by Throwback at Trapper Creek
Many times dreams or goals have to change due to unforeseen circumstances. For a long time my husband and I have been working towards being off-grid when it comes to our food supply. What comes to mind when the term off-grid comes up is electricity, but food security was a larger concern for us. To us electricity is a luxury I guess, which allows us to use our computer, use freezers for some of our food, and generally make our lives a little easier. If it were to go away we might be uncomfortable and crabby without being able to entertain ourselves after dark, but we really don't need it. We pump our water with water power, we heat our home, water and cook with wood from our forest. So really all our basic needs can be met without electricity. We decided to put our efforts into our food supply.And we actually were doing a pretty good job, until my husband was diagnosed with Crohn's. He had lived with all sorts of digestive upsets since he was a child, but never really had a definitive answer. Besides that diagnosis, through his very competent ND, he has identified many food allergens that really have always thrown him for a loop. Unfortunately, some were staples that we were counting on with our off-grid food plans. Potatoes, tomatoes, & eggs to name a few. Back to the drawing board. This was major.
We had just spent the last 16 years rounding out our year-round harvesting fresh food plan, now it was needing to change fast. Besides the garden having to change, I had to wrap my mind around making sure every meal he ate was the most nutritious it could be, since he is not able to absorb all the available nutrients in his food. I never thought I would be the wife or mother who fixed separate foods at mealtime for different family members. But, plans change, I had to adapt and make the best out of a bad situation. I had a sick husband and a growing teenager, both needing different foods at the same time. These days, one meal component may be the same for all of us, but I have to mix and match ingredients and cooking methods. Sometimes it is as simple as corralling the potatoes with foil in a roasted vegetable dish, or using different fillings in his enchilada. I use bone broth instead of water for braising liquids or to cook rice with. Yeah rice...rice is the seed of choice for many of his meals. So much for being off the food grid, we have no desire to bend our land around growing rice, so we have to make peace with the fact that we are buying this staple. We needed to buck up, and get over it, move forward and change our thinking.
Changing our thinking means I have to see the positive. Growing less potatoes lightens my workload. Not fretting over tender salad greens for the entire family all winter, means I can devote more space to more hardy braising greens. And for food to truly be nourishing it should be prepared with love and kind thoughts and be comforting. My poor DH truly misses his potatoes, and he sees us eating them daily, but I have found that by substituting celeriac for the potatoes in dishes, just seeing the white vegetable eases that longing for him. So simple, yet so hard to come up with solutions. Always trial and error.
All in all we still provide much of our food: dairy, meats, vegetables and most fruits come from the work of our own hands. We must accept with grace the cards we are dealt and make the best of it. We need to feel the change in our hearts and then the mind will follow.
Have you had any challenges in your situation that have changed your goals?
15 comments:
Very interesting. We were trying to eat less meat and then we found that DH can't eat cheese! That's a hard one, but now we definitely know that cheese exacerbates his IBS more than anything else. Also, we both can only eat a little wheat and he has to keep off cows milk as much as possible. My own ill health makes it hard for me to have the energy to try new things too often, so my baby steps are baby shuffles. But we have to adapt, as you say; thanks; it's good to know how others are coping with the same sorts of things. Best wishes.
Can you grow cauliflower, and is it something your husband can eat? While it is not an easily storable staple like potatoes, many folks who are trying to reduce how much starch they are eating have found it is a "visual" substitute for potato.
I have made it into a kind of mashed potato using my immersion blander adding some yogurt and a pat of butter, and even used it as a kind of rice substitute in pilaf by crumbling up the "curds" after steaming it.
(if this is not helpful, just know that you have my good wishes and thoughts anyway)
Figuring out that dairy, grains, legumes, and potatoes, not to mention sugar, were the key factors in my husband's violent mood swings was an eye opening life changer for both of us. He was losing his temper all the time and I feared that he'd lose his job as well, so during the day we make sure he doesn't get any of that. I try not to do some of our favorite things like pasta and potatoes until his last meal of the day, when he can sleep through his blood sugar crash. I'm thankful that he doesn't have something like Crohn's, where if I gave him a favorite it would make him sick. But changing his diet during the day has gone a long, long way toward keeping the peace in our house. Considering his sweet tooth and love for potatoes, he's being really good.
to add to Alison's suggestion of cauliflower, my children will tolerate mashed parsnips or rutabega. We get both in our CSA box and while we really love our potatoes, we can get by with parsnips. And we don't really love parsnips in other ways.
Having an autistic child has certainly changed, well, everything really. He has sensory issues and so introducing a new food can take weeks: put it in a seperate bowl near his plate, hear him complain that it's too close, move it a few inches, then a few inches closer the next night, then try to get it on his plate....you see where I'm going with this here. I am on a budget and wasting food on these experiments can sting - sometimes I give in and open up a box. Due to workload, I often only just ate his leftovers as I didn't have the time or energy to cook two different meals. This has gotten better as I freeze from-scratch meals for myself, but I have to stay vigilant to be sure I actually eat.
There are various things I've had to "give" on; using the dryer even in nice weather as line-dried clothing irritates his skin to the point he's actually in pain. This makes neighbours raise eyebrows and quip about so much for me being "eco" but I just grit my teeth on it and carry on. I've had grand plans for gardening and growing our own food, but as my own health levels are becoming less and less favourable, I have to downscale. I don't have the energy for livestock, not even chickens. Still, I'm managing to organise the garden in such a way that I will be able to do it as long as I'm able to walk, even if I need to use some aids to get me around.
I honestly think a lot of living this way involves being able to adapt. I've written in my own blogs how people are so sure they "can't" live without two cars/television/the weekly takeaway. But if you have you, you can.
What a brave, honest and inspiring blog. Thank you for posting it.
I really liked that just *seeing* a white vegetable on his plate helps him to feel better about the whole situation :-)
I've allergies to gluten and nuts, they have changed some of my plans, lots of my recipes and my planning and storing of food.
Allergies have changed my food budget, the time it takes to make meals and encouraged being really creative with substitutions.
The big thing though, is I feel so much better, it's hard to feel sick everyday and not know why.
All the adjustments have been worth it and I've learned a lot, although it's taken some time!
Reading this, the obvious love you have for him, and the care you take in preparing his foods makes me think again about others I know with his disease who take meds, accept the pain, don't change their diets. Nor do their spouses make any effort to help, continuing to cook - if at all - in the most convenient way possible.
Kudos to you, Nita! You're the Real Deal.
Your hubby's health, albeit not ideal with Crohn's, is probably loads better due to the quality food you provide to him. Gotta love the bone broth; have a batch cooking away as I type this. I guess I have my own kind of grid. I'm far from self sufficient, but try to do the best I can to accommodate the dietary needs of my family which includes store bought items, farmers market produce, and my own wee garden. I aim for local, but won't shy away from transported things if I want it. For my daughter's sake, we follow a wheat free diet, and it's had nothing but positive results for the entire family. For my son's health, I cook 99% from scratch. My rule of thumb is to do the best I can with what I've got. :-)
a teacher of mine once told the class that with fast pace world we have right now and the instant availability of some of our needs, the "soul" of doing something tends to fade away..and seeing how you prepare your food (from the works of your hands) it definitely something you can be proud of
What I like most about this post, is the way it's designed to empower individuals with different food requirements. ;)
There's nothing worse than having your world turned upside by what you're allowed to eat, and feeling like an outsider to the rest of the family.
When you have those relatively healthy members, doing what they can to help those with the challenge of adapting their new diet, it goes a long way to feeding the soul.
It's actually quite priceless and does more to make the individual feel whole again. :)
No challenges as difficult as you face, and yet you face them with a positive attitude. That's half the battle right there.
Thanks for talking about catering (literally) to loved ones needs. My son also has autistic spectrum disorder and i have found by process of elimination and then experimental reintroduction that a lot of food additives can cause massive mood swings, even depression like symptoms. It makes extra work and I get a lot of barbed comments about being overprotective, overcontrolling, and a "good housewifey" who bakes, but i simply have to make everything from scratch if we want to avoid massive behaviour problems. We follow the S.A.F.E diet and the Nourishing Traditions cook book as much as possible, and its really helped.
Yes, I've started being very deliberate in including a big percentage increase daily in dark greens...we simply don't eat enough of them so I put them into smoothies along with berries. I've also changed a lot of our wheat/bread consumption over to sweet potatoes, cauliflower, and pumpkin in our meals. Rice is basmati and we cut out our dairy (for lack of raw milk availability) nearly altogether. And no sodas or artificial sweeteners or white sugar (with rare exceptions for maybe a feature dessert)...we're using honey and maple syrup and stevia more as sweeteners these days. Amazingly, it's eliminated almost all processed foods and we feel better as a result. We're still trying to incorporate more beans...my latest project...Jack loves black beans.
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