6 weeks of gluten free living: Week 2
April 25, 2018
Week 2
See Week 1 here.
Day 1.
Breakfast: PiC whips up GF pancakes for me, and regular just-add-water flapjacks for the rest of the gang before we venture to IKEA to buy some gifts.
Lunch: We end that epic visit with lunch in their restaurant and an ice cream cone. (Don’t eat the cone! he warns me. I know, I reply sadly.) Most of their food has gluten but the salmon fillet with veggies plate is quite good, and GF! I feel full for the first time in days. Not sure if that’s because I’ve been inadvertently eating less or because I don’t feel full without six carbs for breakfast.
Dinner: We have leftovers for dinner again – those ribs make excellent tacos!
Pain/Discomfort: Hands are swollen badly, but I can still bend the fingers on my left hand. Cannot lift my arms above elbow level – it causes searing tendon pain. Back, hip, ankle, knee, shoulder pain is low.
Day 2.
Breakfast: A slice of peanut butter GF toast for breakfast,.
Lunch: corn tortilla quesadilla for lunch with a couple of GF cookies. I think I’m finally feeling like I’m settling into bit of a routine which makes me happy.
Dinner: I had shrimp and cheesy grits planned for dinner but work ran late and PiC really likes those rib meat tacos so I fire up the grill pan and heat up the corn tortillas, and pull out the premade guacamole. We get it on sale at Costco so it works out to about the same cost as buying avocados and making it fresh – this saves my hands a bit.
Pain/Discomfort: Right hand remains swollen badly, left hand is gradually coming around. Still can’t lift my arms above elbow level – that searing tendon pain isn’t going away. Back, hip, ankle, knee, shoulder pain is low.
Day 3.
Breakfast: I try that maple “ladders” cereal that PiC picked for me, and have to explain to JB again why we’re eating different cereals. Ze loves my Honey Nut Os, and is perplexed that I’ve abandoned them. I know, I’m sad too, kiddo. The probiotics finally seem to be helping with my earlier inability to digest milk in the morning though and that is exciting!
Lunch: I’m getting predictable – a corn tortilla quesadilla with honey-baked turkey, mozzarella, and cheddar.
Dinner: It takes a couple hours to prep because of my hands but I bake up a big tray of chicken legs on potatoes, topped with pesto. Both PiC and JB are thrilled by the surprise.
Pain/Discomfort: Right hand fingers are still swollen and clawlike, left hand only has minor swelling. Still can’t lift my arms above elbow level, it’s time to hunt down true wrap style shirts again because I hate feeling crippled and helpless, and that feeling is very strong when I can’t even dress or undress myself without help. Neck is stiff and creaky but back, hip, ankle, knee, shoulder pain is low.
Day 4.
Breakfast: I’m so excited by the ability to digest milk in the morning that I do cereal and milk again, JB branches out to Raisin Bran with PiC. My raisin lovers.
Lunch: Forgot to eat, grabbed my now favorite Peanut, Almond and Dark Chocolate Protein Bar (GF!) from my emergency stash to tide me over until dinner.
Dinner: Back to leftovers – ribs and rice, chicken and potatos, a huge pile of sliced Persian cucumbers for veggies.
Pain/Discomfort: Intense headaches today – not sure if I’m failing to drink enough water but just in case, I take 2 Tylenol and down a liter of water.
Day 5.
Breakfast: I miss my bagels, croissants, and English muffins but a slice of PB GF toast will tide me over.
Lunch: Another busy day, two walks for the dogs means I grab another Peanut, Almond and Dark Chocolate Protein Bar for lunch. But let’s be honest, I also just like eating them.
Dinner: More leftovers – ribs and rice, chicken and potatos, a huge pile of sliced Persian cucumbers for veggies.
Pain/Discomfort: More headaches today – less than yesterday, though, and definitely not migraine level for which I’m very grateful.
Day 6. We confirm by text our friends are coming over for dinner tomorrow night, and I haul out a monster of a pork shoulder (almost 9 pounds, bone in) from the freezer to defrost it. It was $1 a lb!
Breakfast: Small bowl of maple cereal with milk.
Lunch: Discover that PiC hid Surprise Snickerdoodle cookies in the pantry (hid from JB, for me) along with more armloads of Late July chips and baked snap pea snacks.
Dinner: More leftovers – ribs and rice, chicken and potatos, a second huge pile of sliced Persian cucumbers for veggies. Boy I’m lucky that my family is fine with eating so many leftovers day after day.
Pain/Discomfort:
Day 7. It’s a hectic day between running to the library, meeting up with a potential dogsitter, a swim lesson and we still need to do some grocery shopping before we have friends over for dinner.
Breakfast: Peanut butter GF toast with a small glass of milk. (This is not enough for an active morning, by the by, I have to eat more if we’re going to run errands.)
Lunch: Turkey cheese avocado sandwiches for all! Plus a handful of Late July chips for each of us.
Dinner: Finally! I perfectly roasted that pork shoulder with olive oil, minced garlic, salt and pepper. Roasted for almost 4.5 hours – came out AMAZING. Served with coconut rice, and a delicious salad that PiC put together, full of beets and walnuts. Predictably JB steals all my beets when I blink. Dessert: ice cream and GF chocolate chip cookies.
My pride is split between the perfectly cooked food and the low cost: $5, the pork; $2, rice; $4, salad; $4, dessert. Everyone was full to bursting for less than $20!
Pain/Discomfort: Hands don’t feel good but I’m not a total wreck by the time we sit down for dinner and that’s really something. PiC helped with cutting the pork shoulder in half for cooking, and then carving it, which spared my hands greatly. I also specifically planned an easy dinner to cook so that I wouldn’t still be cooking for an hour after they arrived.
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It’s still too early for any conclusions but y’all were amazing with your suggestions last week – thank you so much! We’re working on adding some of them to our pantry.
Sounds like you’re finding ways to make the adjustments to your diet work. I sometimes think that people with food allergies or issues start off by looking for one-to-one substitutes at first, then evolve their diet over time to be less about substitutes and more about completely changing their approach to how they feed themselves.
I love rice so much that I’d be incorporating much more of it in my diet if I had to cut out gluten. Maybe on a better health day you (or PiC) can make a big pot of rice porridge or jook that you can reheat for quick breakfasts and lunches. Rice cakes can make a good substitute for toast as a base for peanut butter and may be a little less costly than GF bread.
And there are more things can be incorporated from the “corn” cultures, like hominy. (If you have any leftovers from that pork shoulder you could make a good pozole, perhaps.) There’s also polenta, which can be cooked into something that can be used as a based for sauces.
I know Bob’s Red Mill products were mentioned in the comments of your last post. I toured the facility a couple years ago and was impressed with how they have a completely separate processing area for GF products in order to assure quality.
Buckwheat (also called kasha in Eastern Europe) is apparently GF, so if you’re craving a starchy carb other than corn and rice, you can try some recipes with it. “Noodles” made from zucchini or other veggies can be good as a base for pasta sauces. There was also a comment about chickpea flour, and that’s something worth trying. It can be easily procured from Indian grocers and made into delicious things like socca or poora.
As for milk, I had a major problem with it starting in my late twenties. I’ve found that I can use goat milk without any problems, though, since the proteins are different. The one I like the best is from Summerhill Dairy and is carried at both Trader Joes and Whole Foods.
I hope this experiment works!
Right now, we’re doing half and half because while I love rice and rice based foods, PiC and JB don’t like eating them all the time the same way they enjoy wheat-based foods. I think the ratio will shift as we get used to it, though. Thanks for the help!
I forgot to post this link I found an article on GF grains. Looks like some really interesting options are available. https://www.thekitchn.com/quinoa-and-beyond-10-gluten-free-grains-you-should-know-227208
yes, we eat a ton of slow-cooker rice porridge with chicken and greens (frozen spinach, leeks, peas, whatever’s available). I don’t eat a lot of GF bread because it’s expensive and usually disappointing, but I do frequently make a quick/easy version of brazilian cheese bread (pao de queijo) that is pretty great. good luck!
Arepas!
A GF diet can feel rather limited so I try to vary our carb sources to hit potatoes, corn, rice, and other grains at least once each week. Here’s a meal idea for each of them.
1. Loaded baked potatoes make a solid dinner. Rinse russet potatoes, stab all over while cackling maniacally, rub with olive oil, bake on a sheet pan at 350-400° for an hour or two until they squish easily when you squeeze them with a hotpad. Top with taco meat, olives, and shredded cheese for a Mexican flair; or cubed ham, steamed broccoli, and cheese sauce for Homestyle American. (I can post a recipe for the cheese sauce too if you like.)
2. Bob’s Red Mill GF cornbread mix is a delicious side dish, and corn-chip+shredded cheddar nachos are the absolutely easiest last-minute GF meal I can make for the kids. Me, I can’t do the cheese, so I just microwave some refried beans and use it like dip. It tastes better if I mix in taco meat but that takes too much work for a last minute meal. One way to get around that is to cook up a bunch of ground beef with taco seasoning (you could even use a Crock-Pot if your hands can’t manage stirring it that day) then portion it into Tupperwares for the freezer. Then on busy nights you can just zap & eat!
3. We make a version of Rice Atolé for breakfast by mixing cooked white rice with a can of coconut milk and a little sugar; then flavor it with cinnamon & raisins, or with fresh, frozen, or canned mangos.
4. We use both Namaste GF flour blend (available at Costco) and Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 GF flour blend. The Namaste recipes for biscuit and chocolate chip cookies are both good. But the best from-scratch GF pancake recipe I’ve found is this one. In fact I made a triple batch earlier today; half for lunch and half for the freezer!
http://www.fransfavs.com/2012/07/gluten-free-buttermilk-pancakes/