Pie! Or, I can't believe I'm so ignorant of proper wifely knowledge.

We have this wonderful old Betty Crocker cookbook from 1972. My parents have the same one, and I actually learned how to cook from it when I was a young teenager-- I was home by myself most every day one summer, so rather than getting involved with drugs like any normal kid would do, I decided to teach myself how to cook. The dessert recipes in this book are top notch. Many of the main dish ones are as well, but since it was the early 70s, there are a disturbing number of recipes that involve gelatin or cream-of-something soup. Also, the "ethnic" recipes amuse the heck out of me with their bland lack of ethnicity. I mean, just because you put in some tomatoes and 1/8 of a teaspoon of black pepper does not make the chicken Creole!

So anyway, Casey and I were flipping through this cookbook this morning, trying to get some ideas on what we should have for Christmas dinner when my family is coming down. The meat and main dish sections were decidedly uninspiring, so I flipped over to the pie chapter. Because pie is always an inspiration. Then we found this hilariously archaic paragraph heading the section on chiffon pies:

"How many chiffon pies do you know how to make? Just lemon? That's too bad. Too bad when you think how much your family might enjoy a pumpkin chiffon or strawberry chiffon or chocolate chiffon or Nesselrode. When a man eats in a restaurant he's very apt to order the chiffon pie on the menu. And so, come to think of it, are you! So why don't you be original tonight. Bake one of the family's away-from-home desserts at home. It isn't hard with these people-tested recipes."

Oh, man, I don't even know how to make a lemon chiffon pie.

I can't believe Casey married me with my lack of wifely knowledge.

Also, I'm very glad their recipes are people-tested, as opposed to, say giraffe-tested or velociraptor-tested. I'm not sure a velociraptor and I would have the same sort of kitchen procedures. 

So, anyway, because I want some chocolate that doesn't involve soy, and because apparently I can't maintain my married status without top secret chiffon pie knowledge, I'm going to make the chocolate chiffon pie today. Here is the soy free recipe!

Chocolate Chiffon Pie
9-inch baked pie shell  <---- The Pilsbury refrigerated crusts use lard instead of vegetable shortening, so they're soy free, or you can make your own.
1/2 cup sugar
1 envelope unflavored gelatin  <---- See? It was the 70s. Gelatin is inescapable.
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cups water
2 ounces melted unsweetened chocolate  <---- Unsweetened baking chocolate doesn't contain soy lecithin.
3 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup chilled whipping cream <---- Reddi-Whip contains mono- and diglycerides and "natural flavorings," so it may not be soy free.

Bake pie shell. Stir together 1/2 cup sugar, the gelatin, and the salt in small saucepan, stir in water and chocolate. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until blended. Remove from heat. Beat egg yolks slightly; slowly stir in part of chocolate mixture to temper. [This is to gradually bring the egg up to a warmer temperature without causing it to curdle-- if you just drop it into the chocolate, it won't blend in properly because it will be turning into scrambled eggs.] Return egg mixture to saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, just until mixture boils. Place pan in bowl of ice and water or chill in refrigerator, stirring occasionally, until mixture mounds slightly when dropped from spoon. Stir in vanilla.

Beat egg whites and cream of tartar until foamy. Beat in 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time; continue beating until mixture is stiff and glossy. Do not underbeat. Fold chocolate mixture into meringue. In chilled bowl, beat cream until stiff; fold into chocolate mixture. Pile into baked pie shell. Chill at least 3 hours or until set. If desired, serve with sweetened whipped cream [or Cool Whip] and sprinkle with chocolate curls.

Thanksgiving and the Aftermath

There's nothing like discovering you have a food intolerance right before a food-based holiday to make you feel like a bit of a freak.

My husband does most of the cooking at our place (he's way better at it than I am), and he's been an absolute trouper about adapting to a soy-free diet. He still eats tasty soy-based noms when I'm not looking, but my belly is full, so what do I care?  ;-)  We've only had a couple of missteps, like the bread he thought would be safe but contained unspecified mono- and diglycerides. No big deal. It's a learning process, and he's taking it right in stride.

Generally for Thanksgiving, Casey's parents come over. We make most of the food, and they bring dessert. We usually have the traditional turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc. The good part about this is that it's very easily adaptable to a soy-free diet. We had to have cornbread stuffing instead of the Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix, but that's fine. Casey brined the turkey according to Alton Brown's recipe from Good Eats, only instead of a sweet brine he made a citrus pepper brine with oranges and jalapenos instead of apples and allspice. I was set to make the mashed potatoes and the baked macaroni and cheese-- another Good Eats special!

My worry was the pies, pumpkin and chocolate cream. I found out on Wednesday that the in-laws got them from a local bakery, so I called up to see what kind of shortening they use for their crust. The girl who answered the phone had no idea and acted like I was silly for asking, and said the bakers weren't available. Srlsy? You've never had an allergy-related question before? After some hemming and hawing and wondering if I should make a pan of brownies so I'd have a safe dessert, Casey suggested that I could try eating the pie filling without the crust. This seemed reasonable enough.

So, we got to Thursday and everything seemed in order. The apartment was clean, the food was underway, and the turkey was starting to smell really good.

Then I completely messed up the mac and cheese.

We had whole wheat flour instead of plain all purpose flour, and I didn't realize that when one is making a roux with whole wheat flour, it turns really dark really fast. Yikes! I'm supposed to build the sauce with a barely-colored roux, and this thing has, in the space of an eyeblink, become a brick roux. But it smelled okay, so I made the macaroni anyway. Big mistake! It tasted burnt and nasty. I was so disappointed. This thing is not exactly a health food, so I make it maybe once or twice a year, and I always look forward to it.

The turkey, on the other hand, was absolutely divine. And so far no ill effects from the chocolate cream pie filling. (It's been about 3 hours, so I should be pretty safe by now, I think.)

My mother-in-law had a rather strange reaction to my newly found food intolerance. She suggested that I should really think about it before I take on this allergy, because it will really change the way I have to eat.

Um? No one told me I had an option here! Why didn't I know this?!? (She means well, I swear...)

Anyway, they've gone home and we got the kitchen clean. And the refrigerator now has plenty of room in it. We can fill it up with soy-free foods for my new "hobby" of being soy-intolerant. Sigh.

The journey to a soy-free life begins with a single glass of milk.

Last week, I discovered that I have an intolerance to soy.

I had been feeling just plain lousy all the time for... goodness, I don't even know how long. It must have been a few years, at least. Exhausted but unable to sleep well. Sore and achy all the time. My hair was actually falling out. And bloated, gassy and constipated. Oh my lord, it was so embarrassing, not to mention painful.

I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome last year. Short explanation, my levels of estrogen and progesterone were wrong, and this caused my level of insulin to be wrong. My GYN put me on Metformin, a diabetes drug, and I felt ever so slightly better, but still pretty awful.

My health insurance is through the university where I'm a part time student, so I go to the student clinic there. I'm sure it's a little odd for them to be working with the problems of someone who has left 30 behind, as opposed to the 18 to 22 year old students. I made an appointment to go in and have my thyroid checked when my hair started falling out. The doctor, bless her to infinity forever, decided it was probably the insomnia, and she gave me a prescription for this amazingly wonderful medicine that has let me sleep well every night since. Sleep! Deep, restful, refreshing sleep for the first time in years! Every night!

But my stomach was still protesting pretty much everything I ate, and my hair was still falling out. A friend suggested that it might be artificial sweeteners. I pretty much lived on diet Pepsi and Propel, so this was not so good to hear. I decided to try going without for two weeks. Neither my belly nor my hair improved, but I felt so much more alert that I decided I was probably better off without the sucralose, aspartame, and so on.

At this point I thought it would be worth checking to see if I had a food intolerance, specifically lactose. This was a scary idea. I love dairy so much, but I was tired of feeling awful. I poked around on the internet and found a test I could do for myself at home before talking to my doctor again-- do an overnight fast, drink a big glass of milk in the morning, and see what happens. I drank my milk that morning with dread, hoping it wouldn't be my last glass, but horribly afraid it would be.

Nothing happened. I drank the milk around 7 AM, and by 10 AM I was feeling pretty good. No gas or bloating, I was comfortable, and it was weird. Usually after a couple of hours in my desk chair at work, I'm sore and uncomfortable. I was getting pretty hungry by then, so I decided the lactose test was over and had a granola bar. I was wondering if the gluten in the granola bar would cause the gassy reaction. It didn't. By lunchtime I was still feeling fine.

But then I had lunch-- a frozen Lean Cuisine meal. Within a couple of hours, my belly was up to its old nasty tricks and I was miserable again. It had to be the soy, that was the only common intolerance food I hadn't checked. And then I thought about how epically gassy I'd been the time I'd tried soy milk. Yeah.

I decided to give a soy-free diet a trial run to see if it made a difference. What I hadn't counted on was just how much stuff soy is in. It's in pretty much every packaged food you can name. Even worse, the labels don't always call it soy. It could also be known as:
Bulking agent
Emulsifier
Guar gum
Gum Arabic
Hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP)
Hydrolyzed plant protein (HPP)
Lecithin
Protein filler/extender
Mono-& diglycerides
MSG (monosodium glutamate)
Shortenings
Stabilizer
Thickener
Vegetable/gum/starch/oil/protein
Natural flavorings

Basically, since soy is cheap, if the label doesn't specifically say that one of these is NOT soy, I have to assume that it IS soy. (For example, I've seen sunflower lecithin on a label, and vegetable oils come in many varieties.) This puts so many common foods off limits. Store-bought bread. Margarine. Mayonnaise. Many ice creams and breakfast cereals. Chocolate (sob). Chinese food. (Although I suppose this explains why I've been sick as a dog after the last few times my husband and I went to our formerly-favorite Chinese buffet.) Many many others.

Still, this leaves me a lot, and I've eaten pretty well the last few days. And you know what? After less than a day , my belly felt better. I wasn't sore. I wasn't overtired. I felt, to my great surprise, good. I'd kind of forgotten what that was like. My hair is still falling out, but then, it took me a long time to get to feeling this bad. It will probably take awhile to get all the way back, too.