Now... what, exactly?

It's been an interesting few weeks at the Soup house....

D.Soup now has a red meat allergy.

My self proclaimed "meatatarian" husband can no longer eat beef, pork, or lamb.  His hands and feet start to swell, rashes form up his arms, and he has terrible stomach pains.

Also, pork being "the other white meat" is a lie.  Rude.

All because of a tick bite.

The Lone Star Tick has been spreading across the country, and if it bites you there is a chance that you will develop an allergy to red meat.  The tick carries a sugar called Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose(alpha-gal) in its belly.  It transfers the alpha-gal to you and your body starts to fight it like it would a disease.  Alpha-gal is also found in the fatty parts of all non-primate mammals.  So when your body processes the fat cells of any red meat that you have eaten, you have an allergic reaction.

...That's my very dumbed down explanation of this whole shenanigans.

What does this mean for us?

We will now be a fish and fowl loving family.  We are only in the first week of transferring over to our new lifestyle and we honestly don't know how much he will be affected by different scenarios.  A lot of people with this allergy have issues eating out because of cross contamination.  We will have to take it day by day.  He has been prescribed an Epi pen, and we now have Benadryl stored in every vehicle and multiple areas in our house.


The good news.

He doesn't (so far) seem to have any feelings of his throat closing up during a reaction.

We already eat a decent amount of chicken.  So transitioning isn't going to be TOO hard for a majority of our meals. 

The other good thing is that turkey is much healthier than beef, so it will help us in our weight loss endeavors.

There is a chance that the allergy will go away on its own (3 weeks to 5 years is the "average"), he has to be careful not to get another Lone Star tick bite, because that will bring the allergy back, or make it worse if he is still allergic at the time of the bite.   

The bad news.

D.Soup hunts.  Deer meat is included in the list of no-nos.  We haven't tested it, and some people say they can still eat it so we are feeling hopeful at the moment.  We shall see.

We also have bags and bags of beef - hamburgers, steaks, ground beef, cubes - in our freezers.  I'm going to have to package everything up and give it away.  At least we know people around us that will take it, so we don't have to throw everything away.

It's also possible that we could deal with cross contamination in our own kitchen.  We use cast iron pans to cook a majority of our meals.  Those could very easily have remnants of meat that might affect him.



There's so much more.  I start thinking about it and I end up in a rabbit hole of stress and panic.  We just don't know everything that he will react to so its a strange and slightly scary time for us me.  He is less panicked than I am, at least externally.  I think if I wasn't so stressed about it he would be more stressed, but for now he has to deal with all my craziness so he's taken on his job as the confident one.

I can't believe that a tick bite can do this to people.  Hardly anyone knows about it either. Almost everyone that we've talked to has been completely dumbfounded that this is even a thing.

The allergist that D.Soup saw to get tested for alpha-gal was actually excited (for herself, not for him) that he was there.  She told him "I've studied this but have never actually seen a case of it before!  I'm going to have to do some more research!"

I will continue to post any changes.

Where Mz.Soup gets to make (most of) Dinner

I don't get to make dinner often anymore.  A baby with hunger cries you could set a watch to and a toddler that wants to "help" me do everything puts a damper on that whole leisurely making dinner thing.  Even if I start making dinner I usually have to pass the torch over to D.Soup in the middle so I can give my attention somewhere else.  

We had some chicken in the refrigerator, and I had some fresh tomatoes and green beans from Pappy's garden.  So I headed to Skinnytaste for some recommendations and ended up landing on these two recipes:

Roasted Parmesan Green Beans

Grilled Chicken Bruschetta

Both recipes only took about 15 minutes each once the vegetables were prepped.  It was a perfect quick meal that allowed D.Soup to grill the chicken and me to deal with the vegetable portion while passing R.Soup back and forth.  Luckily, L.Soup didn't take a nap yesterday so she had passed out in the car on the way home.  She slept on the couch through the entire dinner making process.

Not so luckily, she was not very friendly for the rest of the evening.  

On fancy dinnerware.

L.Soup attitude issues aside.  This was by far one of the best dinners we have had in a long time.  Definitely both options will be added into our dinner menu mix frequently from here on out.

Why do kids fight napping so much?

I would nap every day if someone let me.

And I wouldn't get fired.

Well that all went to hell

I was really excited about this whole weight loss thing.  Getting really motivated and even thinking about (gasp!) working in some running here and there.  Then this happened.

So for now, I'm putting the weight loss on hold, and I'm going to focus more on maintaining the current weight and not gaining too terribly much.  Since I never got rid of all the baby weight from L.Soup, I'm hoping to hold myself fairly level on the scale for as long as possible.  I'm going to continue eating healthy, well portioned meals.  Which is completely different from how I reacted to my first pregnancy, which was more like this:

original image source

With my first pregnancy, I was nauseated the first 3 months and lost 12 pounds.  But I ended up gaining it all back and then some with a little thing I like to call no self control.  That's the part I'm trying to avoid this time around.

At this point, I'm not having much of an issue with that, because every food related thing I see makes me want to die.  So... so far so good.

When I got pregnant the first time, I didn't want to make anything public on the internet.  I felt very private about what was happening to me, and didn't want to share it with everyone that I am linked to.  Well now a majority of my internet activity is posting cute pictures and videos of my daughter to Facebook and Instagram, so I think this time around I'll share more of the beginning stages too.

Last time I was sure that I would take weekly pictures of my progress and document everything, and I ended up with one picture of me at four weeks, and a picture of the positive pregnancy test.  That's it.  No other belly shots, not really many pictures of me at all from the entire pregnancy.

I'll try to be better this time around.

A nice little weekend

First and foremost, we found this little guy on the back of the truck. I can't remember what day we found him, but I'm pretty sure it was this weekend at some point.

Sup?

A few months ago, my grandfather gave me two praying mantis nests to relocate to my house.  They are supposed to eat mosquitoes, so I happily took them.  I think they've finally hatched!  This is the only one we've seen so far, but I thought it was pretty cool.  Saturday we saw him again, on the garage door.  I moved him back to the safety of the flower bed.  I haven't seen him since.

Friday my parents kindly kept L.Soup and brought her home for bedtime so that we could do this:

Pretty sunset

Our friends have a boat, and asked us to go fishing with them after work. We had a great time and it was absolutely beautiful.

Saturday we cleaned up around the house in the morning. We all ended up napping when L.Soup was ready. That's one good part about her not taking naps in her crib, its an excuse for us to nap too!  After her nap, we went down to the beach in our neighborhood.  It was a beautiful day out, and the water was so warm. We walked around in the water and on the sand for about 45 minutes, and then we came back home.

L.Soup got a bath, and we changed our clothes and headed to Target!  I decided during the week that I needed 2 things in my life:

1.  A "recycle bin" trash can
2.  A basket for all L.Soup's dirty bibs and wash clothes.

I had a trash can I wanted to use already, problem was, it was being used in L.Soup's bedroom.  And it was definitely overkill for what we needed in there.  So we found a smaller, replacement trash can that fits perfectly in the space.  So we moved the bigger trash can downstairs next to our actual trash can.  I'm going to make some stickers with the little "recycling" symbol, so that its clearly marked for guests.  Now I just have to teach L.Soup the difference between the two!

The basket is actually working perfectly.  It's exactly what we needed to put her dirty stuff in.  When it fills up, we just carry it upstairs.  It's much easier than scooping it all up off the table and trying to fumble up the stairs with it as a pile in  your arms.  I already have enough problems going up the stairs.  On top of the fact that usually I'm not alone when I'm making the trip anymore.

We got back from Target later than we expected to, and L.Soup was HUNGRY.  We had dinner planned out already, but hadn't taken the chicken out of the freezer.  Luckily it thawed pretty fast in a bowl of hot water, and we were able to make a delicious version of Cajun Chicken Pasta.  We substituted asparagus for mushrooms because D.Soup does not like them, and we had asparagus in the fridge.

It was a delicious decision. A serving size is 1.5 cups. The meal itself makes 7.5 cups so we had a million left overs. It was so amazingly good. We've made it before but I had forgotten how yummy it was. Also, luckily it is really filling, so I didn't even eat over my serving size.

NOM NOM NOM.

Sunday we did some more cleaning, packed up a bunch of things that don't belong to us and took them over to my parent's house so they could be delivered to where they actually belong.  It was great to get more stuff moved out of the main level of our house.  The last thing we really need to do is switch around where the couch and loveseat are and the living room will be complete (for now).  D.Soup went out for a few hours with his brother, so L.Soup and I settled in for a nap.  Not soon after we woke up, D.Soup came back home.  So the timing worked out really well for us.

The rest of the afternoon we played, had leftovers of the deliciousness above, and watched Firefly because I had control of the remote it's awesome.  We all went upstairs when it was time for L.Soup to go to bed.  When I came out of her room D.Soup was asleep on the bed!  Rude.  I went in and took a bath in scalding hot water, and it was glorious.  He was still asleep when I got done.  So I went back downstairs and watched TWO (!) more hours of Firefly before I came upstairs and finally got in bed.

Then, it felt like someone was playing a cruel joke on me, because I couldn't fall asleep for almost an hour.  That was terrible.

I fully intend on finishing the foyer wall this week.  So I can finally stop talking about it and actually show it to you.  Other than that I don't have much planned for this week.

We'll see how that works out.

PS How many times did I say "delicious" when referring to my dinner.
Obviously I liked it.
Jeez.

MzSoup's personal weight loss challenge

I mentioned getting back into healthy habits briefly in this post, but wanted to go a little more into it.  I have slowly and steadily gained 50 pounds over the last 10 years.  A little bit at a time so that I didn't really notice it, until it was too late.  Well, I gained about 15 of those pounds during pregnancy and just never lost them.  But they are still there so they count.  Dang it.

I signed up for two 5K run/walks, one in April and one in May, and started Couch to 5k at the end of February to try to get myself ready to run.  Walking or running three times a week and keeping track of my calorie intake using My Fitness Pal, I ended up losing 10 pounds in a little over a month.  It was enough to keep me motivated and working... until April hit and it was crunch time for finishing everything for L.Soup's birthday party on the 13th.  I of course decided I had to make everything myself (or as much as possible) and I went slightly overboard with the decorations.  I was adamant that I would pick it back up as soon as I felt ready for the party.

But that was a lie.

As soon as the party was over, I was exhausted.  For about a week.  THEN I had to work on cleaning everything up (and lets be honest, there's STILL some decorations up around the house... and I'm not even embarrassed about it... okay maybe a little).  And then I was exhausted for another week.

I never had the energy or time to pick it back up.  So I walked both 5K's.  Which isn't a terrible thing, but I had really wanted to try running, since I had put so much work into it.  Oh well.

Well, here I am.  It's July.  I still haven't lost this baby weight, and my baby is 15 months old.  I think I've finally gotten it into my head that I need to DO this.  So I'm putting it out here.  Almost like I'm shaming myself into putting in the effort.  Because now that you all know, I have to at least try.  I've even been debating with myself if I should take before pictures and post them up here, but I don't know if I want to expose you all to that.  Maybe I will take some, and keep them around for motivation anyway.

So I've started back up with My Fitness Pal -- if anyone is there, mzsoup is my user name (of course), friend me!  I've also added a weight loss tracker here, from MFP... It's waaaayy down on the right hand side somewhere.  (That number includes from when I was working before.)

D.Soup and I have a plan to pick out all the meals we want for the week, and make a shopping trip.  Getting only the stuff we would need for that week.  That way we stick to our planned meals, and don't overspend.  The last 2 weeks it has worked really well for us.

We get a lot of our recipes from Skinnytaste, I've never been disappointed by a recipe that I've pulled off of there.  I really appreciate the people that take time to share the healthy meals they are making for their families, because sometimes I run out of ideas.

At the moment I don't have any huge plans for starting seriously back up with running.  We love to go on walks as a family, and we have a bike seat for L.Soup so we can go on bike rides together too.  In a few weeks we're going to have to start physical therapy with Calli, so I will be getting out more often.

I just have a lot of other things I would rather be doing that running, at the moment.  I'd like to see how the weight loss goes for a little while with just changing my eating habits. 

I'll keep you posted.

Our little garden

A while ago I noted that D.Soup built a planter box in the back yard.  I filled it up very soon after it was built, and we are finally seeing some spoils from all the hard work letting it sit there and have the rain/sprinklers water it.  I collected 4 cherry tomatoes this morning, and there are 3 cucumbers that are steadily growing, one is almost ready for picking!

I took some time yesterday to stake up the tomato plants, and the pepper plants.  They all had been laying down a little, and I wanted to get them up so that they could get light.  I had been meaning to do it for a while, and avoiding it because we have about a billion mosquitoes in our yard and they must be starving because they are on me in an instant when I walk out the door.  But I finally sucked it up and took the time to work on it yesterday.

It was probably the worst time for me to decide to get something outside accomplished.  Considering it's 95 degrees here all this week, with a heat index up to 105.  Ugh.  I was sweating just standing there.  Not.even.moving.  It was awful.  Then I started doing actual work, and it was worse.  I was only out there for maybe 30 minutes and I was drenched.  Yuck.

I never really covered the build process for the planter box, mostly because I didn't help with the build.  You can find the plans on ana-white.com.

An attempt to actually FINISH something

Tonight my only crafting goal is to finish the boxes that I started working on last night.  I currently only have 2 brushes, and was actually only using one last night.  So it was a terrible pain to have to run up stairs to wash the brush out, and then dry it off frantically so I could start working on another side.  Tonight I'm hoping to bum some brushes off my mother, so I should be able to more effectively get the work done tonight.

Other than crafting, I need to clean up the kitchen... because we had people over on Sunday and I haven't made time to deal with any of that mess yet. 

I'm also trying to find some time tonight to spend a few quality minutes with my treadmill.  I really need to get back into the swing, I just have been making myself so busy recently, that by the time I pull myself away from whatever I'm working on, I have just enough energy to get myself upstairs and fall into bed.  We'll see how that goes tonight. 

Before any of that goes down though, we are having dinner at my parents house.   Some squash came out of the garden over the garden so mom is frying it up!  Yummmm.  

We invited ourselves over.  :)

Now we're cookin'

Two weeks ago, L. Soup reached a stage in her life where she either eats solid food, or she ends up consuming 30 oz of milk in a day.  I personally felt like that was a little bit of overkill for someone so small, so solid food it is!  We started off with some (homemade) rice cereal.  Here is the recipe I followed:

Wholesome Rice Cereal
1/4 cup (around 1 oz) brown rice powder
8 fl oz (1 cup) water
a little formula/breastmilk

To make the rice powder, grind brown rice in a blender or food processor. This is best achieved by grinding in small quantities - but to make the powder REALLY fine, we recommend trying a Coffee and Spice Grinder (advertisement).
You can use white rice if you prefer, but this page explains why brown rice is more nutritious.
Bring the water to a boil.
Add the rice powder, stirring constantly with a wire whisk.
Reduce the heat to very low and simmer gently for about 10 minutes (don't forget to keep stirring, or the rice will stick).
Then stir in enough formula or breastmilk to give the consistency that's best for your baby.

The first experience wasn't the greatest, mostly because these instructions missed a vital step.  After you grind up your rice, you have to sift it through something very fine.  There were still large-ish pieces of rice after it came out of the grinder, so this step was absolutely necessary in order for everyone involved to enjoy the rest of the experience.  Grinding the rice is a bit time consuming, but I do a large batch every time I start to get low, and then all I have to do is measure out whatever I want to cook every few days.

After we got verification that she was interested in rice cereal, my mom made applesauce from some apples off the tree outside her house (more on that later).

Public Service Announcement:
If you are planning on making your own baby food, keep a few things in mind.  Most importantly, remember the dirty dozen.  Make sure to buy organic if you are planning on giving your baby any of those items.  Actually, you should make sure to buy organic if you are planning on eating any of them yourself. Good news though!  There are fruits and vegetables that are super clean, and you don't have to worry about buying them organic.
Also remember to check if your chosen fruit or vegetable is alright to give to your baby.  Some things are restricted to a certain age.

We mixed the applesauce with the rice cereal and BAM.  It was gone.  She LOVED it.  Awesome.  So we went a few days with applesauce, and I stopped at the vegetable stand on the way home one day and picked up two butternut squash.  I cooked those suckers up, following this recipe:

Butternut or Acorn Squash

1 acorn or butternut squash
1. Cut acorn or butternut squash in half, scoop out seeds
2. Place halves face down in a pan and cover with an inch of water
3. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 40 minutes to 1 hour - be sure the “shell/skin” puckers and halves feel soft then scoop squash “meat” out of the shell
4. Place squash "meat" into your choice of appliance for pureeing and begin pureeing.
5. Add water as necessary to achieve a smooth, thin consistency.

 
After the initial yuck face, she gobbled that right up too!  We've also had banana, but that only needs to be squished up.  I think our next adventure might be peas.  Or carrots.  I haven't decided yet.

She gets lunch and dinner every day now.  And let me tell you, if you are a little behind schedule with one of them, she lets you know.

My awesome little eater.

Deliciousness

I made a Deer Zucchini Casserole for dinner last night. It was delicious. I just made everything up, so when I was talking to my mom later and she asked for the recipe, I had to remember exactly what I did.

I'm glad I had to write it down... Now I'll have it for later use.

Here it is:

1 lb. deer meat
1 whole zucchini (I used half of a squash and half of a zucchini) chopped, I left mine kinda big
1 box penne (or whatever) pasta -- I used ronzoni smart taste
2 15 oz. cans tomato sauce
1 can rotel diced tomatoes with jalapeños
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup chopped onion (I used onion powder because I didn't have real onion)
4 cloves garlic -- 2 smashed 2 chopped
Cheese (I used provolone slices, but that was all I had)
Fresh Basil (I have freeze dried, and just shook it out, didn't measure)
1 bay leaf

2 ish tbsp. EVOO (I have a dispenser thing and just went around the pan twice)

Dispenser thing for my EVOO

Preheat oven to 350

Put the cans of tomato sauce and diced tomatoes into a large frying pan. I used my big cast iron skillet. Add the 2 smashed cloves of garlic, broth, and onion and leave to simmer on low heat.

Put EVOO in another frying pan. Add chopped garlic and let simmer for 2 min. Add deer meat and cook until brown. Add zucchini and cook 5 more min.

Add meat mixture to tomato sauce. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Continue to simmer on low heat for 20 min. Stir occasionally.

After 20 min, add basil and bay leaf. Start water boiling for pasta now. After about 10 min, taste the sauce, if it's a little tart, add a little sugar. Might want to do this anyway, mine wasn't tart but I added about 2 tsp of sugar and it changed the sauce's taste...yum.

Cook the pasta 10 min (or whatever your instructions say for al dente). When that's done Remove the bay leaf and the two smashed garlic cloves from the sauce. Layer pasta, sauce, cheese. And again. Cook for 15 min.

Enjoy. ;)



I realized as we were going to bed last night, that I didn't take a single picture of my creation.

Fail.

Life is never boring when you have pets.

Right now, at this very moment... I am eating carrots with light ranch dressing. Now this is usually a normal every day occurrence for me.

Today, in my head, every time I pick up a carrot and dip it in the ranch I hear:

"MMMMMMMMM CARROT. NOM NOM NOM."

I can't stop it.

Luckily I'm not saying it out loud.

I feel like I'm running my own personal ICanHasCheezburger reel in my head.

Okay, those are done, so hopefully we can all move away from that experience.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last night was mildly traumatic for all of us in the Soup household.

Massive thunder accompanied the not so massive storms that we had on an off all day yesterday. So massive that at one point I felt the 7 story building that I work in shaking.

I work on the 2nd floor.

Since this is the first real storm that we've had since last spring, D.Soup and I conveniently forgot the terror that envelopes our older cat, Atti, when there is a thunderstorm.

I wish I had the forethought to photograph him during his 15 minutes of panic after the one (and only) giant clap of thunder that mini storm. Instead I comforted him, which I feel was a better choice...

But they would have been some awesome pictures.

I will have to settle for showing you a picture of what he LOOKED like:
Now, imagine those eyes. At that height. Walking around the house staring at the ceiling like it was going to collapse. And then you probably have a decent image of Atticus in your head. I'm not exactly sure how he manages to pull his normally long legs up into his body so that they are nonexistent.

It's quite impressive.

I'm also not exactly sure why he thinks lowering his center of balance is going to help him in situations like this. It happens quite frequently: upon entering a room after it has been vacuumed, investigating an unfamiliar addition to the floor, returning after a hasty retreat from a non-thunder noise (really any noise).

My other animals were blissfully unaware of the thunder, or the trauma that Atti was experiencing. In fact, at one point when he was finally settling down (read: hiding under my legs) Calli decided it was the perfect time to see if he had FINALLY accepted her as a member of the house (answer: NO). Luckily I stopped her before she could pounce on him and all our previous comforting was not for loss.

Leo is always blissfully unaware of everything.

Well, except Calli... he's ALWAYS aware of her.

We are trying to keep Calli away from eating people food, because I don't want to deal with her begging constantly while we're in the kitchen or eating.

So far so good... other than the dishwasher.

She has been extremely interested in the dishwasher every time it is open. I think mostly because it's at her level and it smells interesting.

I chase her off every time she gets too close to it for my comfort. But D.Soup was unloading it last night while I was comforting Atti and wasn't paying as much attention to her as I usually do.

If he was, he would have noticed her inching up to it, he would have also noticed her starting to climb in it...

What he did notice. Well, what everyone noticed was her running frantically away from it going "YIPE YIPE YIPE YIPE YIPE" with the bottom drawer of the dishwasher following closely behind her for a few seconds.

Here's what I think happened: When she climbed into the dishwasher, she stepped in between the wires of the drawer, and her paw got caught. She immediately noticed this and tried to pull it out. Which caused the drawer to start moving. Which completely and utterly terrified her and she ran. Which triggered the attack of the dishwasher monster (nickname created by me). Which then brought us full circle back to the frantic running and YIPEing.

Of course, all of this sent both cats into a panic. Leo booked it up the stairs, and Atti returned to his previous occupation of wandering around the first floor as a shortened version of himself with a permanent "WTF" look on his face.

Well, when Calli got as far away from the dishwasher monster as she possibly could, she turned around and growled at it in a "Yeah, I showed you." manner. To prove that she, in fact, was not the giant pansy that we all think she is.

Of course, none of us believed her.

Especially considering she walked around with her tail in between her legs for 15 minutes, and would not re-enter the kitchen for 30 minutes. When she finally did, she donned a stance very similar to Atti's.

Thankfully, all was resolved when we loaded her up and into the car and made our merry way to the vet's office. Calli finally has all her puppy shots, and she's been scheduled to have her surgery next week.

The rest of the evening went more smoothly.

No thunder.

No dishwasher monster.

Peace.

Moral of the story:
Beware of the dishwasher monster.
(aka Listen to your Mother)
And loud noises in general.