Happy (late) Thanksgiving!

This year Thanksgiving was kind of a non-event. I wrote a story, hit a bakery, and had a bottle of wine.

Of course, back home, Thanksgiving is a great chance to stock up on all kinds of food for cheap. Healthy food, even. In South Carolina sweet potatoes go on sale for tiny amounts--like 15 cent per pound. And baking goods are all on sale--everything from flour and butter to baking powder, spices, and "pie filling".

Which means it's a great time to be on a budget.

Sounds crazy, right? Not really. If you eat meat, you can pick up a turkey, otherwise, you can load up on all the other "holiday" food items, and eat like a healthy-eating rich person for a couple weeks. With sweet potatoes alone you can make:

• baked sweet potatoes
• sweet potato fries
• mashed sweet potatoes
• sweet potato pie
• sweet potato gnocchi
• sweet potato ravioli
• sweet potato pancakes
• sweet potato pirogi
• roasted sweet potatoes

Easy and cheap, right? They might each take a couple other ingredients, but most of them are simple and cheap to put together. Some are even fast. The others pretty much all freeze well.

That leaves out all the other Autumn veggies, like squash, carrots, Brussels sprouts, beets (yum), fresh garlic, and on and on. And all on sale--either last week, or for the next couple weeks.

And all I got was a cheap bottle of very young wine. Oh well, it was fun and that's what matters, right? Or something.

Good News Bad News

Good News--

It doesn't seem like the huge bloaty stomach/ gassy ook problem is cause by gluten

Bad News--

It does in fact seem to be caused by onions and garlic instead.

I tested it, you see. I made pancakes--which are full of gluten but totally lacking in onions and garlic. Then I waited. And waited. And waited.

At no point did I look like one of those people having keyhole abdominal surgery. No expando-guts.

Then, later in the day, I made pasta with onions, tomatoes, and cheese. Right after that, my abdomen started expanding. And again last night, after making rice, beans, onions, garlic, and tomato mixture stuff.

The thing is, the onions and garlic don't *always* cause the huge tummy. If they're totally cooked all the way through, I have no problems with them at all. So there's something in raw garlic and onions that is making something in my guts unhappy.

Which really sucks, because I love onions and garlic. They go in almost everything I cook. In huge quantities. I don't want to cut back, and I don't want to cut them out, either. Sometimes a girl just wants a slice of raw onion on her sammich, ya know?

But for happy thoughts, I don't have to cut out pasta or bread or seitan. Or beer. Or whisky made with not-corn. Yum.

For a while there I was worried I'd have to turn into one of those girls that drinks only vodka and pastel-colored drinks. Pleh. Instead I'm going to have to turn into one of those people who thoroughly cooks their garlic, onions, and shallots.

Oh well, any excuse to eat more roasted garlic works for me.

In A Food Rut

It's pretty easy, when you're cooking for yourself and on a budget, to get stuck in a rut. And am I ever stuck. Other than my ever-more-frequent trips to the supermarket for chips and chocolate, I've been eating the same two or three things for a couple months now.

Last year I got stuck on fried rice. It's fast(-ish), healthy(-ish), and easy once you get used to cooking it. Now I seem to have taken a giant step down even from that.

It's all cinnamon pancakes (though not for the last couple weeks), pasta with tomatoes, onion, and American cheese, or rice with beans, tomatoes, onion and American cheese. That's it. The only real variety comes from the every once-in-a-while splurge of food out, or the two days last week when I managed to scarf down half a dozen bagels. With, of course, American cheese melted on top.

Hopefully, moving on will change my diet again. Getting out of Guatemala should do that as well. If I were a fruit-eating kinda girl this would be a great place.

Because of the elevation and lower temps, strawberries are in season pretty much all year here. And there are these red things that look kinda like lychees, but I don't think are. And papaya, and starfruit (2 for 1Q, or about 8 US cents *each*). And pineapple.

You know, back home I could never figure out why anyone would want to eat a pineapple. I mean, they're cardboardy and crunchy in a bad way, and stringy, and rarely sweet back home. Or they come from a can and are oddly floppy.

But the ones I've had here have been sweet, and so ripe they dripped juice when cut into, or even when pressed on too hard. Actually pretty tasty. I still won't be buying many of them.

The thing is, I know I can make that rice-or-pasta and veggies and cheese thing. I can do it in my sleep, I'm so used to it. And you can get the stuff to make it pretty much anywhere, they aren't harmed by the odd blackout, and all but the cheese can be locked safely in my locker.

Other stuff... I might not be able to find it, so I don't even try anymore.

So, have you been in a food rut, and how did you get out of it. Or... Are you still stuck there?

Angry Intestines And Gluten?

So, my intestines have been unhappy lately. Not projectile-vomit/explosive diarrhea unhappy.

No, they've been "swell the abdomen up like a balloon" unhappy. So I started paying attention to what I eat before it happens.

It isn't onions (tho they do cause the odd problem). It isn't garlic, which is good--I think I'd die if I couldn't eat garlic anymore. It isn't processed cheese, or even cream cheese (one causes sticky teeth, the other a different set of problems...)

Nope, the thing that always seems to show up in the meal right before the hugely distended abdomen is wheat.

Which really sucks. I love wheat. Maybe I need to cut back for a while. Maybe I need to cut it out forever. I dunno. Right now it's mostly the sticky-out tummy that I'm noticing. Well, and the gas... But that doesn't mean there isn't more going on inside, too.

But... Without wheat (and other tasty gluten containing foods like seitan) what do I eat? My favorite cookies are made with wheat. And brownies and cake and bread. Totally bread.

Sure, maybe it's not gluten causing the problem (never get bloaty when I eat seitan, so...), but something about the wheat itself. Or maybe it's the combination with something else I'm cooking. I dunno.

I've been hoping it's something else for a while now. I don't want to give up the wonders of tasty baked goods. Sure, there are alternatives, but they almost all taste like crap. Oh, and they cost too much, too.

So what does it mean? It means I should be doing some kind of elimination diet. I should be cutting out everything with gluten in it, and seeing if the magic expando-stomach goes away. Then I should add foods back in until it comes back. More or less.

What will I really do? Probably keep nomming the bread, cake, cookies, and all that other fun stuff until something happens to make me. With my only noticeable problems being abdominal bloating and gas, it's just not worth it to cut back on things I love. 'Specially when it could just be an ongoing stomach bug. You know, like a parasite.

Now, if I end up seeing a doctor at some point and getting blood work that shows that I'm short on all the nutrients I know I'm eating, I'll change something. Until then, I'll just avoid tight shirts after stuffing my face with a pound of pasta. Which is probably a good idea anyway, huh?

Think I Figured Out The Pupusas

Pupusas, in case you don't know (I know I didn't) are the local, corn-based hand-pie. They're almost all savory, and really most of them are just stuffed with meat. They're also cheap--cause they use left over "meat"--and fast, 'cause most people keep some spare dough mixed up if they've got a fridge.

Or, you know, even if they don't.

Basically, you pick up some ground corn--the type for making tortillas. The ground maize here is a little finer than they use in Mexico, but it's close enough. Follow the directions for making tortillas, up through the mixing. They'll usually say to use lard, but I don't see why plain crisco wouldn't work just as well (I'm still eating without asking--I'd like to eat more than once a day and it's the only way to manage it).

Take a ball of mix, probably about what they say to use for a tortilla, a quarter cup or so, and flatten it out until you've got a disk about 5 inches across. Then do another just like it. scatter a couple tablespoons of filling over one disk, keeping it less than half an inch thick (closer to 1/4 is better) and staying about a quarter to half inch away from the edge. Place the second disk on top of the first and squoosh the edges together to seal them shut.

Then, you toss them on a hot griddle or frying pan that's been barely sprayed with oil. Cook over medium to high heat (lower if things start to burn) until the bottom starts to lightly brown and cook. Then flip and cook until both sides are cooked and the insides are warm. If you use cheese, don't be surprised if they leak a bit.

At the shops or street vendors it takes them about 10 minutes to cook them, starting from dough. Figure with a big enough pan or griddle, and someone to make the disks, you could get production going on about 100 an hour...

Of course, two is more than enough to fill even me. For a while.

Food You Can Buy For 20Q

20Q could buy a budget-minded person a week's worth of food. Or it could buy a snack. Or a drink in a bar.

For a week you could buy (grocery store prices):

• 2lbs of white rice at 3.25Q ea (6.50Q)
• 1lb of black beans for 4.95Q
• 170ml bottle oil for 3.40Q
• 3 tomatoes for about 2.50Q
• 1 large onion for about 2Q
• (0.65Q left over for w/e)

Or you could buy 1/2 a pound of cheese (all the same price).

Or you could buy a bag of ruffles Queso chips (actually 24Q).

Or you could buy a bag of Doritos and an American chocolate bar.

Or a Cuba Libre (about 6oz worth of booze, soda, and ice) in a bar.

Or, if you're feeling homesick, you can pick up a toasted bagel with about an oz of butter or flavored cream cheese for 20Q including tip.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love this whole "access to a kitchen" thing?

Weight Gain Fail

After stuffing myself for a week straight, I figured I would have gained something.

And if I were willing to ignore the bit where last time I was in flip flops (total weight maybe 8oz) and this time in "real" shoes at over a pound each, I totally gained.

Except... 125.7 really isn't a gain over 124.3 when I take off the extra 1.5lbs.

I think I need to add more avocados to my diet. It might just be time to hit the market. I've got q8 for stuff, I can totally stuff my face.

Cheese is sliding slowly off the list of things I want to eat. I'm getting sick of it. I might have to start buying nuts. they're pretty calorie dense and they taste good, too. I foresee a sudden doubling of my food budget. And only part of that will end up going to soda.

Pleh.