A weekend of camping - on the ground

I didn't expect to say this but, with very full support of family & friends I camped out over last weekend.  We have a lovely Quechua 3-person tent but now the idea of camping on the ground felt like a dream.  To be precise, having camped since I was one year old, it was a dream I feared.

In the end an incredibly supportive Les solved problems such as getting from lying down to standing (and vice-versa) with considerable patience.  Camping also meant if I wanted to go to the toilet I would need something to urinate in during the night so save the convoluted hassle of getting both in and out of the tent, getting vertical and all the rest...  Never mind the potential loss and disruption to sleep to one and all...

We sleep on a Hi Gear double self-inflating camp bed with one quilt below us and another above us. It is really comfortable.

The camping weekend had a purpose - the maintenance of trees planted five years ago in honour of our daughter who died aged 24 (see www.forjane.co.uk).  Practically speaking I was not much help.  With my actions limited to walking from chair to chair.  That is except for providing directions for cooking for the forty people over the camp fire.

With serious help I prepared a chana-dahl curry with rice & nan bread.  All was in my diet (excepting the nan bread which I avoided!)  This meant filling two jam-pans full of pulses and vegetables.  No oil was used, and spices were kept light.  But it did have kale, broccoli & lemons to help keep iron levels high.  Not bad for 40 people!

Favourite shops & restaurants

Survival with arthritis is made infinitely easier with shops and restaurants where you can get reliable food stuffs.  I am beginning to try some gluten-free muesli as an alternative for breakfast.  Like all foods if I find something that works then I will move heaven and earth to find that item again, and again.  So here are a list of shops, cafes etc that I consider arthritis friendly.

• Cornucopia (Dublin): a fabulous cafe where you can get reliable good arthritic-friendly food and the staff will help to adapt items to your needs and tastes.
• BioCoop (France): a chain of supermarkets serving organic food.  One feature is a good range of fresh gluten-free breads.  We lived very happily from their food for a week.
• Eden Cafe (Witney): a lovely cafe serving vegan and vegetarian food with a good range of gluten-free choices.
• Market Garden (Eynsham): My local organic green-grocer.  Fabulous.

My lunch

When at home my lunch is a slice of Rice & Sunflower Bread with a layer of my own sauerkraut and topped with sheep or goat's cheese (neither of which cause any inflammation, unlike cow's cheeses).

The sauerkraut helps improve my digestive system, which means I am increasingly unlikely to suffer from flares.  Both rice and sunflower give my stomach some work to do, which is important since because I am not eating much I can feel cold.

In my opinion, this s a very well rounded meal.

My Approach to Food

As a couple, we turned vegetarian back in 1979 and have never regretted that decision: in fact rather the opposite.  From my own standpoint I have always argued that decision was made on health grounds, and indeed I attribute 40 years of holding my Psoriatic Arthropathy at bay to that decision.  And apart from the odd unintentional mistake I have neither eaten fish nor meat since that time.

Our form of vegetarianism is what I think of as a wholefood approach, so bread is mostly wholegrain, and rice is brown.  We have always prided ourselves on cooking as much as possible from raw ingredients.

Our daughter, Jane took our interest towards veganism, but until this last year that has been more of an interest.  Lovely cheeses have ruled out leaving dairy behind entirely.   That said cow's milk took a dive and instead we have had either soya or almond milk.

Last year as my arthritis started to flare badly I took a personal decision to drop gluten from my diet.  It took around 3 months to really become fully gluten free as it took time to become aware of gluten-free alternatives.

Late last year I began to understand important and relevant health benefits of juicing and so I bought myself a juicer and again that brought me closer to veganism.  This year I started dropping dairy products in earnest and thus began to achieve a vegan diet.  That process again took a month or two, but it was only when I was at an absolute low and the Paddison Program gave me both the motivation and also the route forward to being finally able to declare to myself fully vegan.