Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

 It is funny/aggravating that my android gave me no trouble in downloading pictures to this blog.  My iphone is giving me fits.  It won't download them, I wait and wait and wait for a picture to download, then it tells me it can't and just quits.  Argh! So here's another quit post without a picture.  A post about pretty much nothing at all.  We have been busy running around back and forth and doing this and that; as most families are. Ellen has been enjoying her job at the resort on the river.  The drunk people test her patience, but they tend to tip pretty well.  Ha!  Gary has been delivering gravel, working on wells, and working around the place here.  There is always something for him to do.  He has made a flatbed out of the blue farm truck.  Yesterday we went to Lebanon and stopped by a garage sale where he found a long truck toolbox to put along one side of the flatbed.  It looks really good.  At that same garage...

 This is is a picture of my father; Lawrence Corley Davis.  I am not sure how old he was here, but he was a very handsome man, with bright blue eyes and very decided dietary ideas.   I won't go too much into the back story, because in light of my recent alpha-gal syndrome diagnosis my focus here is going to be on food, but to set the scene; when I came into being we lived on a 5 acre farm in N. Calif.  There were two houses on the property, my dad, mom, brother and I lived in one, and my dad's mother lived in the other. They were very much farmers; had a milk cow, raised a large garden every year, preserved by canning or freezing...etc.  My Grandmother Davis passed when I was about a year old, but my dad continued with the farming; with cow and garden and even a pony.  When the cow had a bull calf it would be butchered at a certain age and put in the freezer.   When I got about 5 years old my dad was in his 50s (he was 46 when I was born) and...

 The first thing I've learned that I think is really the most important is that calling AGS a "red meat allergy" is almost a misnomer; it barely touches the tip of the ice berg.   It's actually an allergy to the carbohydrate "galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose" found in the cells tissues and fluids of non-primate mammals..even cats and dogs.  However upon researching it, I have found that I am probably already conditioned to be used to the alpha-gal present in my cats/dogs, so they do not cause an allergic reaction when I am around them.  This doesn't make sense to me, but I have read online that some people DO become allergic to their pets.  I guess it depends on the severity of a person's sensitivity.  I supposedly have a moderate sensitivity. This alpha-gal carb is also present in pretty much every mammal byproduct and also in all dairy products. I have to scan labels for the following ingredients; gelatin, glycerin, lactose, casein, whey, stearic acid...

Last week I had what I thought was a great idea; I would have a friend cook up a bunch of ground beef (in the form of hamburgers and just some crumbles for maybe soup or spaghetti) for Gary and Ellen as a break from chicken or turkey.  On Sunday I gave my friend Erin several lbs of ground beef.  She cooked it up and brought it back to me on Monday.  So I wrapped 3 burgers tightly in foil and put them in the oven to warm up. Such a bad, bad idea.   It took maybe 10-15 minutes and I could feel myself starting to react. First I got faint; not really dizzy completely, but just really light headed and shaky.  Then a few minutes after that my pulse began racing. It is a very unpleasant feeling. I at first got a face mask, turned off the oven and kept on with supper prep in the hopes it would subside, but it didn't, it just got worse.   I took some liquid allergy medication and just went outside and sat in the fresh air to recover. Gary and Ellen ate the...

 (So I have tried to get photos to load on here from this iPhone a couple of times, but they refuse to cooperate so phooey on it for now.) Here is a brief rundown of life as it is going for members of the House of Howard.  Last Saturday Ellen and I went to her college’s summer orientation. It was fun and I think it helped to relieve some of Ellen’s nerves about her upcoming college career. She got her schedule and bunches of info, met a few of the other incoming college freshmen. I think she is looking forward to it.  In the meantime she is working 3 days a week at a local resort; Friday Saturday and Sunday, in the office fielding and making calls and all the etceteras that go along with a little convenience store. She works the evening shift Fri and Sat,  then works a 12 hr day shift Sunday from 8 to 8. She is enjoying it much more than she enjoyed cleaning the cabins last summer. Haha ******* Gary is keeping busy with hauling gravel, water well repairs and general ...

  But here’s a picture of cute calves!   Last Monday I had a scare.  All weekend I’d felt “off” for want of a better word.  I’d have weird sweating spells off and on and feel like my heart was racing, then feel fatigued off and on. Then Monday when I was fixing supper I REALLYbegan feeling bad.  I could really feel my heart racing, I was shaky and sweaty.  So Gary and I just dropped everything to go to the walk in clinic. They did and EKG and said while everything looked ok, there were still differences so I needed to go to the ER.  Soooo…we headed to the ER.  By the time we got there my heart rate had slowed, but I was feeling really shaky and fatigued. The short story is that they could find no trace of an emergency.  And even though all the other readouts below are messed up from my twisting around to take the pic, at least I am pleased that my blood pressure is good.  Ha! My mom always had high blood pressure, so I figured I would to...