Kristen Ann McLaughlin - A secluded life...

The lectin-free diet: far from deprivation

Recently I received an email from a friend who had read my blog posts about lectins: The Lectin-free experiment, the Lectin-free experiment 2, and Lectin-free cooking and commented “I was marveling at the discipline of switching to a lectin-free diet. We like all kinds of food too much to give up favorite elements of it. I guess we strive for “healthy food in moderation,” which probably sounds better in theory than its real-life application turns out. If we thought about it, we’d probably also subscribe to the popular rationalization that so much of health is dictated by DNA rather than diet. In any case, we can only admire folks like yourselves who can live without things that just plain taste good.”

Wait a minute – we’re not living without things that “just plain taste good”! In fact, I think we’re having better-tasting foods than ever before, now that I’m trying new recipes and new combinations of foods. Here, for example, is what we ate yesterday:

Breakfast: hard boiled eggs* and homemade blueberry muffins*.

Lunch: Coconut wraps filled with tuna*, avocado, red onion, shredded carrots, sprouts, and Ranch dressing. Plus pickles* and our favorite drink – Pellegrino with a splash of balsamic vinegar (so good!)

Dinner: Butter-garlic broiled cod* with roasted broccoli and sweet potato fries served with a sour cream-mustard/honey/lemon sauce. Vanilla coconut yogurt and fresh raspberries for dessert.

lt all tasted good to us. Today we had hard boiled eggs again for breakfast (our favorite) with yogurt strawberry/banana shakes. For lunch we’ll have cheese* quesadillas* with radishes and green onions and probably more Pellegrino/balsamic drinks as well as a dessert of apples and almond butter. For dinner it’s chicken* and mushrooms with millet and a salad of mixed greens, red onions, and shredded carrots and then chocolate coconut ice cream (below is our favorite) for dessert.

Looking forward to it all. Deprived? Hardly. And the bottom line: I no longer have the health issues that plagued me for so long, even though I thought I was eating a healthy diet. I did some research and decided to experiment. By avoiding certain foods and substituting others that were non-inflammatory, I feel healthier now – despite my increasing years – than when I was younger.

*okay, there are substitutions here: all fruits and vegetables are organic, but I’ve been using those for years; the eggs are pasture-raised, as is the chicken; the cheese is goat cheese; the pickles are fermented: the quesadillas are made of gluten-free almond; and the fish is wild caught. Why? You’ll have to read my other posts on lectins 🙂

Meanwhile, coming up tomorrow for dinner is spaghetti and meatballs with salad and garlic bread. (Gluten-free pasta, gluten-free baguettes, and grass-fed beef – and yes, there now are delicious gluten-free pastas and breads. Maybe I’ll give a list of my favorite brands in another post.)

Here’s to your health – bon appetit!

“Christmas at the farm…”

Nearly fifty years ago I wrote a Christmas story for my column Antiquer’s Notebook, which appeared every Friday in the Morristown, New Jersey newspaper The Daily Record. Last night I started thinking about where that column was. I’d kept copies of all my old columns, but for some reason this one had disappeared. If only I could find it again….

Building the ADU: A Year Later…

Nearly a year ago I ended my last post on the topic of Building the ADU with “The next step: pouring the foundation.” And then, throughout the rest of 2024 and into 2025 – silence here, although I did keep a daily stream of building updates with photos on Facebook . The problem there, now, is that to find the beginning or follow the sequence of what happened requires scrolling down through dozens of posts. I want to have some kind of easily obtainable record for our family to look at – or that others who are interested in the building process can check out. So: back to this blog.

Building the ADU: preparing the site

It began at the end of June with the arrival of heavy machinery needed for digging the foundation. But first, a number of trees had to be taken down that were too close to the proposed “new wing,” otherwise known as an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU). You can find out why we needed to add onto our house here. A daily blow by blow with videos can be found on my Facebook page here.

Finding Cathrineholm

One person’s giveaway is another person’s treasure.

Recently friends of mine were cleaning out their closets and garage and getting rid of items they no longer needed or wanted. Knowing I had an Etsy shop, they asked if I’d like an enamelware bowl to sell. As soon as I saw it, I knew what it was: a Cathrineholm lotus bowl in avocado and white.

The HELOC miracle

It took three months to get our HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) for building the addition to our house, otherwise known as an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU – see my last post). The whole process was a roller coaster. Without the thrills – that is, until the last day when the miracle happened.

Another building project: The ADU

We thought we were done building, that this would be our “forever house.” Never say never. Or plan too far into the future. Life has a way of taking curious and unexpected courses.

Last year our daughter, son-in-law, and two youngest grandchildren decided to return to New Hampshire after several years of living in Vermont. They moved in with us “temporarily” while looking for a house to rent. After months of searching, however, they couldn’t find anything suitable. There’s a severe shortage of houses for rent right now, a situation that appears to be occurring throughout the country.

Lectin-free cooking: beginnings

I didn’t begin the right way. When I headed off on my lectin-free cooking adventure, I hadn’t read Dr. Steven Gundry’s “The Plant Paradox.” If I had, I would have discovered his three-phased approach to this diet.

Instead, I simply found his “Yes” and “No” lists, copied and carried them with me to the grocery store and used them to choose my produce. Then I decided what to make for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Advice: read “The Plant Paradox” first.

The lectin-free experiment, part 2

It’s been about nine months now since we started this experiment, and several months since my last post about how and why we began, but after eating this new way for most of the year, I can say with certainty that we’ll never go back to “the way it was.”

Not that this new diet doesn’t come with its drawbacks, most notably in the area of eating out, whether at restaurants or at the homes of friends, which can be challenging. Being “gluten free” had its challenges, too, such as the lure of French or Italian baguettes and “real” pasta (in which case I usually indulged and simply ached in my joints for a few days afterwards), but being “lectin free” means, in addition, trying to avoid dishes containing ingredients such as white potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, peppers, and other potential gut disruptors.

The lectin-free experiment

Something was wrong. I was eating a totally organic, gluten-free diet of fresh fruits, vegetables, free-range chicken, and wild caught fish. No fast foods, no packaged foods. I made almost everything from scratch. But after meals, I often was bloated. Why? Did I have irritable bowel syndrome? Or “leaky gut”? Bloating would indicate one of those.

So I started poking around the internet, investigating both IBS and leaky gut and reading articles. I didn’t “check with my doctor,” as my own experience told me that all roads starting from that source inevitably lead, after multiple tests, to one or more pharmaceutical drugs – something I definitely wanted to avoid. I didn’t want to put a band-aid on my situation, but find out what was causing it.