Last night we had dinner with our awesome friends, Taylor and Mr. H. I warned her not to attempt soy-free cooking because it can be a bit of a hassle just starting out, due to the lack of soy free basic ingredients (like butter). She said she'd like to give it a whirl and we had a wonderful dinner!
Grilled chicken breast with Lipton seasoning packs (ranch and I can't remember the other flavor, I had ranch!) The seasoning packs were reported to be soy free!
Spinach salad with crumbled feta cheese. The cheese is in the clear. Cream cheese is the only cheese I've found so far with soy (in the form of xanthan gum).
I had balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing. It had soy, but I think that's okay. I'm going to ingest soy every now and again, even if I'm unaware. And guess what? No pain!
Pasta salad. It was great. I have no idea what she put in it but it was yummy.
For dessert: a lemon chocolate pie. I'll embarrass Tay a bit here - she said she accidentally added lemon flavoring instead of vanilla. It was good! Orange and chocolate go well together, and so did the lemon! It was tangy and chocolatey and sweet all at once.
Plus blackberry wine after dinner.
Sorry for the lack of pictures, I'm a baby blogger and haven't learned to document every single thing yet. But I'm learning.
Moral of the story? It's no big deal. Yeah, I had a little soy last night. I actually had some at lunch yesterday (at a work function that lasted 6 hours in the middle of a corn field - I ate a hamburger and am positive the bun had soy. NBD. Still pain free). I was relieved that I could deviate a bit from the plan and not face overwhelming pain.
My mindset has become one of tolerated control. I will continue to remove every source of soy from my diet possible, but when I can't I'm not going to worry about it. I think it's much better to ingest a bit of soy than to go hungry for several hours.
Oh and in case I forgot - I'm still pain free. It's wonderful.