Umbrellas

Why I continue to read a wedding blog almost every day:

"What is this mysterious thing we've agreed to, I realized, if not a shared umbrella? It says that when the days are uglier than we've hoped, we'll hold close and keep each other warm. We'll be together at the funerals and the doctor's offices and the windy shores. Stormy days are the days that matter. The sunny ones are easy."

Expensive

Flights to Hawaii officially booked. Being the super planner that I am this trip won't be taking place until August 3rd, but we're excited.

I need a little more of this in my life...
Photos from our honeymoon. This will be the first real vacation we've been able to take since then. Finally!

In brief

Shock! We are now avoiding eating out even though we finally can again.

Sean: Want to go to this brunch on Sunday?
Ruth: But then we have to eat out AGAIN.
Sean: Yeah let's not go.

The elimination diet in brief:

I need to avoid tomatoes, peppers, soy, and dairy.

Gluten and dairy don't make Sean feel great.

It is possible to cook dinner every night.

Eating a plant based diet really does make me feel better, both physically and mentally.

I am capable of not being addicted to caffeine.

Meal planning is time consuming, but worth it.

Eight weeks was long enough to get us craving vegetables, dark leafy greens, lentils, and quinoa, instead of sugar, carbs, and cheese.

Lessons Learned: Elimination Diet

No more cheese with my wine!

Now that we've finished the interesting experiment that was the Elimination Diet, it's time for a little reflection.

In some ways, this diet was actually fun. It gave us an excuse to try new foods, to complain together about missing pizza, and to share ideas about healthy eating with our friends and colleagues. In many other ways, this diet was a HUGE PAIN. We literally had to plan every meal. If we didn't have a plan for our next meal, we weren't going to eat. We couldn't take advantage of free lunches and snacks at work, and we couldn't order take out. Sometimes it felt like all we did was cook and wash dishes and talk about recipes. We were forced to rethink our concept of specific meals time and time again. What would we eat for breakfast that didn't include gluten, flour, dairy, sugar, nuts, bananas? What would we have for a snack when nuts, yogurt, and granola bars weren't an option?

The first few days were hard, really hard. Cravings for sugar, bread, etc. were high. They went away for about the next two weeks, then came back with a vengeance. Sean and I both had a list of foods we planned to consume immediately upon finishing the diet (cupcakes and macaroni and cheese). However as we neared the end and added things like gluten, dairy, and eggs, we found ourselves not feeling as great and missing the earlier weeks of the diet. This was completely unexpected. It seems that the 8 weeks really were enough time for us to build a habit of plant-based-home-cooked eating.

There are many lessons that I hope we can apply to our life now that we're finished and have enjoyed our cheeseburger reward. I hope we can keep having fresh fruit and veggies for snacks instead of yogurt, processed granola bars, and crackers, and keep bread and cheese for special occasions rather than daily staples. I also hope we can keep cooking almost all our meals and not return to ordering take out a few nights each week. However I know how easy it might be to fall into these old habits. If that ends up happening, I can now clearly see why someone (Miriam!) would want to repeat this diet. Yes it was difficult, but it also made us feel really great. And once you know how great you can feel and how much energy you can have, it's difficult to not feel that way.

Sean says: It's important to control the foods you're putting in your body and the best way to do that is cook most of your own meals. Without knowing the ingredients that went into something, it's difficult to know what you're really eating. Now that I know what is making me feel bad, I want to avoid those foods and be more aware of what I'm consuming.

I have to give a special thanks to Sean, for doing this diet with me. It took him about 8 months to come around to the idea, to not think it was insane, and to even suggest that we try it. I think he agrees that it was well worth it.

St. Patrick's Day

Sunshine and crowds

We spent a sunny, warm afternoon at the Bohemian Beer Garden in Astoria to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Yes, it's not an Irish pub and they don't have any Irish beer on tap, but no one seemed to mind.


This weekend Sean and I both enjoyed a cheeseburger at our favorite actual Irish pub, Sweet Afton. It was delicious. We also finally got to have our favorite snack there, fried pickles.


I'll be back later this week with some thoughts on the Elimination Diet and lessons learned. Tonight I'm still recovering from St. Patrick's Day and resting up before a very busy work week.

Almost there

Green egg salad to go with a Spartan basketball win

This week was the week Sean and I had been waiting for. Dairy! Cheese tasted really great after such a long break and Sean was very excited about butter. The first day or so went well, but then the stomach issues and odd headaches started. In small amounts, it didn't bother me, but the night we made grilled cheese sandwiches was a disaster. It's definitely a good thing to lower the amount of dairy (mostly cheese) I intake anyway, but fancy cheeses are high on my list of favorite foods so this might be a challenge.

Eggs were another exciting addition to our diets, and we enjoyed fried eggs on top of sweet potato hash for breakfast and also made a creative egg salad recipe that uses avocados and greek yogurt instead of mayonnaise. It was delicious. Sean doesn't seem to be allergic to eggs like his Dad is. That's a relief.

This Saturday night we had a great time celebrating the engagement of our friends Adam and Lisa. Today we're recovering. We had the unfortunate experience of being on a subway train when daylight savings time went into affect. Hearing the automated subway lady tell me that the time had just switched from 2:00 to 3:00 a.m. was disheartening to say the least.

Week 6: Caffeine and Gluten, finally

This week I am thankful to the universe that both coffee and gluten seem to sit well with my stomach. After the first cup of black coffee I had a much harder time falling asleep at night, but that was expected. I have been enjoying bread, pasta, and beer without any stomachaches. Tea does seem to make me feel nauseous if I drink it without food.

Sean loves baking and since buying/eating bread is still challenging when we're not eating processed sugar or corn, we decided to make our own garlic knots. Garlic knots are so delicious, and I really don't know why they aren't a thing in the Midwest. We had never heard of them until moving to NYC but now they are a necessity when ordering pizza.

This recipe includes pureed garbanzo beans and whole wheat flour, which I like to think makes them a little bit healthier than the ones from our favorite pizza place. They are easy and delicious and I can't wait to try other variations of the recipe (from www.neverhomemaker.com).

This weekend we took our first trip to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria to check out a Jim Henson exhibit. It was the last weekend of the exhibit and therefore very crowded but still fun. They were also doing a big screen showing of the Sound of Music which we caught the first half of. To our surprise, it was a sing-a-long! Lots of fun if you (not so) secretly love the Sound of Music like we do. It's nice to find things to do in our own neighborhood on the weekend, even though I'm planning on us moving when our lease is up in the fall.