Salicylate free pasta sauce

If somebody else is cooking the main meal, get them to cook the pasta and mince and then leave some mince out for you.

Slice a circle of red cabbage and a couple of slices of leek. Chop all this as finely as possible, including the white core of the cabbage. You can also use celery chopped finely too.

Then in a separate frying pan, using rapeseed oil, fry all the vegetables lightly. Add the mince and some soy sauce, say a quarter bottle. Simmer for a while, especially if you are having to cook the pasta.

When ready to serve add some more soy sauce, maybe another quarter bottle, and allow half a minute to warm it. The cabbage and the soy will give the sauce moisture, compensating for not having tomato.

My favourite meal!

By gum!

Thankfully I was too busy to book an appointment with the dentist last week.

The toothache caused by the garlic meal recurred nightly and I was taking paracetamol to relieve the agony. I was almost convinced there was something wrong with the back tooth - except that every morning when I woke up the pain had gone. Also it was not confined to the one spot - but cropped up in other parts of the jaw. So by the end of the week I concluded that my gums had gone hypersensitive.

My big fear is that I'll get an unbearably painful flare-up on the gums and end up with the dentist - who will assume an infection and pull a tooth or some such. I lost one tooth last year before all this was diagnosed.

But, as I write, the teeth are right as rain. Even though I went away for the weekend I managed to be tough on food without starving. I had a lettuce sandwich for one meal while others tucked into cooked food - but I survived!

I did come back with a swollen forehead. It may have been an insect nip. There's a red patch on the scalp. I took two antihistamines and slept soundly for two nights and it's gone.

Coming up, I promise: The recipe for a perfect salicylate free bolognese sauce.

Garlic and beef

Oddly, garlic appeared on my latest diet sheet as having negligible salicylate. I'm sure it was never there before.

So we used it to season the Sunday lunch - beef. The beef came out quite tough and difficult to chew and bits started getting stuck in my teeth, in the top left jaw.

That caused unpleasant irritation but as I ate it seemed as though some got stuck in the bottom right teeth too. Within minutes I was in excruciating pain and we ran off to get paracetamol. Eventually the pain died down and I survived yesterday with the merest feeling of soreness around the jaw. And a good scrub got rid of the bits from the upper teeth.

This morning the irritation was back in the bottom right jaw - and seemed to come from the wisdom tooth at the back . Now for the last 12 months any tooth problems I've had have been caused by allergic reactions and have gone away. But by this time I was thinking maybe it was time to see the dentist. After all trapped food can also cause abcesses and infection. Then the irritation started spreading to my tongue and throat. A sign of allergic reaction?

I had things to do so left it - although for the first time in months I took my Epipen with me. In time all the pain disappeared. Maybe no need for the dentist and no stuck food. Just a reaction to the garlic, I suppose.

Tonight I agreed to finish off the beef and tried to soften it by cooking it in left over gravy. Stupid thing to do. A piece got stuck in the same place in the upper jaw and this time I can't get it out. And now the pain (or inflammation) has spread to the lower left jaw, not the right side this time. So now I've taken a couple of anti-histamines in the hope of reducing the inflammation and freeing the food.

Last time I try garlic.

Shampoo!

I've finally got round to purchasing and using a baby shampoo and conditioner. I'd been a little embarrassed about going into a shop and buying the stuff so I persuaded my wife to get it. It was my hairdresser who first suggested this and the response to an earlier post finally persuaded me I had to do something about it - so thank you, Laura! No obvious reactions or burning of the skin - as I had from Imperial Leather - but my left eye is a little sore again today. That could be from the glass of whisky I had over the weekend. I'm still not sure about whisky.

I still need to get my glasses out to read the ingredients on the shampoo. The conditioner seems okay - apart from various gums and cellulose additives, which I have wondered about before.

Coffee

I crave a cup of caffeinated coffee!

Anthisan

Well I struggled awake tonight to get some work done and got around to looking up some information on Anthisan.

I found the Boots patient information leaflet which states: "Use on large areas of skin may cause drowsiness and confusion."

Now they tell me.

Hives!

Well six months down the line and I've got hives big time - I'm itching all over. It's the first time I've had this kind of itching since an incident during a summer holiday a couple of years ago before I realised what was wrong. At the time I put it down to unwelcome insect attentions. I've just spread anti-histamine cream all over me.

This is odd because I have not eaten anything dodgy for days. Today we had carrots and green beans with lunch and I drank a glass of cheap lemonade mixed with whisky. Also had a glass of whisky last night and had sausages for dinner.

However last week I had a couple of "Mediterranean" lunches because I was away from home. Although I chose carefully - eating fish, steak and lettuce, undoubtedly some herbs and peppers were used by the chefs. At one restaurant I also had an Italian ice cream covered in chocolate sauce. It turned out be made with fresh fruit, orange, lemon and raspberry. Delicious but totally illegal - although I think I am meant to be trying lemon. But that was Thursday and there were no obvious massive ill-effects as a result.

So what's the theory, doctor? I suppose it could be some kind of overload. Carrots and green beans are meant to be low salicylate, but not salicylate free. I'm meant to be trying them as part of reintroduction - and have remained a little uncomfortable with them. And sausages, even cheap ones, may also contain herbs. So if I used up my quota of salicylate last week, even very small amounts may have pushed me over the edge. And I do wonder whether whisky is really salicylate free - after all brandy is not.

I haven't written much here for a while as I have been busy. I do have some eating ideas I want to share and will post them soon

Juiced up

I think I got a little carried away at the suggestion that I try some pineapple juice.

Fruit juice for breakfast! It was months since I'd had such a treat so last Saturday, a week ago, I started off with a large glass of sweet, translucent, yellow juice.

Unfortunately the next day somebody produced some pomegranate juice drink they had obtained from Morrisons. Now I've been looking for pomegranate juice because, as previously recorded, this fruit is meant to be virtually zero salicylate. Most pomegranate juices mix in other berries which make them out of bounds. This drink was delicious and addictive and I drank almost a whole packet within 24 hours.

The problem is that this is a drink, not a pure juice, and according to the packet, made from concentrated pomegranate. At a guess I would say this means pulped fruit.

This time the big reaction was on the skin in the crook of my arm under my elbows. A spreading blotchy rash. There were other consequences too, I think, but I won't go into those. So during the week I returned to a pure diet of water, cabbage, meat, leek and celery. By Saturday morning my skin was clearing and my eyesight was so good I could read the A-Z properly for the first time in about two years.

So on Saturday I tried a small tot of pineapple juice. Well, once my skin has cleared again I will try some pomegranate drink and see if it was only the pineapple or both juices that caused the problem. It maybe I need to find a way of consuming smaller quantities of juice - perhaps diluting it in lemonade or sparkling water or even using it to make sweet and sour sauces or bolognese.

Wikipedia

Oddly enough, the best summary of the problem I have come across is on Wikipedia where there are brief but excellent articles on salicylate hypersensitivity and salicylate.

These seem to confirm that the substance is used widely in toothpaste, cosmetics and food preservatives.

Also a decent attempt to explain what the allergy is.

Redbush tea

The dietician wants me to start reintroducing some very low-salicylate foods, such as carrots, mushrooms, mangoes and maybe even onions.

She's also unable to say whether redbush tea is any good. Most herbal teas are dangerous but caffeine-free tea is okay.

Redbush is a caffeine-free, low tannin strain of real tea so should be okay. So yesterday I had a cup of redbush and a raw carrot, followed by carrots for lunch today.

One or other does not work, almost certainly the redbush tea. By yesterday evening my vision was blurred and print was out of focus. Today I have had to apply Anthisan cream to my midriff as large itchy red spots emerged. And I have a tummy ache.