Good Grainy Morning

Hello world. It's time to wake up. Probably past time to wake up. If you need help feeling energetic, or if you're seeking a way to not feel hungry before lunchtime, or if you're just feeling a craving for some tasty tasty waffles, I have found the solution:

Whole Grain Waffles (from Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food)
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup whole grain flour, such as spelt, rye, amaranth, or other
2 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 cups milk
3 eggs
1/2 cup butter, melted

Combine the flours, baking soda, salt and sugar in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk and the eggs before adding to the large bowl. Stir til just combined. Then add the melted butter, make sure everything is stirred up, and ta-da! Well, you have to put them in the waffle iron (make sure you grease it) but after that, ta-da!
Actually, I made up the batter last night and refrigerated overnight. Most waffle batters are better if you let them sit for awhile, so I recommend this method. Then in the morning you just need to pour into a heated iron, which takes maybe five minutes, and ta-da! you have a healthy breakfast.
Serve with real maple syrup (that should be the only ingredient listed on the bottle) or sliced fruit or fresh whipped cream or whatever you like on your waffles.

Back to Basics (Creating an Endometriosis Diet)

As you might have noticed, there have not been many posts around here recently (nor have there been many cookies). As much as I've been wanting to write, and wanting to cook, and wanting to be healthy, I've once again been bogged down by health issues.

But I think I may have found what has been causing the fatigue, the nausea, the bloating, the general unease: The pill that was prescribed to help me overcome the fatigue, the pain, and the general unease of endometriosis. Because I began taking this pill before a vacation in San Francisco, and then went on to have wisdom teeth troubles and a respitory infection, I didn't connect these symptoms to the prescription. Now that I have, it seems pretty clear: once again, this illness is not going to be treated by a prescription, because the cure is almost as bad as the disease.

So it's time to return to the process of reinventing my eating habits. I'm trying to create my own endometriosis diet, as many of the ones I've found have been fraught with contraditions and sometimes outright bullshit. In one breath they tell you to eat tofu, in the next they say soy makes the inflammation worse. They recommend not eating red meat, but most women with endo are borderline-anemic. So I'll find my own way, starting again with the process I was building a few months back:

Whole grains (homebaked bread, brown rice, quinoa, flax seeds, etc)
Green vegetables
Meat (included in at least two meals; odd for a former vegetarian)
Fat (butter, olive oil, coconut oil, drippings)
Fish (balancing out the omega 3s and omega 6s)
Raw milk and raw cheese, but not too much
Anything with anti-inflamatory properties

This list can look scary for people who don't have much familarity with alternative approaches to food. Particularly the part about fats. Aren't we supposed to cut out as much fat as possible? Well, we'll get to that.

I'll try this for the next couple months, eating as close to Michael Pollan's command of "don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food" as possible. At the first of the year, if I'm still experiencing the crippling pains and intense fatigue of endo, I'll set about removing elements from my diet. But until then, the wheat stays.