Randomness from the past two months. :-)

For the past two months we have not had internet because of the work that was going on for our addition. We just got our dish reinstalled a couple of weeks ago and I have finally decided to blog agian. :-) What has happened in the last two months?

Addition:
We now have two more rooms upstairs and a full basement underneath those two new rooms. We are currently waiting on the electric inspection so that we can get things moving again. Getting the homeowners electric permit was a fiasco that took over 2 weeks and 2 times of faxing our building permit up to the county building who lost it or didn't recieve it and never decided to call and let us know that. We just recieved the permit in the mail and will hopefully be getting the inspection done sometime this next week. I was going to put some pictures on here, but the camera is in the bedroom and Ben is taking a nap. The pictures are all on facebook though. :-)

ACD:
I am back to eating more "normal" now, although I still have to avoid lots of sugar otherwise I get an upset stomach, corn and any of its other forms ( I can eat it occasionally maybe twice a month, so I have to decide which craving I want more, usually nachos with "real" tortilla chips or popcorn with a ton of butter and salt, nachos win the most.), I do fine with some forms of diary, greek yogurt, some butter and mozerella cheese, and can't handle most of the others at all. After the DALMAC I will have to go back to being more strict on it for a few weeks, because to survive on these long bike rides of 70 miles I need Powerade and the second ingredient in Powerade is...Corn Syrup. :-(
 Benefits of the diet: I've found out which foods aren't good for me, the rash on my hand is completely gone, the rash on my leg is very faint, it was almost gone, but I started drinking Powerade so I wouldn't die,  AND my last two thyroid labs that I had drawn came back with all normal levels!! Including the antibody levels which have never, ever been normal since I started testing my levels. :-)

Family addition. :-)
 Also in the last couple of months I've been working on an addition to our family. :-) Baby # 2 is going to join us in approximately 30 weeks. 27 if it decides to follow Seth's example. Nausea is pretty much gone now, although I do have bad days a couple of times a week. "Morning" sickness has been much different then with Seth, with Seth I pretty much knew that before 10 in the morning would be bad and that if I wasn't laying on the couch around 6:30-7:00 things could get bad. With this little one it has been more random, popping up whenever it wants to, never enough that I have thrown up but enough that I don't want to move and thinking about any kind of food or drink makes me stomach roll. However, the past couple weeks have been 70% good days and on the other 30% it isn't really that bad. :-)
 Seth doesn't really know what's going on yet, although we do talk to him about the baby, I don't think he will really know until baby is actually here. Latest cute Seth moment: Seth went with me to my first ultrasound. After it was all done I was showing him the picture up on the screen and showing him baby. He looks at it for a minute and then looks and me, "Laying down?"  "That's right, baby is laying down." "Sleeping?" "Yeah, it probably is sleeping." "Oh." :-)

"What can you eat???"

 I have been hearing this alot as I have been talking to people about this Anti Candida Diet that I am on. That was my first question as well when I first started researching this out and actually decided that I was going to do the ACD. So I immediately went and bought 3 specialized cookbooks, but over the 2 1/2 weeks that I've been doing this I've used maybe 3 recipes out of those books. There are actually better recipes and ideas on Pinterest and other random ACD blogs then I have found in those cookbooks that I bought.
 Here is what our menu looks like for this week.

Breakfast

• eggs scrambled with spring greens, pumpkin muffins
• soaked cracked buckwheat cereal
• soaked buckwheat pancakes
• soaked oatmeal with chia seeds and almonds
• heuvos rancheros

Lunch

• tuna salad on toasted millet bread
• rice, black beans and pepper stir-fry
• leftovers

Dinner

• fish, stir-fried sweet peas and potates (sweet for me, white for the boys)
• chicken fajita's with rice and black beans
• venison stir-fry
• venison steak with roasted vegetables

 See you really can eat normal food while doing the ACD. You just have to think about it and plan a little bit more. I'm sure after a while it will just become a normal part of life. You also shouldn't think about all the choclatey, ooey, gooey-ness that you are missing when your husband eats warm brownies with cool whip on them. :-P

Week 2 - Anti Candida Diet

 Two weeks ago I started one of the many versions of an Anti Candida Diet. I started this because I have had a rash on my hand and legs for over a year that just wasn't going away no matter what I did. My doctor confirmed it was a yeast rash but just kept giving me different creams to put on it. After several months of that I decided it was time to take things into my own hands. After lots of reading and researching I decided it was finally time to do whatever it took to get rid of this itchy, scaley, very annoying rash. Two weeks ago I started a super strict diet that doesn't allow any sugar, fruit, dairy, packaged or processed foods, and vinegar. White potatoes are very limited.
 So what can I eat? Veggi's, lots of vegetables, rice, buckwheat, quinoa, millet, nuts and seeds, as long as they are raw and fresh, and lots of coconut. Coconut milk, oil and dried unsweetened cocnut flakes. I'm trying to get some sort of coconut every day because of the anti-fungal properties of the coconut and coconut oil. The plus with the coconut is that is since it is naturally sweet I still get some sort of sweetness. Sugars that are allowed are Stevia, Splenda and Xylitol. I've tried Stevia and I can't handle the aftertaste. Right now I'm using Splenda, I know that it isn't exactly the healthiest option, but I don't think a couple of weeks is going to hurt to much. I also just picked up some Xylitol from a local health food store, so I'll be trying that in the next few weeks.
 I've learned that my body doesn't like dairy, at least the pasturized and homogenized kind.....last night I cheated a little and put some butter on some peas and probably half an hour later the spots on my hand where my rash was (it had almost disapeared completely) were throbbing and burning and when I woke up this morning it was back. :-( I also don't handle cabbage very well, cooked or not. I had that last night too, I had stir fried it, and I woke up in the middle of the night with really bad stomach cramps. I had noticed this happening before I went on this diet, but related it to something else.
 At first my plan was to stay in Stage 1 for only three week, but now I'm thinking I may need longer than that. Stage 1 is supposed to be continued until all symptoms are gone or almost completely gone. Stage 2 you get to add in new foods 1 at a time and see how your body reacts. First you add yeast, wait a couple of days and then add something else. Stage 2 can last a long time..... Stage 3 is just really healthy eating, with limited sugar, lots of vegetables, fruit if you can handle it and whole grains.


This has been my favorite way to help my sugar cravings.

Pumpkin Sweet Potato "Mousse"

1 cup Pumpkin
1 whole baked sweet potato,peeled
1 can coconut milk, refrigerated overnight so you can get the cream, you aren't going to use the liquid milk, just keep it for something else

Put it all in the blender and mix until smooth and fluffy. You may need to add some of the coconut milk just to lighten it up a little. If you aren't on a sugar free diet this is going to taste very plain and not sweet at all, but after a few weeks of no sugar it will taste amazing! :-)