In my first post, I mentioned I'd made mint lemonade. My son didn't love it because the honey taste was strong, so I've shopped around a few recipes and found a better method here than just blending the water, lemonade, and honey.

• First, you boil the water and honey together until the latter is dissolved, then let it cool. 
• Next, you add the lemon juice and refrigerate.  
• And it's best if you wait to serve until the next day when all the flavours have infused together.

It was about 32C (90F) and humid all last week. Remember how I said we live in a country with no AC? Yep. And I don't just mean in our houses, in most stores as well. And the establishments that do have AC seem to think lowering the temperature to simply 'not broiling' is satisfactory. There has been nowhere to go to get relief except my car. Even throughout the night, the heat wasn't subsiding. So my son hasn't been feeling well the whole week. I have been too hot to eat carbs, so that's been mildly helpful. But my son, who doesn't normally want junk food, has been craving pizza and I have been craving a not-slaving-away-in-a-hot-kitchen option. Of course our first week of SCD had to be an unbearable one!

This is the meal routine we're falling into now:

BREAKFAST: Fruit salad and/or eggs with a tall glass of water 

(still have yet to brave making our own yogurt but we haven't missed it yet)

LUNCH FOR HIM: An assortment of fruit and raw veggies, cheese, sliced chicken*

LUNCH FOR ME: Salads (ingredients such as: avocado, spinach, tomato, onion, cilantro, garlic, etc.)

DINNER: Meat and veg

Staple fruits, veggies, and snacks we've been using:

For drinks, we're both pretty good about water. But I also make a lot of lemonade and orange juice. It helps that we have one of these from IKEA. Flavoured Perrier helps as well. 

I also pour a jug of filtered water and soak slices of orange, lemon, and lime with mint leaves and refrigerate it for flavoured water. I just keep refilling the water as I use it and change the fruit and mint once a week. 

Since I don't use all the mint in one go, to avoid it wilting before I use it all, I fill up ice trays with water and stuff the leaves inside, then freeze. That way I can just throw the ice cubes into water or the blender for lemonade later.

We've been making smoothies. Easiest is handfuls of raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, and spinach blended with freshly squeezed orange juice. While you won't need a lot of the flavour fruits, you'll need about 4-6 oranges to make the base. More smoothie recipes here.

I have some health complications you can read about on the My Health page. It's essential for me to eat low-carb, but in the past year with my son being sick and us moving overseas and all that, I have failed to keep to my regime as much as I should. So I have felt better this week. Even my son said I look healthier.

Meanwhile, within a few days, my son's symptoms were already improving. He still has nausea and a persistent headache, but he says both have been somewhat better. He still has cramps, which I believe are partially from trapped gas and will take a while to correct if Breaking the Vicious Cycle is correct about all this. But he also has had chronic diarrhoea and, within a few days, he was much more regular. He hasn't been regular in over a year! He was terribly constipated for 5 months and then it switched to diarrhoea overnight and has been mostly on that side of the spectrum ever since. So this is a huge improvement for him.

Furthermore, he hasn't had a consistent appetite since this condition all started. It may be because without carbs, meals aren't quite as filling, but he has been hungry and asking for more all week. As a result, he's eaten more food this past week than he has in ages.

We have both been low on energy, but I'm sure the heat has played a part in that. But it is motivating to see some results already and makes me feel confident we will continue to see improvement with time. 

It's Monday and my son and I have the house to ourselves for the next couple weeks. So what better day to start? I have to say that despite going grocery shopping and stocking up on legal foods, I was still at a bit of a loss on what to make today. My son doesn't have much of an appetite, especially at lunch. He normally has cereal for breakfast, which is a solid foundation for the day. But cereal and milk are both illegal. We haven't gotten into making our own yogurt yet because he said he wasn't in the mood for it recently. I was relieved to not have to figure that out yet. This didn't leave a lot of breakfast options. So, fruit?

We started with fruit salad for breakfast. I chopped up apples, blueberries, peaches, bananas, and strawberries. For lunch, I packed him celery and carrot sticks, grapes, an apple, Babybell cheese, and some sliced chicken that had been refrigerated. (He didn't come close to eating all that, I just wanted him to have options.) For dinner, we grilled steak and had bell peppers and carrots as a side. We had bought broccoli, but it died in the heat of our house! So we had a lot of carrots today.

My son kept forgetting that he couldn't eat bread or grab a Fanta. (He doesn't drink a lot of soda. Never did and now with his sugar aversion, he drinks it even less. But sometimes, it helps his nausea to have a cold, fizzy drink.) Instead, I made fresh squeezed orange juice and mint lemonade. 

I didn't measure it out exactly, but I took the juice of three lemons, a few cups of water, a dollop of honey, and a handful of mint leaves. Then I blended them all together. I liked it, but he stuck with the orange juice.

I'm not sure we perfectly balanced out all our needs today but my son struggles to get balance with his appetite as it is. It's been an extremely hot week or two so we didn't want much more than fresh veggies and fruit anyway. Because of the heat, we actually have to keep our produce in the basement lest everything meet the same fate as the broccoli! We live in a country that doesn't have a lot of AC because until about 10 years ago, we didn't get extreme weather. But it's been in the 30's C (late 80's F) well into the evenings so this whole having to sit in front of a fan all day thing is getting old. Needless to say, we didn't get a lot of activity today but we stayed legal. 

My son said his stomach was a little better, maybe from not churning heavy carbs in his system? Who knows. Maybe it's the power of suggestion for now. As with all low carb diets, I did feel lighter and cleaner today. I'm gonna call it a success!