Powdered Buckwheat Drink

Ingredients:

1. 1 tablespoon of buckwheat powder (grounded buckwheat groats)
2. 1/2 teaspoon of cacao powder
3. 250ml of hot water

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1. Pour buckwheat and cacao powder into mug.
2. Pour hot water into mug and stir.

Bon appetit!

*It takes some getting used to drinking without sugar. You can add dates, honey or maple syrup if you're not used to it!

The Day I Need Not Cook (Almost!)

This year's Mother's Day was the first ever that I needn't cook. Well, except for boiling the rice and baking the salmon. Hubby cooked lunch. And then hubby and Joel vacuumed and mopped the floor. It was my day! And a great day it was.

Minced pork with potatoes

Stir fried chayote

Baked salmon

Powdered Rice & Millet Drink

Ingredients:

1. 60gm of organic red, brown and black rice
2. 20gm of millet
3. 1500gm water
4. Sea-salt

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1. Wash the rice and millet thoroughly.

2. Soak them for two days in the fridge. Change the soaking water a few times.

3. After two days, drain the water and do one final rinse.

4. Sprinkle some sea-salt and mix it thoroughly with the rice and millet.

5. Preheat oven at 180C.

6. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

7. Spread the rice and millet mixture evenly on the baking paper.

8. Bake for 1/2 hour. Halfway baking, stir the mixture with a spoon.

9. Once the baking is done, allow to cool before grinding it with the TMX.

10. Set 1 minute/slowly increasing the speed to 8.5.

11. Store in an airtight jar.

12. You can keep it in the fridge for longer storage time.

Bon appetit!

Candida & Dr. Yadav

After trying the FODMAP diet, things were going really well at first. Then I added back foods with FODMAP for one month before I maxed out the threshold which caused the IBS symptoms to have a party all over again.

I then went back to FODMAP diet but the IBS wouldn't shut up and quiet down!

It even reached to a point that chicken, fish and EVERY SINGLE thing that I ate triggered IBS. I had even stopped having rice. The intestines were churning out rap songs, vibrato passages and electronic music. Sometimes I could even hear an orchestra in there. 

That was when the kinesiologist's diagnosis of Candida being the cause of my IBS lit a 1,000,000 watt bulb in my brain.  

How could I get Candida even when I wasn't having sugar, gluten or even rice?

And then it hit me.

PPIs!

NEXIUM.

20 years of Nexium off and on. I've had GERD since I was 19. And I'm 40 this year. It's been break-up and then make-up with Nexium. I hate it, can't stand it but when it's gone, my stomach goes bonkers, has a breakdown and meltdown and Nexium is back in my life again. 

Click on LINK to read about GERD.

Nexium is a PPI (Proton Pump Inhibitor). It reduces acid in the stomach so that the acid reflux would not injure the stomach lining and esophagus. 

And that is when the sinister characters are able to infiltrate the gut. Bacteria and fungi are able to create havoc in the gut. Especially H pylori and Candida. 

So the million dollar question would be "How shall I get rid of Candida"?

Do I even have Candida in the first place? Why was I never tested for Candida?

I then decided to see Dr. Yadav about it. Maybe this Candida thing had something to do with screwing up my immune system. 

The night before I saw him, I had a terrible episode of IBS. This time I broke out in hives! This has never happened to me before. I started itching from head to toe. It was as though I had hundreds and thousands of ants crawling all over me. I felt so terribly sick that I woke my hubby up in the middle of the night and told him that something was so very wrong. He of course went into panic mode. (The anaphylaxis episode 8 years ago flashed before his eyes.) I swallowed a Piriton antihistamine and then monitored myself. The hives and itch disappeared. 

Morning finally arrived. We went to see Dr. Yadav. Stoned and groggy like the Walking Dead, I stumbled into his office and related to him what had happened. He said that I had eaten something which had some bacterial activity and I had a reaction to the toxin that the bacteria produced!

What did I eat? And then it struck me. I had forgotten about some food which I had cooked and left it on the dining table for a few hours. Even though it smelt good and tasted good after reheating it to boiling point, the bacteria had taken a foothold in the food. And I basically had food poisoning (with no diarrhoea)!

So we talked about Candida. I told him I read about Nystatin being a good medication for Candida. He said that it is and it's one of the pioneer drugs for Candida. The good thing about Nystatin is that it does not get absorbed into the blood stream. It enters the stomach, cleans the gut and out it goes!

I also brought up about being bitten by ticks back in November when we went on a vacation. The bites were still flaring up 5 months later! And they flared up pretty badly whenever I had chicken eggs or prawns. I could have chicken eggs and prawns prior to these bites. Dr. Yadav explained that shellfish and ticks have a similar chemical compound. So that could be causing the flare ups whenever I had prawns. Chicken eggs are high in histamines. So he took some blood for some tests.

We went to purchase Nystatin after seeing Dr. Yadav.

It is supposed to be taken three times a day; 5ml each time. I remember about 10 years back ago, a doctor at the ER in a hospital adviced me that whatever medicine I took, I should take a small amount and wait to see if I had any allergy reaction to it. And if I didn't, then I would take a little more the next round and waited.

So I took 2ml of Nystatin in the evening and waited. And I was fine. I took 5ml the next day in the evening and continued with one dose only. By the third day, all the bloated feeling and gassiness were gone. I could eat food that were on the high side of the FODMAP diet with no issues. I continued Nystatin for two weeks.

The Candida problem was finally solved!

But the nagging pain in the stomach didn't go away....

(...to be continued)

A Not So New 'Toy'

I got this pressure cooker many months back. This has travelled with us to Penang and to Johor. This pot is quite the traveller!

The best part about this pot is that it can be used with or without its cover. If you want to have fried rice, you can remove the lid and use it like a wok/frying pan.

I've cooked many dishes with this. I've used the bake function with fish, chicken and pork. I've even 'stir fried vegetables' with it. The pressure cooked boiled soup is fantastic.

I haven't tried the cake function yet.

Black eye peas soup

Hairy gourd with scrambled eggs

Fish balls fried rice

Minced pork with potato strips

Why a pressure cooker?

For people like me with salicylate sensitivity, we sometimes can be sensitive to histamine, amines and a whole lot of other stuff. Cooking food for long periods of time releases histamines, amines and glutamates. Thus a pressure cooker can achieve a dish which is supposed to be cooked for a long period of time in a short time.


P.s. Phillips should pay me for the advertisement.... Haha.

Failsafe Potatoes

*picture taken from HERE

Thermomix Boiled Rice (Revised Version)

Ingredients:

1. 400gm rice
2. 1500gm water

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1. Place the 400gm rice in the simmering basket and place it in a container large enough for the basket to be covered in water.

2. Fill the container up with water and allow the rice to be soaked overnight.

3. Pour and drain the water away. Rinse the rice a few times under running water.

4. Fill the TMX jug with 1500gm water.

5. Place the simmering basket into the jug, cover the lid (without the MC) and set 21 minutes/90C/Speed 4.

I selected Speed 4 so that the water will wash over the rice. Look at the foam that came from the rice.

6. Once the rice is done, I covered the lid with the MC and let the rice sit in the jug for 1/2 hour before serving.

The starchy water. Apparently plants love this water. I have yet to try giving this water to my plants.

Bon appetit!