Cooking My Fears Away

     Having a condition that severely limits the amount and types of food that I can eat left me with a real love hate relationship. On the one hand I love to eat! The fact that I was always sick after eventually lead to my fear of food. Surprisingly, cooking became like a form of therapy. I missed having food in my life, but didn't want to deal with the way it made me feel so I started cooking all the things that I missed for my family. I was able to take in the process, the smells, the colors, the textures, and mostly I loved the looks on their faces when the food would come out a success. By cooking for someone else, I was able to focus on the food in a more relaxing environment rather than the stress and anxiety that I normally felt.
     Between the cooking and finding the right medication and therapist, I'm finally getting to the place where food is not the enemy and lately I've been using my new found cooking skills on myself. I'm definitely starting slow with foods like toast with almond butter, creamy grits, egg white muffin cups, and homemade smoothies to build up the foods that my stomach is able to tolerate and also to get into a good routine of eatting healthy foods rather than relying on empty calories like juice, fruit snacks, and Jello which have become my staples over the past months.
    Now for all you Android lovers out there who also enjoy cooking, I have a great app suggestion for you! To keep all the new recipes that I want to try for me and my family organized I have been using a free app called ChefTap which takes just about any recipe online and puts it into an offline cookbook on your phone that is easily accessible. I love that it allows you to tag all your recipes so that they are easy to find. I use tags such as GP friendly (for all of my recipes that are easier to digest for my GP tummy), dairy free, gluten free, single serving, and quick fix but because you can make your own tags the options are endless. The app allows you to take your own pictures for the recipes or to import pictures from the original website. You can also add your own recipes so it's a great place to store all of those old family recipes that never want to be found when you actually need them. The designers of ChefTap do have plans of converting the app to be iPhone friendly at some point in the future, so all you Apple people will have to be a little patient but I promise you it will be worth the wait!
     As I try different recipes, I will be sure to post them because I know how easy it is to get stuck in a rut with having a few "safe foods." With careful planning and a little bravery, trying new foods can be very enjoyable and I've found that every successful food gives me the courage to keep moving forward on my path back to normalcy=)