Mango Sorbet

For my birthday dinner with friends, I decided to contribute a fun summer dessert…mango sorbet!  While probably not the best recipe to use if your mouth is feeling the effects of chemo (there is lime juice in the recipe), this dessert is definitely a nice, fresh, summer treat.  I followed this recipe pretty closely (though I decreased the sugar) and really loved how the mango sorbet turned out!

Here’s what you will need:

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[list_item]4 mangos[/list_item]
[list_item]3 tablespoons lime juice[/list_item]
[list_item]1/2 cup simple syrup[/list_item]
[/list]

Start by peeling and cubing the mangos.  I peeled them all by hand and then just sliced away chunks of the fruit.

chopped mango

I then blended the mangos with the tablespoons of lime juice.

blend mango

blended

Next, add your simple syrup.  I made some right before slicing up the mangos and it was cool enough to use by the time I had everything else blended up.  If you need directions on making homemade simple syrup, this was an easy to follow recipe.  I only added half of the simple syrup that the recipe called for.

simple syrup

After blending again to mix in the simple syrup the liquid was ready for the ice cream maker!

icecreammaker

sorbet

After letting the ice cream maker work its magic, I froze the mango sorbet for a few hours before serving.  I even made some homemade whipped cream to top it off with!

whippedcream

and voila!

servedsorbet

Have you tried any fun mango sorbet or ice cream recipes lately?  If you try this one, let us know!

Ginger Strawberry Ice Cream – Oh My!

We have been so excited to share this strawberry ice cream recipe!  We offered a sneak peek a few weeks ago on Instagram and today we are pumped to tell you how we made it!  The best part of this ice cream recipe? The ginger!  Eat something sweet and sooth a queasy tummy at the same time!

Here’s what you will need:

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[list_item]1 cup sugar[/list_item]
[list_item]4 cups strawberries[/list_item]
[list_item]1 1/2 cups milk[/list_item]
[list_item]3 1/4 cup half-n-half[/list_item]
[list_item]a handful of chopped ginger[/list_item]
[list_item]1/4 cup basil[/list_item]
[list_item]1/4 cup lemon balm[/list_item]
[/list]

Start by rinsing the strawberries and slicing the tops off.

strawberries

Peel a hunk of ginger (you can do this with a spoon!) and slice a handful.  (I did not use the entire hunk of ginger in the below picture!)

ginger_1

ginger

Chop some lemon balm and basil.  We took ours straight from Lacuna Loft’s garden!

lemonbalm

Pour the cream and milk into a sauce pan.  Add the ginger, lemon balm, and the basil.  When the creamy liquid is warm, add the sugar, and stir until the sugar is fully incorporated and the liquid slightly thicker.

heatingcream

Remove from heat.  Blend the herb-y cream-y, sweet liquid along with the strawberries.  Cool for 4 hours (or overnight).

batter

Pour into your ice cream maker and voila!

icecream

As you can see from the above picture, there are small pieces of herbs and ginger in the creamy ice cream.  If you’d like to remove the herbs after you heat the liquid in the sauce pan, and before you blend everything together, that’s fine!

What do you think?  Let us know if you try the recipe!

Summer Pies

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE sweet things 🙂  Summertime may be the perfect chance to experiment with some delicious, fruit pie recipes!  Brit Co put together a fun list of 30 different pie recipes.  Going through the list seems like a great, calm activity to me!

Which one do you want to start with first?  Should we make a few here at Lacuna Loft and share our cooking tips with you?…maybe figure out how to add ginger into some of these to ease a queasy stomach?  Let us know!

image via

Deviled Egg Salad

I have already told you how much I have depended on eggs in the past few years.  🙂  They are a great source of protein and I ate a ton of them while going through chemo.  I found them always easy to eat when I didn’t really want to eat anything.  You can serve them up a million different ways…actually there are officially 101 ways to cook an egg which is why there are 101 pleats on a chef’s hat…did you know that?  🙂  Today we are making deviled egg salad…yum!

Here’s what you will need:

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[list_item]8 hard boiled eggs[/list_item]
[list_item]1/4 cup chopped dill (or cilantro?  yum!)[/list_item]
[list_item]1/3 cup sweet relish[/list_item]
[list_item]1/3 cup miracle whip (or mayo)[/list_item]
[list_item]1 Tablespoon mustard (I used plain, yellow mustard but you could mix it up if you wanted!)[/list_item]
[/list]

Start by hard boiling 8 eggs.  If you aren’t sure how to hard boil eggs here is an easy “how-to”

ingredients

Next, I peeled the eggs….I don’t do this very carefully (as you can see below) but the next step is chopping eggs so I don’t think it matters much 🙂

hardboiledpeeled

Chop the cilantro and eggs, placing them in a medium bowl.

dill

chopeggs

Then add your relish, miracle whip, and mustard.  If you prefer more miracle whip or more mustard (or even some added paprika) go ahead!  🙂

relish

mayo

mustard

Stir to combine.

eggsalad

Serve over toast!  (or anyway you like it!)

serveontoast

If you try this recipe, let us know!

Favorite Product: Ginger Anything

Several years ago I was put on a months-long course of an antibiotic known to be especially hard on the stomach.  Within a few days nausea became my constant and very unwelcome companion.  The prospect of months of queasiness was completely unappealing but looked pretty inevitable until a good friend bought me a giant box of ginger candies (thanks again, Rachel!).  Some studies have shown that ginger reduces nausea (see here or here for literature reviews), and it definitely works for me.

My course of antibiotics is long over, but my migraines are often accompanied by nausea, so ginger still helps.  My go-to sources are ginger tea and ginger candy, but I also cook with fresh or powdered ginger, drink ginger ale, and am open to pretty much anything else made with real ginger.

Some of my favorite gingery treats (I have not been compensated in any way for mentioning these brands or products; I just like them):

If you have any other gingery product suggestions, or other anti-nausea recommendations, feel free to leave them in the comments for me and for other readers!

Please remember that this post is the opinion of the author and should not replace actual medical advice or attention.

image via

Going Gluten Free

Several years ago I learned that celiac disease can cause migraines, and can present without gastrointestinal issues.  So I asked my neurologist to consider celiac disease as a possible cause, and he agreed to order a blood test to check for characteristic antibodies.  It came back negative.  I didn’t know much about celiac disease at the time; specifically, I didn’t know that the blood tests for celiac have a high false negative rate.  So I assumed that the celiac disease had been tested and discarded, and I should look elsewhere for an explanation for my migraines.  This was a mistake.  It turns out that about 10% of celiac sufferers are antibody-negative.  Further, gluten-intolerance (which is separate from celiac disease, and will also yield a negative antibody result) can also cause chronic migraines.  I had dismissed a promising treatment option on the basis of an imperfect test.

When I learned this, I decided to go gluten-free (GF) and see if I improved at all.  The catch is that it can take six months on a GF diet to see results (although most people see a difference sooner, some within days).  Guess who took five months and three weeks to notice an improvement?  (Sadly it did not make me feel completely better, but I’ll take what I can get!)

Keeping to a GF diet is not so hard when I eat in – there are lots of restricted foods, but lots of good alternatives.  The toughest part is eating out – many servers at restaurants don’t understand which of their foods contain gluten, and many restaurants don’t have policies in place to prevent cross-contamination.  But it is doable, and it is definitely worth some sacrifices to feel better.   And when I mess up and accidentally eat gluten, the way it makes me feel reminds me why I do this.

In future posts I’ll give advice on maintaining a gluten-free diet, secret sources of gluten to look out for, and favorite GF products.  If you are considering going GF, try and stick with it for a while.  The results might not be immediate, but if you do see them, they are so worth it.

Please remember that this post is the opinion of the author and should not be replaced for actual medical advice or attention.  Please learn more about celiac disease here and more about gluten here.  Lacuna Loft supports healthy eating whether gluten-filled or gluten-free!  Find what works best for you!

My Go To Chemo Food: Eggs!

I mentioned once before that there were two main foods that I ate while going through cancer chemo treatments….ice cream and eggs.  Don’t get me wrong, I ate other things too.  If I wasn’t feeling well though….ice cream and eggs it was! (not together though!)  Throw in a bottle of gatorade and I was a happy camper 🙂

A friend just sent me over a link of a company that is making a contraption that scrambles your egg while still in the shell…totally wild.  While I cannot endorse the product, I think it is really fun and weird 🙂

What is your go to food when you aren’t feeling your best?  Do you have a chemo food?

 

Food Tips For Chemo – Eat What Tastes Good!

Early last year, NPR ran an article featuring four tips to help a foodie get through chemo.  In the article, the author shares the four tips that she used when deciding what to eat while undergoing chemotherapy.  She emphasizes that sometimes you just have to eat what tastes good!  Here at Lacuna Loft, we thought that this advice was great!  There are so many articles out there telling you all of the anti-cancer properties of this and that and different food tips for chemo.  Once you’re going through chemo treatments though, sometimes you just have to eat what works!

My mother and I always loved a particular diet soda.  While she was doing chemo and radiation treatments, all of a sudden I noticed our beloved diet soda’s main competitor starting to appear in the fridge at home.  I couldn’t believe that she had made the switch!  I asked her about it, and she replied that the old favorite just didn’t taste the same anymore.  I experienced some of this myself, once I began chemo treatments.  While on a road trip with some friends to a wedding, we stopped at a restaurant for dinner.  I ordered something that I’d enjoyed before, but that time around, the food burned my mouth and was almost impossible to eat.  I kept asking everyone I was with to try the food, expecting that it was far spicier this time around or had some other component wrong with the food’s normal taste.  No one else thought the food tasted any different than it ever did!  Then it dawned on me…my mouth had been bothering me all day.  I guess I had pushed it to the back of my mind in hopes of enjoying the car ride without thinking of my ailing mouth.  Throughout the rest of the meal, I picked around from everyone else’s plate but nothing really tasted good.  When we left the restaurant I was still hungry.  On the way out of town we stopped by an ice cream place and I got a medium, hot fudge concrete (for everyone not from the midwest, think blizzard).    🙂

I ate a lot of ice cream while going through chemo.  Eggs were another go to meal for me.  I’m lucky enough too that both of those foods still taste pretty good to me now that I am a few years past my chemo treatments.  Other foods are still off limits though.  For instance, I ate at a Korean restaurant with some friends during chemo.  I still cannot stand the smell of what I ordered that day.  My husband and I also used to eat at a popular eatery every once in a while during chemo treatments…it was right across the street from the hospital.  It took a few months post-chemo for me to be able to even walk into that eatery without feeling nauseous.

Some of these preferences have gone back to the way they were before treatment and some of them haven’t.  I think it is just another one of those changes that cancer causes that needs to be embraced, not resisted.  🙂