Blackberry Breakfast Muffins

Project 365: Day 226

Since we have now past the time of the year where local, fresh fruit is abundant, I have started to dip into my frozen fruit supply. The strawberries, raspberries and blackberries that I picked during the summer have been coming in handy this week for a series of tasty smoothies.

Today, I was craving a very specific flavor combination: almond, blackberries and crystallized ginger. I baked these hearty muffins that totally hit the spot. In case you would like to make some of your own, here is what I did:

Blackberry Breakfast Muffins
(yields 24 muffins)

Ingredients:
2-2/3 cups of all-purpose flour
2 cups of rolled oats
1 cup of packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/3 cup of sliced almonds
3 tablespoons of crystallized ginger, minced
2 cups of milk
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3 cups frozen blackberries

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F
2. Oil/grease muffin tin
3. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, oats, brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, almonds and ginger.
4. Add the milk, eggs and oil. Stir until well blended.
5. Add blackberries and stir until evenly distributed.
6. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full.
7. Bake for approximately 19 minutes. Muffins are done when they are light brown on top and spring back when touched.

Two Months In

Well, here I am!  I'm at a benchmark place and feel it is high time I catch you up and share an allergy/health update.  For anyone who might need the back story or want a refresher, you can see my full set of allergy posts here. 

To recap, here a quick summary and timeline of what happened:
mid-June - get really sick with rashes, swelling, itching, exhaustion, pain, swollen lymph nodes and seem to lose the ability to regulate my body temperature
June and July -  try to figure out what is wrong, go to my acupuncturist, my primary care doctor, an allergist, 2 dermatologists, do lots of research on my symptoms, am subjected to lots of testing and appointments and presciption medications that do not help or provide any answers.  have short bouts of seeming to get better only to get much worse again.
August - hit my wall and accept a prescription for oral prednisone.  it provides much relief but no answers.  get on waiting list for an appointment with a contact dermatitis specialty clinic for testing
September to mid-October - taper off of prednisone in preparation for contact allergy testing, symptoms return
mid-October - contact allergy testing
late- October - get results from testing but healing does not begin due to negligence from the doctor

Ok, so I guess that wasn't a "quick" recap!

After getting my test results and subsequently being mislead by my doctor, I decided to do everything in my power to get better and to depend on myself to get there.  I realized that giving myself the best chance at the quickest recovery possible was going to mean that I needed to become an expert STAT!  I needed to understand (and limit/control, when possible) everything I came into contact with because any exposure to an allergen jeopardizes my recovery.  Since I had been continually exposed to my allergens, I was told to expect multiple months of recovery time before my body finds a stable place.

Armed with my list of allergens, I hit the internet.  Google, google, google away!  I learned so much in such a short time!  My biggest challenges included a list of allergens that are seemingly omnipotent and a lack of understandable/accessible information about products. I did a lot of trial and error with products at first.  My allergens are found in nearly every personal hygiene product, laundry, cleaning products and medicines, so I tried a lot of DIY options.  And, as I found out through trial and error, sometimes I react to products that don't contain my allergens.  I think my body has become so sensitized through the months of exposure to allergens that it just can't handle much of anything right now.  By January 2nd, I was done with the trial and error and had developed a set of extremely pared down products that addressed my (extremely!) basic needs.

For the last 2 months, I have exclusively used the following products:

Showering is where I was regularly dosing myself with allergens and thus has undergone the biggest transformation.  My shower stall is bare!  After trying a ton of shampoo/conditioner options including a ton of natural versions, I needed to cut it all out.  I use water.  That's it!  I also installed a shower filter but I am not sure if it is making a difference.  The only products in my shower are Dr. Bronner's Unscented Shaving Gel and a razor that I had to really work to find.  I was not able to find ingredients for the moisturizing strip on my razor blades nor could I find that information out for any of the razor blades on the market.  So, I searched long and hard for a razor and razor cartridge situation that did not involve any strips or soaps or fanciness. I'll be honest, it is not an ideal shaving situation, but it is getting me by.

Ok, so let me go back to my proclamation about my water-only showering strategy.  Crazy, right?  It turns out I am not the only one on this radical boat.  A lot of people are turning to that option for the same reasons I am: medical ones.  But, there are also a lot of people who are switching in order to avoid all of the chemicals and unknowns in the plethora of personal hygiene products on the market.  It isn't easy, though.  It takes a bit of an adjustment before your hair realizes it can chill out on the oil production, but it has been fine after I got past that stage.  There is a ton of info on the internet about water-only washing for hair so I will not spend a lot of time on it here.  Feel free to let me know if you have questions.

Also, I should mention that I have a bar of soap in the shower, but I found it isn't really necessary.  Just scrubbing my body with water seems to have the same result, so I eliminated that from my routine for now, too.

As long as we are on the subject of my "just use water" campaign, I ended up going that route for laundry, too.  I researched the best laundry detergents for people and for the environment and settled on one to switch to.  I tried it out and my body hated it.  Then I switched to baking soda only.  That was worse!  I tried to go back to my original laundry detergent I've used all along, but my skin was still dry and angry.  So, in the spirit of eliminating as many variables as possible, I just use water in the washing machine and these wool balls in the dryer.  We have some laundry detergent around in case there is a really grubby load of (usually dog-related) laundry, but have only had to use a few times and never on my clothes.  

Interesting aside: I have noticed that since I have been almost exclusively wearing plant fibers that static cling hasn't been an issue.  Paul has clothes made of synthetic fabrics and I've noticed his clothes come out of the dryer with static. 

Allright!  Here is the biggie.  This is the set of products that I use to meet my daily needs.  Before all of this allergy stuff, I was an eczema sufferer and I still am, so moisturizing my skin safely is of a top priority.  I was able to keep using my tried and true Aveeno Daily Moisturizing Lotion and have added coconut oil to my routine.

I have stopped using all lip balms and just use Vaseline right now.

As of the end of December, I was able to switch from prescription topical steroids to an over the counter one: Cortizone-10 (the one with no other ingredients except the steroid and petroleum jelly).  Hooray for that!

For hand washing, I have a bar of Dr. Bronner's unscented soap.

I wear contacts and have decided to stick with Opti-Free Pure Moist multi-purpose solution even though it has some proprietary ingredients that I do not fully understand.  I tried alternatives but they made my eyes burn and also had unknowable ingredients.

After many failed homemade versions and some unsatisfying special order toothpastes, I decided on Weleda Salt Toothpaste.  I also have a salt crystal deodorant that I use sporadically.  Apparently, I like salt in all its forms.

Although it is not a product, I included my fine tooth comb in the picture because it has become an essential for me with my water-only shampoo strategy.  It helps to even out the sebum/wax throughout my hair.

You might notice there are a lot of things missing when you compare this to the average American woman's set of toiletries.  No perfume (that wasn't hard for me), no makeup (I miss mascara!), no nail polish (I am allergic to many polishes and to polish remover) and no toner/facewash/scrubs (water only for this, too!).  I wasn't much of a girly girl before this, but I do miss some of the frivolous products.  I tried natural mascara and it was totally crap.  Maybe someday I will reintroduce some of this stuff.  For now, I am just grateful to be comfortable in my own skin.  Literally.  My skin was so uncomfortable that I was totally OK with giving up all of this stuff for the potential of finding comfort in my body again.

Another area that I had to consider was cleaning products for the home and kitchen.  Once again, mostly water being used in this category, too!  We have been making our own vinegar water (sometimes we add essential oil) for cleaning for a long time, so that didn't need to be adjusted.  I changed our dishwasher detergent to Earth Friendly Products Wave soap after doing research on the ingredients and safety of these types of products.  Scary stuff!  We kept the same dish soap we had already been using for handwashing dishes: Seventh Generation Free and Clear.  We also have baking soda for scrubbing and a container of liquid Unscented Dr. Bronner's Soap for tougher cleaning jobs but haven't had to use them so I left them out of the picture.  Its amazing to see how truly little we need to keep around the house when it comes to products!

Ok, here I go...out farther on this limb than I ever thought I would.  I am going to clue you into how these allergies have impacted my sex life.  I wasn't super keen on sharing this part, but I also didn't want to omit this information in case someone else is struggling through the research, finds my blog and this information helps them along.  If you want to skip past this part, go ahead and skim down to the part where I show naked pictures of myself.  Wait!  What has happened to my knitting blog?!

As I was doing my research on each and every thing that comes into contact with my skin, I started to research condoms.  In the process, I talked with the lovely staff at Smitten Kitten and learned that the sex industry has very little to follow in the way of regulations.  This has lead to a real lack of information for consumers.  For instance, all of the condoms at our local Target store are lubricated and not a single one of them tells you what the lubrication is made out of.

We needed to find out what the product we use contains, so we figured we would just email them and ask.  Nope, no email address to be found on the packaging or the website.  How about calling them?  Nope, no contact info listed for that either.  We ended up finding a phone number for the company that owns Trojan, but the number was old and nobody answered it.  The one and only way to make any inquiry was by mailing a letter to the company that owns the company that makes the condoms we used to use.  I didn't even want to go that route since I had a strong suspicion it would be unfruitful.

So, we thought we would work around the problem by getting unlubricated condoms and buying a lubricant for them.  First of all, getting unlubricated condoms takes extra effort and, according to what we found, most brands make these condoms out of a really thick latex.  We eventually found a good solution that we ordered online: Life Styles Ultra-sensitive Non-lubricated.  Second of all, buying a lubricant whose ingredients are listed, whose list you can trust and whose ingredients do not include my allergens was a challenge.  Again, major thanks to Smitten Kitten.  They helped us look through their many products to find options without propylene glycol.  The winner: Ride - Dude Lube - Water-Based!  It had the least ingredients and none of my allergens  It is obviously not marketed to us what with the dude focus, but to that we say, "Yeehaw!"

I hope this marks the end of sex related content on my blog. I like to keep is family friendly around here, except for the occasional cuss words that make it through  :)
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So here is where the news gets happy! Guess what?!  All of my research and strictness is working!  Here are some before pictures that I took in the summer and some pictures from today.  I am not totally better, but I am so much more comfortable now.

 

I have more to share about the other things I am doing to cope (food, furniture, the outside world!) and the other adjustments (how to get a haircut!) I have made to create safe spaces for myself, but I will save that for another day.  I want to close this enormous post by saying that after having been through all of these ups and downs and having to let go of so much, I truly appreciate and cherish each day that I wake up and have a little bit more of my health back.  I am about to go and do some really average Sunday afternoon activities like cooking, laundry and cleaning and I am so grateful that I have found a way to do it without questioning my every move and potentially making myself sick. Having your health is such a valuable thing!

Cherry Tomato Soup

We are at the peak of these beauties coming out of our garden.  Growing big tomatoes is nice and all, but the little ones are my favorite.  They are so versatile.  I would even go so far as to say they are the candy of vegetables.  Although, that may not be accurate, because I am pretty sure these are technically considered to be fruit.  Any which way, they are freaking scrumptious and have endless potential.

I made a soup with them that I definitely want to repeat.  It was meant to be a bisque, but before adding the cream I tasted it and decided it was perfect just as it was.  The inspiration for this soup came from the bisque soup recipe in this post. I changed it a little bit and it was super impressive for a super small amount of labor (if you don't count the part where we planted, grew and picked them).

Cherry Tomato Soup
Yields approximately 7 cups

Ingredients:

• 6-7 cups of cherry tomatoes, ideally a mix of varieties.  I used sun golds, yellow pear and sweet 100s
• 3 cups vegetable broth/stock
• 5 cloves of garlic, roughly minced
• 1/2 of a medium onion, roughly chopped
• 5 tablespoons of olive oil
• salt and pepper, if needed

Directions:

1. Heat the olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat.
2. Saute the onions and garlic until soft and fragrant
3. Add the tomatoes and broth
4. Let simmer for about 30 minutes, until the tomatoes have mostly broken down
5. Remove from heat and puree with an immersion blender or in a blender
6. Add salt and pepper, if needed.

Garnish with your choice of cheese, avocado, basil, pepitas or whatever else sounds good to you!

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we also have Hillbilly heirloom tomatoes coming out of the garden at a steady pace.  Big as a baby's head, they are.

Tis Tomato Time

This is the time of year when the farmer's markets are overflowing with tomatoes and this year so are the branches of my tomato plants! I am enjoying the bounty in various ways. Here are two of my recent dinners.

Pear tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and fresh basil sauce with pasta and parmesan cheese.

Heirloom tomatoes with fresh basil, olive oil, salt and pepper, and fresh mozzarella (made in Somerville)!

On a totally different note, check out our dogs. They have this pitiful/cute habit of resting their chins on the bed in hopes that they will be allowed to come up and cuddle. It is rare that they are actually allowed up on the bed, but they're eternal optimists.

Happy Pumpkin Day!

For some people, this time of year is exciting because of halloween. For me, it is exciting because of all of the pumpkin related things there are to eat. This past week I went on a bit of a pumpkin bender. I started by cleaning and baking 2 pumpkins.

Then I scooped out the innards and mashed them all up.

At this point I had a ton of fresh pumpkin that could be used in any recipe that calls for canned pumpkin. I used it throughout the week and made the following:

Pumpkin Cake with Brown Butter Frosting

This cake was phenomenal. I highly recommend it. In the process of making the frosting, I learned how flavorful browned butter is. So, if you make this recipe, don't skip the frosting!

Pumpkin Hummus (modified from this recipe)

this recipe yields a lot of hummus (around 6 cups)

This pumpkin hummus was my contribution to a work potluck party. It won the Best Side Dish award! The proportions in the recipe below don't yield a blatantly pumpkin-y flavor, so I bet you could tweak the recipe to make it more obviously pumpkin, if you wanted to.

• 
  

• Ingredients:
• 2 cans (15 oz) of chickpeas
• 2 cups pumpkin puree
• 1/3 cup of lemon juice
• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 cup tahini
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon cayenne
• a handful of chopped fresh parsley

salt to taste

Directions:

1. Drain chickpeas, reserving liquid
2. Place chickpeas and half of reserve liquid in a large capacity food processor
3. Puree until mostly smooth
4. Add in pumpkin, lemon juice, olive oil, tahini, garlic and spices
5. Puree until smooth, adding more reserve liquid if necessary
6. Add in parsley and salt
7. Puree to blend
8. Adjust spices to taste

Curried Pumpkin Seeds

Of course, when you cook a pumpkin, you can't let those seeds go to waste. I was in the mood to try something a little funkier than the usual salt and pepper variety and the link above definitely had some unique options.

And, after all of that, I still have some pumpkin left! I froze some in quantities appropriate for pumpkin tea bread and/or pumpkin pancakes (a.k.a pumpcakes). I also reserved a 1/2 cup in the fridge for making Pumpkin Biscuits with Orange Honey Butter. Oh, goodness! When going to grab the link for that recipe, I came across her next post that references recipes for Pumpkin Muffins and Pumpkin Pie Pudding. So much pumpkin goodness! I guess this means the pumpkins in my root cellar will be finding a delicious fate this winter.

Foraging for Oyster Mushrooms

For most holidays my dad asks for my presence as his present. I honored his request with a trip up to his place in Wisconsin over Father's Day weekend. Paul and the dogs came along, too. I did also take the opportunity to give him his Blue Thuja socks. Since we were also fitting in time to see Paul's dad on Sunday, our trip was pretty quick.

We had two goals during our brief time there.

1: help out with some manual labor as my dad is recovering from an injury and isn't at 100% strength.

2: forage for oyster mushrooms.

Paul got to work on the manual labor part. He hilled the potatoes in my dad's nearly immaculate garden. With his injury, my dad can still pull weeds like nobody's business. Plus, he has a lot of time on his hands as he isn't able to work his physically demanding job. (As an aside, his garden was so pretty that I spent a big part of last night yanking up weeds and tidying up our garden space to try to achieve some semblance of the awesomeness that is his garden. It does not yet measure up.)

While Paul was working on the garden (and taking a nap afterwards!), my dad and I jumped in the car to go "road hunting" for oyster mushrooms. Luckily for me, my dad has been at this for a few years and knows the roads of rural Wisconsin pretty well. He knows of some good mushrooms spots that aren't posted as private land. We drove those road looking for the right trees with flashes of white mushrooms. When you see a possible batch, you pull over, jump out with your bucket and knife and head into the woods. In the photo above my dad is heading towards the tree that is fallen. If you look closely you can see a bit of the white clump of mushrooms at about shoulder's height. Oysters! I wasn't that great at spotting them to begin with, but after a while my eyes got tuned into the bits of white.

Our ideal oyster mushroom was only a day or so old and white with minimal bug invasion.

These oysters are too old. They've been invaded by bugs and have turned darker. We leave those for the bugs and for "seed".

Sometimes even the new, tiny mushrooms have bugs! Mushroom foraging is not for the bug-fearing. It was a bit uncomfortable as the bugs were swarming my head. I got a few tick bites and even more mosquito bites. Plus, it was wet and cold.

Still, it is so worth it!

This one was probably growing at about 12 feet. I ended up finding a big stick and knocking it off because it was too perfect to leave behind. No bugs on that one!

We picked 2 flats worth and then called it quits on the foraging stage of the mushroom experience. Next came the cleaning, sorting, trimming, chopping and drying.

Most of our mushrooms went into the dehydrator. I had dried some of these last fall and shared them with swappers at the first swap. I think I'll bring another round for the next swap, too. I definitely have enough to share!

We did save a stash for eating right away. Since we've been back from Wisconsin we have had them sauted in rosemary garlic olive oil and added to the Carrot Tomato Soup I made with last year's tomatoes. I also added chopped up basil from our garden and a splash of homemade plain goat yogurt to the soup. I paired this with crackers and the fig, lemon and anise preserves that I got at the last swap. I felt super happy eating so many homegrown, homemade foods in one meal!

I also sauted up a batch in that same oil and tossed it with whole wheat pasta and a bunch of the tomatoes that I roasted last fall. I realized recently that the next crop of tomatoes is going to be here soon. That was when it dawned on me that I did way too much saving of special foods and not enough eating of them over the winter. So, into the freezer I have been diving.

Lastly, we finished off the fresh mushrooms tonight with a fried batch. We made them just like last year's batch except for that Paul fancied them up this year by adding chopped preserved lemons into the pan right before they finished frying. I call this my own personal state fair night, because I seem to eat this fried dinner once a year when we have the fresh oyster mushrooms. Fried foods are not normally my thing, but these are a real treat!

Now that all of the labor is behind us, we have these dried goodies waiting to be rehydrated and added to soups, pasta and whatever else we can think of.

Chianti Bike Tour

Rolling Tuscan hills, freshly pressed olive oil, castles, wine cellars, towers, vineyards, panna cotta and we fit it all into one magnificent, day-long bike excursion. Few words and many images for this one...

We were driven to Castello di Poppiano to begin the day. If you click through to their site, there is a wonderful video of the castle and surrounding area.

Old and new tools for cold pressing olive oil:

Drying mats and room for grapes to be made into Vin Santo, an Italian dessert wine:

Vin Santo is aged in a tower in really old barrels.  The fluctuation in the environmental temperature is necessary for the wine's aging process.

Atop the tower where the Vin Santo is aging:

From there, we learned the rules of the road and were assigned bikes for the 13 mile ride through the Tuscan countryside.

We stopped at a vineyard while the harvest was happening.

Lunch included a feast of 3 kinds of pasta, salad, bread, wine, coffee and panna cotta.  And then we had to get back on our bikes for more riding!

Our experience with Tuscany Bike Tours was really enjoyable.  The guides were professional and entertaining and the scenery along the ride were the sort featured in Tuscany calendars.  Our fellow bikers were also fun to spend a day with even if those Australians were pushing the unlimited wine refills on us and the mother from Uruguay was a bit mischievous during the bathroom breaks! Our day in Chianti was a great way to spend our last day in Tuscany, giving us a taste of the more rural parts of the country that we were about to explore more.