Frito pie, pigs in a blanket, green bean bacon wraps (with a brown sugar glaze!), Caramel Delite Girl Scout cookies, guacamole with pan-fried corn tortillas, hard ciders, kombucha and a sandwich cake. These are the indulgent components of a Super Bowl spread for two. I am not one of those two.
While I don’t care a whit about football, I do love an excuse for ritual around food and fellowship and the Super Bowl gives that gift to me each year. We always set aside the day for making some sort of indulgent meal full of what we call ‘fun food.’ Fun Food can be as simple as boxes from the freezer aisle (like frozen pizza for Benjamin and frozen gluten-free corndogs for me) or crockpot-pulled-pork nachos. It’s the kind of rich, indulgent fare that scratches the urge for junk food that we don’t usually make for ourselves.
Yesterday’s menu was decided on by Benjamin and his mom and shared between them. While they feasted on rich delicacies, I had to get creative about turning my regular fare into something a little more fun and exciting for the festive occasion. Since the end of June my digestive system’s been quite ill. With plenty of visits to the doctor over the course of 3 months, I got things stabilized by sticking to my prescribed diet, taking a few supplements as needed, and creating a rather extensive daily self-care routine. While it was harder to stick to specific parts of my diet and self-care once we hit the road, I modified things the best that I could to ensure I stayed on track. My goal was singular: to be healed enough to enjoy traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with family.
Thanksgiving went well, but Christmas (four of them) was much more indulgent and then my birthday followed just a week later. By the start of January my symptoms were returning. Stupidly, I stubbornly ignored them because I was in denial - naturally this only made things worse. In painful desperation I returned strictly to my prescribed diet two weeks ago and I haven’t looked back. Slowly I’m gaining ground, but it’s more of a lifestyle commitment than a quick fix and I absolutely can’t afford to make any compromises (the Denial ship has sailed and I am now fully on board with Acceptance of my situation!).
Still though, the ritual around fun food is a cherished one - so the question became ‘how can I make my prescribed diet feel more festive?’ Here’s what I can eat these days - for every lunch and dinner this is pretty much what I’ve eaten the last two weeks: baked fish, baked sweet potato, and this thing called ‘green composite’ in which I cook the heck out of leafy veggie greens for over an hour then puree them with a couple of other ingredients including a fresh, uncooked herbal kind of green. I use ghee and prescribed salt and herbs to season my food.
Another facet to my digestive woes is that I absolutely cannot go too long between meals under any circumstances or it will start to make me feel ill again. Luckily I’ve found that basic Lara bars (no chocolate) sit well enough with me if I eat them slowly. A bar can get me through an oncoming attack if I’m out running errands and can’t get a meal in my stomach right away. These days I don’t leave the house without a Lara Bar (or two) in my bag. The last component of my eating these days is almond milk. If I’m still feeling a little hungry after a snack, I’ll have a swig of unsweetened almond milk. It’s filling and it hasn’t upset my stomach.
So there was my challenge: how to make a festive, indulgent meal out of those items alone. I’m very pleased to say I totally pulled it off! I started by making a fresh green-composite. While I rotate my cooked veggie greens each time I make it, I’ve only found cilantro palatable for the fresh herbal green (parsley was just way too strong!). But there’s also delicious, tasty, beautiful basil. I love basil so much, I just don’t use it regularly because it’s so much more expensive than cilantro. But for a festive game-day meal, basil was the perfect indulgent component!
So with my fish, sweet-potato, and greens fortified with delicious basil I was left to solve the conundrum of drinks and dessert. For dessert I cut up the four Lara Bars that I can eat into small squares and heaped a bowl full of them. This allowed for the indulgence of a little something sweet, in tiny bite-sized pieces, with a mix of flavors (a surprise in every bite!) and I could just snack on a few (since I certainly didn’t need to eat a whole bar in addition to my meal). It worked out perfectly! It was also a dessert that others would enjoy. Contributing to the spread and sharing with others made me feel more like part of the party.
When we were traveling in southern California last November we pulled into a Whole Foods because I found myself in need of putting something in my stomach right away. While browsing for readymade food and drink that I could travel with I discovered individual-sized date-sweetened almond milk and I was filled with so much excitement and joy! When basically all I can drink is water, herbal tea, unsweetened almond milk, and aloe vera gel (and I’m so, so tired of water and herbal tea from drinking it so much) you can bet that finding a travel-sized serving of creamy almond milk that was made with legal ingredients was such an exciting highlight for me!
Yesterday, in a grocery store in west Texas, I walked by an end-cap full of kombucha and stopped to pick one out for Benjamin. There in the top, right corner was that same brand of Californian almond milk! I bought two of them and added them to my meal like I’d found the crowning glory to my festive feast (which, let’s be honest, I had).
After 6.5 hours of grocery shopping followed by crafting the festive contribution for others that was most certainly not on my diet, I heated up my fish and sweet-potatoes (baked the day before), added my fresh-made basil greens, chopped up my Lara Bars, and selected the most indulgent of the two almond milks and sat down to enjoy the final minutes of the football game.
I’m most delighted to say that I succeeded. The food was savory and delicious, the Lara Bars were a sweet treat, and the creamy golden almond milk was a chai-lover’s dream. I ate all the food on my plate, just a few of the Lara Bar pieces, and about 2/3 of the almond milk, and it all sat pretty decently in my tummy. Truly a massive success and one of which I’m most proud.
In the early weeks of January during my Denial period I kept eating the rich indulgent foods offered to me because I so badly wanted the delicious food and the fellowship that came with it. But it only made things worse. I’m much more satisfied by accepting the current situation and putting my creativity to the test to find a solution that makes me feel both indulgent and part of the fellowship all at the same time. As Benjamin often reminds me, ‘creativity likes constraints.’ It led me to a winning situation where my body, mind and heart were all nurtured and delighted.