Finals, Food, Travel, Caramel Color, Energy Drinks, and Cake Balls

It's been a long time since my last post...I have been quite busy. Since the last time I posted, I have: 

• finished a final project and given a presentation on it in programming
• peeled through like 6 layers of skin because of my sunburn (it's still going)
• cut my bangs (they look very snazzy when I care to fix them)
• done lots of school work (boo)
• visited my boyfriend's home town with him (and because of this, experienced traveling with my food restrictions, details further down)
• studied for a final and made studyguides (those darn things take forever)
• taken my first final

Unfortunately, my foot has not healed, so I cannot add that to the list. I have still been limping around annoyingly. I don't get it. The cut wasn't deep, but it hasn't healed very well. The slit is still in my heel and it hurts insanely when I step on it. Thank goodness for dead week so I got a break from walking. And I even pulled off wearing heels one day. They were good heels to wear, they had an ankle strap and were loose sandel-like so I could walk on my toes and no one really noticed. 


Food I have been surviving off of: 


I haven't really made anymore meals because I didn't have the time and didn't want to stand up that long. For a few days, I ate this chicken my grandma had given me for the freezer - she had pre-seasoned it and stuck it in individual little wrappings for me. I put it on a cookie sheet and baked two pieces for each meal. It was reallllly good chicken, I still need to thank her again and ask how she made it. 


I also ate Cream of Rice. It's in the frozen section of the store, and it's surprisingly a lot more like cream of wheat than I expected. It was good, here is a picture I stole from google images:

And I don't know if I mentioned it, but I did try Kinnikinnick white bread 

http://www.kinnikinnick.com/

not the "new soft white bread" that they advertise on their site, but just the stuff they have had for a while because the soft stuff isn't in my stores yet. I ate almond butter and this jelly with it: 

Ok, now this Red Raspberry stuff is probably one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten. Seriously, I ate like two sandwiches and almost downed the whole jar. Unfortunately, it made me horribly sick. I'm fine with the raspberry, but apparently I cannot handle grape juice concentrate, which is the only other ingredient in this jelly. If you are cool with grapes, I highly suggest eating this by the jarful. 

As far as the bread, it was pretty good. Almost like real bread. It's a little lighter than my normal Food For Life Brown Rice Bread that I normally eat, but it's still got that spongey texture a bit. I've been really impressed with kinnikinnick's products though so far, and I'm hoping to try their new breads soon. 

Something that I was not impressed with was Katz Rugelech:

Another google image here. Probably should serve me right for buying something I couldn't even pronounce. But it was like everything free and looked kind of like a chocolate version of cinnamon rolls. They are actually kind of dry and unappealing though. I ate one, and the rest have remained untouched in my freezer.

I made steamed asparagus again, and it will probably be the last time. I had bought a lot of it because it's fast and easy to make, but when I started eating it, it triggered my gag reflex for some reason and well....let's just say I never want asparagus again. 

About this time is when I went to my boyfriend's home town. His family asked what they could make that I could eat, which was very sweet and I hated having them worry about that, especially since my diet is so specific. It's difficult to tell someone, you know? You start out with, "Well i can't have gluten, which is like all breads and pastas, and I can't have dairy, so no milks, cheeses, butter...no soy, so basically not 95% of the products you buy in the store (like seriously? Do they have to add soy to EVERYTHING?)..." and then it goes downhill from there. You can practically hear their head explode, or imagine it happening. I ended up saying the most normal foods I could have (rice, meats, veggies, etc) and then packing a bag of food just in case. But then I feel bad because what if they wanted to eat the food I was eating? I don't have much of my own kind of food. So I brought stuff that I could keep with me (except the bread went in the fridge), that only was really appealing to me: 

Food for Life brown rice bread and almond butter, dried figs, Enjoy Life Happy Apple cookies (pic below), and Minute Ready to Serve White Rice Packs (pic below). 

These aren't the greatest. They don't taste very good and are kind of grainy, but I realized they were a godsend for me when I needed to eat something quick and didn't want to have to leave my room to go to the fridge or microwave. They provided sustenance without preparation and no one else would want them lol.

We ended up going to Whataburger for dinner one night and Chili's for dinner the other night. Both have allergy menus separated by allergy. I was in a hurry looking at the menu for Whataburger and got a #3 without a bun or mayo, so I basically got a chicken thing with lettuce and tomato. It was seasoned so I spent a while scraping all of that off. It ended up making my stomach hurt, but not terribly, and as soon as I felt it I rechecked the allergy info and realized it had soy. Can't escape it. 

At Chili's, I was basically left with two options: Classic sirloin or Classic something else. I went with the 6oz sirloin with no seasoning and no butter. I traded the loaded potato it came with for avocado slices, and got the steamed broccoli without seasoning. 

The steak was fantastic, I was really amazed that it wasn't seasoned, I thought it was a trick and was sure I'd get sick. I ate all of it and didn't get sick and was happy. $9.99 for 6oz by the way. Not terrible for a restaurant. Jonathan got red wine with his steak which I took a sip of, and it didn't make me sick either. I still don't understand alcoholic drinks honestly, "Uh, yes, I'd like some alcohol with my juice please. That extra burning in my throat makes this meal so much better."

Since I've been home, I've been making egg wraps: scrambled eggs, Pace picante sauce, and Food For Life Brown Rice tortillas. I think the picante sauce makes me kind of sick, but it's hard to tell because i've been eating lots of difference stuff at once because it's finals time and i'm out of my mind. Ok, the brown rice tortillas: They smell bad when you warm them, they feel kind of gross, and they are basically just so the egg stays in one place. I can eat it no big deal, but you need a steak knife to cut it with and it's like chewing on a beef jerky tortilla. CHEW CHEW CHEW CHEW CHEW ON THAT ROCK JERKY "TORTILLA."

Lucky for me I get sick of eggs within like 2-3 days so I no longer want to eat that meal for a couple weeks. 

Ok, so it's kind of become tradition that on dead week, I make cake balls. This year I wasn't really planning on it since I can't eat them, but then I was going to make some for my boyfriend and knew it would be too tempting to make it and then not eat any, so I decided it was time to try out making some I could eat. 

I used Betty Crocker's Gluten Free Cake mix (which unfortunately has sugar): 

and ended up with these:

I don't think I'll use the Betty Crocker cake mix anymore. The cake tasted like a light corn bread kind of, which is just weird considering it was supposed to be a WHITE CAKE. It wasn't terrible though, so I went with it. I think next time I'll try Pamela's. I have heard a lot of great things about those mixes. 

The icing was a tricky thing....how to make icing without sugar or powdered sugar? How to make icing that way that didn't require me to jump through hoops? 

I ended up finding this recipe: 

http://realsustenance.com/glutensoyrefined-sugar-free-and-vegan-white-cake/

Here is my edited version of her Buttercream icing: 

• 10 Tbs Room Temp Coconut Oil  
• 6 Tablespoons of Arrowroot
• 1 TBS Nondairy Milk
• little more than 1/3 Cup stevia in the raw
• little more than 1/3 Cup agave nectar
• 1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

I'm not sure what buttercream is supposed to be like, but this kind of looked gloppy, like gloppy oil. I don't know why anyone would ever want that much coconut oil. I blended it for forever where it was basically icing consistency, but it was weird I guess. And not white because I added the agave, so like a little tan white. It tasted super sweet, and the consistency again, was kind of gross. I didn't know how to make it better because I'm unfamiliar with icings in general, not to mention freaky non refined sugar ones, so I left it be and mixed it in with the crumbled cake. 


Because I couldn't use a normal candy coating on the cake balls, I used Enjoy Life Allergen Free chocolate chips that I melted over the top of them. And I refrigerated them immediately. 
They were pretty good, definitely not edible without the chocolate. What I noticed is that they dried out really quickly in the fridge, and were kind of crumbly. Also, the cake+icing aren't fluffy or light like normal cake balls, they are much thicker and heavier, almost like a truffle maybe? Not sure. It was very...firm. 


Bad Brittany Broke her Diet Time: 


It's finals. The time of bad diets and not caring, and for me, lots of beverages. I normally spend this time drinking more energy drinks than normal (but honestly, I used to drink energy drinks every day/ most days. I loved them) but since I was trying to be good, I went to walmart to see if I could satisfy my beverage seeking without energy drinks. I had that natural soda before so I was hoping to find something natural ish at walmart. 
The closest thing I found was a Jones Soda pack. I've never had it before, but the ingredient list is like this: 
CARBONATED WATER, INVERTED CANE SUGAR, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, PHOSPHORIC ACID, SODIUM BENZOATE AND POTASSIUM SORBATE (AS PRESERVATIVES), CALCIUM DISODIUM.


Ok, so it didn't have that many ingredients and one of them was cane sugar. Who even uses cane sugar in their drinks? It's also caffeine free, so i was sold. I haven't looked up what those other ingredients mean, so who knows. It was a variety pack: green apple, berry lemonade, and cream soda. I'm pretty sure they made me sick, but the cream soda was pretty heavenly. The berry lemonade was gross and the green apple was like sucking on a jolly rancher. Good I guess, but I don't really want another. 
I also bought two all natural teas. One was gross and one I drank but didn't really like. 


Then today....I had a final at 8am. Finished at 8:47am like a boss. Decided that I would get ONE energy drink because I have two finals tomorrow and I am soooo tired, and I wouldn't drink anymore energy drinks. So I got the only available one in the machine by my bus stop since I had to wait 20 minutes for the bus anyway. Annnnnd I got immediately very sick. This is actually why I have been writing this entry instead of studying. I'm really really sick because of the stupid thing. Even while drinking it, it was hard to go down, but I paid for it, so I was going to drink the stupid thing. Granted, it was my least favorite energy drink of all: a sugar free rockstar. But still...I read the ingredient list as I was drinking it (can't exactly read them while they are in the vending machines) and it had milk. What are the odds! I was kind of angry, because I know not all of them have that. It made me research more about energy drink ingredients though. It says on rockstar's website that they are gluten free though. Did you know that caramel color and maltodextrin are gluten? And lactic acid can be made from dairy instead of beets.


here is a note on caramel color from celiac.com:
-----
The problem with caramel color is it may or may not contain gluten depending on how it is manufactured. In the USA caramel color must conform with the FDA standard of identity from 21CFR CH.1. This statute says: the color additive caramel is the dark-brown liquid or solid material resulting from the carefully controlled heat treatment of the following food-grade carbohydrates: Dextrose (corn sugar), invert sugar, lactose (milk sugar), malt syrup (usually from barley malt), molasses (from cane), starch hydrolysates and fractions thereof (can include wheat), sucrose (cane or beet). Also, acids, alkalis and salts are listed as additives which may be employed to assist the caramelization process.
-------


I looked up energy drinks and from what I can find: 
Red bull:  gluten free, vegan, wheat free, dairy free

Monster: gluten free

Rockstar: gluten free

hi-ball energy waters: gluten free, vegan, dairy free, soy free


Here is some interesting info on energy drinks and what effect they might have on you:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/88191-energy-drinks/ 


Today I'll leave you with a picture and a song...or two songs.

He always makes being on my phone so difficult. Also, let's notice my awesome Justice League shirt.

"Wild One"  for the "popular" music fix: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cetdi2BpIaA


"Somebody that I used to know" for a little retro slowness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsbF2Inokxs