By: Revanche

Gluten Free Living, Month 3

July 4, 2018

I left off the weekly updates after the first six weeks of the trial but I’m going to keep on with a few monthly reports for posterity and discussion.

Meal winners

• Rice pasta with ground turkey, marinara sauce, topped with mozzarella. Broccoli on the side.
• Coconut rice and baked tilapia
• Chicken and tofu masala, coconut rice. Palak paneer and lamb curry from a box on the side.
• White corn tortilla quesadillas – ALL HAIL white corn tortillas! Soft like flour tortillas but none of the gluten.
• Turkey and cheese enchiladas for dinner. The sauce packet says to make four, I made 15. It stretched!
• Gluten free three cheese pizza crust topped with fresh red bell peppers, sweet Vidalia onions, 1/3 lbs of sweet Italian sausage. And of course sauce (from a jar this time) and shredded mozzarella (bought in bulk from Costco). Pretty darn good!
• CPK’s cauliflower crust pizza, though not at all economical, was pretty good too.
• Herbed butter chicken thighs, garlic mashed potatoes, elote.
• Grilled pork loin chops, pan fried cauliflower with a touch of salt, garlic mashed potatoes.
• Cottage pie with sour cream mashed potatoes, and mozzarella on top

Meal losers

Nothing this time! Those horrible snickerdoodles are finally done and gone though. Thank goodness. The Trader Joe’s snickerdoodles are a little bit better but still not really winners for my palate. The Trader Joe’s fake Oreos are even worse than the snickerdoodles by a small margin.

Gluten free baking

I hadn’t gotten back into baking yet for a variety of reasons but finally tackled some spice muffins last week with my Bob’s Red Mill GF one-for-one replacement GF flour. The first batch was decidedly NOT muffiny but it’s hard to tell which change was the problem: I forgot to add the buttermilk at the end, and instead of pureed apples/zucchini as usual, I only had watermelon and strawberries. The latter might have been too watery because the batter was definitely more runny than usual.

In the name of science, and not wasting my homemade buttermilk, I had to make a second batch the next day. Had to, there was no choice about it! These didn’t get any fruit or vegetable treatment because I was too tired and I did remember the buttermilk. They turned out very muffiny. Too blonde, but 100% muffiny. I think I need a third batch to confirm if it was the missing buttermilk or the addition of watery fruits that caused them to be not-muffiny.

“What does not muffiny mean?” Good question! I can’t quite describe it but it’s something about the texture.

Thoughts on effectiveness

My fatigue has been high for the past several weeks. Possibly due to getting up early, working or playing with JB for hours, walking the dogs a lot, and trying to maintain a positive outlook constantly. I’m not a cheery sort, but I need to focus on being positive. It’s a new thing we’re trying on around here along with the GF diet.

Positive or not, though, I’ve been unsure whether the diet has made a true difference. The changes in pain levels have been slight, if any, on a daily basis. My day to day fatigue and energy levels have not improved at all. On my second baking day, after an hour baking, then peeling and dicing potatoes, my body was D-O-N-E. I had to sit a long while just to get my breath back. It was only an hour, a third of which was sitting down, but still, it resulted in complete exhaustion. (Reflection: I normally have to rest 2-6 hours to get back up again when I’m that fatigued but on this day, I was able to recover in about 1 hour. Coincidence? I don’t know!)

The difference I see is in the top range of my pain and exhaustion.

Usually, overexertion results in being knocked down for a day or three. Sometimes even a week. We’re talking about being bed-ridden, unable to feed myself, unable to walk, even unable to sit up in bed without help.

But my first indication that this diet might be having any impact was after an unusual weekend. We had two full days of commitments, full of socializing that I would normally never have agreed to if I was thinking it through. Each day required at least 10K steps (more than 4x my usual daily step count). The Monday after, when I would normally be glued to the bed gasping for breath like a fish out of water, elephants of fatigue sitting on my chest, I was able to get up. In pain, and slowly, not well, and definitely not well rested, but able to function. That’s far better than I typically would have been able to do the pre-GF era.

That was my first sign I had to stick with this longer, to be sure.

Father’s Day weekend was another challenging weekend – we had a really bad start to the Saturday and so I booted everyone out of the kitchen so I could cook in peace which included hefting the cast iron pan into the sink three times. I could feel the tingles, the usual precursor to sausage-fingers and other joint failure, and regretfully braced myself to be non-functional on Sunday.

I wasn’t!

I shamelessly took advantage of that unforeseen mobility to do some crafting and sidewalk chalk with JB, a little bit of weeding in the yard, butchering a huge pork loin into roasts and chops, and then cooking a full special Father’s Day meal. Again, with hefting that ludicrously heavy cast iron into and out of the sink. My hands should have been toast. They nearly were – but they stayed on just this side of useless.

This isn’t proof positive that the diet is working.  The good days could be a fluke,  I might be going through a rare good spell. It’s hard to tell because those start and end without warning. But it’s compelling enough for me to stick with it even if it’s a bit more work and cost.

:: What’s your favorite easy meal this month?

Sharing is caring!

Email

Twitter

Pinterest

0