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.
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May 23, 2018
Week 6
Here are Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, and Week 5
This is the last week of this food diary, and I think I’m really starting to see a difference in my baseline pain.
As Court mentioned, it does seem like my original estimate of two weeks for the de-glutening was really too short. It feels as though this entire six weeks has been necessary to get it out of my system. It could also be because it took me a few weeks to do things like avoiding cross contamination and cooking in entirely separate dishes and so on. Now I’m wondering how to make this more sustainable.
I do want to (very carefully) bake up several batches of healthy breakfast muffins for PiC and JB to have on hand, thus using up the wheat flour, before I start experimenting with alternative baking bases, and get back into the habit of baking and cooking in a GF-friendly way without having to expend a ton of thought and energy on the process. (more…)
May 16, 2018
Week 5
Here are Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4.
This week is all about avoiding cross contamination: cooking in separate pans, using different utensils and plates where we would normally share to cut down on dishes.
I’m not a fan of the extra dishes to wash but I’m also trying to make the most of this trial and we do have a dishwasher so we can handle it.
As I mentioned to Linda, we’re doing more substitutions now than we may later in part because we’re trying to preserve some of our easy go-to recipes but I can see that changing over time as I learn new recipes and adjust them to our lifestyle and time constraints. I adore rice myself and grew up eating it for every meal so I have no issues going to a mostly-rice based diet but the family is going to need a bit of time to adjust with me. (more…)
May 9, 2018
Week 4
Read Week 1, Week 2 and Week 3.
This week was supposed to be about experimenting with recipes and getting comfortable with the new diet but it turned into a week of survival because the Flu going around tackled me to the ground and sat on me, taunting me.
Rude.
As someone noted, I probably underestimated how long this diet trial has to last – I may not document beyond the six weeks, though, if there’s not much interest.
Day 1.
Breakfast: Bowl of two cereals – GF “honey nut O’s” and the weird maple ladder cereal. Yes to the Os again and no to the ladder cereal again.
Snacked on bars and a couple slices of dressed cucumber – cross contamination? Felt tingly and weird after. But that might have been sleep deprivation.
Lunch: Grilled cheese and apple slices
Dinner: Grilled shrimp and cheesy buttery sliced grits
Pain/Discomfort: Less pain than yesterday’s weird night but my lower back is a mess.
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May 2, 2018
Week 3
Read Week 1 and Week 2.
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.
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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.
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April 18, 2018
I’ve been seeing research that suggests that a gluten-free diet may help the effects of my fibro and rosacea, not just anecdotes like I’d heard in the past and finally had to start considering that it might be something worth trying.
I hated the thought because oh how I love my carbs but I’ve lived with high levels of pain for most of my life. If a simple change in diet might help, I’ve got to try it.
I planned to wait until after our summer vacation to start because that would give me time to use up the gluten-ful ingredients we have stocked and phase in GF foods instead over the course of several weeks. Instead, PiC convinced me to start early because if it could help, why not find out earlier rather than later?
My order-loving soul is grumpy about it but his argument has a certain amount of logic. It takes at least two weeks, according to the experienced, for all the gluten to exit the system so I have to try this for at least 6 weeks to get any real sense of whether this will help.
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