6 weeks of gluten free living: Week 3
May 2, 2018
Week 3
At this point, the gluten should be all out of my system except for that one oops of the hash brown I ate with an egg, thinking that it was fried potatoes! Potatoes are GF, right?
Not these. Drat. There’s likely still some residual contamination in this week.
I THINK my exhaustion is less intense and my pain spells are maybe a little shorter. It’s still hard to be sure whether it’s related yet because I normally have irregular cycles of pain and fatigue. I do feel like there have been some minor differences in how I feel.
Day 1.
Breakfast: I defrosted a huge batch of homemade muffins for PiC and JB to eat feast on. For myself, a slice of GF bread with peanut butter does the trick, and I have half a glass of milk.
Lunch was an experiment with the millet and rice ramen that PiC found. I made up a broth with a base that I use for chicken soup, gently simmered onions, salt, a dash of onion powder, a dash of garlic powder, sliced roast pork. The ramen noodles looked really strange but they were not bad! The broth was awful, though. Next time, I’ll just boil the noodles, fish them out, and dash some sesame oil and sesame seeds on top with the pork slices.
Dinner: Leftover pork roast, coconut rice, sauteed spinach. Simple, filling, and easy! Also this reduces the cost per meal even more.
Pain/Discomfort: Medium – several joints are out of whack but I can still walk so yay for that.
Day 2.
Breakfast: GF protein bar
Lunch: Strawberry yogurt, banana (almost too ripe yuck yuck yuck)
Dinner: Trader Joe’s Indian dinner! Alas, no wheaty garlic naan for me. But we pulled out the coconut rice that’s lasting forever to eat with the chicken tikka masala, lamb vindaloo, palak paneer. The chicken shouldn’t be too spicy for JB but I forgot that the palak paneer is a touch spicy. Whoops, sorry JB! Ze soldiers on with 1.5 glasses of milk. PiC and I love Indian food but a full Indian dinner at a restaurant is just too expensive for every day. This was a nice budget version of it.
Pain/Discomfort: Medium grade pain – not pain free but not gritting my teeth either. Somewhere in between.
Day 3.
Breakfast: strawberry yogurt and a slice of peanut butter GF toast.
Lunch: A weird hodge podge because work has kept me glued to the screen so I grab whatever I can pop onto my plate: a cold chocolate milk, a small bowl of strawberries, a chunk of semi-soft cheese, beet chips, edamame chips, regular hummus, and a GF snickerdoodle. That cookie tasted WEIRD. Everything else was good!
Dinner: PiC was suggesting that we do pasta, I still need to test out that GF pasta (was it lentil pasta? might have been) that I grabbed at Trader Joe’s but I’d already set aside some fresh fish to cook up today. We had perfectly poached tilapia fillets (one lime and some salt), with coconut rice on the side. I’m very proud of how the fish turned out, less proud I was too busy to pull out and prep vegetables. I meant to make up a quick batch of green beans. PiC says Strawberries and watermelon for dessert makes up for it. I’ll go with that.
Pain/Discomfort: Felt weird all day. Not sure how to describe it other than “weird” – sort of on the cusp of a flare up but unsure whether it’ll be Fatigue Swamp or Pain Power-up.
Day 4.
Breakfast: A slice of peanut butter toast.
Lunch snack: Banana and GF chocolate chip cookie.
Dinner: Pesto pasta (rice and quinoa pasta), sauteed asparagus, tiny chunks of roast pork shoulder. You know your dinner is a winner when the three year old takes one bite, declares “I would like this for my lunch tomorrow, please!”, then devours three servings.
Pain/Discomfort: Fatigue is the real problem today – we had two outings with the dogs in the cold and my energy is drained down to the dregs for 4-6 hours. I still drag myself through work, cooking dinner, getting JB bathed and through bedtime but the tired pulls at my consciousness and weighs down my limbs.
Day 5.
Breakfast: Eggs, sunny side up, with the last of my thick cut GF toast.
Lunch: 2 cheddar-mozzarella-turkey quesadillas on corn tortillas, chocolate milk
Dinner: 2 hot dogs with grilled onions, sauerkraut, and ketchup on short stubby GF buns
Pain/Discomfort: Morning – Curious absence of intense pain. Mild aches throughout like an early flu but nothing is screaming or obviously swollen. WEIRD. Proceeding very carefully because on the few mornings before this where I thought No Pain! (because less than teeth gritting pain feels like no pain) I completely overdid it and fell over. Not making that mistake again. Not today anyway.
By day’s end, I seem to have done a good job moderating my activity even though I felt “good”. Thus, my fingers didn’t start swelling up until the end of the day! Usually a flare up would be triggered by noon.
Day 6.
Breakfast: Trying a new GF seed bread. The bready bits are fine, not terribly special, but the sunflower and other seeds are tasty! I share a bite with JB because it’s zir motto to ask for some of anything I’m eating.
Lunch: I intended to have yogurt for lunch but forgot and had the last of the pesto pasta and asparagus instead. Yummy mistake!
Dinner: A friend was in town for a business dinner and invited PiC to socialize with their old associates even though he’s not working with them anymore. I wholly approved, he’s not gotten away in too long, so I shooed him out the door and whipped up some frozen paella for JB. I dished up rice and ribs for myself.
Pain/Discomfort: NewPup has always been a puller, and only sled-dogs a little bit less with a better collar now, but today, the pulling was too much for my hands. I could feel my wrists starting to flare up after a training walk so I had to take it very easy afterwards.
Day 7.
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs and GF pancakes with maple syrup
Lunch: Quick tacos and a side of Late July chips
Dinner: Sushi dinner – salmon teriyaki, rice, salad, mediocre miso soup that JB devoured, sashimi, cut rolls. Avoiding soy sauce was weird.
Pain/Discomfort: It seemed like a typical day with moderate pain but by the time I actually hit the hay, my body was one gigantic aching bruise. I couldn’t sleep until 2 am – once the pain wore off, heartburn followed up with the second punch. RUDE. It eerily reminds me of being pregnant, many of these aches were amplified and made it nearly impossible to get any sleep past the first few months. I’m not, it just reminds me of that time.
Yummy Foods
- Late July: Jalapeno Lime which strangely tastes like a weird Doritos Cool Ranch chip.
- Immaculate Baking Company: chocolate chip cookies. I miss their biscuits and cinnamon rolls (which weren’t ever quite the Cinnabon level of creamy I missed but were still good), I haven’t seen any GF versions of those items from them yet.
- Trader Joe’s: Brown rice and quinoa pasta.
- Little Northern Bakehouse’s seeds and grains bread from Sprouts
- Niman Ranch fearless beef franks
- Trader Joe’s breaded chicken nuggets (not 100% yum but good enough)
Yucky Foods
- Simple Mills soft baked baked Snicker doodles
As a money blogger, I really should be keeping a close tally on these costs but I don’t have the attention to spare for it while I’m adjusting to the changes. I know that we’re paying a 30-150% premium on most GF foods. Trader Joe’s regular pasta is $1 a pound, the gluten free brown rice and quinoa pasta tends to be twice or three times that much.
I remember reading that bulk bins aren’t a good idea because of the risk of cross contamination either because the store changes bins for certain staples without washing them out first or because people are careless and use a scoop tainted by wheat in a non-wheat bin. I’m not sure if that level of possible contamination will be an issue for me but I’m starting to be better about cooking our food in separate pans and so on.
To save, I skip the quinoa pasta and stick to the brown rice at TJs and do my own baking. Most of it freezes pretty well.
Also, in the beginning, there was a lot of Mexican and salads while I figured the rest out.
Court recently posted…The Good Stuff: April
Do you also do the frozen brown rice? I need to figure out how much extra time regular brown rice needs in the pot.
I haven’t tried it, but I don’t think it takes much longer than regular rice.
But I also get the boil in the bag kind so don’t trust me on that one.
Court recently posted…Read it! Keep Me Posted
Good to know that’s an option 🙂
Oh and it can take a full month for me to clear some of the symptoms of a gluten exposure so give the “clear out” a bit more time. I think it took a full 6-8 weeks for all of it to go away the first time.
Cross contamination for me varies based on what else is going on. Right now we’ve just started seasonal allergy season around here so any exposure will be amplified for me. Stress also makes exposure worse for me.
Court recently posted…The Good Stuff: April
Thanks for that thought – I think that you’re right, I’m still feeling like I’m in transition.
As I recall, Red Mill (?) makes a really good gluten free brownie mix. Of course, Mom added some (dark chocolate) chocolate chips for added oomph.
Good luck on this diet. I hope it does end up helping.
Abigail @ ipickuppennies recently posted…The bathroom is (finally) done!
OMG I hope you’re right – I must find this! And thank you!
Lotus brand noodles, right? 🙂 I like them but they do have to be cooked separately from the broth because they leave so much starch in their cooking water.
It took me a long time to learn that brown rice does best if it has some time to sit & soak before you start to cook it.
King Arthur GF brownie mix is SOOO good! The best price I’ve found is through Amazon’s Prime Pantry.
Our grocery bill shot up during the first few months when we changed over to GF, then stabilized at something like a 20-25% increase over our previous spending. I miss the bulk bins, and I had to spend over $50 replacing my spices/herbs alone. 🙁 But part of how I keep costs lower now is by buying in bulk through Azure Standard and Costco. I get 50 lbs of GF oats at a time through Azure and three 4-lb bags of GF bread mix (6 bags if they’re on sale!) I also pay attention to the sales & coupons on my weekly grocery runs at Fred Meyer (they have a good selection of GF products at cheaper prices than Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods). The other main way I save is by trying to maximize our “gluten irrelevent” foods; bananas and baby carrots cost the same now as they did before, cheesesticks and chicken breasts too, and these plain foods are both cheaper and healthier than the expensive GF replacements!