If I needed proof

I thought about entitling this post "Crap ass!" but then thought perhaps that would be a bit too negative of me. ;)

I started my new dietary restrictions around Valentine's day and have seen an enormous improvement in Kiernan. By me cutting out all dairy and soy from my diet, down the ingredients of everything, we have a much happier baby, who sleeps better, and who is getting chunkier, seemingly by the minute.

Sometimes I wonder if I really need to be as careful as I'm being. Am I right to be nervous to ever eat out anywhere in case there is something in what they give me that I can't have? I went to Lone Star last week for fajitas and even called ahead to make sure there would be no soy or dairy in anything that I would be having and they assured there wouldn't be. When we got there my waitress informed me that there was in fact a milk byproduct in the tortillas. CRAPASS! (oops, couldn't help myself) So they gave me some corn tortillas instead and I had those. I was tempted to just have the regular ones anyways, what harm could it do? But instead I ate the crappy corn ones. (I did complain though, since I had called, and the fajitas were free).

Anyhow, I wondered if I was making the right call being so stringent. Then I got a cookbook I ordered in the mail called the Milk and Soy Protein Intolerance Cookbook (no bells and whistles on this book ;) and it listed everything I shouldn't eat and I found out I can't even have the non-dairy creamer I was using in my coffee. CRAPASS! So I bought vanilla rice milk and tried that. (revolting btw) Then I tried chocolate flavoured almond milk and that's ok. I have vanilla flavoured almond milk that I'm going to be trying next so hopefully that will also be ok. I'm getting used to the restrictions.

I've been doing really well and finding all kinds of recipes online and cooking a lot more since there are almost no prepared foods I can have. It gets tiring though. Fortunately a lot of web sites have listings of all their ingredients, if you're going to go to a chain. Friday night we ordered pizza pizza because their dough and sauce is fine, and so is their pepperoni and italian sausage. No steak strips though. And cheeseless pizza just isn't as good as pizza WITH cheese ;)

Anyhow, the other day I was going to make this recipe for pork tenderloin where you put a can of cranberries and a packet of onion soup mix into the crockpot with the tenderloin and cook on low for 8 hours. Easy peasy. Then I read the onion soup mix - soy protein. boo. So then we looked online and figured out that I could use beef bouillon and onion and onion powder instead. So I did that yesterday morning. About 4 hours into cooking I realized that I had never checked the ingredients on the beef bouillon. Vegetable protein, including soy, was listed way down the list. GRRRR! As if!! It never occurred to me to check it!! BOOO!

I decided to eat it anyways. A bit of soy in the beef bouillon in this recipe couldn't be that big a deal - I was eating TONS of that stuff before and that tiny amount couldn't hurt once in awhile. Wrong! Although the pork was delish (and hopefully I can find a substitute so I can make it again) Kiernan woke up this morning at 5 farting and screaming and cranky like we haven't seen him in... well since Valentine's day. I can't believe that trace amount affected him so much. It could be a coincidence but we've gotten pretty good at detecting reactions and I'm pretty sure this was one. So... I wasn't wrong. I really do need to be that careful. And it makes me all the more nervous. I can't eat anywhere that can't give me a full list of ingredients it seems like. Or I need to talk to the actual cook. Eating at a mall is out. I had a soup the other day, it could have had bouillon in it with soy. K didn't react like there was, but what I thought was probably a safe bet, could have caused problems.

So ya, I have proof that what I'm doing it worthwhile at least. And I'll get used to it. Oh, one last crapass.... we bought an electric breast pump yesterday. It works well. I pumped last night after dinner... guess where that milk has to go now? :P

I guess I should have just called this post crapass after all :)