Manchego Cheese

I just finished a block of manchego cheese.  It's my second or maybe third block of the cheese in the last month or so.  It was so good!

Maybe 12 or 13 years ago, I was at my rock bottom with my chronic pain.  I was wearing a TENS unit all day, carrying around a bottle of narcotics I prayed I wouldn't have to take, and spending hours stretching on the conference room floor while I tried to work on a work laptop.  No doctor could figure out what was wrong.  Every treatment they gave me made things worse.  I was seeing more specialists than I could keep track of and seeing two different physical therapists (one for back and one for the pelvic floor), a massage therapist, and an acupuncturist.  I even tried a chiropractor at one point.

I decided to experiment with food to see if there were foods that were triggering me so I did a whole 30 diet (for a good 45 days) and then slowly reintroduced foods only to find a horrible reaction to dairy (and some milder reactions to soy and gluten or something commonly in gluten products).  This was devastating.  I lived in Wisconsin at the time and cheese was my main food group.  I remember how my parents joked about how fast the cheese went moldy after I left for college because they didn't realize I was the one eating most of it and they needed to stop buying so much.  But from that point, I cut out dairy.  

I remember at one point trying some Lactaid products and pills but none helped.  I still had the horrible reaction so I assumed my issue was with the caseins, not lactose.  

But here I am today, my body has done so much healing since the divorce that it feels like a miracle.  So in the back of my head this spring has been this desire to once again try cheese.

I started with manchego for two reasons.  First, it is made with sheep's milk and the casein's are a little different in the different animal milks so it is possible that even if I never can enjoy cow's milk products, I might be able to enjoy sheep or goat milk products.  Second, I have the most fond memories of manchego from my days in Spain as a college student.  

So anyway, I'm really enjoying the manchego cheese.  I don't seem to be reacting to it at all.  I don't yet know if that means I should try cow's milk cheeses - I do miss a good Colby longhorn.  But maybe for now, it's okay just to enjoy the manchego.