FODMAP

[Frank]

Thought group might be interested in this:

Fortunately I do not have this problem as a lot of good stuff is on the bad list.

[songbird]

yeah...

i wonder how much they've studied this in combination with looking at how much complex fiber a person is getting.

i know for myself that certain dietary things have helped a lot over the years, but most of my short-term issues were coming from commercial meats (chicken and ground stuff). i solved about 80% of my gut episodes from that alone. the remaining things seem to have responded well to increasing fiber (fruits, veggies, beans and whole grains).

i'm very glad i don't have dairy intolerances and some other things (i really like whole milk plain yogurt, cheese and once in a while we have ice-cream).

the tomato sensitivity is the one that has come on the past four years and that's the worst as we really love tomatoes and almost all our traditional dishes have tomatoes in them. once in a while i have some anyways and pay the price...

songbird

[Frank]

I found the chemistry interesting as I worked one summer as a lab tech in a plant lab where sorbitol and mannitol were made from sucrose and corn sugar and learned a lot about sugar. Sucrose is a disaccharide of glucose and fructose. We would invert it, i.e. hydrolyze it, with acid before hydrogenation. Glucose hydrogenates to sorbitol and fructose converts to 50 50 sorbitol and mannitol. I thought all disaccharides would not survive in the stomach and like to tell folks that high fructose corn syrup is the same as honey without the bee pollen.

I did not realize that a disaccharide could not be digested and ended up fermenting in the colon causing IBS. My wife thinks she is lactose intolerant and we use no fat lactose free milk. Otherwise maybe other disaccharides don't bother her but maybe they do. Funny she does not complain about ice cream.

[Nyssa]

Is it the acid in the tomato that causes you problems?

I seem to remember reading several years ago about some varieties of tomatoes that are bred to be lower acid than "standard" or heirloom varieties. That was back when they began recommending home canners add acid in the form of lemon juice, vinegar, or ascorbic acid granules to their home-canned tomatoes before processing.

If the acid is causing you problems, perhaps trying to grow a few of the low-acid varieties might give you some relief and allow you to enjoy your old recipes.

Just a thought.

Nyssa, who still hasn't found an affordable type of fencing for her garden beds

[songbird]

Nyssa wrote: ...

i wish it was, but no, it is something else and not a digestive problem, it ends up being a skin rash. i can get away with a slice of tomato here or there or a squirt of ketchup on a burger once in a while, but that is about it.

i had a sloppy joe today, first one in a few years, i'll be interested to see how close to the line i came and if i skirted it or not... last year i had lasagna for a week and i did pay for that, but it was worth it. :)

yes. i'm pretty aware of acid/non-acid issues in food processing because we only do non-pressure cooked items. pickles, tomatoes and tomato juice are what we do the most of these days. anything low acid gets frozen.

we've managed to get lucky a few times and have other people give us their fences. it is hodge-podge looking in places, but ...

songbird

[songbird]

Frank wrote: ...

:) of course not! but i know a few people who won't eat it because of the lactose.

songbird

[Nyssa]

The rash reminds me of a problem I had when I was very young...kindergarten age...when I developed a rash on my elbows. It was thought that I was allergic to tomatoes or strawberries and the doctor just prescribed some cream to put on the rash.

I liked both tomatoes and strawberries, so I wasn't too pleased with either not eating them or the smelly cream.

By the next year, I was happily eating both strawberries and tomatoes and no rash returned...ever.

Odd that I seemed to have out-grown the problem and that you have grown *into* the problem.

Maybe if you're lucky you will *out* grow the problem you grew into. lol

As for the deer and critter problem, I'm now thinking about planting an herb garden in one bed close to the deer pathway to discourage them from approaching the real food in the other beds plus planting some marigolds around the edges of other beds.

Plus I have a short length of chicken wire I may try around a vegetable bed when it's getting started to discourage the deer from nibbling down to nubs.

More ideas are welcome. Anything that's free or inexpensive, that is.

Nyssa, who figures spending hundreds on fencing to protect a few vegetables isn't very frugal

[songbird]

Nyssa wrote: ...

i surely do wish it to be so. after eating tons of tomatoes over my lifetime to have that come along... Mom sometimes doesn't remember when she cooks she's so used to making things her way.

i used to go out and pick them and eat quite a few and also while processing to put them up, i'd nibble bits and pieces here and there. the toughest thing to remember is to not drink the extra juice at the end of a canning run.

and one of our favorite easy meals is macaroni and tomatoes or tomato juice.

well, pretty much any italian dish we made had plenty of tomatoes in there and that was the basic cuisine of ours (me being half italian). when i was off living on my own a small can of tomato paste could be a snack at times.

i really miss the umami flavor that comes from them in so many ways.

we don't grow as many tomatoes now that i can't eat them, but Mom will still use them for her cooking she does for other people. today she'll be making goulash.

we've found out that it may help, but don't count on it. when we have years with really deep snow the deer will come along and eat the cedar trees and the rabbits will too along with chewing off some of the bark on other plants (including poison sumac, but i think we finally got rid of that invasion).

even plants that are touted as "deer proof" may get sampled by young deer before they learn and given enough young deer samples it can still do in some plants. so we've learned that anything we want protected must be fenced.

exactly my thinking for fencing the rest of the yard i don't want to spend a lot of money for what is pretty much extra and non-essential gardens, but when the deer and rabbits eat a lot of the strawberries out there i do grumble a bit. i'm expanding my strawberry patches outside the fences because i also like them as a ground- cover plant beside the berries. some years i've gotten plenty of extra berries and then there are years like last season where i barely had any (between the late frost and deer/rabbits grazing).

the good news is that it is a one-time expense and if the fence is strong (chicken wire is too thin to last very long IMO) it should last long enough to pay for itself.

we've already invested in fencing the main veggie gardens and that was only a few hundred $ at the time, but the mistake there was the wrong kind of fence along the bottom which does not really exclude rabbits or groundhogs. and i was surprised to see the groundhogs climbing to get through.

for discouraging chipmunks you need even finer mesh (1/2 inch or less). nothing plastic has ever been worth it. it crumbles or tears too easy, rabbits will chew right through it, etc.

anyways, there is still quite a bit of room inside the main fenced gardens that i could use. i expanded my strawberry patch a few years ago and there is still hundreds of square feet i can reclaim from pathways and the carpeting/limestone mulched areas which are just there. also some other gardens in there which are all lavender which neither of us can really touch without issues (reactions similar to poison ivy).

for making some extra $ when we walk we pick up cans along the road as Michigan has a $0.10 deposit. it may not be much but over the course of a year it adds up. doing odd-jobs and lawn work for others is also a way to make some extra $.

if i were living in the city, this time of the year i'd be shoveling snow for a few extra as i could use more exercise and it would be a good reason to get outside more.

snowing out nicely now, big fluffy flakes drifting down, more often it is blowing sideways... :)

songbird

[Frank]

Deer and shade pushed any gardening I do close to the house and deck.

The only sure fire way to keep deer away, short of dogs running loose in the yard is fencing. They can leap an 6 foot fence but one that high is not needed. Simple netting stretched between posts deters them. Deer are browsers and the world is their salad bowl. They will eat your garden plants before there is any fruiting. Only thing they did not eat in my garden was onions. I have mature chestnut trees now and nuts really attract them as do apples and acorns. I've had to throw stuff at them to chase them, even might take more than a firecracker.

[Terry Coombs]

  A .490" round ball at about 1800 FPS should take care of that problem nicely ... I'm moving my apiary over by the garden , Mama thinks the hives were too close to the new deck - and she's right . The current plan is to reconfigure the electric fence I have around the garden and swap fence chargers and add some chicken wire along to bottom to keep the rabbits and 'dillos out . The 'lectric fence has worked OK to keep the deer out of the garden  and the bear that tore up a beehive last spring out of the bee yard .

[Frank]

I wish. I loved deer hunting but gave it up as I only had public land access. It would be illegal to shoot these so close to houses. My crossbow could easily do the job. Two years ago, during chestnut season, I popped 6 in the butt with my pellet gun. They have been scarcer since. County rule is no discharge of a deadly weapon within

200 yards of an occupied residence. I know a guy arrested for target practice in his yard with a compound bow.

[Terry Coombs]

  That sucks - out here where I live it's not uncommon to hunt deer from the dining room window - but then we're 12 miles from the nearest town , living in a clearing out in the woods . Game regs are a bit vague on that , but it is legal to shoot from your porch if you own/lease/rent the land . Once I get things a bit more organized here I plan on building a 100 yard rifle range ...

[Frank]

I'm in an unincorporated area but it is a crowded county. There are people close to me that have the land and could do it. The county law is 200 yards but the rest of the state is 50. I could hunt a state park less than 10 mi away either in DE where I live or PA side. Rules varied considerably but they were heavily hunted and deer were sparse.