Back on the No-Wheat Wagon

"Damn!"

So for a brief couple of months my body was all copacetic with the ingestion of all things gluten. After almost 10 years of intolerance of the stuff I went on a bender. I was eating bagels! And real pasta! Cookies! I suppose if it had tasted better I would have eaten whole bags of flour.

Of course- old habits die hard. I couldn't seem to remember that I could make sandwiches with bread instead of rice cakes. I continued to eat my cheese and crackers without the crackers.

Then things started going a little haywire about a month ago. My lower legs started itching wildly, then my torso. Red dots broke out and I had scratched my legs raw in some areas. My knee and ankle joints hurt to the point where I curtailed my walking. These things could be chalked up to an over active imagination prone to hypochondria. Then the other shoe dropped.... constant diarrhea.

I had a final bagel and called it quits. I was back on the no-wheat wagon. Within two weeks my symptoms have disappeared. With a quick shrug of the shoulders I have accepted my fate. I am going to miss all that good stuff, but worse things in life have happened. I have already been through the experimenting stage to see what makes a good gluten free muffin, how to pack a satisfying lunch and how to find GF snacks in convenience stores for the occasional hunger attack. I'll live.

I suppose I should be thankful for my brief reprieve.

Falling Off the Wagon, So To Speak....

If you need some great photos to illustrate this post- go here. But I suspect this is an image we all keep deep in our minds... right next to nude celebrities.

For almost ten years being a celiac has defined my life, or at the very least defined my diet. I have been unable to eat wheat, oatmeal, rye, spelt, barley or any of the other grass based grains. Admittedly I am self diagnosed... but only after multiple specialists either gave me a perfunctory once over and announced IBD or others who ran me through a battery of upper GI's and any other humiliating probe they could think of before shrugging their shoulders and saying "IBD." Cutting gluten out of my diet had given me the greatest amount of relief from my symptoms.

In mid-April I had yet another major (for me) medical crisis and had to have a tooth pulled. The tooth had grown into my sinus where it had caused an infection in my jaw. There was a good chance this had been an infection for quite sometime. Within days I noticed that things were, shall we say, quite regular. Over the years I had experienced occasional, albeit brief periods of digestive normalcy but to experience such an extended period of things working as the textbooks say they should - unheard of!

Days, weeks and then months passed without terrible pain in my stomach. My curiosity piqued I tried a bagel. I waited 4 days. Then I tried another. Still no problem. Since then I have tried any number of things which usually have me running in the other direction- pasta, bread, cookies.

We have started incorporating wheat products into our evening meals.... and one of those meals I have dreamed of for years is Macaroni & Cheese. This is a lowly pleasure from childhood- neither fancy nor precious. It was served frequently but was always welcome. Tonight the boyfriend & I made it together....

It has been so long since I cooked anything like this I have forgotten how it is made. He definitely had his ideas about how it should be done. While there is no such thing as bad Mac & Cheese- there are only degrees of goodness, I have a fondness for my mother's way of cooking everything to just shy of burnt. The top should be very crunchy and the brown of mahogany. The interior should be thick & cheesy.

I think gluten/wheat does not agree with me 100%... sort of the way I get canker sores if I eat too much citrus, but it is definitely back in my diet. I think I shall start experimenting with the best Mac & Cheese Evar'. The better to sooth my dainty stomach.