Oddities

Over time, you might notice that my recipes never include white potatoes or tomatoes, that's because I have a slight allergy to them.
I have a skin condition called Psoriasis, it effects me worst on my scalp. It's something I've been trying to deal with since I was in high school, always fighting with an itchy, scabby, flaky scalp. Last summer, after I returned from 9 months in Spain, my psoriasis was the worst it's ever been, so I went to a nutritionist to get information about how altering my diet could help. She told me that while patients with psoriasis are largely inconsistent with which treatments are effective (which is why they haven't found a cure for it), that a large number of patients have an allergy to nightshade vegetables.
The most common nightshades are tomatoes, potatoes, chilies/peppers, eggplant and tobacco. There are thousands of other varieties and many are flowers that we don't consume. The nightshade are part of the Solanaceae family and many of the plants are completely toxic. For me, the allergy is more of an irritant than an actual life-threatening allergy, but eliminating these foods (in general) from my diet has improved my symptoms immensely! I will admit to still eating green chili every now and then, cause it's one of my favorite foods! But ever since I've been out of the Mediterranean and off that type of diet, which is very high in nightshades, I have limited my tomato and red/green pepper intake, which I dislike because they have always been some of my favorite salad toppings! Potatoes are not as much of a problem for me, I've always viewed them as a nutrient-lacking starch, I didn't even have them for Christmas dinner, my mom made me rice instead! :)

So there's my oddity! I've also been experimenting with gluten and trying to figure out if I have an intolerance to that because I have some persistent...errhm...digestive problems. Keep tuned for more related to that, in the mean time I will probably post quite a few gluten-free recipes!

Thanks for reading!