Resolutions, Schmesolutions

I have been asked so many times since being diagnosed with cancer whether I've changed my diet. My answer is always: not really. I was pregnant and then nursing for more than a year prior to my diagnosis, and I took those jobs seriously. I aimed to eat organic, whole foods most of the time. I took my prenatal vitamins. I only cooked with organic, free-range, grass-fed meats or wild-caught fish. I might have been a little obnoxious about it, but I hope not too terribly so.

My diet was far from perfect, I'm sure, but it's not like I was eating at McDonald's or KFC. Not that I would judge a person for that. Much.

When I was undergoing chemo-chemo, I ate what I could. Sometimes that meant I was drinking Gatorade -- red dye #5, sugar and all -- just to stay hydrated. Raw fruits and vegetables were largely off-limits because they could carry harmful bacteria, at least until my white blood cell counts rebounded. Not that I had the stomach for salad anyway. I just wanted to keep my weight up and stay reasonably healthy through treatment. If anything, I was less strict about what I ate because I just wanted to have an appetite for anything.

Last year, I even shook my head a little at friends who all seemed to be jumping on the paleo bandwagon. Mostly because the word drives my anthropologist, evolution-studying husband crazy. And I couldn't see how depriving myself of entire food groups was going to make me any happier. (Plus, I was really iffy as to whether it would make me any healthier.)

Do you know that I didn't have any signs of cancer in 2014? 

And so I let some things slide, especially in December. There were neighborhood open houses, cookie exchange parties, end-of-the-semester celebrations, Christmas Eve gatherings, and New Year's Eve toasts. I ate gingerbread and chocolate and cheese and peppermint-and-white-chocolate-covered pretzels and I drank wine and champagne like my pre-cancer self. I thoroughly overindulged. I had the breakouts and bloating to show for it. The holidays were fun, but if any January called for culinary austerity, it was this one.

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My goal was to do the Whole30 thing. If you're not familiar, it calls for eating whole, fresh foods with no added sweeteners of any kind, no dairy, and no grains for 30 days. Also, no alcohol. As I dug a little deeper into the theory, I came across blogs with quotes like, "You haven't really lived until you've made your own paleo mayonnaise." Or I realized my (uncured, organic) bacon wasn't "diet" enough for this diet because there was some sugar in it. For that kind of bacon, I'd have to pay $18 per pound, and I just couldn't rally myself behind that kind of quackery.

It also turns out that -- although I love to cook -- prepping meals in advance for an entire week is not my forte. I found myself subsisting on mostly Lara bars and trail mix, or apples dipped in almond butter, or "cheating" with non-diet bacon or a bite of Quinn's leftover pancakes.

I've been pretty great about limiting sweets and alcohol, and I'm proud of that. I've cut way down on my dairy and pasta intake. The combination has done wonders for my skin and my digestive system. I'm pretty sure I'm eating more nuts and nut butters and seeds than most birds, so I should probably figure out some alternative snacks.

This experiment has been eye-opening. I will probably never be the type of person who makes her own mayonnaise. Just about every type of packaged food out there has added sugar. A couple of glasses of wine a month might be necessary for my mental health. And I'm terrible at diets that are this restrictive.

Did you make any resolutions this month? Have you stuck with them? If so, please tell me your secrets!   I hear that if I write down my goals and share them with people, I am more likely to stick to them. Hence, this post.

Next up: my other project/resolution of sorts and an update on my book, the ultimate of new year's resolutions.

Good News, Bad News

I don't even remember what the particular news items were, but the other day I said to Quinn, "Go ask Daddy if he wants to hear the good news or the bad news first." So now when Quinn has something to tell me, he'll say, "Do you want to hear the good news?" Followed by something like, "I built a treasure box for my rocket ship!"

With him, there's no bad news.

This is a post about some bad news, though. I've hesitated to write about this because it's not cancer-related and I know I'm inviting so many opinions by opening up about it. But, me being me, I wrote about our dog adoption in this space already, so I figured I owe you guys an update.

Also? The last few weeks have been pure Christmas chaos abundance, with a train ride to the North Pole (where we blamed there being no snow on global warming, and I'm not sure Quinn bought it because it was 29 degrees out and that might be the coldest he's ever been), a cookie exchange party we're still eating the remnants from, a couple of holiday open houses, a family limo ride courtesy of Chris's aunt to view Christmas lights, waffles with Santa at Quinn's preschool, and Quinn asking Santa for exactly two things: a menorah to light candles for eight days at our house and a remote control spider to scare his mommy. Guess which one Santa delivered? 

Hot cocoa on the Polar Express, a new family tradition (even if there wasn't any snow; there was plenty of magic and Christmas cheer and caroling and a visit from Santa and sleigh bells all around).

A photo posted by Jen Campisano (@jencampisano) on Dec 12, 2014 at 7:35pm PST

I hope you all have had equally abundant holiday seasons. I am so lucky to get to experience this time of year, this life I've got with Chris and Quinn, and this was the first Christmas since 2011 that I didn't wonder if it would be my last. Instead, I probably tried a little too hard to put in place holiday traditions that would make the season as magical as possible for my little man, abandoning ship here because there just was no time for blogging after I figured out what to do with the elf every night. 

I might skip the damn elf next year.

Back to the pup. A couple of weeks after we brought Luna home there was an incident that made it clear she shouldn't be in a house with a preschooler (or a cat, for that matter). She was extraordinarily sweet in so many regards and attached herself to me pretty quickly, but I couldn't be as vigilant as I would have needed to be to ensure everyone's safety. It broke my heart even after only two weeks, but the rescue organization took her back earlier this month.

Quinn says our house is boring without Luna, which is true. The good news (if I can spin it) is that our cat has come out of hiding after spending more than two weeks hidden in a closet in the back of the house. And the rest of us are once again in the market for a (child- and cat-friendly) dog. 

Cookies, by way of Explanation

This is in no way a food blog, nor has it ever been. But chocolate chip cookies are showing up everywhere I look lately. See: here and here, and here, too. And after I dropped a hint last month that other health issues were plaguing me, I received a slew of phone calls, texts, and emails asking if I was okay. You guys are the greatest.

I think I'm okay. Let me explain.

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I've always liked to cook, liked the process of combining ingredients into something greater than their parts. I might not be any good at chemistry, but I can bake, dammit. And I'd always prided myself on making a decent chocolate chip cookie--until I met Chris, that is.

Chris' grandmother had been famous for her cookies. At Christmas, she didn't just make a few varieties and leave it at that, the way the rest of us mortals do. Instead, as the story goes, she would bake for days, making seventeen different varieties of cookies to share for the holidays. In the neighborhood where Chris grew up, her cookie plates were a highlight of the season.

I couldn't compete with that. My cookies were okay, Chris told me, but they just couldn't hold a candle to his grandmother's. (I had to woo him with my genius wit instead.)

He told me the key was to refrigerate them overnight, and I scoffed at the idea. Who plans ahead for cookies? They'd always been a thing I'd decided on last-minute, when I had a hankering. That was the beauty of chocolate chip, I thought. It was a cookie that could come together in an hour, tops, when you had a craving for one.

But then I stumbled across this recipe (I'm telling you, everyone else on the Internet is craving chocolate chip cookies, too). So I gave it a whirl. Lo and behold, the cookies were heavenly--chewy, full of toffee flavor, and with the addition of a sprinkle of sea salt on top I may have even tied the score with Grandma. It only took nine years.

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I can't blame the lousy winter weather on why I'm craving cookies. I don't have much of a sweet tooth. I'm certainly not pregnant (although they tested, just in case). And I'd be freaking out so much more if I hadn't just had a clean scan. There may be one other explanation: PMS.

I have essentially been on my period since mid-December. (TMI? Maybe...) That's two months, folks. While I am so very happy that chemo hasn't put me in permanent menopause, I am really tired of ruining pants, doctors appointments with no answers, not to mention cramping and crankiness and headaches and bloating.

So far, the bleeding hasn't made me anemic. Which is great, since it means I can still get chemo. Luckily, we were able to get things under control with a ten-day course of progesterone that my oncologist approved (I was shocked). And yet, my uterus is still shedding.

I have my third meeting since Christmas with my gynecologist this week, to try to come up with a solution that my oncologist will be on board with. The go-to choice for regulating periods, birth-control pills, is not an option for me because of the hormones. Another possibility would be a hysterectomy, although I really don't want to lose another body part to this disease. I'm hoping we can find some middle-ground.

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In the meantime, I'm going in for more cookies. I don't know why, but they help.