Cheesy Rice Bake

We had this for supper last night with grilled chicken breast, and again tonight with grilled London Broil, thanks to the cheddar leftovers from macaroni and cheese. Here's the skinny:

Ingredients
1/2 cup chopped onion
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard (this seems to go in lots of cheese-based recipes?)
2 cups milk
3 cups of cooked rice (I prefer brown, but we had long-grain white. It was still amazing)
1 cup cheddar cheese

Directions
Start cooking rice according to the package instructions.

Saute the onion in the butter until tender. Add flour, salt, pepper, and mustard (this will make a roux-like mixture). Gradually add the milk while stirring constantly until the mixture thickens. Add half of the cheese and stir until the cheese is melted.

In a casserole dish, layer in this order: rice, cheese sauce, grated cheese, rice, cheese sauce, grated cheese.

Bake at 375 for 25 minutes. Enjoy!

Sorry about the lack of finished product pictures. You can image a nice golden-browned cheese crust. It was tasty. And soy-free.

Stuff I don't miss

When I started this journey I was so desperate for pain relief that I didn't think about the ramifications of giving up soy, until the next day when I was trying to scrounge together a brown bag lunch. For a moment I thought, "what on earth do I think I'm doing?", but I persevered. In a bit of reflection this morning, I realized there are some surprising things I don't miss.

Bread. We bake our own bread fairly regularly but haven't had time these last two weeks. Since all of the store-bought varieties contain soy, I've been sans bread. Add crackers and croutons to that list as well.  I'm a self aware carboholic, so this is probably the most shocking to me.

Sweets. This is a little deceptive because I cooked fudge over the weekend (and it was SO good - recipe coming later). But after I ate it, I could actually feel what the sugar did to my body. I quite literally felt it hit my blood. I ended up with a headache and a feeling of 'bleh'. So while I'm happy to have a go-to soy-free alternative for those sweet cravings, I don't really miss it. It isn't worth how it made me feel.

Mayonnaise. I am a mayo girl. Rather, I'm a can't-stand-dry-sandwiches girl. And given the number one item on this list, I haven't been eating mayo lately. Brint has even taken mayo out of his go-to recipes like potato salad and cole slaw. And I don't miss it one bit.

Regular peanut butter. I'll admit that when I first tasted the natural peanut butter I was less than enthused. It was grainy, and very peanut-y. I had become so brainwashed by what companies offer as peanut butter that I wasn't sure I liked the real thing. But now I love it. It's so dense in flavor that a very little bit goes a long way, and I like the texture now. It reminds me that I really am eating just peanuts and salt.

Those are the biggies that come to mind. In a few days I'll do a stuff I do miss post, because there are a few things in that category as well. But I have to say, it has been so much easier to make this a lifestyle change than I expected. It's become second nature to flip a food product over to check the ingredients list.

Happy almost Friday day!

Soy Free Protein Bars

Thursdays are my killer days this semester - 5 straight hours of class, from 11-4. Early this semester I discovered Clif Bars and fell in love. They were fast, and kept me full for hours. Except that I always ended up hurting halfway through my second class, and was barely able to drive home by the end of the day. It's no wonder:

In case you can't read my low-quality picture, it contains soy rice crisps, soy protein isolate, roasted soybeans, soybean oil, and soy lecithin. It's basically a soy bar. No wonder I was hurting so badly halfway through class.

I've had 2 soy-free Thursdays so far, and crunching on carrot sticks in the middle of a lecture just isn't going to work. So I hit the internet to find a soy free protein bar. And I did:

Their ingredients list is heaven. It's all fruit, nuts, and a little organic chocolate (depending on the flavor). No chemical names that can't be pronounced, and best of all - no soy. These were the answer to my Clif bar quandry. Except that they cost about $2/bar. More than double the cost of a Clif.  I shuddered a bit when I saw the price.

The answer? Make them myself. I browsed a couple of blogs with homemade Larabar recipes. I really liked Julia's recipes. It was pretty clear that dates should be the primary ingredient, so I went to work this evening.

I have to say, my ego is pretty inflated right about now...

Ingredients
20 Dates (pitted, of course)
1/4 cup roasted sunflower seeds
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon natural peanut butter

Chop the dates in a food processor (my #2 favorite kitchen appliance, behind my KA stand mixer), then add in the nuts, honey, and peanut butter and pulse some more. It should look like this:

Form four balls by hand with the mixture, and wrap each ball tightly with plastic wrap. Chill, and enjoy! The finished product:

Clearly, approximating serving sizes is not my strong suit. But, had I managed to evenly divide the four servings, here's the nutritional info:

Calories:203
Fat:6g
Carbs:38g
Protein:4g

Not really a 'protein' bar, but filling nonetheless. And the mix tasted pretty good! I think if I had bought the fresh dates I wouldn't have needed the honey, but the prepackaged dates were a third of the price. Honey it is.

So I challenge you - create a protein bar flavor of your own! Just don't forget the dates.

Endometriosis Treatment

Disclaimer: I am no way affiliated with, supported by, or under the duress of the Center for Endometriosis Care.

I'm an over-dramatic person in all aspects of my life, except when it comes to my health. When I was diagnosed with a heart condition at 15, I thought, "cool". My parents were petrified, and 5 years later my Mom still didn't want me to ride a roller coaster at Universal Studios.

When my doctor found the cyst on my ovary I thought, "crap, I'm gonna have to take that final exam early!". And when he explained the severity of my endometriosis I thought, "I feel justification for complaining about the pain all this time".

I am a professional worrier. I hear it comes with the extra-X chromosome territory. I worry about Brint getting into a car accident while commuting to and from work, or him getting run over by a piece of equipment on the job, and more recently about earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods. The exception to my worrying? My own health.

All last year when I was in terrible pain, I never worried about what it meant. I think the pain became the norm, so I mentally discarded it. In fact, I never would have sought out a new doctor in this region if the symptoms had not begun affecting my marriage. When sex became painful, I knew I had to do something. I could handle the pain, but it wasn't fair for my husband and my marriage to suffer.

But now I'm beginning to worry about all of that pain that I ignored. Doctors don't know if pain = active endometrial growth. Maybe it does. If so, then I have reason to be concerned. When left unchecked, endometriosis can bind internal organs together so tightly that doctors can do nothing about it. The uterus can fold over onto itself permanently. The fallopian tubes can become fused to the ovaries.

In an attempt to find answers about the meaning of the pain, I found the Center of Endometriosis Care website. It's located in Atlanta, but it doesn't matter if you're local or not. They offer a FREE service to women to review medical records (even women who haven't received a formal endo diagnosis) and provide recommendations for how to move forward based on those records. You just send them your information, they request your information from your doctor(s), and then the doctor calls you after reviewing the information. Ladies- take advantage of this! I plan on doing so this week. I'm not comfortable asking my doctor point-blank for another surgery. But I really want to know to know the extent of my disease after nearly 2 years of hormone therapy.

If you have endometiosis, or think you might - give them a call! It doesn't cost a thing, and being proactive with this disease is imperative to living a well-balanced life.

The Dark Side of Soy

I've been doing lots of soy research over the last week and a half, and I finally found a review article worth sharing. It is co-authored by a PhD in nutrition science. Even though it is available on a dot-com site, every single statement is backed up by a numbered citation, and most of those citations are peer-reviewed articles. Check it out here. When I tested the link, it took me to page 3 of the article. Just make sure you start at the beginning! And I forgot to add - you'll need to provide an email address to be able to read the article. I keep an old, never checked email address for occasions such as these....

If you don't want to read the entire article, here are the high points:

• Soy was held as a sacred grain by ancient Chinese dynasties, but not nutritionally- it was used in crop rotation because soy fixes nitrogen in the soil (all legumes do this).
• Asian cultures only eat fermented soy, because non-fermented soy contains toxins called anti-nutrients. These anti-nutrients block enzyme receptors that usually absorb protein and other nutrients from the digestive tract. Soy has been shown to cause deficiencies in calcium, Vitamin K, Vitamin B, magnesium, iron and zinc, which backs up the theory of enzyme inhibiting chemicals.
• In addition to anti-nutrients, soy contains isoflavones that mimic estrogen called genistein and diadzen, which have been linked to infertility, increased cancer risk, and thyroid malfunctions. This was even proven by the FDA's National Center for Toxicological Research in 1997 (why is the FDA Center for Toxicology researching a food product that is rampant in our food supply and not making more Americans aware?).
• In 1998, researchers found that infants being fed soy-based formula were ingesting the estrogenic equivalent (based on body weight) of five birth control pills per day.

I think that's enough for now. Seriously, read the article. I shouldn't be surprised, but I admit that I'm aghast that the FDA has been aware of the toxicity of soy for nearly 15 years now and yet doesn't seem to be doing anything about it. 

And by the way - I'm still pain free! I've been feeling better too, not as run-down as usual. And I've been sleeping better at night. Placebo effect, perhaps, but I'm thinking it's got at least a little to do with my new and improved way of life...

Breakfast Sausage

Do you need to guess how soy exists in most breakfast sausages? Natural flavors. I'll repeat earlier sentiments - why must flavorful foods be filled with natural flavors? It is naturally flavorful on its own! Anyway, here's a super easy recipe for breakfast sausage that you can make with any ground meat of your choice. We use 93% lean ground turkey, but you can use beef, pork, chicken, turkey, or a combination of meats.

Ingredients
1 pound ground meat of choice
2 Tablespoons sage
2 Teaspoons salt
1 Teaspoon black pepper
1/4 Teaspoon marjoram
1 Tablespoon brown sugar
1/8 Tablespoon crushed red pepper

Mix all of the ingredients together and enjoy! I use the paddle attachment on my Kitchen Aid mixer (my #1 favorite kitchen appliance) and it's done in a snap. If you like it spicier, you can use more crushed red pepper, or even add white pepper for a different taste. It's very versatile, and I love that I know what's going into my body. Also, it freezes well (obviously, since the meat is still raw....)

To make breakfasts faster, I cook up a pound of this on Sundays and put it in a zippy bag in the fridge. When I cook my eggs in the morning, I just crumble some in towards the end with a little cheese. It makes a great protein-packed meal that's super fast. And it's soy free. Take that, Glycine max!

Soy-Free Macaroni and Cheese

I am a self-proclaimed cheese hater. I've always hated 'real' cheese, except for the Italian and soft cheeses. I've never liked gouda, or cheddar, or pepper jack. Until today. Check out the awesomeness:

Ingredients
1 box whole pasta of choice
4 cups shredded cheddar cheese
12 oz. can evaporated milk
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard (the spice not the condiment)
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons corn starch

Directions
Combine can of milk, water, dry mustard, salt, pepper, and corn starch in a saute pan. Whisk very well until mixed together, then place over medium heat. STIR CONTINUOUSLY! If you walk away, the mixture will burn. Also, using a spatula to stir works best (it likes to try to stick, even if you stir). Stir until it begins to boil, and allow it to boil for 1 minute while continuing to stir. Remove from heat and add in 3 cups of cheese. It should look like this:

While you were doing all of this, your pasta should have been cooking. Pour the cheese mixture over the cooked pasta in a casserole dish. We didn't use the entire box of pasta with the cheese mixture because we like it very saucy, but it's personal preference. Sprinkle the remaining cup of cheese on top, and bake uncovered at 350 Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes or until browned on top. Enjoy!

I didn't get a picture before Brint had some. I don't blame him -  this completely changed my opinion of 'real cheese'. I'll never go back to boxed mac and cheese again. And next time we're going to use cheddar, asiago, and provolone, because it sounds earth-shattering...

Barbecue Sauce

As promised, Brint's homemade barbecue sauce recipe, in its (almost) entirety:

Ingredients
1 cup ketchup (Heinz is soy-free)
3 Tablespoons mustard
1 Tablespoon cajun seasoning (Brint mixes his own and refuses to share the recipe, sorry!)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup water

Mix everything together in a sauce pan and simmer on low for 5-10 minutes!d If you like it sweeter, add more brown sugar. If you like it tangier, add more cider vinegar. It's very versatile. You can refrigerate the leftovers for future use.

Saturday Traditions, and More Food Stuffs

I'm from the Deep South, and that means Saturdays = College Football. Around here, nobody understands because  we now live in the land of professional sports teams, so everyone gears up for Sunday afternoons and Monday nights. But not us.

Saturday afternoons usually involve a well-planned meal, which more often than not centers around the grill. Except that it's been raining cats and dogs (back home we call it a gully washer), aside from a 15 minute break in the clouds yesterday, when I witnessed a beautiful rainbow while walking Mulligan:

My smartphone didn't pick it up, but it morphed into this quadruple rainbow type thing, and it was huge. Instant smile maker. Mulligan was less enthused, but he did his business so we all went away happy.

Anyway, our menu for the day: Pork spare ribs, butter beans, and homemade macaroni and cheese. Brint is experimenting with the ribs in the oven due to the inclement weather. He's also making barbecue sauce from scratch for me, since everything in the store contained natural flavors. Luckily, Heinz ketchup doesn't have soy in it, so we can use that as the BBQ sauce base. I'll provide his recipe later. Here are the spare ribs before they went into the oven (he basted them with olive oil and liquid smoke, and rubbed with his own proprietary blend of cajun seasoning):

The butter beans come via my lovely parents. As long as I can remember, we grew our own vegetables and froze them for winter use in a huge chest freezer. Corn, okra, squash, tomatoes (we cooked those down as a base for soups and things), green beans, black eyed peas, butter beans, bell peppers.... on and on. Well last year Brint mentioned that he LOVES butter beans, so Daddy planted like 11 rows of them. Which is ridiculous. So when they visited at the end of the summer, they stocked our freezer for us like they always do. Except we have a disproportionate amount of butter beans.

Yep, that's butter floating in the pot. Just 2 tablespoons. We found out from some Boston friends that it isn't normal to put butter in everything, and yet we keep extra butter in the freezer so we don't run out. Except we've always used Country Crock. Ever looked at the ingredients list on Country Crock butter? Don't. It's long. And it shouldn't be, because butter is just cream that's been churned, right? Well CC has soy in it, of course. So today we went searching for soy-free butter.

I was not expecting what I found. I always assumed that unsalted butter was best, because it's got less sodium in it. Wrong. They replace that salt with 'natural flavors'. The salted butter contained 2 ingredients: Cream and salt. Simple. Here's the label:

The brand is Wellsley Farms, which is the BJ's store brand. I love BJ's. Warehouse shopping is wonderful. Anyway, I had another awesome find at BJ's: soy-free salsa. In a jar! And it's way more affordable than Mrs. Renfro's (sorry, Mrs. Renfro):

Welcome to Moe's! Well, I certainly feel welcome now! No soy, no natural flavors, no xanthan gum. Mmmmm.

Oh, yeah, the macaroni and cheese. So we're using whole wheat organic noodles, which are soy-free. Plus evaporated milk and sharp cheddar cheese. I'll post the entire recipe later. I was excited to see that all of the cheeses were soy-free. I just have to learn to like real cheese, instead of the fake vegetable oil spread stuff that starts with a 'V'. Small sacrifices.

So I'll be back later, to post the barbecue sauce and macaroni and cheese recipes! Enjoy the day!

Week One, and Falling Off the Wagon

So a week ago today I began striving to remove all known sources of soy from my diet. And it's been pretty amazing. I haven't been in pain. I don't even know where the pain pills are right now, which is crazy.

I suppose I should have left it at that - continuing on my journey without soy, happily enjoying life the way it used to be. But I couldn't. One day I'll learn, but today wasn't that day.

Have you ever been plodding along at something, and it's going so well you feel invincible? Well that was me, today. I felt so great, so normal that I forgot. I forgot about the breathtaking pain that doubles me over mid-step.

I remember now.

Brint suggested we go out for dinner, because another night of roast didn't sound appealing. I looked at some online menus and picked out a cobb salad from one of our favorite local places, and planned to do oil and vinegar dressing.

And then I promptly ordered pretzels and crab dip as an entree when we arrived. I convinced myself that since the soy was successfully out of my body, that a little bit wouldn't hurt. Until now I've been an "everything in moderation" person. I never thought that any food or food group should be off-limits, as long as moderation is practiced.

I have to remember that those days are over.

Trust me - supper was amazing. Maryland is known for crabs for a reason, and this was quite possibly the best crab dip I've ever had.

Now it's about 3 hours later, and I can feel the tiniest tinges of pain creeping into my abdomen. I found that bottle of pain medication and preemptively took a couple.

I'm not ashamed. I'm sure I'll eat more soy in future, purposefully and accidentally. I just have to remember that everything has a cost, and I need to be willing to pay the price. Seeing as how I want to go back to that super human high I was riding earlier, it's going to be a long while before knowingly ingest soy again.

In a nutshell, I'm not giving this thing up just yet. If anything, my meal out proved to me even more just how important it is to stick to the plan....

Cooking Spray

I eat eggs for breakfast almost every morning. On my first soy-free day, I used cooking spray with reckless abandon, not knowing that the cooking spray contained soy lecithin. It didn't even occur to me to check the label because it seemed so ridiculous. But, here it is:

Soy lecithin, our favorite emulsifying agent. I think I detest SL more than the bean itself, because it excludes so many of my favorite foods: mayonnaise, salad dressing, ice cream, the list goes on.

So after that I just started cooking my eggs without cooking spray, but that grew old, fast. And here's the solution:

The misto is an awesome oil sprayer that I picked up at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. It's pretty cool, and environmentally friendly because it doesn't use aerosol. So here's the misto, dissected:

You pour about 3 ounces of oil into the canister. It's important not to fill it too full, because the extra air space is what creates the pressure for the spraying mechanism. The clear plastic piece with the attached spray button goes in, then the white cap screws on top to hold it in place. The clear plastic piece that's attached the lid of the canister is the important part: it pushes down into the clear plastic part of the spray button, creating a vacuum and increased pressure. After the pressure is built up, you can push the spray button, releasing the pressure and sending oil out through top! It's kind-of like a garden sprayer from a home improvement store, only better.

And now I can enjoy soy-free cooking spray!

Almost Taco Salad

Supper was a yummy crock pot roast. Eye roast, to be exact, with baby red potatoes and baby carrots. Plus organic polenta from Trader Joe's. Mmmmm.

As promised, I stopped by the store on the way home to check out soy-free salsa. I forgot about the popsicles, sorry. I have to admit, I'm pretty frustrated with the food industry right now. Every single brand of salsa but one had natural flavors in it. Now tell me - why do companies have to add natural flavors to a product that is already flavorful on its own? I just don't understand. Anyway, thanks to Mrs. Renfro from Fort Worth, Texas I didn't have to ask Brint to make salsa for me after he worked a long day. He would have made the salsa, of course, but he didn't have to cook supper and I didn't want to send him right back into the kitchen. Thanks, Mrs. Renfro!

I forgot to take a pic of the ingredients list, but it went something like this: tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, garlic, salt. No suspicious names that might hide soy. Pretty cool. 

And because it was on my mind, I took some peanut butter pics of what's acceptable. Basically, if it doesn't say 'natural peanut butter', it has soy in it. Trust me, I checked every jar. So here's what I'm using:

Check out the ingredients: peanuts and salt. Wonderful. It isn't what I'm used to, but it's more....pure. It tastes like peanuts, which I think is what peanut butter is supposed to taste like anyhow. And it's not full of sugar like traditional peanut butter, which is a super cool bonus!

And now for my new lunch idea, Kind-of Taco Salad. Here are my ingredients:

The green things are bell peppers. Our department does research on food crops, and at the end of the research they give away the produce. So this summer I ended up with a ton of free green bell peppers, and I froze them for future use. Oh and I also used salt, pepper, olive oil, garlic salt, and onion powder. Here's the progression of the meal:

I used about a pound of ground turkey (93% lean), a can each of black beans, red beans, and chickpeas, an onion, and a cup of green bell pepper. The yellow things are chickpeas, not whole kernel corn. I drained and washed all of the beans before adding them in, to get rid as much of the preservatives and added sodium as possible. I'll take about a cup and a half of this in for lunch tomorrow and see how it goes, but it smells yummy!

Endo, defined

Most of my friends here in MD are aware of my condition, and they usually have questions about it. I'm more than willing to be candid, and I realized that quite a few people have probably never even heard of endo, especially since it's one of those diseases that is absolutely not identifiable by outward appearances. So here's bit of information and personal experience:

Disclaimer: The rest of this post may be a bit TMI, but I'm not embarrassed so you shouldn't be, either. Anyway, start here. I really like dot-gov sites because I know it's pretty factual. And the NIH is pretty awesome, and their site gives a very basic definition. It doesn't sound that bad, and for some people it isn't.

But for me it was (like that past tense? 'Cause I do!). I always had very painful periods, from the very first one. I took prescription-strength Naproxen like it was candy all through high school, and at my first ever GYNO appointment the doctor put me on birth control because she said pain that extreme wasn't normal for an 18 year old.

By this time I was living in Auburn, and driving 3 hours to Anniston for doctor's appointments isn't conducive to low-income college living, so I found a new doctor in the area. He didn't really care about my pain as much as the cost of my BCP, and kept changing my prescription to whatever was cheapest. I really do appreciate the thought, since I was a broke college kid, but I think the constant hormonal fluctuations is was caused the condition to flare.

By the Spring of 2009 I was in pain and bleeding constantly (that's the TMI part). Like, every single day, even though I was still on BCP. My Mom had dealt with similar problems and told me to go to her GYNO, even though he was 3 hours away, because he was good. And he was. In my very first visit he found several cysts on my ovaries, one the size of a quarter. He said it had to go immediately because if it ruptured I could lose the ovary. Surgery was scheduled for the next week.

What was supposed to be a 30 minute drain the cyst and get out of there surgery turned into nearly 4 hours. He found very severe endo growth all over my ovaries, fallopian tubes, and outer uterus wall. He used a laser to remove everything he could see but warned me that it would grow back, and that there was probably some he missed but he just ran out of time.

The 6 weeks after the surgery were amazing, but then the pain came back. I know I keep talking about 'pain' like you understand. It's like labor pains. I've obviously never had a child, but when I got the Mirena the doctor induced labor (supposedly that makes it easier but I'm not convinced) the night before. It was awful. Anyone who's ever had a child has my compassion. But that's the closest thing I know to describe the pain. For non-moms, it's like a toothache, or an earache, in my lower abdomen. And it kind-of burns. And then my lower back starts hurting and the intensity grows until I can't move, because moving makes it worse.

But anyway, you pretty much know the rest of the story. A year later I ended up on Mirena, and it helped with some of the other symptoms but not with the pain. Some women I've read about have worse endo than I do, and have to have laparascopic surgeries at least once/year to remove the growths. I don't think I'm that bad off, yet. I do want to have another lap to 'wipe the slate clean' again, but I'm not going to just ask. It will happen soon enough, I'm afraid.

So now maybe that's provided a little bit of insight to this disease that doesn't really seem like a disease since you can't identify anyone who has it by any outward appearances. It is real, and it isn't any fun.

On a brighter note, I'm going shopping after work today so I'll have a list of soy-free items to add to the blog.

Dear Husband(s)

For husbands or SOs of endo sufferers, God bless you. I mean it, I'm not being tongue-in-cheek here. It's challenging to lovingly handle a wife who is almost constantly in pain. My own husband is amazing. So for all of those other husbands out there, let me give you a few tips:

The pain can come in a matter of seconds, so if her mood changes, don't hold it against her. When I hurt, I'm ill. I am a flawed person and this  may be one of my biggest flaws. Sometimes as soon as a snappy word comes out of my mouth I'm apologizing, and sometimes not. But he understands, and he never criticizes my criticism.

If she didn't feel like it last night, don't be mad if she doesn't feel like it again tonight. Sometimes those moments without pain are brief, and trust me- she'll let you know when it happens. And in the mean time, sitting in a hot bath can help alleviate the pain, so why not draw up a smelly-good bubble bath?

If you married/dated an independent woman, that independence may waiver at times now. I pride myself on my work ethic and ability to work alongside men without faltering. Or at least I used to. Now I can't lift a case of water without feeling those familiar muscle groups tighten all at once. Be aware that she might need more of your help now, even if she's too prideful to ask.

I'm sure there are more. If you could be a fly on our living room wall I would just tell you to do as my husband. He truly is wonderful, and understanding. He never gets impatient when my pain keeps us from doing fun things we already had planned, and now he can pretty much tell by the look on my face if I don't feel good.

But remember- it's not her fault that she has a disease with no cure. Love her anyway, and she'll love you even more for it.

Code Name Soy

I'll try to have a couple of these posts a week (at the rate I'm going I might have a couple a day, but the ideas just happen to fresh right now). I want to provide you with a list of off-limits food, as well as foods that might be okay, depending on the label.

First, let's start with the label ingredients. Everyone can figure out the obvious ones like soy, soybean oil, soy oil, soy lecithin, etc. But soy comes in many shapes, sizes, and names. Xanthan gum is one of those. I noticed xanthan gum on the label for some flavored nuts the other day.

Another super secret soy hiding place? Natural flavors. Yep, anytime you see the words 'natural flavors' on an ingredients list, there's at least a 90% chance it contains soy. Not because the food in question is soy-flavored, but because soy is the carrying agent for all of those 'natural flavors'. This nixes most pre-packaged, processed foods, even if it didn't already contain soy. Things like canned baked beans, canned soup, potato chips (one exception being Lays Kettle Cooked with Sea Salt, yum!).

And yet another place for soy to hide? Fresh fruit and vegetables. Yep, the only option that should be assumed safe. I read an article not too long ago about a new product that fruit and veggie producers are using. And guess what - it's organic! I can't escape this stuff! Anyway, this new organic soy-based product is sprayed on fruit and it's pretty magical. If the fruit isn't ripe yet, it speeds up the ripening process. BUT if the fruit is already ripe, it slows the senescence (layman's terms: rotting) of the fruit so that it has a longer shelf life. According the article, this stuff is called Xedabio, and is soy lecithin-based. Of course. I wash my produce before I eat it anyway, but who's to say that some of the soy isn't actually leaching into the edible parts? I don't want to have to peel half an inch off my apple before I eat it....

And just to re-iterate what should be obvious by now: All processed foods are off-limits. This includes bread, cookies, crackers, candy bars, frozen meals, and pretty much anything else you buy in the 'center' of the grocery store. Chocolate is on the list, too. I actually haven't looked at popsicles yet. I know ice cream has soy lecithin because it's used as an emulsifying agent, but surely an all-fruit popsicle would be acceptable. I'll just have to check it out next time I'm at my most favoritest place:

Big Tuna

Nope, that isn't a reference to The Office. It's more of a white flag flying in defeat. My favorite brown-bag lunch protein, canned tuna, has soy in it! I bought it before my soy revelation and didn't need to check the label until last night. Apparently the tuna is cooked in soybean oil. Wouldn't you know...

So now I'm re-thinking everything I ever thought about lunch. And here's my tomorrow idea:

Kind-of Taco Salad
Ingedients:
Ground lean meat (turkey, chuck, sirloin, chicken...whatever you prefer - I shop sales, so that's gonna be my preference)
Salsa (I'll be back later with soy-free brand suggestions)
Chickpeas
Black beans
Pinto Beans
Shredded Lettuce
Cheese, if desired

Directions:
Brown the meat, add in remaining ingredients except lettuce and simmer 1-2 minutes. Enjoy!

I'm thinking this will provide ample protein, fat, and fiber to keep me full during the day. And I shouldn't get bored with it, since I can always change the type of bean, or add in avocado, or start making my own salsa...

Today is a late day (as in, I won't be home until close to 9PM), so I'm not sure if I'll swing this for lunch tomorrow, but by Wednesday I'll definitely have an update.

Related "Research"

As promised, a little more information on why I've decided to do something as drastic as removing all soy from my diet. After all, this is no easy task. First, go check out Xarata's post here.

 The Bald Eagle flying before an Auburn football game, since I have no cool soy-related pictures....

She has a food allergy, which is a bit different, but she did a very good job at introducing the fundamentals of why soy maybe isn't so good for you. I do disagree with the GMO argument, but I'm a plant scientist (disclaimer: I am no way, no how a plant geneticist. I'm not smart enough.) and generally haven't found an anti-GMO argument that I really agree with anyway. So, start there.

Then, check out this page and have a read. I know it's not peer reviewed, there are no citations, and that it's a dot-com site. But as a plant scientist, I know that all of the soy-related arguments are factual, i.e. the types of flavonoids that are produced, the phytic acid argument, and definitely the part about how fermenting soy negates its toxicity.

So what I'm having trouble with is finding peer reviewed, layman's terms medical articles that link the soy plant chemicals to endometriosis. Oh, well. Based on the responses to this post, it's helped at least a few endometriosis sufferers. And if you suffer from endo, you know that in those moments of gut wrenching pain, anything sounds better than the current reality. So in a nutshell, that's why I'm giving it a shot.

 A rainbow, from my husband's place of employment. See above note on non-soy related pictures..

And as a researcher, I have to be an equal opportunist. Here's a couple of articles/posts that say soy either helps endometriosis or has little effect:

• Effect of Soy Isoflavones on Endometriosis: Interaction With Estrogen Receptor 2 Gene Polymorphism Authors: Tsuchiya, Masaki*§; Miura, Tsutomu*; Hanaoka, Tomoyuki*; Iwasaki, Motoki*; Sasaki, Hiroshi†; Tanaka, Tadao†; Nakao, Hiroyuki‡; Katoh, Takahiko‡; Ikenoue, Tsuyomu§; Kabuto, Michinori¶; Tsugane, Shoichiro*
• This tested only 138 women in Japan, and they were all closer to menopause than I am. 
• I couldn't link the article, but if you search for the title you can find the abstract for free.
• This guy  is pretty skeptical on soy's affects on endometrial growth; however, in his defense, this post is old in the world of scientific discoveries....

So basically, if you're at the end of your 'treatment rope', so to say, then it might be worth trying. Based on some of the other reading I've done online (I won't fill the whole post up with links, you can google yourself), some ladies have to remove soy and wheat, some soy and dairy, etc. etc... It's just different for everyone. But I am now a firm believer than pain can be managed, if not controlled completely, through diet alone. Hopefully one day (soon) I can stop taking all of these oral contraceptives and further end copious amounts of hormones I'm putting into my poor body...

Lupron

So I refused Lupron after my diagnosis, even after my doctor tried pretty hard to convince me otherwise. In his defense, he was worried about the possibility of having children. I didn't want children then, and we don't want them now. He warned that the longer I wait to try my chances of conception decrease exponentially, but I'm okay with that. I won't finish my doctorate for at least 2 more years anyway, so even if we wanted them it would be on the back burner.

So after the surgical follow-up/convince Whit to take Lupron meeting, I did some research on Lupron. And I didn't like what I saw. There were pages and pages of threads full of women, some as young as 16 some as old as 50 who had taken Lupron injections. Why any doctor would want a 16 year old (or the parents would allow it for that matter) to take Lupron is beyond me. In a nutshell, Lupron puts a woman's body into 'false menopause', except all of the symptoms are there. Hot flashes, weight gain, and yes - osteoporosis. In fact, many doctors require periodic bone density scans in conjunction with Lupron.

I think the Osteoporosis is what did it for me. I'm well aware than human beings are more likely to verbalize negative opinions than positive ones, but when the risk of bone deterioration is so great that bone density scans are necessary, I'm not going down that road.

Now if you've had a positive experience with Lupron, please - let me know! Leave a comment! Go onto all of those forums and tell women! But the side-effects were so much scarier than the disease for me that I wasn't willing to take the risk.

A little introduction

So as I'm writing this I've been soy-free for 3 days (but really only 2 - more on that later) and have been pain-free for all of those days (except for the sort-of day 1, with minimal pain). But how did I get here?

After my 2009 endometriosis diagnosis through laparascopic surgery, I refused Lupron shots. I'll post on that later, as well. So I took the only other option - continual course birth control. I was okay for a couple of months, and then the pain returned. So the prescription was changed. Imagine this happening a couple more times until Fall 2010, at which point I was married and suffering terrible daily pain.

I found a new doctor who specializes in endo and PCOS, and she prescribed Mirena! Apparently it has been used a treatment for over a decade in Europe, but the FDA hasn't approved it here as anything more than birth control. After 2-3 months of my uterus adjusting to the alien creature that was now inhabiting it, my pain was gone. For about six weeks. And then it came back with a terrible vengeance.

Knowing full well that I was pretty much out of options, except pregnancy, I turned to the internet. My husband and I don't want children, so having them to alleviate my pain seems very selfish and wrong. I found just a couple of references to soy-induced endometriosis, and that was all I needed. I latched onto that idea like Mulligan and Divot on a new squeaky toy:

Mulligan destroys his things, and then covets Divot's things...

Anyway, I found these vague references last Wednesday night, as I was curled up in a ball of pain waiting for the 6 liquid ibuprofen I had just inhaled to start working. I decided first thing the next day, I was going soy free. And I did, except that I didn't know that my cooking spray has soy in it (seriously?) so Thursday can't really count for purists like myself. But I only hurt for like, 5 minutes on Thursday afternoon and then the pain subsided. Usually when the pain starts the intensity just continues to grow until I finally give in and take something or crawl into bed.

So here I am, 2 (or 3?) days post-soy and I feel great! I haven't hurt at all during my normal 11AM-4PM window of pain-opportunity. So I'll continue to chronicle my experiences and hopefully someone out there will find this, and know that hysterectomies aren't necessary, and neither are children and expensive IVF (unless of course you want them!) for pain relief!

In the very near future I'll be posting about Lupron (strictly opinion, not experience-based), research (I'll try to find peer-reviewed articles) that links soy to endometriosis, and even some recipes for soy-filled staples that I can't live without (think mayo....), as well as my daily (or at least 5X/week) experiences and pain levels...

As time goes on, I'll try to document my go-to meals. I don't want this to become just another food blog, but since living without a fairly rampant food ingredient is the primary topic, I'll try to give you ideas of staples.


Welcome!