Thoughts on future food prep

I just figured out why I've been not feeling well so often in the last several months. I've been using ground ginger and dried celery flakes in my various dishes and it turns out they are dried and preserved and/or dried with sulfur dioxide.

Anything that deals with sulfur and food makes me sick. No Mounds or Almond Joy for me. No mass produced breads with fancy dough conditioners. No mushrooms. No sea food. No Worcestershire. No wine. Hell, no grape juice. It doesn't matter if it is a sulfite, sulfide, or straight up sulfur. I get sick.

The reactions vary depending on what concentration I've ingested and what type of food stuff I'm dealing with. I can only eat sweet or green onions. I can only eat so much garlic before I'm miserable.

And now my spice cabinet is being attacked...

Well FH and I love fresh ginger, so that isn't a problem. I'm just annoyed we were out this morning and I couldn't have any in my oatmeal. And celery flakes can be worked around again by using fresh. But that leaves many questions about the other bottles that are in the kitchen.

So now we're going to systematically go through every seemingly innocuous bottle and jar of spices to make sure we can be warned. And probably take a trip to the spice aisle at the store to do some recon.

Hopefully whatever else contains the sulfur can be worked around. I'm tired of saying "I can't eat that, even though I love it." Or, "sorry I'm allergic." Or, "umm... there's nothing on this menu I can eat except a dry salad, hold the mushrooms and onions."

What kills me is that this started in my late teens and has gotten worse as time goes on. I had time to learn to appreciate fine wine, enjoy sushi, and develop an obsession with coconut in confections.

Recently we have found one winery in the States that makes wone I can drink. They ferment in a room filled with nitrogen gas. Yay for anerobic environments. I can get fresh coconuts and extract the meat out myself for sweets, and have in the past. Fortunetly we found a store that sells organic coconut nearby. Less work for chocolatey, coconutty goodnees.

So I guess we'll figure out more after our trip to the store. This whole mess is getting on my nerves though. I decided not too long ago that if I'm ever diagnosed with something terminal that I'm going to eat what I want in my last couple of days and damn the consequences. I'm going to go out with a smile on my face and favorite, good, and maybe new tastes on my pallet.