Cooking Disaster

So I have confirmed why I am only allowed to cook once a week. Yet another cooking disaster. It was really more of a buying disaster. I decided to try a new brand of gluten free pizza. Gluten free products are pretty mediocre at best... so you can just imagine the results. I do not recommend King Arthur brand gluten free pizza.The gold standard continues to be Bob's Red Mill. King Arthur came out more like a focaccia which is fine if that is what you are expecting....read more on unmet cooking expectations here.

While waiting for said leaden experience in baking to rise I had a chance to finish a review of the most recent biography on George Kennon. An interesting character during interesting times. Makes you start questioning the right of the masses to vote and rule our country. Note to self....buy biography and read...right after you have finished that biography on Copernicus.

Also had a chance to read about Margaret Sanger and the history of "family planning"more commonly known as birth control. We have come a long way but it is beginning to feel as if we are sliding backwards. Another note to self- those damn Europeans have it all over us Americans when it comes to pizza and social policy.

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.

Baking Gluten Free Cookies

I decided to bake some of my extra good gluten- free peanut butter, chocolate chip cookies. They are extremely easy and very satisfying considering they have no flour in them. (peanut butter, sugar, egg, baking soda, salt, peanuts & chocolate chips- that's it!) Another gluten- free girl double checked with me to make sure they had no flour because they are sooooooo good.

Here they are in the baking pan.... which suffered a little damage during my last cookie baking party with 5 small girls. These double walled cookie pans are actually pretty terrible. They do keep cookies from burning but water sneaks in between the walls during washing and then sits there to rust and leak inside of your cabinets.

Here is the cookie baking operation- pretty seamless- eh? You would think I did this for a living.

And ..... here are the finished products- minus a few. I can't resist them when they are hot. Besides I had to counteract that green smoothie I drank the other day.