Mimic creme

nancyl · Post by **nancyl** » Fri May 27, 2011 10:57 am

I was wondering if anyone has tried the Mimic Creme products (DF and SF)? I purchased the regular creme and the Healthy Top, which can be whipped into whipped cream. I tried the second last night and put it in the refrig., haven't tried it yet. You can also freeze it like Cool Whip. I will try for dessert tonight on some pudding I made. For me it needed a little sweetner so I added a little powdered sugar and vanilla extract.

I was also reading an article online in an allergy magazine. It stated that some can tolerate eggs and milk in baked products if cooked for at least 30 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Your comments, please.

Nancy

sarkin · Post by **sarkin** » Fri May 27, 2011 4:45 pm

Nancy,

I believe that tolerating milk/eggs in baked products might be different for true allergies, as opposed to the immune response Enterolab tests for. But I don't know.

I've been making a creme-like product from nuts - usually cashews for a sour-cream analog, and almonds for something milkier. It doesn't have any stabilizers, so it comes apart in coffee (luckily I'm a black-coffee drinker). But it's useful for stirring into creamy soups - I've made several soups, pre-MC, and non-vegan omnivores went wild for 'em.

The Mimic Creme products have similar ingredients as a base. They add tapioca starch, a corn-based sweetener (not in the unsweetened one, of course!), and xanthan/guar gums, which I believe would make it behave more stably. I don't know which of those ingredients work for me, so I'm trying not to push my luck. I also seem to better with very limited sugar/sweets, though I might be mixing up what threw me for a loop recently. I can see why it would appeal!

Hope you're feeling great,

Sara

nancyl · Post by **nancyl** » Fri May 27, 2011 4:58 pm

Hi Sara,
Love your photo, so glad you finally put one on the forum.
The cream has sort of a marshmallow consistancy. It was OK, not as great as dairy, but something I can use to.

Nancy

sarkin · Post by **sarkin** » Fri May 27, 2011 5:58 pm

Nancy,

I'm the perfect candidate for MC, because I don't miss dairy so much... BUT that creaminess in soups was pretty cool. I'm the kind of cook who tends to wing it, but I'll post the recipes when I make the next version. We were shocked at how easy they were - much easier than 'normal' soups, and very adaptable to different vegetables and flavors. I made one with corn, one with asparagus, and at least one other flavor - all very different and all successful. I bet they could be fine-tuned to become new favorites, even though they're not the true cream soups of your dairy-lovin' heart ;)

Thanks for the sweet comments on the picture, too (to all who commented, you guys are the best). I don't look that old in the mirror, somehow! It is nice to "see" each other.

Glad you've found a useful product that agrees with you. I have bonded really intensely with my new Sodastream seltzer maker. It's just water with bubbles in it, but it's my new best friend.

Have you been able to regain a little weight? My weight seems stable, but my strength is definitely not what it was.

Love,
Sara

nancyl · Post by **nancyl** » Fri May 27, 2011 7:29 pm

Sara,
I would love the soup recipes, so I hope you do post them. I'm glad your weight has stabilized and hopefully you will get your energy back too. Are you on any medication for the MC right now?

My weight is about 104.5 - 105 lbs. I am feeling really great right now. I'm at the gym 3 times a week and walking every day. I'm trying to build my arms up because I bought a sleeveless dress to wear to my grand daughter's wedding at the end of June. That only gives me fours weeks to fill up the extra skin. lol I'll be off Entocort two weeks before the wedding, so I am hoping for the best. I see my GI doctor next Friday. I had an endoscopy two weeks ago and have a hiatal hernia and GERD. I knew that before. I think the GERD was pretty much healed, so not sure if the MC triggered it again or not. I was still having some nasuea even on Entocort till I gave up eggs, and then again after eating french fries so I know any kind of fried food is out. I can have chips, but only a few at a time.

Like I mentioned in another post, my PCP is sending me to a food allergist, which is scheduled for next Tues. That will be interesting.

Nancy

sarkin · Post by **sarkin** » Sat May 28, 2011 6:36 am

Sounds like you're feeling much better - that's great news, and an improved weight if I'm remembering right. So far, no medication. It looks as though I'll be able to keep recovering without it, though I know a new food intolerance might pop up going forward.

I only lost about 10 pounds, thankfully. I think that's partly because I chucked out everything I thought *might* be a problem, instead of narrowing down my diet slowly. It was actually easier, in a way - and now I have all these new kitchen habits.

I hope the allergist is helpful. And I'm very impressed you're heading out in a sleeveless dress for that wedding! Good for you, and what a lovely occasion.

Love,
Sara

Post by **tex** » Sat May 28, 2011 9:25 am

Sara wrote:I chucked out everything I thought *might* be a problem, instead of narrowing down my diet slowly.

IMO, that's by far the best way to go about it. It saves months of needless suffering, since you don't have to go through the long, drawn-out process of eliminating one food, waiting until your immune system reacts to another food, then trying to isolate it, then repeating the cycle, ad infinitum. It's much easier on the body, to simply reach remission early on, and then add foods back in, to test them, one at a time. It's also a lot easier to accurately test foods when you are in remission, rather than trying to figure out what's causing the problem, when you seem to be reacting to everything you eat.

Good for you.

Love,
Tex

sarkin · Post by **sarkin** » Sat May 28, 2011 2:26 pm

Tex,

I suppose it's bad form for me to reply by agreeing with your post endorsing what I said... but I agree ;) I believe the phrase "months of needless suffering" even crossed my mind, and that was exactly what I was looking to escape, having been there with my original MC experience.

I was familiar in general with the general workings of an elimination diet, and had read the Specific Carbohydrate Diet book way back when, in my search to find answers. (How I wish I could recall which friend 'borrowed' that book - though I'm not sure it's exactly the right diet for me, I'm sure there are useful recipes.)

Knocking out suspects one at a time also increases the odds of adding disruptive something back in - if you react to three things, and take out one and don't feel better, you might wrongly conclude that food was OK. But your point is the main one, and Kari has pointed out the same thing in her recent update - how hard it is to find a 'baseline' without eliminating all possible trigger foods. Though I am tempted to credit my clever approach for my success to date, I feel enormously lucky and grateful that so few months into this, I am eating a fair variety of foods in most categories. I realize that my system may raise a few more alarm bells along the way. Yesterday I had a long hard day of work, and really crashed at the end. Today, I just came back from a shorter, but harder day of work, and feel like a million bucks. Yesterday's fatigue didn't disrupt my digestion, in any case... so I am on more-or-less the right track.

Eggs were the only food I didn't immediately eliminate, but now need to. As I retooled my thinking, my kitchen, my shopping, and my routines to eliminate what I considered my likeliest suspects, I did a lot of work and came up with some great recipes, habits, and 'workflow' solutions. All that involved eggs are now 'off the table' - I can't imagine doing multiple versions of pantry-purging and re-inventing breakfast over and over again. (I know, I may have to - make more adjustments, but so much easier to fine tune from a stable-ish place.)

As I've said from the beginning - and as I'm sure I only realized because I got here and learned from the masters - this hard road is most definitely the shortcut!

A neighbor told my husband recently that I've turned the corner - I somehow look better to her. I don't honestly know what she's seeing, but it's affirming anyway. (I was going to say "the proof of the pudding is in the eating," but of course, I can't eat pudding.)

Thanks for the encouragement and support.

Love,
Sara

Gloria · Post by **Gloria** » Sat May 28, 2011 4:23 pm

Sara wrote:I can't imagine doing multiple versions of pantry-purging and re-inventing breakfast over and over again.

I've had to do recreate breakfast many times over the past three years. I, however, don't purge the foods because I'm never certain which ones are irritants and may be introduced again, and which ones are true intolerances. Plus, I tend to buy things in quantity when they're on sale, so I have a lot of food that I can't eat at the moment. I just purchased three jars of walnut oil at half-price, but I'm truly hoping that I'll be able to replace them with the bottles of EVOO that I bought a while ago.

Hopefully someday we'll have the answers we're seeking.

I was thinking how helpful it would be if at birth they did genetic testing for food intolerances and handed a list of problematic food to the parents. Then, hopefully, the child could avoid dealing with the consequences of eating food which is harmful. Sounds good in theory, but in practice it would probably not work.

Gloria

MBombardier · Post by **MBombardier** » Sat May 28, 2011 5:11 pm

I was thinking how helpful it would be if at birth they did genetic testing for food intolerances and handed a list of problematic food to the parents. Then, hopefully, the child could avoid dealing with the consequences of eating food which is harmful. Sounds good in theory, but in practice it would probably not work.

Gloria, that is an EXCELLENT idea!! They test cord blood for blood type, etc., why not food intolerances? Of course, all this would have to become much more main stream, but even now if the parents requested??

sarkin · Post by **sarkin** » Sat May 28, 2011 5:19 pm

Gloria,

My guess is that food lists from birth might be helpful for The Biggies... I am guessing that if I had never eaten gluten, I might never have had a problem with eggs. I think that it would be great if people with GS genetics knew never to eat gluten at all, though that would be a hard sell for most folks. It's possible that some folks who are committed to Paleo/Primal eating will raise their kids this way, with little or no dairy and grains; probably not enough to make a significant shift in the percentage of folks Dx with celiac or MC down the road. But maybe it will make a difference at least to those families.

The 'secondary' intolerances are a work in progress, and seem to shift more. I'm sorry you're needing to substitute for the walnut oil, which is delicious. I haven't tried walnuts yet - they seem more likely to be a problem for me than almonds, based on having had that strange feeling in my mouth on occasion over the years while eating them. I hope the EVOO is successful for you. I have been using that, and small amounts of coconut oil. Also, my husband has cooked sweet potatoes in duck fat on evenings when he's made a duck breast. Not 'health food' according to conventional wisdom, but it worked.

I do agree that many foods that are "out" temporarily might be able to be added back "at some point." And shopping in bulk is a wonderful thing! I gave away some bulk foods recently, because I think even if they might work for me, they'll have gone stale by the time I'm ready. I do think a chest freezer may be in my future. Our kitchen is below grade, and very humid in summer, so some things keep down here better than others (canned goods, of course - flours, not in midsummer).

I have been lucky to experience relief with what I eliminated, considering my age and the double DQ2 genes and how long I've had MC without knowing about the gluten/food connection. I know that my luck may not hold, and once this honeymoon GF/DF/EF period is done, I may be headed for another kitchen makeover. Considering how fast I got on the GF/DF bandwagon, I find egg-free breakfast befuddling. Here's hoping almonds aren't next ;)

I still think this "opposite of Iron Chef" kitchen problem would make a great TV show... let's get some experts in Kari's kitchen, or yours, to name just a couple, and watch them whip up some miracle of creativity and flavor with the ingredients on the list! We ate at a high-end restaurant in NYC last year that uses some of those techniques premiered at El Bulli in Spain (foams, and 'clouds' - I don't even have a vocabulary for it, but the cutting edge techniques really made it fun and interesting, not just gimmicky). Ingredients-wise, I'm not even going to wonder whether I can eat there again, for budgetary reasons ;) But I'd love to see that kind of imagination and food-savvy applied to our breakfast dilemma!

Have a delicious weekend ;)

Love,
Sara

sarkin · Post by **sarkin** » Sat May 28, 2011 5:29 pm

Marliss,

I bet infants wouldn't show any food intolerances - not even the Enterolab tests for anti-gliadin antibodies would likely be positive till gluten's ingested (for how long - who knows?).

I have this idea that the knock-on effect of intolerances is partly 'caused' by the brewing crisis of continued gluten consumption when the intolerance is unrecognized. I would guess that if we had never eaten gluten (and maybe dairy), some of the other problem foods would never have come up - for some of us. For others, nightshades and tree nuts and some of the other suspects might always be a ticking bomb.

I don't know whether I made this idea up, to tell you the truth. It's just that the other food issues seem so varied and nearly random. Kind of like a tumbling tower of blocks - hard to predict which block will get knocked next. Of course where histamines are an issue, or true allergies, it's easier to predict what's likely to be an issue?

I think I've started theorizing in the absence of evidence now ;)

Love,
Sara

MBombardier · Post by **MBombardier** » Sat May 28, 2011 6:55 pm

Sara, what Gloria suggested was genetic testing, and that can done anytime, as genes are donated at conception.

sarkin · Post by **sarkin** » Sat May 28, 2011 7:07 pm

Marliss,

I'm ALL over that - but it doesn't exist, does it? At least we can know whether gluten is to be avoided at all costs. (In many - even most - cases, like your wise daughter's, testing the parents would make that clear.) But there is no genetic test that will tell you whether turkey or chicken, sweet potatoes or 'regular', grapes or cherries, will turn out to ruin your day.

I do (by intuition, not evidence) believe that if some of us would never have had our additional issues if gluten hadn't been in our diets. Maybe even mast cell issues would not occur if the damage of what I'm calling 'primary' intolerance had not been there.

IOW, I don't believe Kari's struggles with beef are genetic; I think they result from the cascade of other digestive issues she has been struggling with. The fact that some here (Mary Beth, Tex, Kari, and I'm sure others I'm not up-to-date with) have been able to add back known problem foods suggests that it's not all about genetics... I think!

Love,
Sara

Gloria · Post by **Gloria** » Sat May 28, 2011 7:18 pm

I think Dr. Fine has a pretty good idea about the connections between the genes and the primary food intolerances he tests. I seem to remember reading about it somewhere on his website.

Sara wrote:I do (by intuition, not evidence) believe that if some of us would never have had our additional issues if gluten hadn't been in our diets. Maybe even mast cell issues would not occur if the damage of what I'm calling 'primary' intolerance had not been there.

That is what researchers should be studying. They still haven't reached the point where they recognize that food is related to the problem. We're a long way from getting answers.

Gloria