“Seek and you shall find”

When SM City CDO Uptown was newly opened in November 2002, I suggested to Mama we should now start shopping for groceries at its supermarket. But she didn’t want to. She still preferred Ororama Cogon. I asked her why. She said because she had already memorized Ororama’s aisles. And it’s smaller, she didn’t have to walk around a large area.

But I insisted. So we went to SM and of course she complained and told me, “See? We don’t know where the items are. And it’s huge. We have to walk around longer.”

Now that I’m, uh, old, I have become that way too. When S&R Cagayan de Oro rearranged the sections for its merchandise, I paused for the longest time, stared at the aisles, and heaved a deep sigh of no relief. I had to re-familiarize myself with the new floor plan.

SM City CDO Uptown’s supermarket didn’t just rearrange its merchandise—it transferred to a new location, which is right across SM Northwing. And there I was again, pausing for the longest time at the entrance as I tried to check if I could guess the new floor plan just by standing there.

Kind of “seek and you shall find.”

So, yes, I’m officially old. I want supermarkets to stay the way they are, without moving any item to another aisle.

The carnivore diet has made grocery-shopping so simple for me since I don’t buy carbs and snacks anymore. Unlike before during my high-carb days when I’d go around each food aisle, searching for my favorites and food items to taste-test. These days, I buy only beef and pork for me. It’s the househelp who needs more food items.

I’m now seriously following the carnivore diet after a bout of allergic coughs that kept me from the gym for a month.

I was on an on-and-off carb-loading mode, with more on than off, from April to May. By the second week of May, I was sneezing. On the third week, I was coughing a little. On the fourth week, the cough got worse and that’s when I started staying home and went back to carnivore.

But I noticed my cough would worsen when I had eggs, salmon, and bangus belly. So I went down the rabbit hole of searching why I was still reacting to what I thought was safe food for me. Apparently, I was reacting to the histamines of these food items. Pork and beef, especially ground beef, also have high histamine levels when they’re not frozen immediately at the source.

The safest food I could have was literally the fresh-from-the-farm kind: buy one whole live cow, have it butchered, and immediately put the cut pieces inside the freezer. Holy cow.

I had to compromise. So by June 8, I began a strict diet of thinly sliced quickly boiled, like shabu-shabu, pork belly, with its fats removed. By last Sunday, I got so tired of it, I couldn’t even eat a single bite anymore. So I’ve been back to the generally accepted carnivore diet since Sunday evening.

Food as medicine, that’s the advice from low-carb and carnivore doctors.

I did have two doctors while recuperating from the coughs, my sister-in-law, and an ENT specialist. I used medicines and nasal sprays while experimenting with the food that wouldn’t worsen my coughs.