Gluten Free Me

It’s such a nasty word, isn’t it?  It sounds white and pasty…like Elmer’s.  Hard to believe such an ugly word makes food so tasty.  Fresh baked bread, peanut butter cookies, chocolate cake…

GLUTEN.  There, I said it.  In the nick of time, too. Stopped me from going down a dangerous…albeit delicious….road.

In the last year or so, I’ve been motivated to take care of some chronic health issues.  Before Christmas one of my health care providers suggested I try a gluten free diet. 

Before Christmas??  I ignored her. 

Of course in January she asked me how the diet was coming.  And I started to feel guilty.

I’m no good at guilt.  Or maybe I’m too good at guilt.  You get the picture.

I checked out a few websites and got some ideas about what I was in for.  At the store, I headed for the gluten free aisle and was stopped dead in my tracks.  Do you know how EXPENSIVE that stuff is??  Holy buckets.  But I figured I couldn’t live without the gluten free equivalents of the things I love. So I paid over $6 for a gluten free corn bread mix.  I paid almost $7 for a gluten free brownie mix.  Four ice cream sandwiches were $6.59.  I thought going gluten free was supposed to make me feel better.  Those prices made me nauseous.

The cornbread took forever to bake, and when I finally took it out of the oven it was still gooey in the middle.  It tasted okay at first, and then it landed in my stomach.  Like a ROCK.

My son once had a dog that ate rocks.  (Can you believe his name was Rockie?  No joke.)  I now know how he must have felt.  But after spending 6 buckaroos, I ate the whole cotton-pickin' 20 lbs of cornbread.  It took four days and I gained three pounds.

On a Friday night I decided to mix up the brownies.  The batter tasted good and smelled great.  They, too, took forever to bake and looked gooey.  But who doesn’t like gooey brownies, right??  (Except for my daughter, who hates chocolate, but that topic deserves a post all its own.)  I cut the brownies into 16 squares like the box said…but the pieces were so dinky.  I ate four. Okay, it was probably more like five...or six...ish.

Did you know that some gluten free flours are made from ground beans?

Did you know there are some bodily noises that are impossible to sleep through? 

It was a long night…for both me and my dog.  I wasn’t uncomfortable, I was just….surprised.  And so glad it was Friday.  And so very glad I didn’t decide to eat brownies for breakfast on a work day.

I’m still doing the gluten free thing, but I stay away from the processed stuff.  Vegetables, fruit, cheese, milk, meat, fish…all I can eat, man.  I eat a lot of oatmeal.  And today I found out I can have tortilla chips, my one true love!!  And I do feel better.  I feel lighter.

And I'm hoping one day soon Daisy will come out from under the bed and be brave enough to sleep with me again.