I want food

but it's Friday night and I'm tired.  I don't want to go anywhere, I just want food.

I'm leaving for a weekend trip tomorrow so I have barely anything in my fridge.  I used to order delivery whenever I was too tired to prepare food on Friday nights.

but that is no longer an option.

this blows and I need a nap.

banana

My dad accidentally called me at the crack of dawn this morning (he meant to call my brother, who's on a road trip with him and then he called me instead.  Because apparently having two children whose name starts with R is very confusing.)

And I was grumpy and woken up and then didn't sleep well for the rest of my night and overslept and walked out of my apartment carrying a banana as my eating plan for the day.

Yes.  My plan for both lunch and breakfast was a single banana.

Thankfully, my brain kicked in before I got to work and I stopped at this gas store that's really a mid-sized grocery store and purchased a Mexican coke, apple, fried/dried vegetables, and turkey jerky to go with said banana.  All for the low low price of $14.75. (!)

Food planning.  How much easier was it when forgetting my lunch meant that I could just go to Subway?!

Pasta

My manager discovered some delicious stuffed pasta and shared it with my coworker, who I share an office with.

She - a foodie but not a snob - immediately went out and bought some.

Now my office smells like delicious pasta during lunch. And my manager is bringing it for lunch tomorrow just to tease me so the whole area is going to smell like yummy pasta!

I can't decide if I enjoy the smell more than I hate the fact that I can't eat it. It's just so hard to tell.

And the worst part is, they found this pasta while I was on my elimination diet so now I can never know its true deliciousness!!!  (Which is why my manager didn't share it with me.)

People, I was never meant to deal with these kinds of conflicting emotions!!!!

And then it took my...

Mayonnaise! I can't believe that my mayonnaise is chock-full of soybean oil, even when it's "made with olive oil!"  WHAT?!?!?!

No more mayonnaise? How am I supposed to eat my delicious lettuce-wrapped burgers?!  I have tzatziki for now but oh, man, I never anticipated giving up mayonnaise.  I don't like mustard and my ketchup choices are severely restricted.

In other news, a) Beanitos aren't bad.  The texture's not quite right and it's trying too hard to feel like tortilla chips, but they're salty and the almost-right kind of crunchy, and hey! they have lots of protein, which I appreciate.

Also, I'm waaay overindulging on dairy - I'm just so happy after more than a month without! I may have drunk a gallon of milk since Thursday and, er, I just finished off my second pint of Haagan-Dazs since Friday.
I will pay for this but it's so delicious! (I have a dairy problem.)

Vending Machines

I can't eat anything in my company's vending machine.

Well.  I assume this, since I'm not actually going to buy everything I like and double check ingredients, but most of what I can see has an obvious no-no.

In the list of Adult Things I Am Good At, planning my daily food intake is somewhere between keeping my apartment clean (ha!) and doing laundry before I run out of clean underwear (sure. I did that once. I think.)

I work at a company that's health-related and they have a huge healthily living campaign for their employees. Including a nutritionist that I should probably talk to...O.o (And excellent health insurance, so yay!)

So why we only have junk food and coke vending machines, instead of those cool ones that take credit cards and dispense apple juice is beyond me. I can guarantee in the next few weeks I'm going to have a day where I don't pack enough food and end up starving in the afternoon.  How nice would some apple juice be then?

Just sayin'.

Chips and Guac

Guacamole is one of my favorite foods ever! In fact, one of my best  friends just sent me a tantalizing text message stating that she had just improved her already-perfect guacamole.  Now, I have a recently developed corn allergy (among many others) so I'm scouring the grocery stores, looking for a tortilla chip substitute that is both delicious and corn-free.

I bought some nut chips made from almonds that went really well with guac and pico de gallo but because I'm pretty sure I have a tree nut allergy, they're out.  (They're delicious though; called Nut Chips and made by Blue Diamond.  They sell them in my local H-E-B, but by the rice cakes, not in the chip aisle.)

I picked up a bag of Beanitos (made from beans and rice and fried in sunflower/saffron oil) from the city's co-op and am going to try them out with some guacamole tomorrow.

Sneaky Dairy Foods

After the good news that I wasn't allergic to dairy, I immediately went out and got some ice cream to celebrate.  I went to get a pint of coffee ice cream - yum, my favorite! - and found out that both Bluebell and Ben and Jerry's have both soy and corn in them.  Well.  That explains why ice cream gives me a stomachache.  Haagan Daz, however, is safe, with only cream, skim milk, sugar, egg yolks, and coffee flavoring.

On a similar note, though Starbucks doesn't list the ingredients of their frappuccinos, I'm pretty sure they're chock full of high fructose corn syrup because I get a bad stomachache every. single. time I have one.

The final dairy surprise, on my question to celebrate my resumed dairy consumption, is that Promised Land chocolate milk, possibly the most delicious dairy product on the market, has corn starch in it! Now I am on a quest to find an equally delicious brand of chocolate milk that is corn-free.  I can't say I'm not looking forward to this, though.

My Food Allergies

Lately, I've been having a lot of stomach problems - constant stomachaches, occasional nausea, and the random weird bout of vomiting. (Yuck.)  So I went on an elimination diet and then I went to the doctor with my results.  They ran a blood allergy test and it turns out I'm allergic to soy, corn, wheat, peanuts and walnuts (I suspect a tree nut allergy, as I'm having pains when I eat almonds as well), scallops - which I've eaten perhaps 5 times in my entire life - and sesame seeds.

Yes, sesame seeds.  Who on earth knew that there was a sesame seed allergy? Not this girl.  Luckily, since I live in America, the only time I eat sesame seeds is when they're on top of hamburger buns which the wheat allergy has taken care of quite handily. 

Anyway, I need a place to vent about the drastic changes in my diet and the fact that all my favorite foods are no longer allowed!  

But the good news is - I'm not allergic to dairy.  And I looooove me some dairy.  So there's always a silver lining!