Well, the day finally came where we could eat chocolate and sugar again. I used to eat at least a few chocolate chips every day. After the first initial days of withdrawal from most foods I was used to (most notably, coffee), I haven't really craved chocolate or sugar, although I had thought about how weird it was that I was able to go so long without it. I wasn't really as excited about eating it again as I thought I would be.I noticed that it really opened up what we could eat once we added sugar back in. I picked up some Kettle BBQ chips that I've been avoiding so far because of the sugar content. When I think about it, it's kind of vexing that so many foods include sugar. A little bit here and a little bit there adds up to too much sugar, in my opinion. I can see I'm going to have to think about this one as I look forward to phasing off the ED and into a less restrictive diet ahead.
Since we are on a camping vacation (in a motorhome) this week, I decided this would be a good time to test chocolate and sugar, so we could have some s'mores. To me, it's just not camping without them. I'm thinking of this week as a kind of break from our ED, without actually breaking from it, as we are keeping all (well, most) other "avoid" rules in place. I also thought it would be nice to bring some chocolate chip cookies, so I followed the cookie recipe on the back of the package of organic chocolate chips, substituting brown rice flour, tapioca flour and xanthan gum for regular flour. They turned out great! I'm not sure if it's the amount of time I've been away from chocolate or, perhaps sugar, but I found just one cookie was plenty each time I ate one, whereas before I could have easily eaten more. Maybe it's due to the rice flour? I'm wondering if it's more filling then wheat flour? I need to look into that.
So, now on to finding the ingredients for the s'mores. I found some ED friendly chocolate: Trader Joe's Fair Trade Swiss Dark and Theo's Organic Fair Trade Rich dark with 70% cacao. I didn't notice how thick Trader Joe's bars were - if you are headed out on a camping trip, I recommend Theo's even though it's a little more expensive (or even less expensive, use chocolate chips).
I found some gluten free graham crackers at PCC called, perfectly, S'moreables (pea starch, non hydrogenated shortening, potato starch, brown rice flour, brown sugar, sweet rice flour, tapioca starch, water, rice bran, sugar, blackstrap molasses, honey, glucose, salt, sodium bicarbonate, pea protein, vanilla, sodium carboxy methylcellulose, pea fibre, guar gum, inulin, soy lecithin, mono calcium phosphate). I must admit that I'm not exactly sure what some of those ingredients are, and it does include a tiny bit of soy, but I was feeling brazen, so I went for it.
Lastly, we needed marshmallows. I don't use the normal ones, since they have gelatin (animal bone) and aren't vegetarian. There are several vegan marshmallows on the market but most if not all include soy or some corn derivative, which is not too ED friendly for us. I decided to use Ricemellow Marshmallow Creme (Brown rice syrup, soy protein, natural vegan gums and flavors) because it had the shortest list of ingredients. Even though it has soy, I decided another small amount would be okay, because I believe our Naturopath has figured out what's going on with my daughter, and I guess I really feel I would be depriving my daughter to have her miss out on s'mores. Written out, it's not a very compelling argument to break from the ED, I admit. I wouldn't be doing it if we were early on, but I'm confident she isn't allergic to chocolate or sugar and she will be okay with a little tiny smidgen of soy. Wow, such excuses!
So, here's what happened. Our first day of the trip, my daughter was sitting outside with her brother for a few hours while I set up camp. Apparently in that period of time, they downed a bag of chips, a cookie each and some other snacks too (I hope some fruit). After dinner, we made a nice fire and made s'mores. Since we have marshmallow creme, instead of roasting marshmallows, we didn't actually use the fire to melt anything, and just sat near it while compiling our layers of graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallow creme. I made my daughter 2 small ones, the size of a quarter of a normal graham cracker each. However, she did use the Trader Joe's chocolate, which as I mentioned before, is pretty thick. Before bed, she told us her tummy was hurting, and around 3 in the morning she woke us up to let us know she didn't feel too good. After throwing up twice, she was fine. Needless to say we avoided making s'mores again for a few days, and even then only one small one per person. She didn't want any more marshmallow creme, and I used the thinner Theo's chocolate. I melted the chocolate onto the graham cracker in the oven which I hoped would somehow digest better.She learned a good lesson, since it was likely the combination of all the extra foods in one day that upset her stomach. She now is starting to notice that even though foods taste good enough to keep on eating, she should only eat until her body is full, then stop, even when it tastes really good. I *thought* she knew that before, but she's talking about it more at mealtimes, so I guess she needed a reminder. Later in the week I decided to bake some s'mores cookies, crumbling chocolate chunks and graham crackers into the batter. Yum! I think I've learned a good lesson myself - camping is still fun without s'mores.
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