self proclaimed vegan

It took awhile for my sweet husband to declare me a "vegan", but with the help of Nick chiming "mom is a gluten-free, vegan, pescitarian"; Kevin finally accepted that this "phase" was not going away! The journey began back in November, and as I am approaching the year mark I must admit that I like how I feel. Although it is always a little scary to utter the word remission (I feel like I need to knock on every piece of wood in my house) my symptoms have completely disappeared. It wasn't an over night sensation, as a matter of fact, I went through a period of feeling pretty badly months after I started this restrictive way of eating. Just when I thought that my disease was going to take me to a low place--boom I started feeling good and then great. We took a trip this early summer to Belize. It was hot, humid and of course amazing. I expected that the heat would bring on some of my symptoms, it never happened. I stuck to my diet by soaking huge pots of black beans, throwing in a lot of belizan spices and marie sharps incase it wasn't already spicy enough, pairing it with rice and fresh avacado. Aside from plantain chips this is what I ate, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Surprisingly, Belize did not have fresh greens of any sort. Kevin and I would walk to the market just down the street, run by Elvis, his wife Lilly and their two young children, the youngest daughter was placed on a changing table in the open doorway of the market where the breeze would lift her black chinese baby hair straight up. For a market run by a Chinese family, I was surprised that I couldn't find fresh veggies, later in the week we drove down to the larger town of Placencia and went into another Chinese run market--much bigger than Elvis' and was amazed to find no fresh fruits or veggies. Salsa comes from a jar out of Texas and no lemons anywhere in the country. For some reason I pictured, cilantro, tomatoes, peppers, onion in abundance...well I happily settled for good old beans and rice and by the grace of God, fresh avacado.