How does a German/Australian wheat and meat-aholic turn into a plant-based, wheat- and sugar-free eater?
Bread, Cake, Wurst and Steak was about all I ever ate and
the occasional lettuce leaf-
Hamburg-Sydney-Saigon
Hello, I am Kat, originally from Hamburg. During a 5 months working contract as a garment engineer in Saigon in 1992, I met my Australian husband and moved to Sydney with him in ‘93. We raised 2 kids and are now living between Hamburg and Sydney, currently in Ho-Chi-Minh-City.
A crazy, exhilarating, life-changing city!
My current fascination is the fact that I passed my Vietnamese motorbike license test recently and I can now chase cooking ingredients all over Saigon on my scooter. With a racing heart, but a huge smile on my face. The traffic here is from a spectrum that does not exist in Europe or Australia-
Big Decision: Meat Free
When I unexpectedly gave up meat in June 2017 I suddenly realized that I should start writing recipes down and learn how to take photos of food, to be able to share them with you. I already had lots of gluten and dairy free recipes and after 4 years trying, finally mastered my bread recipe, my proudest moment so far.
How We Healed Our IBS and Leaky Gut with Food
Having had IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) for as long as I can remember, I was accidentally healed through a diet my daughter had to eat in 2013. Our doctor recommended the diet to heal her leaky gut syndrome. To make life easier I decided to eat exactly what she ate. She was not allowed to eat gluten, dairy and sugar for about 2 months.
We were lucky that the rest of the family was living overseas at the time and I could concentrate on our unusual new eating habits. I remember that my head was spinning at the time. I had no idea what to eat or cook with those limitations. So I spent a lot of time online searching and finding inspiring recipes.
After about 6 weeks I woke up one morning with a very strange sensation in my body, that I could not remember feeling in years:
I Was Pain Free!
No bloating or cramps, just a very happy, relaxed and
pain-free gut.
What I realized then was how much of an impact food has on us and it took a few more unexpected events in Sydney in 2015 and in Saigon, where I live since March 2017, that led me to decide to eat a plant based diet in July 2017.
Flexitarian? What on Earth Is That?
I am not a vegan and was searching for a word that describes someone who mainly eats a plant-based diet with the occasional meat or animal product: FLEXITARIAN.
What a brilliant word!
I do avoid all meat and dairy, but will sometimes eat seafood when going out. Further, the vegan diet would not allow me to eat mayonnaise or fish sauce or many curry pastes, which makes it too tricky at the moment due to living in Ho-Chi-Minh-City.
I Love Food with a Bang!
I am a big fan of strong, bold flavours and fast, uncomplicated recipes. And I love my chilies! If you are not used to chilli, please adjust all my recipes accordingly and start by using ¼ - ½ of the amount I use and increase the amount after tasting the heat. You can always increase the heat, but it is very tricky to decrease it …
I am also very practical, and try to save time where I can. Making 3 different meals out of one large pot is fantastic. For example I would make a big pot of a tomato and vegetable based sauce to eat with gluten free pasta or zucchini noodles one day, then add kidney beans, olives, cumin etc for a chilli non-carne to eat with rice the next day. And if anything were left over I would blend it into a
soup with a little coconut cream.
I also cook big pots and freeze meals, 1 portion at a time, so that I always have something to defrost in minutes if I have no time to cook.
Dried and Ground Stevia Leaves Are an Excellent Sweetener
I also do not use any sugar of any kind. The only sweetener I use is ground up dried stevia leaves. They are super sweet and come in handy for many Asian dishes that require sweetness.
I quit sugar at the same time I quit gluten with the inspiration of Sarah Wilson’s book I quit sugar. In my bread recipe I use rice malt syrup to feed the yeast. All my attempts to feed the yeast with stevia were unsuccessful. But since the yeast is eating the syrup during the activation period, the bread does not taste sweet at all.
Lactose Versus Dairy Intolerance
In 2015 I was dairy intolerant from one day to the next and it took 7 months to work out why I was sick, again.
What we all do until “it” sinks in, is eat things again we sort of know we shouldn’t. So did I.
For 2 more years after being gluten intolerant I was not ready to have another food intolerance. So I ate dairy and meat. Until my body decided to make the signs very clear. But I still could not work out what my body was reacting to, so I worked with a fodmap-food-list for a while.
I wrote many food diaries and switched to lactose free milk, with no improvement. 7 sick months later, I made myself lunch out of rice noodles, smoked salmon and lactose free cream. What could be wrong with this meal? Gluten free, meat free, lactose free. I thought it was the perfect combination and I was sure I finally was onto something. I was not. I was very sick within minutes. I immediately asked Google for an explanation: what is in lactose free cream that can make me sick? Sure enough, it is a protein in cow products that some people cannot digest. I was so happy that the penny finally dropped! I was symptom free within a few days, cutting out all dairy. A huge relief!
Beef Intolerance?
For two years I did all right being dairy, gluten and sugar-free. Until I started getting 2 day migraines after eating beef. But, no way was I ready for more intolerances, so I had an allergy treatment at a clinic in Sydney.
That helped for about 1 year.
But after that year, I realized that every time I ate beef I had stomach cramps. I was in Saigon by then and did not eat much beef at all, so it was pretty obvious when it happened. I gave up beef, thinking beef and dairy must contain the same protein, obviously. Fair enough. There is still chicken and pork left….
Egg and Chicken Gives Me Goosebumps :)
A few days later I walked a different route to my passion fruit supplier at the local Vietnamese farmer’s market, which led me past the butcher’s aisle. What a shocker! Vietnamese like their chicken really fresh, which means they like it slaughtered in front of their eyes. One lady was still patting a chicken’s neck, as if it was a pet, the next one just dunk a dead one into a bucket of hot water to remove the feathers. There were blood and guts and screaming chickens everywhere.
The scene was horrific and caused me to have heart palpitations and the shakes for the rest of the day. I could not go to the market again for 1 month, and when I really needed to go I had my husband lead the way, being my eyes, to avoid slaughter aisles.
One morning the following week I made myself some roesti for breakfast and the last touch was to crack an egg into the pan. This egg however was black and stank so badly that I raced the entire content of the pan to the bin and ran the rubbish outside of my apartment and aired the room for the rest of the day with fans on. What was that? A supposedly fresh egg from the market?
I was not going to have an egg for a long, long time.
Fork over Knives and What the Health.
2 Great Movies!
I watched two movies on Netflix, which changed my life.
Earthy Andy had mentioned the movie forks over knives on her blog earthyandy and a book she read called the The China Study by Dr T. Colin Campbell. I had been following Earth Andy for a while and had a sense that she was onto something, so I watched forks over knives. Straight after that I watched what the health.
I was a plant-based eater after the second movie.
For 1 month. To test how I would feel.
Of course no symptom disappears over night, but gradually I felt better. My skin improved and I slept better, I thought. What a healthy month it was. But did I feel that different? Am I imagining it? Not enough I thought, to say no to an invitation to chicken puttanesca at a friend’s house.
Can Meat Cause Insomnia?
What followed was a complete sleepless night staring at the ceiling, sweating profusely. I tried to work out when I had the last coffee, but I didn’t have any late coffee-
It must have been the chicken that caused it. Having been “clean” without any meat for a month, that portion of meat caused havoc in my body. Only after that night I remembered my notes that stated that I had sleeping problems whilst still eating meat. The message was clear. No more meat for me.
Our Meat Consumption and Animal Farming Methods Are Not Sustainable!
During a recent trip to Hamburg in October 2017, I came across an exhibition called
Food Revolution 5.0 in The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe.
Two things stood out for me here: The need for new meat farming practice and the need to explore new forms of proteins, that are sustainable and can be produced in our own home.
A Danish architect came up with a new design to combine pig farming and tomato growing in the same building. This is an online excerpt of the exhibition’s catalogue, on the page you can scroll down to Gottlieb Paludan’s page. In this project, manure of the pig farm is used to create fertilizer and energy for the tomato farm. This flyer explains the concept in more detail.
Read facts like this:
on the Cowspiracy website and you understand why things need to change!
Worms Here We Come-
What about eating insects and worms? I am incredibly amazed by new concepts that are being designed. This Ted Talk by Katharina Unger from Livin Farms is a must see. The talk is also embedded into her website livinfarms.com.
She designed a worm farm that can sit on our kitchen bench, to harvest worms when we need them.
A brilliant concept!
And yes, I agree, I could not eat worms, yet, but people have excellent ideas to trick you into tasting it. For example Carolin Schulze created Bugs Bunnies by mixing mealworms with potato mash, than 3D printing a sleeping rabbit and deep-frying it. Fantastic idea! Watch the film to believe it. Forward to the main bit at 3.33 minutes if you don’t feel like listening to German vegetarians tasting it.
(They are actually eating it-)
We Need More Plant-Based Options in Restaurants!
Not everyone is going to switch to plant-based eating, of course not, but there is certainly a strong trend at the moment where people are realising that the vast amount of animal products they consume is unrealistic. We all just need to be more aware of what is happening to our planet, due to the overconsumption of animal products and we must introduce more plant-based meals into our lives. And restaurants need to have vegan meals on their menu, at least one or two, please. So often I go out with friends and there is not one item on the menu I can eat. This is the first steak restaurant I have been at, in Saigon, called madcowsaigon that offers a delicious vegan burger. See it under custom grill in the above linked menu. This is a great step in the right direction!
Let Me Be Your Virtual Friend and Share My Recipes with You!
Without the bloggers out there sharing their recipes and stories I would have been very lost and lonely in 2013. It does feel like finding a virtual friend if you find someone who has a similar taste to you and gives away their recipes, for free. Very generous! And now it is time for me to pay back: I am hoping to be of some help for those of you just embarking on this new food journey.
