the_rck | (no subject)

We spent most of Father's Day with Scott's family. There's a tradition there of all the adult men going golfing (Scott, his dad, our brother-in-law and his dad. I expect that, in a few years, our nephew will go, too).

Delia and I took Scott out for breakfast. He requested IHoP and ordered stuffed French toast. Delia had a pancake with fruit on it arranged to make a face. I had a burger. Both of them enjoyed their food, I think. Mine was merely so-so, especially since I'd requested that they not grill the bun but got a grilled bun anyway. (At least they left off the tomato, onion and mayonnaise as I'd requested.) We then tried to pick up Delia's pictures at JC Penney, but the photo part of the store wasn't open yet, and we couldn't spare the 40 minutes to wait.

While the guys were golfing, the three kids watched a movie. That required some negotiation as what Delia's willing to watch is rather more limited than what her older cousins are interested in. Delia still doesn't like anything with a villain (unless it's one of the movies she watched a lot when she was younger), and she was convinced that Lilo and Stitch 2 would be terrifying.

After getting the kids settled with some popcorn, my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and I looked at the wedding registry for the daughter of one of Scott's cousins. There's a big family gathering next weekend, and we figured that it would be better to drop off a shower gift then than to ship it. It's just too far for any of us to go to the shower. The process of making the decision was hard because my sister-in-law and I wanted to look online while my mother-in-law wanted to go to the store because she doesn't trust/understand online shopping. Also, the registry wouldn't print for us. We could get five items to print but no more.

I went with my mother-in-law to pick up the gift. The Target is only about five minutes drive from my sister-in-law's house, so that wasn't a hardship. We ended up tramping around the store quite a lot because the item we'd picked was on sale. My mother-in-law felt that we had to add something to it to bring the cost up to $20 per family.

Dinner was interesting in a not so good way. My mother-in-law is on an anti-sugar, anti-high fructose corn syrup kick and put artificial sweetener in her broccoli salad. I'm allergic to several artificial sweeteners, enough so that I get psychosomatic symptoms even from those that don't produce genuine illness. I don't allow Delia to eat anything with artificial sweeteners, either. I don't want to find out the hard way that she has allergies to them, and I'm generally suspicious of putting weird chemicals into kids' bodies when it's not necessary.

In this case, the sweetener was splenda, and my mother-in-law tried to convince me that it's harmless, good for you, absolutely natural and so on. I was upset that she hadn't thought to tell me that she'd done it. She just figured that it was fine. Sadly, it tasted vile (which was why I asked her what was in it. I was rather hoping for an excuse not to eat the portion she'd prepared specially for me, omitting an ingredient that I can eat but that she thinks I can't). I spent the rest of the evening trying to get the flavor out of my mouth and wondering how much of my headache was due to exhaustion and how much to stress over the artificial sweetener.

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My mom is sensitive to Splenda. She coughs and gets headaches. I just hate the way it tastes.

I haven't been sure if the headaches I get with Splenda are a reaction to the substance or just stress over knowing I've put something weird into my body. I suppose it doesn't really matter except that, if it's stress, I'm less likely to get sick if I ingest some without knowing I've done so.

Yep, the headache might just have BEEN an allergic reaction. Emily gets terrible headaches from sucralose (which is the word on ingredient lists to watch out for, apparently, if they use Splenda).

I was also running on about four hours of sleep, so the headache could have been that.

I may well have had sucralose before. I need to check. I think it's in a lot of over the counter cold medicines. If it's what I'm thinking of, it doesn't make me sick in small quantities, but it still tastes utterly vile.

I am one of the fortunates who is not allergic to it and don't notice any aftertaste/taste. Although honestly, I'm moving more and more towards just using sugar -- better to honestly monitor my sweets intake instead of all those chemicals! -- except this takes away EVERY SINGLE non-water thing I drink. >_<;; Given that I can't justify drinking normal soda, and honestly think it's rather vile -- I prefer the diet versions for the few sodas I will drink.

I rarely drink soda pop of any sort. I do drink carbonated water occasionally. I cling to my fruit juices, though, even when I dilute them, and I can't give up my morning cup of caffeine and honey. (I keep trying to cut back on the honey, but I seem to need the sugar as much as I do the caffeine. Also, the honey seems to reduce the reflux from the coffee.)

One friend recommended water with a small amount of vinegar as a way of avoiding plain water boredom. I liked the flavor, but it smelled wrong enough that I couldn't manage to drink it.

I try to avoid sugar, though I've gotten worse over the last few months rather than better at avoiding it, but one thing that I would state unequivocally is that some things shouldn't be artificially sweetened. Like broccoli salad. And I've not really ever heard of sweet broccoli before. That just kind of throws me off. I've perhaps eaten it and did not enjoy it very much though.

I'm thinking that I'm going to try again to get off of the potatoes and the sugar. I made a cake last weekend and we still have some, but I think I'm going to go into the "if it's got sugar in it, I don't want it" stage again after we've polished it off. The wedding and the showers beforehand really gave me every excuse to get off of my diet. I need to just quit it already.

(Though each time I go on a more healthy diet, I stay off of something. The first time, it was sugar in drinks. This time, I've been off of sugar in drinks and caffeine. Maybe this time I can stay off of the sugar except in small doses).

The sauce on the broccoli is supposed to be sweet. It's a mayonnaise based sauce. I think it could be made with yogurt, too, except that my father-in-law is allergic to dairy products.

Good luck with the sugar avoidance! It's hard, but it can be done.

Mayo, vinegar/lemon juice, and a pinch of sugar is a classic dressing for coleslaw, broccoli salad, or similar things.

I really can't imagine using fake sugar for that, though, even though I've started using Splenda in a few contexts (with no noticeable ill effects as yet, thank goodness).

My mother-in-law attempted to use Splenda in a vinaigrette several months back, and the Splenda clumped into a putty. Very, very odd. I actually think it's acceptable in soft drinks, though; Diet Rite raspberry and black cherry are pretty tasty.