Hi my loves- are you having a good week??? Things are back to the grind over here but I am already making summer plans and life is good! Are you going to the beach this summer or any other vacation plans?
A lot of you have asked me questions about food and healthy eating and I wanted to just share my own personal experience. I’ve talked about the importance of eating your veggies before (because your mother told you to when you were little).
**Just as a disclaimer-I am not a trained nutritionist, dietician, or healthcare professional. Everything written here is based on my own opinion and personal experience.**
I have been working on maintaining a low gluten, dairy, and soy diet for the last several months. I have also cut out all nightshade vegetables for the most part(veggies that are known to cause inflammation) and raw nuts. I know that list seems long. While I would like to be totally free of all of those, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t eaten cheese or had a beer. So all in all I am just working on finding a balance of not eating a high amount of those things. For me when I do eat all the yummy things like pizza and my granny’s potato salad, me knee swells up and I had a stomach ache. Womp womp.
What I wanted to briefly talk about was food combinations. I learned a lot about this through my naturopathic doctor and it is basically the theory that certain foods don’t digest well in your system when eaten together.
(source)
It can be kind of confusing- but if you feel like you may have some tummy issues I would read over the chart because if you just make a few changes you may see a difference.
The other thing I wanted to say is that if you are trying to clean up your diet- don’t just go all or nothing. I think sometimes it’s easier to start small so you can stick with it. Make a smoothie or salad, have a stash of berries and nuts, carrots and celery with hummus, and then you’re a little more prepared. Don’t switch to all raw all at once because if you’re not used to eating it, your belly will be upset. And while you may think you feel great (like I did eating soy veggie sausage all the time) you don’t realize what hurts your stomach or clogs your sinuses until you eliminate them from your diet. If something is in your system all the time you can’t really tell it’s effects.
(source)
________________________________________________________
Last week I was asked if I would review some locally made, all natural, gluten free, vegan, sugar free salad dressings. Yes please.
From their fact sheet:
Tessemae’s All Natural is what real salad dressings should be—a few quality ingredients, simply mixed together. Available in a variety of flavors, Tessemae’s can be used as a dressing, marinade, dip or sauce.
What I also love about this brand is that they are family and locally owned- all in Annapolis, Maryland!
This is the Vetter family. Mom is the original creator and her three sons and daughter-in law run the business. Aren’t they such a cute family?
I was lucky enough to test their lemon pepper and the balsamic dressings.
I will talk about the balsamic in another post- but I was surprised at how much I loved the lemon pepper! I normally probably wouldn’t pick that one off the shelf but it was perfect to make with salmon. I marinated a piece of salmon for 30 minutes in the fridge before cooking it (you could leave it longer for more flavor). I cooked the fish in a frying pan with a little bit of cooking spray just to coat the pan and poured the marinade in with it.
Yes- I ate all of this. It was super tasty and GREAT for a warm night. Not too hot and nothing too spicy. Loved it. You must make it. The lemon paper would also be great for grilling shrimp or pieces of tofu if you’d like. The veggies were just steamed and I added some of Trader Joe’s 21 salute seasoning.
Tessemae’s is sold currently at Whole Foods and it’s in the refrigerated section. They are about to expand their line to other dressings, dips, and hot sauce. Hopefully I will be lucky enough to try them!
Happy Thursday!
xo,C
