Dietitian Appointment

Wahooooo!!! Yesterday I finally got to speak with a dietitian regarding my Hypoglycemia and seemingly inability to loose weight! I kept an incredibly detailed food journal for the last month because I knew it would be the first thing she would ask for. I was so happy that she took me seriously and not once did she pull out the plastic food proportion examples. She saw that I know what a real serving is and thought that my meals were properly sized and eaten at properly spaced apart time intervals. Now the bad stuff (though it’s not really bad). The first thing she said was that I was not eating enough carbs. What?! Wait, aren’t carbs the devil of all foods? I thought they should be avoided at all cost. Apparently I am eating less than half of what she would recommend as an ultimate low carb diet. Who knew? So I guess I get to eat more bread. Geeeeee what a pity (please note the sarcasm). She also said I could eat more potatoes. Hmmm I was not aware that you could eat more potatoes then I do already. I was cutting back a little because I was a little worried about the starch, but she says that the starch is ‘A Good Thing’ (imagine my surprise). She wants me to keep my carb intake even throughout the day; not eating a little all day and then cramming it in at dinner time to make up for it. This is probably the reason I get so sleepy after dinner .Next, I have been choking down a hard-boiled egg every day for a month trying to raise my protein. Well not any more. She is worried about my cholesterol. She said that I can eat the whites to get the protein and be ok; it’s the yoke that are full of fat and cholesterol. Blink*Blink* soooo your telling me that I can eat the yummy white part and throw the nasty, choking, gagging, disgusting, yellow goo away? Yep I am! AWESOME; So there IS a silver lining! I will be speaking with my doctor again soon. She is wondering if there is a correlation between my being overweight and my Ehlers-Danlos. Recently I read a blog about a woman who asked that same question and found out that the Ehlers was keeping her body from correctly absorbing nutrients.. Very interesting. We will see. She gave me some sample meal plans to get me started and while they are not gluten free I should be able to make most of their gluten free counter parts. The best part is that I can eat fruit again! She just doesn’t want me drinking fruit juice and that’s OK. I had already cut fruit juice out a while ago because it was too high in sugar. This is going to be an ongoing struggle but at least I am no longer going it alone.

Original Pancake house

Easter Sunday/ our one year Anniversary we went to the Original Pancake house I would not recommend them to anyone ever. When we were seated the ice in our glasses had already melted; which tells me that it had been sitting there a while. Not once during the entire meal were any of our glasses refilled. Bear had called ahead to ask specifically about the menu and mentioned my pork allergy and gluten intolerance's. We were reassured that they had a wonderful menu and that they would and could accommodate us. The gluten free menu is small. I mean small as in a 4" by 3" laminated piece of paper. Over half of the menu had sausage, bacon, or ham. We sat for a good 45 minutes before our waiter turned up to take our order. We tried telling him that I am a allergic to Pig and needed the grill cleaned off and free of pork products. The food defiantly was tainted when it arrived. After we left my lips and tongue got all tingly, a massive head ache set in and I was unable to stay awake for more than a few seconds before crashing again and again, but not before an emergency trip too the bathroom. They are darn lucky it was only a small exposure or I would be slapping a hospital bill on them. From the time we ordered till the food came it took at least another hour. Lucky for us I had an emergency health bar in my purse to keep my starving four year old niece from eating the table. Seriously people, if you know it's going to be that long of a wait and you see that the party has a small child with them, for the love of God bring out some crackers! When the food came, my sister in law's order was wrong. She had ordered Strawberry crepes and they brought out strawberry pancakes. I ordered three gluten free pancakes, hash browns, and sunny side up eggs. The hash browns were surprisingly good and that is all the credit I will give them. The eggs were so runny that they were practically raw. The pancakes I am sure were contaminated with gluten and I am paying for it today. I spent the rest of the day quite miserable and constantly crashing from pork, and hurting from gluten. Happy Anniversary indeed.

Biaggi's Revisited

Biaggi's you've done it again. Bear and I absolutely LOVE your restaurant. This still remains one of the few places that's safe for me to eat that has a real menu and not a scrap of paper listing three salads that they remove the croutons from. Easter Sunday is our One year anniversary and we have been wanting a special occasion to go back to Biaggi's (instead of just getting their take out pizza which remains one of my favorite GF pizzas). Since we did not want to fight the Easter crowd we went a little early. Our waitress was Charis and all we can say is Hat's off to you. Biaggi's was quite full this time and while we saw her here there and everywhere she did not seem rushed at all when she spoke to us. She even gave us the heads up that Biaggi's will be getting a GF cakes soon. Yummy. All of the staff there are splendid and will do everything within their power to make sure you have a wonderful time. I posted a picture of Bear's dinner this time because honestly, if they are going to go through that much effort to make every meal into a work of art it should be noted. He had the Filet Mignon. While I hate the taste of cow, the sautéed mushrooms I snatched from his plate were absolutely amazing. Bear who does not like tomatoes loved the sun-dried tomato cream sauce he even liked the fresh cherry tomatoes. I snatched one of those as well. Mmmm delicious. It was also served with asparagus and garlic mashed potatoes which Bear happily devoured.
I was torn from wanting to order Linguini and Clams (which I had last time) or the Alfredo. For the sake of something different I ordered the Farfalle Alfredo with Grilled chicken, bowtie pasta, roasted peppers, sautéed red onion and peas. I had them leave out the crispy Italian cured ham since I am allergic to pig. I will admit that I was slightly disappointed that the bowtie pasta turned out to be the same Linguini I had with the Clams last time. Aside from that it was delicious. The Alfredo sauce with Asiago cheese was light and creamy not the heavy thick stuff that you get out of a can at most other restaurants. I happily ate every last bit of it, but probably should not have. We were pleasantly full but not stuffed when we finished. By the time we got to our car we both realized we ate to much and were stuffed. Sigh, and I was looking forward to the GF chocolate cake Bear had gotten us from Trader Joe's for dessert, Oh well, there is always tomorrow. Heck our Anniversary is not till Sunday. Sunday we will be going to the Original Pancake house. We hear they have a fabulous GF menu and the staff was more than helpful when we talked to them on the phone. I will defiantly be posting about them then. Till then THANK YOU BIAGGI'S.

Banana Bread

Bear and I finally got around to testing our flour recipe. It was wonderful. We made pizza and banana bread. The banana bread had the texture of moist corn bread and was absolutely delicious. It did not have the slightly metallic taste of other gluten free breads. This is defiantly a repeat. The pizza was a pleasant surprise. The crust has a slightly crumbly feel but held together like brick oven pizza crust. It even had a slight brick oven taste. It was not 'bready', to thin, or even soggy like other gluten free pizzas. Bear and I can't wait to make more flour. We even found a stone flour mill for $27. More on that when we get one. I'm only listing our Banana bread recipe but I posted a picture of the pizza so you could see it's crust (the peperoni is 98% fat free turkey, I think it makes up for the over abundance of cheese). Enjoy!

Mom's Banana Bread Recipe:
3/4 cup of butter
1 1/2 cup of sugar
4 eggs
3 cups of flour
4 Bananas
1 1/2 Tsp of salt (we use sea salt)
1 1/2 Tsp Baking soda
1 1/2 Tsp Vanilla extract

In this order:
Cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs. Add flour, salt and soda. Add Banana's and vanilla. Bake 325-350 for 60-70 minutes

Gluten Free Flour

In the past we have mixed different pre-made GF flours; but this is our first attempt at grinding our own flour from the raw materials. Our recipe is 3 cups brown rice, 2 teaspoons Xanthagum, 2 cups Tapioca starch, and 1/4 cup of Flax seeds. We used a Hamilton Beach coffee grinder that can also grind herbs. It has different settings for different levels of fineness. Using the espresso setting the flour still had the texture of beach sand. I've been grinding it by hand using a motor and pestle. There are flour mills available but they can cost $300 or more. The motor and pestle work nicely even if it takes some time. It's stored in the fridge in an air tight jar to make it last longer. So far we have not had the time to make any bread with it. I will post again when we have, but the texture and smell of the flour are wonderful. We have been hard at work expanding our garden and spring cleaning. During the cleaning I broke our camera. How do you like the pictures taken with our new camera?

Homemade Coco & Marshmallows

This past weekend we tried our hand at homemade marshmallows. They turned out alright, but I think they needed to set more. Our next batch will be better. I am looking forward to making smores with them over our outdoor fireplace; although ironically I don't like marshmallows in my coco because it makes it to sweet. We used one of the many recipes online for homemade marshmallows and substituted Tapioca starch in place of Corn starch. The coco is our own recipe and it can compare and surpass any gourmet coco on the market. Compare our 48 calories, 11 carbs, and 5.3 grams of sugar to the store bought average of 182 calories, 32.4 carbs, and a whopping 21.3 grams of sugar per serving and you can see why we choose to make our own coco. It's smooth and still sweet. Our secret is Truvia. I will never use Splenda, but have found a new friend in Truvia. You can add powdered coffee flavors but it jumps those numbers right back up there with the store bought varieties. Enjoy!
Our simple coco Recipe:
4 cups powdered Milk (still looking for powdered almond milk)
28 packs of Truvia
1 1/2 cups Baking Coco powder

Gluten Free Crackers

These Gluten Free Crackers are an excellent alternative to Ritz crackers. They are slightly more crunchy; but I think that makes them taste better than Ritz. They are made with corn starch and white rice flour. Hmmm I wonder if they have one with brown rice flour ;) Enjoy!
I've been meaning to blog about them since January but I've been so busy and a tad upset. It looks like Bear and I will have to wait another year (or two) for a child. It turns out that I am Hypoglycemic. That coupled with my Gluten Intolerance coupled with my Ehlers-danlos has made a recipe that my doctors don't want to mess with. At least I'm FINALLY getting answers after 17 years of tests and dead ends. I feel validated to know that my Gluten Intolerance is not imagined and that the missing link was the Hypoglycemia. I guess this blog will now become a gluten Intolerant/Hypoglycemic blog. Oh well, women are having children at older ages these days. Till I can hold my baby in my arms Bear and I are looking to adopt a puppy. Wish us luck.