Yeast Free Living

Archive for the ‘Candida diet tips’ Category

My oldest daughter and I enjoyed a late night movie yesterday courtesy of Cablevision.  Cablevision is our cable, Internet and phone provider and they have a Rewards program known as Optimum Rewards for customers who use all three services.  For several years I have seen Cablevision commercials boasting about free movie nights at Clearview Cinemas for their Rewards customers but have never really taken advantage of it.  Since my daughter is out of school now and I am scrambling to keep her from being bored these two weeks before theater camp starts, I figured I would try to catch a few flicks with her, as there are several kid friendly choices in theaters right now.  The thing is that going to the movie theater these days is so expensive and I of course want to do it as cheaply as possible.  My first thought was going to a matinee but then I remembered the Optimum Rewards program.  The Optimum Rewards free movie night offer is valid for 2 free tickets for any movie at anytime at a Clearview Cinema theater on Tuesdays.  You have to get to the theater really early as many other Cablevision customers are trying to see free movies too.  In typical Tennille fashion I was late to the theater yesterday and all the kid friendly movies such as Toy Story 3, The Karate Kid and Shrek 4 were sold out.  The next showtime available was not until 10:00 PM for Toy Story 3.  I thought for a moment and then decided to get the tickets for the 10:00 PM show remembering that my daughter didn’t have to get up for school or camp in the morning.  We drove back home with the tickets in hand in order to kill some time.  I was actually really happy about what would seem like an inconvenience to most because when were rushing to the theater for the 7:30 PM show I did not have time to prepare and therfore was not equipped with any yeast free snacks to ward off the temptation of the movie theater concession stand. 

Popcorn is a problem for me, especially movie theater popcorn dripping with buttery topping which you can now add to your hearts content all by yourself at many theaters.  I don’t really know what is in buttery topping but I am pretty sure that it is not yeast free and it probably has very little to do with actual butter.  Additionally on the way to the movie theater the first time we past the party store which has many of my favorite nostalgic candies such as, Fun Dip, Pixie Sticks, candy corn, Smarties lollipops and Necco Wafers to name a few.  I am a candy addict and have conditioned myself to always enjoy one of my favorite sugary treats when I am taking in a flick on the big screen.  At one point I was not sure if I should even go to the movies because it seemed like out of nowhere I started to get all of these cravings.  I did not give in though.  After we bought the tickets to the 10:00 PM show and went back home this gave me the chance to use the air popper to make so candida diet friendly popcorn.  I sprayed the pocorn with olive oil cooking spray and added a little bit of sea salt.  I then put the popcorn in a brown paper lunch bag so it would have sort of a movie theater feel to it.  I also made a cup of green tea with stevia and lemon to help with my sugar cravings.  My daughter grabbed some strawberries for herself and we grabbed some bottles of waters.  The movie theater is tough for my daughter too as she is allergic to corn and corn is in everything.  We got back to the movie theater right on time with are yeast free goodies stashed in my purse.  We went right in as we already had tickets and I tried not to make eye contact with the concession stand.  I noticed someones over flowing bag of bright yellow popcorn out of the corner of my eye but tried to refocus.  I looked down at my purse and I immediately felt comfort knowing that my yeast free snack was tucked away and that I would be enjoying it momentarily.  Today I am reveling in my yeast free triumph.  My daughter and I really enjoyed Toy Story 3 and we will be looking forward to enjoying more of these movie nights yeast free.

I have been getting a little frustrated when cooking over the last couple of weeks.  It just seems like it takes so much effort to make a meal and sometimes I just don’t feel like doing it.  I started to reflect on how I was preparing meals and what specifically was frustrating me the most about preparing them.  There were 2 areas that I thought of that are making candida diet cooking harder than I believe it has to be.  The first area is my spices.  My spices were all over the place and it took me too long to find what I needed when I needed it.   The second area is all of the different gluten free flours I am now using.  I must have at least 10 different types of flours and/or flour starches in my refrigerator.  They are all in their original bags slightly torn and as I take each one out to use it flour always spills all over the place as I am trying to get an accurate measurement.  Additionally this makes for a very sloppy refrigerator and makes me long for the days were one bag of all purpose flour was sufficient in my household. 

So here I identified 2 areas that I needed to get organized.  I knew that if I could make using both the spices and flours/starches easier maybe candida cooking could be easier.  I indulged in a few new kitchen purchases to organize these two areas.  For the spices I bought the Tagco Spice Stack – White from Amazon and for the flours/starches I bought Snapware 60713 32 Oz Square-Grip Canister from the container store. 

The Spice Stack is something I had been looking into buying for a while but just never got around to ordering it.  I knew a long time ago that I needed something to help me keep my spices organized but when I am on the candida diet organizing my spices becomes even more important.  Candida cooking requires creativity and some of this creativity is fueled by the use of spices.  Mixing appropriate spices helps you to create splendid candida diet meals and if these spices are not organized and therefore hard to find cooking becomes harder than it has to be.  So far my spice rack has really helped me to work towards an organized kitchen.  I can now find my spices easily and have them right were I need them when cooking.  I bought the larger spice rack, that holds up to 27 spice bottles.  If you do not use that many spices there is also a smaller one Spice Stack available that holds up to 18 bottles.

I needed to find a good way to organize my flour/starches so I set out to the container store.  I love the container store.  It inspires me to organize everything in my house.  There were a few items that I looked out that would work for this task such at stainless containers and/or glass containers but in the end I decided on Snapware plastic storage containers.  They are shatterproof and this was very important to me because I am clumsy and I do break things.  They were also pretty affordable compared to the other choices.  They were also listed as BPA (Bisphenol A) free at the store but I was not certain that this was true since BPA free was not listed on the product labeling.  As I am sure many people are aware of there is much debate over whether BPA are hazardous to our health.  I called the company to verify and found out that these containers do indeed contain BPA.  I thought about taking them back but I decided that since I was not going to be reheating things in these containers that they do not pose a risk to our health.  I realize that some people may still be concerned and may want to go with an alternative method of storage.  There are many options and I encourage you to choose what is right for you.  I bought 4 – 64 ounce containers and 6 – 32 ounce containers.  This really helped me to store the flours/starches in a much more organized way.  I labeled each container using freezer tape and a Sharpie. 

I feel like organizing these 2 areas in my kitchen will help me do my daily candida diet cooking with ease.  If you are stuggling in kitchen organization I hope these ideas are helpful to you.

Gluten Free / Yeast Free Pancakes are on this week’s Candida Diet menu a lot.  I just want to state that I do not get up every morning and cook pancakes for my children.  I barely have time to shower in the morning so cooking anything is usually out of the question.  This recipe does have a lot of ingredients but once you do it a few times it becomes second nature.  I was pleasantly surprised that I could actually make these from memory this past weekend. 

I do miss those days of a quick bowl of cereal in the morning but try finding cereal without corn, wheat or soy in it.  Some mornings we do eat Puffed Rice Cereal but the kids seem to tire of this easily.  So what I do is take about an hour on Sunday to cook a stack of these pancakes.  Once they cool I place 2 pancakes in each freezer bag and put in the freezer for easy use during the week.  This makes it so easy to heat up in the morning and then my children get to eat a hot breakfast without all of the fuss.  These pancakes are okay for the candida diet just skip the syrup.  They really do taste like regular pancakes and retain this taste even after they are frozen and reheated.  In addition to being okay for the candida diet they are extremely allergy friendly.  I make them free of wheat, eggs, soy, corn and dairy.