Meal Planning – Day 4 (Making Meals)

The day everything goes wrong. Despite my best intentions, I make so many mistakes when making meals.  On Friday I decided to make some fried rice with the beef I’d previously cooked and prepped.  I added a ton of frozen veggies that were starting to freezer burn.  Then I whipped together some seasonings in olive oil.  Even eight days later I’m in pain all over.

Clearly, my mast cell disorder has been triggered by that meal.  It’s not obvious what specifically caused the problem though.  Day 1 was indigestion, the next day was intestinal pain, then my muscles and side were killing me.  Every now and then I find recipes that are always safe.  Some examples are the beef and noodles that I put on the menu as well as tacos (without sauce).

Most of the time my body reacts somehow to the food.  So here’s the breakdown of the meal ingredients I used on this trouble meal:

Dressing:

• Brown sugar
• Olive oil
• Mustard
• Five Spice
• Shallots
• Salt and Pepper

Main ingredients:

• Quinoa and white rice mix
• Prepared Beef (in soy, brown sugar, garlic, ginger, potato starch…)
• Mixed veggies (corn, peas, green beans, carrots, and I tried to remove all the lima beans)
• Cauliflower rice
• Ginger
• Garlic
• Olive Oil

Mustard is considered to be a med-high risk due to histamine levels and this mustard spice is old too.  It’s pretty safe to say that it’s not the brown sugar, olive oil, salt and pepper, quinoa/rice – though it may have been too old ( 3 weeks maybe? No visible mold or smells).  The beef itself could have been because I pulled it out and refroze it a few times but otherwise it isn’t the issue.

While the lima beans and other veggies could have caused some of the lower GI symptoms, it doesn’t explain what I felt the same day or now as I’m writing this.  I’ve never used Five Spice before but had tried it because the only spice in it that has ever caused me a problem was cinnamon.  I didn’t like the flavor that cloves added though.

Best By dates on the seasoning were 2015, 2018, and 2019.  The item I thought was the oldest had the most recent Best By date.

The Meal Prep Days

The meal prepping itself was an asset and labeling still has the potential to work.  Sadly, I unsuccessfully calculated the difference between 5/27 and 6/16 as 2 weeks.  Moving forward I’m going to look up, just for a starting point, when the food would expire (fridge or freezer).  Then if I discover it’s still too long I’ll adjust the list accordingly. 

Additionally, I’m going to prep the rice mix into the freezer to eliminate that as a potential problem.  Eventually, my prep days will be closer to my cook days but I often have excess rice so I’ll portion that out in the freezer.  I came across freezing the rice from author Dana K. White from A Slob Comes Clean.  She offers a meal prep class that is similar to how my mother prepared meals and how I learned to cook.  It worked great for spaghetti and other meals I can no longer eat due to nightshade allergies.

I’ve been staying away from the fish for now as it can be high in histamine and I’d like my system to recover first, so while the fish is still prepped I haven’t eaten it yet.  I probably need to throw out the couscous that I had planned, on Day 1, to have with it now that it’s several months past its expiration date.

Cooking Blunders

In the past, I’ve had difficulties cooking chicken without drying it out.  I’ve been cooking ground beef so long that I don’t think I could mess that up but other cuts have been overcooked on the outside and undercooked in the middle.  It would be very helpful to get chicken prepped better but for now, I’ve given up on prepping chicken.

Foolishly I used a moldy onion once.  I cut off the mold but I wasn’t aware that on moist food like onions that mold roots are invisible and release toxins.  To this day onions are challenging for me to cook with.  They are just too hit-and-miss so I’ve switched to using green onions and opting toward recipes that don’t need them so I can drop them if I’m having flare-ups.

While herbs are cheap, I’ve let them sit around too long.  It feels wasteful since I don’t use them fast enough, but they start out more dangerous to me than their fresh counterparts, so I need to let it go and just keep seasonings simple.  On the plus side, I’ve found Messel’s gluten-free beef and chicken bouillon cubes are very well tolerated.  They have no MSGs or BHTs.  There’s also a glass jar chicken bouillon that I’ve used with success.

Putting warm food items on top of other items that were already in the fridge and cool is a very common mistake for me.  I’ve noticed this messes with texture and reduces the life of that item from a few days to about one for leftovers.  My fridge has fewer shelf slots than I would prefer so I do have large spaces between shelves which encourages me to put one container on top of another.

Another realization is that if I have a side-dish left over I feel compelled to keep it because “it will save me time” but the reality is that I won’t make a meal around a leftover side and they go bad quickly.

Adjustments to recipes

My mother explained to me once that when she was learning to make something or trying it for the first time, she would make notes about what she used, how much, how long she cooked it, and what the result was.  Not just “edible” but that it was too crunchy on top or mushy in the middle.  She didn’t give up on something just because it was not well executed. Instead she made notes each time she made it.

I’m constantly substituting ingredients or using less or more of something.  Very often it was not on purpose.  I may have misread when to add an ingredient or forgot to bring something to a boil first, etc.  Most of these mistakes make a completely edible meal.  The result may lack flavor or veggies aren’t cooked through enough.  Perhaps the Pilaf wasn’t browned or something was overcooked when trying to caramelize.

Notes help you adjust the next time.  Take my recipe above.  I’ve noted that I don’t like the clove flavor in my fried rice.  Sometimes I’ve added too much mustard, so this time I added less and tried the mix as I added ingredients.  Ultimately, I probably don’t need that many seasonings in my fried rice and that note will help me keep my ingredient list small and manageable.

I also highlight and add question marks to any ingredient that I believe is suspect so I can avoid it or minimize the risk with fresh or frozen versions in the future.  I’ve spent a lot of time looking up substitute ingredients for problematic ingredients as well.

My future meal planning goals

Make a perfect medium-rare steak.  I’m also looking into pesto options for Italian dishes (I’m often triggered by nightshade vegetables such as tomato).  My ultimate goal is to have 10-15 completely harmless meals that I can trust won’t trigger a mast cell reaction and I can fall back on as a staple. I also want them to easily adapt to the veggies or seasonings that I have on hand. 

It’s possible to deviate with some regularity if the foundation is all safe and I don’t choose to go off course with the same type of food.  For instance, I can only handle about 1 Tbsp of peanuts every other week or so.  Sunflower seeds and other fatty seeds or nuts will be similar so I can’t always be making an exception with eating nuts or seeds.

Food is my greatest frustration right now because I don’t have safe vs trigger foods well defined.  Paleo or Whole30 or Gluten-free, etc. have very little in common with low-histamine diets.  Not to mention that staying on a low-histamine diet forever, will most definitely result in malnutrition.  For most people, including me, the goal is to customize our diets to what our bodies are not hurt by and gain nutritional variety from.

I’ve already done some of the groundwork.  Gluten really isn’t a significant trigger for me.  Soy is.  Soy can be found in so many “Gluten-free” substitutes, so it’s important not to trade away a negligible impact food for a known trigger.  It’s also important to know all the names these trigger ingredients might go by.

In the above recipe, I had traded away corn for potato without realizing that potato is a nightshade vegetable.  Potatoes don’t cause me as much trouble as tomatoes but I feel sluggish after eating potatoes. 

We’re all a little different so please keep this in mind anytime you try to adopt recipes or entire diets. I am not a food expert. This is still very early in my journey managing the difficulties of living with a mast cell disorder but I hope the struggles of meal planning and follow through are relatable.