Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Nuts and Podcasts

Dear Mom,

I'm not used to just bopping around, not having something specific to do, but today was one of those days. Timi called to say she needed to cancel her housecleaning, so Don and I just hung out, doing stuff together. Our friends Melissa and John gave us another big box of pecans to shell and we got right on it, cracking and shelling almost 3 pounds of pecans. I've been warned not to eat too many 'ingredients' for wonderful stuff like Banana-Nut Pancakes, Butter Cookies, and Chocolate Brownies. We've even been known to add nuts to stir-fry dinners.

Yesterday I stopped and did the grocery shopping at HEB on the way home from work and had an attack of Poor Pitiful Me. I was hungry. Probably 90% of the food that's in a supermarket consists of things I can't eat. I watched people walking around, many of them looking mildly annoyed at all the choices available to them and wondered, "How annoyed would you be if you couldn't eat wheat, corn, milk, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, peanuts, sunflower seed (and oil), and some mystery ingredients that are still affecting your skin, to be placed on the no-no list?" Fortunately, half a bag of Sweet Potato chips on the way home mellowed me out. There are still a few on top of the fridge. Melissa introduced me to Dole's Fruit Gels. They're little cups of fruit in Jello, but they don't have corn syrup, they're made with sugar. The reason she likes them is because they're thickened with ingredients other than gelatin. She's a vegan and gelatin is an animal product.

It's difficult to find snacks or any kind of portable food that doesn't contain any of the ingredients that are toxic to me. I sent an email to Dole telling them that I like their product and why. Their response was quick and there are some coupons in the mail. I have cheated a bit in the last few days, but it's really not worth it, I have rashes on my hands and arms and feel mentally compromised, it's very hard to concentrate on anything.

Don and I have often discussed designing and maintaining a web site for people with food sensitivities, including our recipes and discoveries we've made in dealing with limited diets. The problem is, I just don't have any more time. Setting up the site itself would involve a lot of forethought as to how extensive it should be, what should and should not be included, possibly writing another blog to keep the content fresh and interesting, all kinds of decisions to be made before even beginning the design, the designing itself and then the maintenance. All the while maintaining 3 sites of my own, our site, two ezines and a blog. Oh, and working and taking care of mom, I almost forgot. Fortunately, there are many good sites on the web for people with food sensitivities and I've looked at a lot of them. Unfortunately, if you need them, there aren't really enough.

Don's done something awful to me, he's ordered a web cam. He thinks we're going to start podcasting, that's creating little mini-TV-type shows on the internet. He thinks we're going to receive it in the mail, get all excited and talk about how cool it would be to have our own podcast, then I'll knuckle down and learn how to do it, being the fixated geek that I am. Au, contraire, mon frere. When it comes, he can just take it out of the box and start reading the manual. Oh, yes, well he did just build you a computer and fix the sound on my computer and order some headphones so we can talk via VOIP...do I hear UPS at the door?

I love you,

Lisa

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