I looked back through my old blog posts and realized that I’ve been off soy for over 2 months and haven’t had any stomach trouble since I had a reaction to the strawberry cake I made for Bug’s birthday at the beginning of February. I think I’ve figured out what that was all about. There was no soy involved yes, but my stomach hadn’t healed from the damage I’d previously inflicted my body reacted to the butter. Since then I haven’t had any issues with butter. This means that maybe I can start making cookies again (provided the other ingredients are soy free) with butter rather than shortening! Yay! Happy Dance! I’ll eventually (hopefully) blog about it, but I recently made homemade crescent rolls (from scratch) with a lot of butter and eaten quite a few of them without issue. The recipe I used needs little tweaking, but hopefully I’ll have it right before tomorrow night as I’m making several dozen to bring to Easter dinner at Darling Hubby’s Grandpa’s house on Sunday.
So, what have I been eating? Well, I’m still making my own homemade breads. I’ve learned to make 2 one pound loaves of white bread at a time using my bread machine for the dough and then baking it in my oven. I freeze one and slice the other for immediate consumption. It’s so good! I generally have 2 slices for breakfast with a cup of Rooibos (African – pronounced roy boss) tea with honey, often topped with orange marmalade or kerrigold irish butter. Yum! Sometimes for lunch I’ll make a Fluffernutter sandwich (made with Peter Pan PB and the original marshmallow fluff) with banana and honey. Yum! I’ve been eating a lot of fresh fruit – plums, nectarines, bananas, grapes, strawberries. We always have a veggie with dinner. I’ve also started finding new ways to cook potatoes and I’ve been making myself sweet potato fries, too. I’ve found a brand of panko bread crumbs that are soy free – only one of about 7 different bread crumb brands on the shelf!), so I’ve been making my own breading for chicken and fish (yes, I’ve started buying fresh fish from the fish counter rather than the dried out or greasy soy laced battered things that come in a box.)
I’m still making my own taco seasoning and seasonings for chili and all my meats. And, just cause it’s less fat, I’ve been rinsing my browned ground beef before I add seasoning or put it in my other dishes. It cuts down on the amount of fat that my family is ingesting. We’re still eating a lot of pasta. It’s yummy and everyone eats it, either with homemade spaghetti sauce or plain with just butter and sprinkle cheese. I also make my own homemade pizza dough, topped with my own seasoned tomato sauce, turkey pepperoni and skim milk cheese. I only use olive oil or corn oil, now, as well.
Oh, we’ve even been making our own homemade bagels. Darling Hubby usually has a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast and since I’m soy free I can’t have the bagels from the grocery store. I found a simple recipe in my bread machine book and we’ve made several batches. It took a bit of time for us to really figure it all out, but now it’s easy, though time consuming, to make homemade bagels. Darling Hubby enjoys Asiago cheese bagels, so that’s what we’ve been making as of late.
I’ve found a few treats for myself that are soy free. I found some yummy sweet potato and beet chips (I think the brand was Terra) and even some kosher for Easter chocolate chips that have no unnecessary ingredients. The grocery store decided to no longer carry my Equal Exchange organic chocolate bars, so I no longer have those to snack on. They were delish! Oh, and the No Pudge! brownie mix, made with only good stuff is yummy made with Stonyfield’ No Fat French Vanilla yogurt. Oh, and we bought an air pop popcorn popper so we can make batches of fresh popcorn for snacks and always for movie night! Both my kids can polish off an entire bowl of popcorn all on their own! lol They love their popcorn!
So, there you have it. The things I’ve figured out while on a soy free diet. It just takes a little consistency and several days of eating the same thing over and over til you find what works, but it can be done!
If anyone has any questions about going soy free or has anything to add to my growing (thankfully) list of foods to eat, please comment! I want to help others who may be going through the same thing I am! Now I’m off to make soy free tacos! lol
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