing but an ongoing process, and that’s part of why we’ll be writing some of these non-recipe posts. We’re hoping to talk about the role food plays in our lives, how that changes with food allergies, how that can affect families when your food traditions have to shift to accommodate one person’s health (or what happens when the tradition is given precedence over the person), being your own advocate (or not), being the “weird” one, the sheer time factor of needing to make your own stuff, the planning that goes into feeding yourself, and anything else that happens to come up as we write about the other things.

    What about you? What would you like to see discussed? What has having food allergies — or being around someone who does — taught you? What do you still need to learn? We’re open to suggestions.

  • Whatever Wednesday: Why there won’t be a corn-free tag on the blog

    Why you won't see a corn-free tag on the blog
    Why you won’t see a corn-free tag on the blog

    So most of you know by now, since I’ve (Denise) complained mightily, the whole corn allergy thing sucks. And some of you might have wondered why we haven’t added a corn-free tag to the recipes we’ve posted since the corn thing went down. The short answer is, it’s just too hard, and there’s too much cross-contamination for those who are super sensitive, and I can’t be responsible for that. The longer answer is a bit more complicated than that.

    Since I got the positive scratch test, I’ve been researching how to deal with a corn allergy. And I’ve been in overdrive since I failed the corn challenge. Here’s the thing, corn is in everything and it’s not required to be labeled at all, and some people have reactions just to the cross contamination of other ingredients being processed in the same factory or mill, what it’s waxed or gassed or sprayed or washed with, or any other number of things. Here’s the list of corn derivatives. Check out this page Where’s the Corn in Foods? from the Corn Allergy Girl, where corn can be hiding in daily life in New to Corn Allergy from Corn Free Lifestyle, and a post about how corn gets into meat during processing and otherwise, Corn-tamination Series: Avoiding Corn in Meat again from the Corn Allergy Girl. I’m not even going to get into the medications, household products, personal care products or cleaning products issues. Furthermore, the cross contamination issues are huge for super sensitives and many people can’t handle products that I am still using at this point. Like fresh vegetables from the grocery store, because they’re waxed with a corn derived wax, or sprayed with ethylene gas. Also, many people have difficulty finding safe flours and oils even if there is no corn contained in the product, like sorghum flour or olive oil because of cross contamination in processing. And everyone seems to have a different level of sensitivity, with some people falling on the corn-lite side of the spectrum meaning they can tolerate more than most, and the super sensitives who may have only a few safe foods they can eat. If you’ve got a corn allergy, you might want to check out the Corn Allergy and Intolerance group on Facebook and/or Delphi Avoiding Corn forums to get advice about products and what others have had reactions to.

    At this point, I’m simply not comfortable labeling a recipe corn-free unless it really is truly corn-free, and honestly, in our food supply at this current time, that’s damn near impossible. So basically that’s why you aren’t going to see a corn-free tag on our blog. My (Denise’s) recipes will not have any obvious corn ingredients, but since I can’t guarantee that the ingredients I’m using are safe for everyone with a corn allergy, we’re not going to tag recipes as corn-free. Also, since Mary Kate can eat corn, and her diet is limited enough, her recipes may still contain corn. So I guess what I’m saying is, do what’s right for you, and use safe ingredients you can tolerate. Be careful out there.

  • Whatever Wednesday: Visit to the Allergist, that’s a bad, crazy day.

    Geothermic activity at Te Puia, Rotorua, New Zealand
    Geothermic activity at Te Puia, Rotorua, New Zealand.  It seemed apropos.

    On Monday, April 29, 2013, I had some more scratch test allergy testing done because I was having symptoms similar to those I had before I realized that the milk allergy was bad and couldn’t be ignored any more (see my Denise page, which will have to be updated at some point for reasons that will become apparent), and again a year or so later, just before I tested positive for coconut, almond, egg, clams, and crab. So after hemming and hawing and hoping it would freaking go away for a few months (please don’t do what I did, I’m an idiot), I dragged myself into my allergist’s office for more testing.

    I got a 2+ for lobster and 1+’s for wheat, corn, potato, chicken, celery and onion. For the 1+ results, the allergist says this result means I have approximately at 25% chance of having a true allergy for these reactions. I’ve been told to do a food avoidance for these and then do a challenge for each ingredient to determine which ones actually cause symptoms. So, here’s the thing. I know it’s at least one of them, and one of my 1+ results from the last round of testing, egg, causes me huge distress when eaten, totally belying its puny 1+ reaction. Here’s the other fricking thing. This brings me to a total of SIXTEEN foods and food derivatives that I have to avoid to do this challenge. Now just for fun, since corn is not a top 8 allergen and doesn’t have to be declared or labeled separately, go look at this list of possible corn derived ingredients. Then go look at this list of foods and products that you may not recognize as containing corn. I thought wheat was bad before I started looking at this stuff, but seriously, I think corn is the worst. And I’ll totally lose being able to eat most Asian food out at restaurants, which will be really, really annoying. And why can’t the FDA get it through its head that people would be best served by having all this stuff labeled?? But actually, I know why and it involves the moment of little pieces of green paper, to borrow a phrase from Douglas Adams.

    I haven’t started the elimination process yet, because I’m thinking that while I’m at it, I should just freaking get tested for celiac as well and get it over with, thanks to Mary Kate’s sharing of Celiac Disease Symptoms from the Gluten Dude, and since I still I need to be eating wheat in order for the test to work. In addition, there’s a crapload of stuff I have to sort through and figure out and learn. But at this point, it’s looking like a lot of plain beef or pork, plain vegetables, and rice in my future for the avoidance part of the challenges. Please send good thoughts for the challenges that I was just having a bad day and my skin was pissed off at me and it just decided to fake me out, because it was in a mood. And if some of these results are in fact true allergies, join me in crossing my fingers, eyes and toes, that one of them isn’t f-ing corn. I’ll seriously take all of the rest of them as true allergies as long as corn isn’t one of them (knocking on wood so the universe doesn’t b*tch slap me with corn, just for hoping that it isn’t).

    I drafted the above paragraphs the day after I received the results, and I’ve been letting them sit so I could go back and write it to show both the reaction to the testing, and the later consideration after I’ve had time to think about what it means. Which would be good if I were at that point, but the thing is, I’m still reacting and in denial. I haven’t started the elimination process because my doctor appointment with a new primary care practice (don’t get me started on that whole thing) isn’t until later today, where I’ll start the process for getting testing for celiac. I don’t think that this will become real until after I try to eliminate everything and see what is actually is causing the problems and what isn’t, although the possibilities are causing huge anxiety. Also, if it’s corn, and I have a reaction to Earth Balance and have to make my own margarine, I’m probably going to have a huge temper tantrum. I’ll try to contain it and not expose the blog reading public to it, and try remember that at least I still have the option to make my own and be positive, but I may be cranky for a bit. Being optimistic and positive is not one of my normal states of being (and anyone who knows me in real life is probably busting a gut laughing right about now at the understatement). I’m also trying not to get ticked off in advance by stuff I might never be able to buy or use again until I know that I have a reaction, but I’m anxious about it. And at the same time, I’m afraid that even if all or some of this round of positives are allergies, that this isn’t the end. From the original diagnosis of three food allergies in 2000 to the testing in 2011, I added six additional food allergies. Now in a two year span, I’ve added another seven potential food allergies with this round of tests. My pointed little logical brain can’t help but say, “so does this mean that I’m just going to keep adding more food allergies over the course of my life?  I’m 41.  What will be left for me to eat?”

    I’ve been through this before, so I know I’m just going through the normal stages of this process, and I know I’ll get to the other stages eventually. Like being at the place where knowing is better because I can control it and I will feel better and be happier once I have a handle on what the problem is. But I’m just not there yet, I’m still angry and anxious, which causes me to be more angry because I seriously don’t like being anxious. Before I got the results, I thought I was ready, and that it wouldn’t be this hard this time around because I’ve been through this twice before and you’d think I’d be used to it. Oops, guess not. I thought about waiting to share this post until I had moved farther along the continuum, but maybe it’ll help others with first time food allergies realize that this is part of the process and it’s okay.

    Anyway, that’s the beginning of the new battle, just as I thought I was getting the handle of things with the other nine. Any helpful references or pages you guys have for any of the new list, would be most appreciated. I’ll be posting some updates as I do the elimination and challenges.

    Be careful out there.

  • Whatever Wednesday: Learn Something New: Camellia Sinesis, dba Tea

    Teapot fountain
    Teapot fountain

    Since we’ve focused this month on recipes inspired by cuisine from the continent of Asia (I know, we never said there was a theme, but there was.  We’re wily like that.), I thought tea would make another good subject for another research-based (some might say “nerdy”) post.  Tea is the second most popular drink in the world.  In the world, people — second only to water.  I know I’m part of that statistic.  I was only an occasional tea drinker until graduate school.  You know what’s colder than a New England winter?  A Pacific Northwest winter.  I know, the thermometer says it’s warmer, but it’s wet and sinks into your bones.  So you drink hot beverages — coffee, hot chocolate, and TEA.

    And why not?  Tea, at its root, is an easy drink to make — pour hot water over some leaves.  It works with a variety of leaves, in fact, giving us tea (leaves from the camellia sinesis plant) and tisanes, which are commonly called “herbal teas” in the US.

    The Miracle of Green Tea
    The Miracle of Green Tea

    I would guess that most people drink tea because they like the taste — and there are so many varieties that I imagine nearly anyone can find something that they enjoy.  But tea has been used for centuries as part of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Western medicine is now studying the potential health benefits of tea.  One meta-study (review of all the other studies to gather the data in a single place for analysis) assembled the following list of tea’s benefits:

    Recent human studies suggest that green tea may contribute to a reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease and some forms of cancer, as well as to the promotion of oral health and other physiological functions such as anti-hypertensive effect, body weight control, antibacterial and antivirasic activity, solar ultraviolet protection, bone mineral density increase, anti-fibrotic properties, and neuroprotective power.

    But what IS tea?  Tea is the leaves or leaf buds of the camellia sinesis plant, which, left to its own devices becomes a tree, but is generally kept pruned to about waist-height for ease of harvesting.  Tea is harvested by hand, with the leaves being picked every few weeks.  The earliest harvests are generally the most prized, and different seasons produce different teas.

    In 2009, I took a trip to China, and we visited a tea plantation near Suzhou, site of all the photos I’ve punched into this post.  At the plantation, we were ushered into a lovely building, with a courtyard teapot fountain (top photo) and a tea tasting room that looked out over the bushes.  All the tea here is picked by hand and processed (dried) on site.  They produced 4 grades of tea, and the top two (Empress and Grade A) are never exported.  Quality tea leaves like these can be re-used up to 5 times, so about all day.

    IMG_3466
    Chinese Tea Plantation, near Suzhou

    Tea is native to China, and the Chinese drink their tea green — unoxidized.  Tea was oxidized and compressed for trade, but the Chinese traders considered this an inferior version of the drink.  Tea hit a cultural high point during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), when it was used for social ceremonies as well as in Buddhist ceremonies.  Lu Yu wrote what may be the first tea manifesto, in which tea appreciation, using Taoist and Buddhist principles, could enhance one’s life — help you live your philosophy, and enjoy the moment.  To this end, specialized tea wares, including ceramics, began to be developed  Japanese Buddhist monks studying in China at this time discovered tea and its ceremonies, which they brought back to Japan.

    As Japan’s tea culture flourished, the Manchu or Qing Dynasty in China changed the ethnicity and dominant traditions of the ruling classes.  The Manchu were the primary market for the “inferior” oxidized teas that earlier Chinese dynasties traded at the borders — the precursor to what we know as black tea.  They drank their tea dark, strong and with milk — fermented mare’s milk.  This is the tea culture that the British Empire first encountered, and explains the popularity of black tea with milk as tea spread to Europe.

    Boston Tea Clipper -- click image for original site
    Boston Tea Clipper — click image for original site

    Tea spread first to Europe, and then to England, which is how it becomes part of the story of the US.  The first sale of tea in London was in 1658, and tea became a fixture of British life when Charles II married Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza, a tea drinker.  Chinese tea was traded through the Dutch, who had a monopoly on tea, and even when the Chinese began to trade directly with British merchants, it wasn’t enough.  Tea was popular everywhere, including in the British colonies, including the one Denise and I both live in now.

    The 1773 Boston Tea Party, besides being an important historical landmark event, seems to be a high point for high school history, given how well it is remembered (I vaguely remember a re-enactment class, and I grew up in the South. If you ever get a chance, go to the Old South Meeting House re-enactment in Boston — it’s worth the trip.)  The really short version?  The colonists were tired of being taxed by the British, and began to boycott their imports.  The Dutch were more than happy to sell their tea without a tax, so to undercut them, the British decided to empty some warehouses of tea at low cost to the colonists.  The colonists?  Didn’t take the bait.  They asked the governor to send the three ships back to England without unloading.  When the governor refused, the Sons of Liberty, dressed as Native Americans, boarded the ships and dumped the tea overboard.

    Tea bushes, near Suzhou, China
    Tea bushes, near Suzhou, China

    Tea was also the beginning (and end result) of another war — the Opium Wars of 1839-1842 in which British traders tried to make back the money they paid the Chinese for tea by importing Indian opium into China.  China lost, and badly, not only paying for the war, but giving Hong Kong to the British.  Remember when Hong Kong was “repatriated,” if that’s the right term?  In 1997?  All over TEA.

    Tea Tasting Room. Please ignore the blurred faces-- none of these people asked to be on the internets.
    Tea Tasting Room.
    Please ignore the blurred faces– none of these people asked to be on the internets.

    As part of the great sales pitch at the tea tasting room in Suzhou, we were given tea to taste, but also demonstrations of green tea’s detoxifying power — but wait, it also absorbs fat!  And this dirt in the water!  According to my journal notes, green tea steam can be a great eye moisturizer (I had forgotten all this, but allergy season is a great time to test it out), and green tea bags can be used to absorb fat in a soup stock (I never tried this either, but there’s no time like the present).

    Fresh tea leaves contain about 4% caffeine, and scientists have speculated that it may be a chemical defense system for the plant.  Tea also contains flavinoids, vitamins, and polysaccharides, as well as amino acids.  One of these amino acids is L-Theanine, an amino acid that naturopaths say stress depletes in your body, but which provides a calm, alert, and focused mental state.  I want a calm, alert, and focused mental state, don’t you?  That may be why I drink so much tea.

    Office Tea Stash (does not include additional plain black tea and a few others in the closet)
    Office Tea Stash (does not include additional plain black tea and a few others in the closet)

    Given all this, what teas do I drink?  I admit that, lovely as loose tea is, it’s not my go-to tea method.  I usually have tea bags in my purse (always) or carry-on bag (when flying).  The photo above is just my collection of teas at work, where they take up valuable real estate on the printer.  The small green canister up there was the last bit of tea from my trip to China, and the aluminum canister holds all the many assorted teas and tisanes I’ve collected over time.  The boxes include two tisanes — a Celestial Seasonings Tangerine Zinger and a peppermint, which is great for all the digestive fun that can come with food allergies and intolerances.  The two teas are Irish Breakfast and Bancha Hojicha.  Bancha hojicha is a toasted/roasted Japanese green tea better known in my office as “magic tea,” as it was introduced to me as a hangover cure (my hangover was from benedryl, sadly, but you know what?  It works, so it IS magic).  I did look up Irish Breakfast tea versus English Breakfast tea — both are black tea blends, they are just different blends.  The internet consensus seems to be that IB is stronger than EB, possibly with higher concentrations of Assam tea (Indian tea).

    Starting with Lu Yu, there have been many theories and philosophies on how to make the best, most perfect, most enlightening cup of tea.  There is an actual international standard for making tea for tasting — ISO 3103.  (Wikipedia link –the official ISO is a pay-to-read site).  Green tea should be steeped in water just under boiling, not quite boiling, as it can become bitter — this seems to be even more true with the lesser quality leaves that tend to be found in mass produced green tea bags.  At home, I admit, I like the ritual of my tea kettle, but I rarely make a pot of tea.  At work, I use the hot water spigot, and it’s even less ritualistic, but I’m in it for the taste.

    So.  Tea.  Do you drink it?  What do you love?  What did I miss that you still want to know?  Please ask.  I probably read about it and just couldn’t fit it in.

    Sources Used:

    Tea catechins’ affinity for human cannabinoid receptors (study on how tea works)

    Beneficial effects of green tea — a review

    Mary Lou Heiss and Robert Heiss, The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide. Ten Speed Press, 2007.

    Wikipedia entries for Tea, camellia sinesis, tasseography

  • UPDATED – DIY Shampoo if Allergic to Coconut on Whatever Wednesday

    Shampoo in re-purposed pump bottle

     

    EDITED TO ADD : Please go see the newest version of this recipe – it’s a lot better!! – UPDATED AGAIN!! DIY Shampoo if Allergic to Coconut on Whatever Wednesday

    Since publishing my DIY Shampoo if Allergic to Coconut post, I’ve made a minor change to the original shampoo recipe. When you see the change you’re going to laugh and say “Whatever Denise, like that matters.” But it makes a pretty large difference in the lathering of the shampoo, and also in moisturizing your hair.  I had a tough time over the winter with original recipe because I felt like my hair was too dry.  So I tinkered with the recipe a bit, and got something that makes a much better lather and made my hair feel great.  And so without further ado, I give you the original post, with the added ingredient underlined, italicized, and in bold:

    So here’s the thing. Being allergic to coconut is a b*tch, once you realize that coconut is in just about every cleaning product on the market. To get a list of coconut derivatives, go here, thanks to Becky at the Allergic to Coconut? blog. Due to some issues with breaking out much more than I should be at freaking *40*, I decided I wanted to try cutting out any coconut derivatives that touch my skin.

    First, most soap and shampoos contain at least one of the coconut derivatives on the list, if not five to ten of them. Most lotions, face masks, acne treatments, etc., etc., etc., contain at least one of the coconut derivatives as well. When I decided to go looking at my beauty and personal hygiene products, guess what? Every single one had coconut in them, except one lotion, and when I looked up the ingredients I didn’t recognize on that label, it turned out to be two forms of pesticide. Yippy fricking skippy.

    The first thing I did was to try to find a recipe for shampoo, because I was breaking out in my hair, which hadn’t ever been a problem before. I posted this information earlier in one of our Fabulous Friday Finds, but I’ve made some modifications.

    I found this recipe for making your own shampoo, which calls for castile soap. Just be aware that even some castile soaps, like Dr. Bonner, have coconut in them. I found a recipe for making castile soap from Kiss My Face Pure Olive Oil Soap. Kiss My Face Pure Olive Oil Soap does not have any coconut in it. I made the shampoo with some modifications and found it too drying on my hair, so I added olive oil, but found it could be a bit waxy. This time I think I have it the way I like it. I’ve been using it as a body wash as well.

    Denise’s Version of DIY Shampoo

    • 1 Kiss My Face Pure Olive Oil Soap – 8 oz bar, grated (I grated it in my food processor, dumped it out, put the blade in, put it back in the food processor and pulverized it some more.  Doesn’t take as long to dissolve in the water this way.  Make sure you clean your food processor really well afterwards.)
    • 5 cups of distilled water
    • 3 Tablespoons of grapeseed oil
    • 2 Tablespoons of castor oil
    • 1 Tablespoon of avocado oil
    • 10-15 drops of tea tree essential oil

    Grate Kiss My Face Soap.  Place in a glass or plastic container with 5 cups of distilled water.  Stir well, cover, and leave overnight.  The next day, check to see if the soap bits have completely dissolved. If not, stir again and let sit.  When the soap has completely dissolved, add, the grapeseed oil, the castor oil, the avocado oil, and the tea tree oil, and mix together.  I used a whisk, I found it incorporated the oil better.  This makes about 48 oz of shampoo.  I put half in a pump bottle (Yes, it’s a store-brand hand sanitizer bottle, reduce, reuse, recycle, remember?) in the shower and half in the fridge until I run out.  Or you could just make half the recipe 🙂

    You can use the shampoo as body wash and facial wash as well, but stay tuned for further posts on facial cleansing options.

  • Whatever Wednesday: Oil Cleansing Method

    Oil Cans, photo by Ian Britton (creative commons license)
    Oil Cans, photo by Ian Britton (creative commons license)

    About a year ago, after a lot of reading about it, I thought I’d try this “oil cleansing” thing that the internet was chittering on about.  Honestly, it seemed a little counter-intuitive, smearing oil over the grease on my face to clean it off.  I have had oily skin since I was about 11, which is when the acne started.

    I’ve tried all sorts of cleansers and acne systems, most of them harsh and annoying, with the side effects being as bad as the breakouts and just as hard to cover up.  Nothing’s ever been a miracle solution.  Since my skin was oily, I was a big fan of stripping all the oil off, using stripping cleanser followed by really harsh astringents, and ending up with tight, dry, itchy skin that was oil slicked in about an hour.  Eventually I came around to moisturizer, which did calm my skin down a bit.  The oil cleansing, though, replaces all of that.  Adjusting the formula based on the seasons has mostly eliminated the need for moisturizers, too, though I still use them occasionally.  If you do find you need a moisturizer, Denise posted a coconut-derivative-free lotion a while back.

    I use the oil cleanser in the evening to remove the makeup and daily grime, and in the morning just splash water on my face and then put on makeup like normal.  It is WAY cheaper than the rather expensive cleanser I was buying before and more effective to boot, so I am a solid convert.  I even had a test phase — last spring, I didn’t pack the oil for a trip, and by day 3, I was breaking out again.  Now I have a travel container.

    I started with all the information on the oil cleansing method on the Crunchy Betty website, and have started tweaking my own recipes from that information.  I’d suggest you do the same, but here are my recipes for a starting point.  I’ve done everything as ratios, but I would suggest starting with a small batch (maybe making 1 part a teaspoon) to see how it works for you, so that you can tweak the next one if you don’t love it.  Give it a week or two for each tweak, to see how it shakes out.

    Oil Cleansing for Winter, for Oily Skin

    • 2.5 parts castor oil
    • 1 part avocado oil
    • 1 part grapeseed oil

    I did this with 15 mL castor, 6 mL each of avocado and grapeseed, 5 drops of thyme essential oil (for acne) and 2 drops of super-strength vitamin E oil to soothe.  This mix will last me close to a month of use.

    Oil Cleansing for Summer, for Oily Skin

    • 1 part castor oil
    • 1 part grapeseed oil

    You will need a small bottle for your oil mix, as well as a stack of cotton washcloths.  I have found that some makeup stains the cloths — mascara and lipstick, in particular — but rather than bleach the cloths, I use them only for face washing and just wash them on hot.  I have two small bottles, one glass with a dropper and one plastic with a small spout that allows me to dole the oil out in drops.  This does take longer than a quick foaming face wash, but I then spend less time with concealers in the morning.

    Here’s the short version of the technique — but really, read the Crunchy Betty post.  It’s good.

    • A few drops at a time, pour oil onto clean fingertips and apply to face. (I do about 3 or 4 drops at a time, until I’ve covered my whole face.)
    • Massage into face.  I know the post says 2 minutes.  I probably don’t do it that long most nights.
    • Using hot water and a washcloth, briefly steam your oiled up face, and then massage the oil off with the cloth.
    • Pat dry or let air dry.
    • Enjoy how not oily your skin is in the morning.

    (Oh, and a bonus tip: I admit, I got this years ago from seventeen magazine — instead of using zit cream, try lemon juice.  Just a dab on a breakout.  It’s cheaper, more effective, and tastes great in iced tea. Just like the creams, it will not magically make a zit disappear.  But it will make it go away in less than half the time.)

    Have you tried oil cleansing?  How did it work for you?

  • WW: Learn Something New: Maple Syrup

    Sugar Kings Sugar Shack
    Sugar Kings Sugar Shack

    The very first known instance of the word maple (though, at the time it was “mapul”) was in Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale in Canterbury Tales where it is just part of a list of all the trees in the woods.  Maple trees (genus: Acer, Latin for sharp, as in the points of the leaves — related to the base word for “acerbic), are all over the northern hemisphere, and are one of the foliage trees that bring the leaf peppers up to New Hampshire, Vermont, Ontario and Quebec.

    But for all that, as pretty as a maple can be in full autumnal bloom, the real genius of the genus maple is the sugar maple that brings us this glorious Maple Weekend in New Hampshire.

    Old-School Sap Buckets
    Old-School Sap Buckets

    Knowledge of the hidden treasure in the maple tree predates European settlement on the North American continent — French explorer Jacques Cartier mentions the trees in a 1540 report, and mentions of the “distilled sap” are found by 1606 in the writings of Canadian explorers.  It seems, though, that the native people of these areas mostly went beyond syrup to sugar, which makes sense, as anyone who’s tried to take gifts of maple syrup home on a plane could attest.  Maple sugar is much easier to transport, being dry and compact.

    evaporation
    evaporation

    The process of making syrup and sugar from maple sap pretty much boil down to the same thing — the removal of water from the sap.  Accounts vary on exactly how much sap is needed to make syrup, but it’s something around 40 gallons of sap boiling down to a gallon of syrup.  Concentrate it down to dry sugar and you can see why maple sugar has a rather high price tag.  But it didn’t always.  Maple sugar was promoted by abolitionists as a great local alternative to slave-produced cane sugar.  (Does this particular line of reasoning strike anyone else as rather modern?  The more things change…)  When cane sugar was taxed as an import, maple sugar and cane sugar were about the same price, but by the end of the 19th century, producers in New England were producing primarily syrup, not sugar, from their maple sap.

    Over the years, technology has refined the processing of maple, with the current high-end technology being reverse osmosis — the removal of about 75% of the water from the sap before it is boiled into syrup, reducing the processing time considerably.  Some sugar shacks are running r.o., but not all of them.  The one we visited was doing it old school, just wood fire and long boiling.

    All the technology in the world can’t make the weather behave, though, and 2012, which was remarkably warm, was a bad year for maple syrup production, reducing output everywhere but Maine.  New Hampshire still produced 76,000 gallons of maple syrup, but that was down from 120,000 gallons in 2011.  Can you imagine 120,000 gallons of maple syrup?  Are you imagining a giant vat of syrup right now?  I am.  Apparently, though, this weather’s been pretty great for maple sap, so we were promised a good Maple Weekend.

    Sap Tree
    Sap Tree

    Denise and I drove out to Warner to the Courser Farm Sugar Shack, which has apparently been open since 1957.  Have you ever been to a sugar shack?  It’s a fun winter experience — they really are shacks, with all the ventilation that the word implies, and specifically chimneys and vents up top.  You can see a working shack as you approach — the steam and smoke give them away.  Inside, they are remarkably cozy, especially on Maple Weekend — you’ll likely be handed a small cup with a shot of syrup in it, still warm, as you enter.  The owners and likely a neighbor or two will be hanging out and chatting, keeping the fires going, watching the sap become syrup.  They smell pretty amazing, too — sweet, though not quite syrupy, tinged with wood smoke.

    Maple syrup is graded — both by color and letter.  Syrup gets darker as the season goes on (from light to medium to dark amber) and grade B is the end of the season, recommended mostly for cooking.

    If you want to visit a sugar shack, and you live in the northern tier of North America, look at your local agricultural department’s website.  So far as I can tell from a quick search, you can get locally-made maple syrup as far west as Wisconsin, as well as all over New England.

    So you’ve got your syrup.  What do you do with it now?  Maple syrup is a common liquid sweetener in vegan baking and cooking, making a good substitute for honey.  If you’re feeling really industrious, try making maple cream from your syrup.  It’s labor-intensive, but if you’ve never had it?  It will blow your mind.  Honestly, though, I think it’s best straight up over pancakes or waffles.  I will warn, though, that it’s addictive — once you’ve gone to pure maple syrup rather than “pancake syrup,” you will be hard-pressed to go back.  Try it out with Denise’s recipes for gluten-free pancakes and waffles!

    Want to learn how to tap a tree in your backyard?  Start here.

    Maple Syrup
    Maple Syrup

    Sources:

    NH Maple Producers

    Wikipedia, Maples

    Maple Syrup Report, 2012, USDA New England Field Office