You might be Celiac, if...

Over the last two years living gluten free, I've come across emails, forums, etc that have a list of "You might be Celiac, if..." same concept of the Jeff Foxworthy redneck jokes except celiac themed.  They always make me chuckle and the longer I live gluten free the more I come to appreciate and relate to them!  One of my favorites is "You might be Celiac, if you brown-bag it to a black tie affair!"  About 3 1/2 months into my gluten free existence, my brand new husband and I were freshly back from our honeymoon.  The stars were shining bright in our eyes and our heads were way above in the clouds!  We were invited to the wedding of a co-worker and friend of my husband's.  The biggest concern that ever crossed my mind was what in heavens was I going to wear!

The cake topper from my wedding :)

The idea that I may not be able to eat anything served at this wedding never even crossed my mind until my butt was firmly planted on a chair on the lawn of a fancy country club watching the beautiful bride make her way down the aisle.  That's when I had my @#$% moment <- (generally when I realize I've done something stupid, my thoughts are hardly mommy friendly...I'm working on it, but at least they don't come out my mouth lol!)  How could I miss something this important!  Okay, well chances are there will be something non-breaded like roast beef or something they slice pieces off of with a big knife that hopefully didn't touch anything gluten or have any seasonings that have gluten...  Honestly I was horribly distracted the rest of the ceremony, but I can tell you it was very nice and everyone looked great!

Once everyone filed into the reception hall, I looked over the buffet table and thought, "Okay there's some stuff that's a possibility...maybe..."  The last thing I wanted to do was ask the bride and groom if they knew about the contents of their wedding feast!  That was definitely NOT something they should be concerned with right then!  I waited until everyone was seated and snuck out to the "bathroom" by way of the kitchen lol :)  The kitchen staff were a little confused by my presence, but I quickly located the guy who seemed to be in charge.  I proceeded to explain the situation to him and asked if there was anything plain or something they had in the back that could be prepared separately or if ANYTHING on the buffet table was safe?!  I figured, at who knows what unGodly price a plate these places charge for me to be sitting there, they would be able to work some magic!  I'll never forget what this man told me.  He said, "I'm very sorry, but everything is cooked in the same pans and work space.  I really don't want you to eat anything and I'm not going to risk making you anything.  That's a liability to our establishment!"  I was floored.  I stood there mouth gaping.  He ushered me out of the kitchen all the while apologizing profusely!  Sometimes I wish I had let him have it, but I wasn't about to make things awkward for our friends!  This was their day; my drama WASN'T going to spoil it!!!

I slunked back to the table.  My husband could tell by my expression that it didn't go well.  He refused to eat if I couldn't eat anything so we decided to "cut class" and sneak out of the wedding!  Our goal was to leave, get food and be back before the bride and groom realized we were gone :)  Thankfully there was a Wendy's fairly close by so this didn't seem like an impossible task!  We giggled to ourselves as we exited, running to our car as if on some great secret mission.  We must have looked a sight walking into that Wendy's, me in a floor length asian themed strapless, him in a three piece suit!  People visiably gaped...  The guy at the counter barely made eye contact as he asked, "Can I take your order?"  But when I started to describe how I needed my food prepared, he finally caught a glimpse of our clothing and did a double take!

Sitting at one of the small tables, enjoying our contraband, my husband started talking about going to another fast food joint after except this time when we walked in I should slap him and say, "THIS is where you're taking me on our first date you jerk!" :)  We had a good laugh coming up with a whole bunch of scenarios of things we could do in our dress clothes to mess with people's minds!  It turned into so much fun by the time we got back to the wedding and told the rest of the people at our table, we were even talking about adding it to our monthly "date night" just for giggles!  The best part was we were successful, the bride and groom never even knew we left and we didn't miss out on any of the wedding fun!

I learned my lesson after that wedding, now I try to bring some type of food in my purse or a cooler bag in the car that I can easily sneak in to places if need be!  Most places won't give you a hard time though if you explain that you have a food allergy and need to eat your own food.  Actually one time I packed up a bowl of soup to bring to the diner just so I could hang out with some friends who were eating there.  I bought a glass of OJ so I wasn't using their napkins for nothing lol, but they were happy to let me do what I had to do.  Now with everything I have to remember for my baby, I've find myself forgetting to pack ME a lunch yet again.  Still, things are so much easier these days with people's awareness of food allergies growing and gluten free options in many places!  Even my family's restaurant is adding a gluten free menu in the next couple weeks!  Hang in there, my gluten free friends, you never know what adventure you might have on this gluten free journey!

Are you hungry yet?

We tend to eat a lot of chicken and fish when we eat meat; beef used to break things up occasionally but now that we're "cow-free" beef is OUT.  Trust me you start to run out of variety after a while especially when it comes to chicken.  One of the things I like to do on the weekends is roast a whole chicken that I can cut up and use for other meals or send with my husband for lunch.  The typical Italian way to make it is with Italian seasonings (ie: parsley, oregano, basil, etc), garlic, onions and olive oil inside and poked into the meat itself.

Then we went to Bonefish Grill (a great GF option!) and had their chimicurri sauce.  I fell in love and decided to look up a recipe.  Well, like always I decided to make my own version :)  SO I'm sharing my version with you...of course I never measure anything, it's all to taste but I did the best I could to write it down.  My suggestion, dip your finger in a sample once it's all assembled BEFORE you put this on the chicken and defile it with raw chicken bacteria!  I don't want anyone going to the hospital! 

Normally chimicurri is known for parsley and olive oil as the base, but when I made it I only had a little parsley and not the 1 cup of parsley they asked for leaving me to get creative.  What I did have was cilantro!  Below is what I came up with:

1 cup parsley -> substitute 1 cup cilantro and add in a few shakes of the dried parsley
3/4 extra virgin olive oil
3 tbs. red wine (or red wine vinegar, I use a combo of 6 tbs. red wine and marsala wine)
2 tbs. oregano (fresh is always better but I used dry this time)
2 tsp. Goya Adobo (I added more to taste after everything was mixed)
3 cloves chopped garlic (I added way more than this actually!)
1 small onion chopped
1/2 tbs. GF hot sauce

Here's the original recipe that I "doctored.  I chopped the "solids" in a food processor before blending the liquids and solids all together in a bowl.

Once everything is together and stirred well, I take a taste and adjust the seasonings as needed.  As I said before, I start out with measurements and quickly walk off the paper with additions lol!  Now here's the really important part: I used a 5 pound chicken, if you are using a bigger chicken you will probably need more ingredients so you have enough of the sauce to use as "gravy" or for other recipes later on in the week.  Now that everything's together poke a bunch of holes in the chicken and make sure the inside is empty of the guts.  Then take the chimicurri sauce and spread with your hands over the chicken, making sure you poke garlic and onions into the holes you made along with the sauce.  Add some sauce inside the chicken as well.  The secret to a juicy chicken is to bake it for the first 15-20 mins on 450 degrees and then lower to 325 degrees for the rest of the time it need to bake.  This "shocks" the outside locking in the flavor!  Mine took about 2 hours to cook, but it really depends on your oven!

In the pan with the chicken I roasted carrots, they tasted great but you don't have to cook anything with it (made it a little difficult to scoop out just the sauce to put over stuff).  I also made mashed potatoes to go along with this, the chimicurri sauce is AMAZING over the mashed potatoes!  You can make whatever veggie you want.  Chicken goes with anything.  Do yourself a favor and cut up the chicken for leftovers when it's still warm not cold from the refrigerator. (I've done both and learned the hard way!)  It's a lot easier, plus you can separate different portion sizes for the rest of the week.

There's another chicken sitting in my refrigerator waiting to be turned into yummy goodness, alas a birthday party calls me away from the kitchen!  It will have it's day though :)  Enjoy everyone, let me know what you think!

My journey to Gluten Free'dom

For those of you who live gluten free I think you will agree with me that you're life is divided into two very unique periods - your Pre-GF life and your Post-GF life.  For our friends and relatives it may be hard to grasp and understand exactly how drastically our lives change with a celiac diagnosis.  Don't get me wrong, for us the physical changes far outweigh the challenging sacrifices, but others on the outside looking in may not be able to fully comprehend what we have gone through.  This post is for them, our friends and family.  In honor of Celiac Awareness Month, I share with you my journey to what I like to call Gluten Free'dom.




Me right before my diagnosis, I was 94 pnds

As long as I can remember I was a little slip of a thing, didn't grow very tall, couldn't gain weight.  My family called me "magra" meaning "skinny" in Italian as a nickname.  My dad would sing the song "Skinny Lena" to me.  People envied the fact that I could eat anything and not gain an ounce.  But around 13/14 years old, my energy would lag, I would get dizzy, I bruised terribly from the smallest bump, I caught EVERY cold, flu, etc around me and it kept getting worse.  By 18, I was hospitalized because I got the flu so bad that I couldn't keep anything down; my sugar and blood pressure dropped dangerously low.  They wanted to send me to a psychologist!  They insisted that I was hiding an anorexia issue. 


It seemed like each year brought new symptoms, my hands and feet tingled but I was told it was just bad circulation.  My period was horribly irregular and every method they tried just made me feel worse.  Every morning I woke up sick to my stomach and the nausea would come back off and on through out the day.  Finally 3 years ago, it got so bad I was embarrassed to go in public.  Not to be vulgar, but I didn't know when an attack of diarrhea or gas would hit me!  I hated to eat; I would have stabbing knife-like pains in my intestines for hours.  To be honest, no one wanted to use the bathroom after me and that's about the nicest way I can put it!  My hair, skin, and nails were dry, dull and brittle.  I had pain in my joints and back.  I felt like I was 80 years old instead of my 20's!


I kept going to the doctor.  My iron was low...I was calcium deficient...the list went on, but adding vitamins, eating healthy and exercising weren't helping...  Then one visit the doctor wasn't available, instead I saw the physician's assistant.  At this point I was sure they were going to tell me I was terminal - I felt that awful!  She was young, fresh out of college which in my case was my saving grace.  As soon as she heard my list of symptoms she asked if I had been tested for celiac disease.  In my head I'm thinking "Yup, this is it! I'd better start writing my will!"  She briefly explained what celiac disease is and I thought, "Okay it's not terminal, we can deal with this!" - At this point I wanted to feel better and as long as it wasn't fatal, I didn't care what it was going to take!  That was until I got home and decided to google "Celiac Disease".  Then the reality of what this would mean to my life started to sink in.  But I held out hope, maybe this was all just a coincidence.  Nah, it couldn't be little ol'gluten making me this sick, could it?! 


Then the results were in and I had to face the reality that I would have to be gluten free from this point on.  *Cue meltdown*  I went from relief to finally knowing what the problem was to complete basket case in 2.5 seconds...  As far as I was concerned my life was over.  I would never be able to eat out again, never be able to eat the fresh Italian bread that would come into the restaurant in the early morning delivery, never be able to eat cake and cookies and...I just kept going, everywhere I looked there was something I couldn't eat!  By day 2, I was in a funk so deep I could barely crack a smile.  Not to mention my wedding was in 3 months and now all I could think was, "I can't even eat the food at my wedding!!!"  By day 3, my fiance had had enough!  He decided to make it his personal mission to find EVERYTHING on earth that I still COULD eat.  By the end of the week, it became contagious!  I "devoured" anything and everything I could find on the internet about celiac and gluten free living.  At the time I was back living with my parents temporarily until our wedding so I printed off tons of material on cross contamination and passed it out to my family.  To this day, the cross contamination checklist I printed off for the refrigerator hangs on my fridge.


My family was truly supportive (and continue to be) which made my transition that much easier.  My fiance and I got married 3 months later; our wedding was catered by our fathers who worked tirelessly to make food for 200+ people and make sure I had GF versions of everything!  My now husband took it upon himself to agree to eat 100% GF while in our home to prevent the risk of cross contamination.  On our honeymoon he ate gluten free with me and if we couldn't find something GF right away, he waited to eat until I could eat.  That's when you know you have a great man :)  He's been my inspiration through all of this new chapter in my life.




My son and I when he was 3 months old

 It's only been 2 years this past April for me, but I feel like an entire lifetime has passed by in that time.  I've relearned how to eat, cook, shop, eat-out, travel...and so much more.  I feel like a million bucks and last February I got the best gift ever, I got pregnant with my precious little boy!  My hope is he'll outgrow his milk allergy and won't have to live with a permanent food allergy.  I know in a lot of ways gluten free and dairy free are a better choice health wise, but I'd like him to be able to experience food without reservations first before he makes his own lifestyle choices.  Would I ever go back?  Do I ever miss gluten foods?  Sometimes I imagine my favorite gluten foods...Cheez Its are one that I miss a lot...but then I remember how sick I felt all the time and how good I feel now!  Sure, living GF has it's challenges; finally having a healthy body full of energy and life far outweighs any of them!  So the next time you think about asking your GF friend "Can't you just have a little taste?", remember even a little bit of poison can kill you!  We make this choice so we can live and live well.  This Celiac Awareness Month take the time to go out and try something gluten free with your celiac friend, you might just be surprised! :)     

What homework?

Yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to be doing homework.  At the moment I don't feel like it.  The idea of wrapping my head around statistical equations makes my eyes cross at the moment.  I had planned to make a really nice dinner tonight of gf fried eggplant sandwiches, but a cranky baby left my husband unable to finish the pile of dishes in the sink.  Add to this getting out of work late and my idea went south with the birds.  Thankfully we both aren't picky eaters.  You learn to roll with the punches when you live a crazy life.  It's pretty standard to have your idea of a gourmet gf/df eggplant parm turn into fried eggs and bacon...one pan, two plates...done.

For those of you who do want to know my recipe for gf/df eggplant parm, here's the basics:

Ingredients
1 eggplant
1 egg
GF bread crumbs (I use Choice Batter, absorbs less grease)
Parsley
Garlic Powder
Vegetable oil
Frying pan

Tomato sauce
(I make a big pot and freeze small portions to pull out later, but you can use whatever you prefer)
Daiya mozzarella

Preparation
Beat egg in a bowl.  Fill a second shallow bowl with bread crumbs, add parsley and garlic powder for some extra flavor.  Slice your egg plant into thin discs. (the thin slices fry up quickly and absorb less grease) Dip eggplant slices into egg and than into bread crumbs.  Set aside onto a dish.  Fill frying pan with vegetable oil until there's a shallow pool for the eggplant to fry in.  Heat oil on medium high heat.  Lower to medium when oil is heated up.  Fry eggplant slices until golden brown.  Place cooked eggplant on dish covered with papertowel to cool and drain.

Normally I fry the eggplant up the day before and put the parm together when they're cold from the fridge the next night.  (The night I fry the eggplant, we make "fried eggplant sandwiches".  All this means is you take the hot fresh eggplant and put it on your gf roll of choice, add some sauce and eat it up :)  So to finish this recipe, take the cold fried eggplant from your fridge and line a 9x13 pan with a single layer.  Then coat with tomato sauce.  Finish that layer off with a generous sprinkle of vegan mozzarella cheese.  Repeat the layers of eggplant, sauce and cheese.  Once you're out of eggplant or room in your pan, pop in the oven at 350 degrees until the parm is hot all the way through and the cheese is melted.  For those of you who don't like a crispy top, you can cover the top with aluminum foil - But I personally think not having a crispy top is a waste!

Tomorrow's another day...I have all the ingredients and now a dirty dishless kitchen...here's to a delicious hot gf fried eggplant sandwich to be!  Don't forget - May is Celiac Awareness Month!  I want to dedicate this year's celiac awareness month to my uncle who was just diagnosed with celiac a few months ago.  Welcome to the gluten free family Uncle Louie! 

And then my life got complicated...

My first personal blog http://thestoryofmylittlecaramellatte.blogspot.com/ was my therapy during the wonderful journey to becoming a gluten free mommy.  After the birth of my son, I contemplated returning to this blog.  The blog felt finished in a way though.  I may continue the story following my son as he grows, but for now I decided to start a new chapter. 

Anyone who has kids in their lives knows that your life goes from busy to plain insane with the addition of a baby!  Add to this going back to work, being gluten-free, a part-time student and you'll think it couldn't get any harder...but it can!  At 4 months old, my son was diagnosed as milk allergic which for those of you who are not familiar means mommy can't even LOOK at a cow without junior reacting!  My life went from crazy to "please tell me the men in the white coats are outside to pick me up!"

Anyone who lives gluten free understands the challenges inherent in this lifestyle.  When you're working full time, you have the additional challenge of finding a place to eat out or having to pack lunch, snacks etc for the day.  Now I have to follow a dairy free diet as well.  There went my ThinkThin bars...there went my Amy's mac & cheese...there went my yogurt and string cheese and ice cream and...  Well you get the point.  Right after I found out I had to be gluten free for the rest of my life I had a meltdown.  A "I can't eat anything, my life is over" meltdown to which my (now husband) fiance spent 2 weeks pouring over the Internet finding EVERYTHING I still could eat to prove me wrong and get me out of my funk.  The meltdown this time was darn near catastrophic!  It took a good month to finally come to terms with the fact that I would have to give up my love affair with ice cream for the safety of my child.  And don't get me wrong, I was 100% commited to the safety of my child from day one, but my selfish side that needs a mommy ice cream fix occasionally was not.  Now, techically I'll only have to be dairy free while feeding my son, but considering the fact that he'll still have to be dairy free after he's weaned, it's only fair to stay dairy free in our home for his safety.

The new phase after meltdown is the "Fix it" phase.  This is where I pick myself up, learn to live with the hand I've been dealt and find little pleasures in the journey along the way.  I decided to share this journey with all of you so you won't feel alone in this gluten free dairy free life.  Plus it's more fun when you share any journey with someone else :)  Thanks for joining me!