The low-iodine diet

[Fat Guy]

The mouse ate my dough!

I just went to check the bowl of replacement dough that was rising on the counter overnight and there were ragged holes chewed through the plastic wrap and feces on the surface of the dough. Farewell, dough. I think the bread project is over for the week.

I don't understand it. We haven't had a mouse issue here in years. I guess the neighborhood mouse community just couldn't resist the aroma of Jim Lahey's bread.

Wow! I think I'd have been brave enough to just whack/toss the part of the bread the mouse nibbled and still consume the rest of it.

My general rule with city mice is to throw out all of whatever they've nibbled on. My feeling is that city mice have possibly been rooting through city trash, possibly full of medical waste and whatever. So I don't think of it like cutting a little mold off a piece of cheese. Maybe I'm overreacting, though. I don't know.

[abooja]

Gosh, I would have called it quits by now. Sorry you're having such troubles. The week, while it must seem interminable at this point, will eventually be over. Stupid mice. Stupid, gross mice.

On another note, Diamond Crystal kosher salt is easily ground with fingers, and does not contain iodine unless specified. I wouldn't leave the house today unless I was armed with a ton and a half of food (regardless of your particular desire to eat it), and a bag of that salt. Beats starvation.

[rooftop1000]

Steve,

Sit down and breathe for 5 min then make yourself a decadent juice based smoothie. It appears you have had an important part removed, they havent given you all your meds yet, and you are malnourished.

Slow down until they have you stabilized, it's allowed.

If you want to come out to Jersey you can borrow my cat for a few days

tracey

[David A. Goldfarb]

We're fortunate not to have mice in our apartment, but when I leave dough to rise, I usually leave it in the KitchenAid bowl with a metal pot lid on it. Might try that, maybe with an extra weight on it.

[abooja]

We're fortunate not to have mice in our apartment, but when I leave dough to rise, I usually leave it in the KitchenAid bowl with a metal pot lid on it. Might try that, maybe with an extra weight on it.

The microwave is another option, particularly during cold weather when you can use it first to boil a cup of water to sit adjacent to your plastic wrap coated bowl of dough.

[jgm]

Don't give up on the bread too soon. This is the time to get creative. The dough can be protected, as others have pointed out, under a large pot, in a microwave, in a regular oven with a note on the door, or inside a cabinet, if that's a possibility for you.

If you want to have baked bread protected, that can be done, too, while allowing for air circulation. Not sure how I'd do it in a kitchen other than my own, but it would probably involve two cooling racks, placed one on top of the other, with the 'holes' running different directions (assuming you have the kind that have long, rectangular spaces between the wires); the purpose being to create openings too small for a mouse to squeeze between. The racks could be placed on top of a container that holds the bread, or underneath something. . .I know you can figure it out and improvise. You could even place newspapers beneath whatever structure you build, so that if you find mouse droppings, they'll be on the newspaper instead of the counter, and they won't be so gross to clean up.

We've had to do the same kind of thing in our kitchen, only our mouse is a 70-pound mutt named Fred. There is nothing he won't do to get bread into his mouth, believe me.

Actually, the baked bread could be stored in an oven - again, with a note on the door. My mom used to store all kinds of baked goods in hers. I don't do it because I have the attention span of a gnat and would surely have burned the house down by now, or at least coated everything I own in smoke.

[Fat Guy]

I've only been on the low-iodine diet since Wednesday and already everyone I come in regular contact with is now sick of me saying, "Boy, I could really go for some iodine right about now."

The helpful booklet my endocrinologist gave me notes that "This low-iodine diet does not meet the suggested daily allowance for all nutrients." I definitely lived upto that caveat today. For the first time I ate enough not to be hungry, but I can't say I ate a balanced diet.

I started the day with several pieces of fruit -- and I mean several -- at a nursery-school breakfast. Everybody must have been thinking, "Why is PJ's dad eating so many clementines? What's wrong with the guy? He should really leave some for the kids."

For lunch I ate a turkey leg. I know there's nothing about the diet that truly requires such absurd gestures, but I didn't trust the turkey breasts at the supermarket -- they looked like they'd been treated or brined or whatever -- so I went with a pack of two drumsticks, rubbed with a little olive oil and roasted. I ate one for lunch.

I also acquired some permissible peanut butter from the grind-your-own machine at Whole Foods. It took about 5 seconds to fill the container from the machine and 5 years to wait on line to pay $3 for it. I then took it home and mixed it with some of my allowable salt. Then I spread some on a couple of salt-free rice cakes. A legitimate snack.

We made home fries for dinner. With only olive oil and no butter (and no skins) they never acquired a beautiful brown crust but they were tasty. Here they are approaching done:

I also made some more salads and followed the great suggestion above to dress with lemon juice (and olive oil, salt and pepper).

I decided not to discard the dough that had been attacked by the mouse. Because it was going to bake at high temperature eventually, I figured it was okay just to remove the top layer. PJ shaped it into four baguettes and they came out looking like baguettes made by a four-year-old artisanal baker.

They are resting safely on a platter in the microwave.

[Blether]

Low iodine sounds like a tough regime. I second the soup idea - how about chicken stock made into whatever soup takes your fancy, and a vacuum flask to take it with you ? From the stock you can lift off chicken fat for cooking skinless potatoes.

Edited February 6, 2010 by Blether (log)

[Fat Guy]

On paper I'm an excellent candidate for this diet: I work at home and I have food knowledge as well as access to the knowledge of this community. But these past few days I've been out of the house more than a person with a 9-5 job would be out, and despite my theoretical knowledge I haven't planned very well. Tomorrow morning I'll be going grocery shopping and I hope to be a bit better prepared for the Sunday-Wednesday back half of the diet.

Today I'm at home most of the day so I'm thinking I'll be successful with breakfast and lunch. I'm planning a fruit smoothie for breakfast and perhaps a turkey sandwich and a salad for lunch. I wonder what I'll put on the turkey sandwich, with mayo, mustard and cheese all out of the picture.

Tonight I'm working at an event -- it's a fundraiser for PJ's nursery school and I'm the bar manager in a manner of speaking. I'll have to arrive in the late afternoon and prepare the cocktail batches, train the bartenders to make the cocktails I designed (with a lot of help in the cocktails-and-spirits forum) and generally supervise the operation. It's a catered event that runs through midnight, but I won't be able to eat any of the food being served there. And because it's in the synagogue where the kosher regulations are in effect I won't be able to bring my own prepared food from home. I guess I'm going to have to eat a late-afternoon dinner at home and throw a couple of pieces of fruit in my bag.

[BeeZee]

Steven, can you make your own hoummous if you soak dried beans and use your allowed type of salt? That can be used for some veggie-based sandwiches as well as snack/dip. As far and your turkey sandwich, I like using mashed up avocado instead of mayo.

[NadyaDuke]

The bread looks great! At least 8 year old level. And I have to say - following this thread made me crazy caesar salad so I had one yesterday and will have another for lunch. Though with my husband out of town I'm indulging in anchovies, which he won't touch. So my version will be full of yummy iodine. Sorry!

[Fat Guy]

Okay now I'm just getting annoyed with the mouse.

I stored yesterday's bread in the microwave. That worked great. No mouse damage.

I also made more dough last night and let that rise in the regular oven. Today when I went to extract the dough I found that the mouse had managed to get into the oven and go crazy on the dough. How is it even possible for a mouse to get into a closed oven? He can't be living in there because I use that oven all the time. There must be enough of a gap somewhere that he (or she I guess) can get in there.

I guess bread dough is likely to be good bait for our mousetraps.

BeeZee's suggestion of avocado on the turkey sandwich came in moments before I made my lunch, and I happened to have a quarter of an avocado left from a sushi-making experiment earlier this week. Turkey, avocado and non-iodized salt on toasted homemade no-iodine baguette. Quite good, I thought.

For breakfast I had a fruit smoothie. This was the first day since I started the diet (it feels like a million years but this was only my fourth day) that I've been home and not in a rush at breakfast time. The smoothie contained blackberry, strawberry, orange and peach. It was really good. I also had a little of my no-iodine bread with breakfast.

Dinner didn't work out so well, though. I had grand plans to make myself something early before going to my event tonight. But I had to mail a package, and my plan to get over to the West Side at 5:30 got blown when I learned that the post office closes at 4. Thanks, 13-ounce rule.

The only things I could eat at the event were the raw vegetables from the crudite platters. So throughout the evening I ate carrots, cucumbers, celery and tomatoes while everybody else enjoyed pigs in blankets, deviled eggs and other great stuff I can't eat. When I got home I had some more bread.

Tomorrow morning I'll hit the grocery store and see what I can do to make the next four days a little easier on myself, although it's strategy more than shopping that seems to be the key here. We also have brunch guests coming tomorrow, so I'll have to make a menu that has enough stuff for me to eat.

[Fat Guy]

I ate well today. Being at home all day made a huge difference.

I went shopping this morning and bought, among other things, the makings of brunch for our expected guests. Fairway had Pico, my favorite cheese, in stock. I bought it for our guests, but for me there was not to be any dairy. I got a ton of fruit and other things I could eat, so I could sit at the table and not come across as too much of a lunatic.

As soon as they left I ate lunch. The mouse has ensured that there's no bread available for me, so I just ate turkey and avocado -- with a little non-iodized salt and lemon -- right off the cutting board.

Thinking about dinner, I noticed that I had a whole bunch of plum tomatoes, purchased last Sunday, that were on the brink of turning. So I washed them.

I also had four hamburger patties in the freezer that were never going to be turned into hamburgers, so I figured I could combine them with the tomatoes convert it all into a low-iodine pasta sauce.

I set out to build that all up into something edible.

It came out pretty well, served over DeCecco organic spaghetti(I figure the enriched non-organic stuff could contain some additives that include iodine), though I should have run the tomatoes through a food mill to eliminate the skins. Not that I care about the skins, but still.

I also ate various snack foods throughout the day and there's still time to eat more. So I did well today. Too bad I have three days coming up where I'll be mostly out of the house.

[Blether]

Do you like samosas or pakora ? Both use dairy-free, oil-based doughs, don't need bread-like proving time and are eminently portable. Pakora can carry pretty much any vegetable you fancy, and you can stuff samosa with whatever cooked meat, potato or other filling - you could even create a new line in "not Indian flavored" if that's not your thing.

[KatieLoeb]

I've been vicariously living this nightmare with a friend recently diagnosed with (mercifully, very treatable) thyroid cancer. She had most of her thyroid removed a couple of weeks ago and will be undergoing radioactive I-131 therapy and radiation in the coming months. Thankfully she has a very well developed sense of irony and is an extremely capable home cook, so there's little danger of her starving to death or having to eat anything that doesn't live up to her usual exacting standards. But advanced planning is most definitely called for. She's got all of her meals well planned in advance and will be eating (and drinking) well during her period of confinement away from her husband and children whilst she remains "radioactive" and needs to isolated. No mouse in the equation as far as I know, but definitely an eating plan in the works.

[rooftop1000]

I finally dragged the my mothers story out of her... Back in 1974 there was no week of special diet, they just stopped the Synthroid. She had to go back to the hospital for the treatment but didn't have to stay. She says they just waved a "wand" over her and sent her home. Maybe they knew less or they used less, not sure. She very clearly remembers feeling like a crazy person for quite a while though.....

T

[Fat Guy]

Yesterday I came very close to overruling the dietary guidelines my doctor gave me.

For example the no-bread rule seems like a bit much. I know with a pretty high degree of certainty that the good bakeries aren't using iodate dough conditioners or iodized salt. Indeed I doubt most of the salt in commercial anything is iodized. The idea that you have to avoid all this stuff completely just on the off chance that it contains iodine seems nutty.

There are many other aspects of the diet that are hard to swallow. But I decided that for a week (and with just a couple of days left) I'd continue to play along.

So during the day I had tea and oranges and at night I had an approximation of shepherd's/cottage pie: sauteed ground beef topped with olive-oil mashed potatoes. And a few slices of turkey breast. And a couple more oranges and salt-free tortilla chips.

[maggiethecat]

This so totally sux for you, and I've been suffering along.

But first order of biz is to kill that wee cowrin' beastie. Make more bread dough, put it in the microwave to rise (of course, with a sign on the door) and stick a nub of dough into a couple of mousetraps.

If the mouse can penetrate the microwave let's give it up for bionic mice.

[Fat Guy]

Oh great. I just learned today that when they said I'd need to do this diet for a week they weren't using the normal definitions of "week." Rather, I started the diet Wednesday morning and need to continue it through Thursday evening. That's nine days as far as I can tell.

[Fat Guy]

I just had my dose of Iodine-131 and have to stay here at the facility for a couple of hours. They're going to serve me a hospital-kitchen-produced, low-iodine meal soon! If I can get a cell-phone photo of it I'll share.

[Fat Guy]

Last night for dinner we had baked potatoes. I ate the insides and Ellen ate the skins. PJ ate both.

I'm busily planning my post-low-iodine-diet meals. I'm thinking either pizza or Chinese food Thursday night, eggs for Friday breakfast, deli for Friday lunch, and Friday night I have a date to go to a great seafood place.

[Fat Guy]

These are the best photos I could get of my low-iodine lunch (cell-phone only today):

The commissary here has unfair advantages, because they have access to a lab that can test for iodine. So they've determined that these rolls from Rockland Bakery are no- or low-enough- iodine. (The nurse tells me they've also tested Wonder Bread and Thomas's English Muffins and that both are low-iodine -- thanks for telling me at the end of the diet.) The chicken soup was quite palatable, the fruit was fruit and the olive oil provided to dress the salad was not garbage. The chicken plate was the same rubber chicken from hotel banquets of old. I'm sure I've had worse chicken but I can't quite remember when. The peas were steamed to molecular incoherence and the rice was dry and weird. But really, I give them credit for producing this meal. There was enough edible stuff to make for a nice lunch, which I hadn't expected.

[chezcherie]

hope all goes well, fatguy! are you having post-diet food brought in, or will you go out for your iodine after?

[Fat Guy]

As luck would have it my period of semi-isolation will end at the same time as my diet: dinner tomorrow (Thursday) night.

At the moment I'm leaning Chinese.

For my second lunch, or perhaps it was retroactive breakfast, I just had (homemade) turkey hash. I'm thinking a hamburger and the inside of a baked potato for dinner maybe. We'll see. Hey maybe I'll have it on a Thomas's English muffin.

[Fat Guy]

Dinner at mom's this evening. Based on today's new findings, she acquired some Thomas's English muffins for me. Dinner was hamburgers topped with sauteed onions on English muffins, and french fries.

With one day left on the diet I feel like I'm really getting the hang of it.