Thanksgiving prep

How come you can have pumpkin pie, but not candied yams? My curiosity got the best of me, hope you don't mind. Good luck with the training for the temp job!

That includes potatoes, their relatives, and substances derived from them--no more:

white potato
sweet potato
yams
potato flour
potato starch
Kabocha squash*
Jicama*
Tapioca*
Jerusalem (Sun Chokes)*
B vitamins (Niacin, Thiamin, Riboflavin)
enriched bread or pasta products
Vitamin D Palmitate
Dextrose
Iodized salt
modified food starch
hydrolyzed vegetable protein
vegetable broths
MSG (AKA “natural flavorings”)
propylene glycol

So basically, if it's in a box, it's got one of the above and we can't eat it. Even the boxed or bagged organic health foods have dextrose in them. There's only one kind of cookie we can buy, Nature Bake's Spelt Oatmeal. Luckily, we have a couple of good cookbooks with some tasty recipes using rice, spelt, or other alternate flours. My sour cream pastries (from spelt soaked in sour cream overnight) are out of this world and DH's rice flour chocolate chip cookies taste almost exactly like Toll House.

No wheat, either. We can have sprouted wheat, which is nice, I can use Nature Bake Surviva Bread for DD and I, hence the stuffing.

DD is intolerant to potatoes and we are both type "O"s and thus intolerant to wheat. If you have a strong constitution, like DH, you can be an "O", eat wheat, and only get mild IBS or something. If you've got arthritis like DD and I do, wheat actually makes it a hundred fold worse.

There is a point to the admittedly weird and hideously inconvenient diet--DD and I have fewer colds and enjoy better overall health and energy since we've made the changes. I was nearly imobile with pain a year and a half ago, like I was in a seventy year old's body. Now I'm only in moderate pain and a fifty year old's body. Maybe by next year I'll have my body back again.

But pumpkins and all other squashes are just fine. We discovered that butternut squash when smothered in butter and brown sugar taste almost like candied yams, so they're our subsitue for that Thanksgiving dish now.

The pies will have regular wheat crusts, so DD and I will just eat the good stuff and not eat the crust. I have a good spelt pie crust recipe, but I don't have time this year to make pies, so I'm making do.

DH's style is seriously cramped with no more potatoes. He's polish-american so mashed potatoes are serious soul food. It's proof positive of his love for me that he's going along with the diet at all.

Anhata
www.familynaturally.com
Your Family's General Store, Naturally

We're keeping it pretty simple too...

Turkey
Crockpot Dressing
Mashed potatoes and Gravy
Romaine Salad
Roasted Brussels Sprouts/Carrots
Rolls
Apple or Pumpkin Pie

Thanks for the explanation. I'm glad it's working for you. I seem to remember a sis-in-law doing something like that (she also discovered she was allergic to sunlight, which was why she always was breaking out). She started feeling so much better that her "electro-meridian something or other" (sorry, can't remember the term) said she could put a few things back now and then if she really wanted to. She does, but finds she regrets it.

We're not having Thanksgiving with family this year (sigh). Usually, we go to either my parents or DH's parents, but this year we live a 24 hour drive away, and decided to go it alone. But then, one of our church's leaders and his wife asked us to spend the holiday with them, since their grown kids aren't coming home for the holiday either. All I have to make is a relish tray! However, I'll have a lot of cooking on the 8th of Dec. as our church is having a Christmas party and wants to make it as "close to what Mary and Joseph ate as possible" which means that since I'm the one every one knows can make au-natural foods, I get to make lots. Of course, there are lots of volunteers, and I get to pass out some recipes. It should be a fun night, we're supposed to dress period and imagine that we were recieving the good news of Christ's birth for the first time. It's the most creative Christmas party I've ever participated in, and I think I'll really enjoy it.