random ramblings

it has stopped raining for the nth time, rendering the night cooler than ever. the rainy season has started indeed. funny since this was easier to announce than summer this year, when it was already in the middle of april when the weather began to really heat up.

the rainy season came right by on time. it started raining last thursday and it has been falling off and on ever since.

for most students, it is just the beginning of another school year. for the others, their summer vacation. and as for the rest of the metro's populace, it's another gradual slide once more into the inevitable carmaggeddon that plagues the city for the rest of the year.

as for me, the season is just that: the rainy season. sometimes i like it (because the weather's cool again), sometimes i don't (never liked squishy sneakers! who does?).

i do have a love-hate relationship with rain. but i find it does help with writing. i haven't had anything posted here for the rest of the summer. most probably it's the heat, among other things. anyway i'm glad my writing mojo has been dampened enough for me to churn out the thoughts that rage in my mind. and thanks to the cool weather, i could snuggle under furry sheets once again.

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this year's summer was certainly a summer to remember. or to forget. i wasn't in the best of spirits for the whole summer as i've been riddled with a couple of illnesses that seemed to have no end. they were concentrated in my neck area: tonsillitis and hyperthyroidism. wow. no wonder i've had trouble swallowing, been getting feverish at night yet all right during daytime. and there was the general feeling of weakness all over that i haven't ever gone to arnis training since the second week of april. i think that is the worst thing ever, the second being having no appetite. yep, yours truly lost her appetite for weeks.

at any rate, i'm just glad that there's no more tonsil problems and that my hormones are getting back to normal level thanks to the meds and countless prayers of family and friends. it's a great feeling not to feel anything lumpy in my neck anymore. it's an even more awesome feeling that i'm back to my old weight when i was still in college. ha! i know i've been rambling on in my sunday currently about needing and having to lose weight. well, thanks (or no thanks) to hyperthyroidism, that is goal number 2 achieved. goal number one was to get a belt in arnis. still, i know that constant training in arnis has helped a lot with my weight loss; having hyperthyroidism only accelerated it.

a couple of my friends said that they'd like to lose weight as fast as i had, and i only have one thing to (teasingly) ask them: you wanna get sick with hyperthyroidism too?

of course the answer is no.

my life for now with hyperthyroidism is quite the rollercoaster ride. a huge adjustment, really. mostly it's because of the food i am not allowed to eat, which includes all seafood and seafood-based ingredients, iodized salt, dairy, and egg yolks. i get the no seafood, iodized salt and egg yolk parts, but dairy? my beloved dairy??? during that first week when i was diagnosed, the wheels in my head worked overtime as to how i could substitute all that creamy, milky goodness of cheese, butter, ice cream, etc. and at the same time despairing since I NEED MY DAILY DOSE OF DAIRY! (tantrum, tantrum).

there are a smattering of health food stores in manila wherein they basically serve only those who can really afford the healthy stuff. most of the products are imported and to me seemed kind of rare and strange. come on. almond and cashew milks? since when did nuts develop udders, yeah? then again i think of soy milk which i enjoy drinking. ok, never mind.

so far i've enjoyed adding almond milk to my coffee, hot chocolate, oatmeal, and champorado. same thing with the rice milk and i do prefer it more when simply drinking it. i'm not sure about cashew milk yet but my vegan uncle swears by the cashew-based cream cheese he makes himself.

and then there's coconut milk. ha! i've been cooking and making desserts with it since time immemorial, but i haven't tried using it as a substitute for cow's milk. coconut milk is the easiest to come by because it's readily available in the supermarket. i could even get it fresh from my neighbourhood store and have the coconut meat shredded. once home, i soak the shredded coconut in warm water that covers it just so, then squeeze out the milk with a cheesecloth. a thin towel works well too. kind of like an artisanal beginning for whatever i'm planning to cook. this is also the way i grew up with long before the canned sort came out on the market.

so coconut milk it is. but what about the bread? while most of my countrymen prefer rice for breakfast, it has always been bread for me. i must admit i became a little bit obsessed about the no-iodized salt rule and began checking the ingredients of grocery items i usually purchase. lo and behold, 99.9% of what we buy at the supermarket are made with iodized salt. so just to help myself with getting better, i scoured the internet for foods made with natural ingredients. and since i couldn't live without bread, the closest thing to it that i could easily buy and make myself would be pancakes. pancakes because our oven's busted and no one feels compelled to fix it.

so far i have tried making pancakes with several additions: sweet potato, mango (fresh from our tree in the backyard), sweet potato with cacao nibs, and coco banana. my first try at making sweet potato pancakes was funny. i used purple sweet potato and i thought, purple pancakes might look just as good as those made with the orange kind. but nooooo. after mixing the ingredients, the batter looked a lovely shade of light cement gray. actually it was kind of scary since i need nourishment and my first foray into vegan/paleo/whatever cookery was turning out to be something a mad scientist might do. i cooked it anyway and as the pancakes were cooking, the colour turned from a light cement gray to a radioactive green. 

here's the photo of the finished product for reference:

radioactive pancakes, anyone? :))

don't let the colour scare you. the pancakes were actually tasty and quite filling. my mum raved so much about it so i made several more. nothing like an encouragement from mum, huh? 

there is now a stock of orange sweet potato waiting to be turned into more pancakes and more.

....

it has now been more than three weeks since i've started a change in diet for health reasons. so far, so good. in addition to pancakes, i've also tried my hand at making peanut butter, vegan ice cream and even mojos. everyone at home loved the mojos; the ice cream, not so much although for me it's perfect of course and i couldn't wait to try adding more natural ingredients to it. savoury cooking is easy since i only have to use regular rock salt for flavouring.

the breakfast, pastry and dessert making is more challenging since it's all about substitutions in the ingredients and tweaking recipes for the most part. because like i said, most of the food products sold at health stores are crazy-expensive and i only need a few items there anyway such as the dairy substitutes. now i only need to learn how to make vegan butter and cheese. 

the blender is my newest bff in the kitchen. sorry, santoku knife.