The Monthly Grocery Bill

No one ever said that eating healthy was inexpensive, but we're shelling out about $1,000 a month on groceries. That's for 2 adults (one who entirely eats gluten-free food and one who cooks/bakes gluten-free but eats/drinks non-gluten-free food too). For that price I'd expect to have a personal chef who is making me filet mignon every night, but that's not the case.

Let's take a look at some of the typical foods our family eats. It's probably not so much different than a family who doesn't have to be gluten free.

Breakfast:
A bowl of Rice Chex (now GF) or Nature's Path GF Corn Flakes with some skim milk
On Sundays we splurge and eat GF waffles (from the Namaste mix) with GF peanut butter and GF syrup. We also have some GF bacon (Walmart brand is GF; thankfully, because we can't find Hormel here)
Banana
Stonyfield Farms yogurt --on occassion, but rare

Snacks:
Fresh fruit, like an apple or banana
Enjoy Life trail mix
Chips and salsa

Lunch:
Amy's frozen meals or leftovers from dinner
Bean salad (Bush's black beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans) with diced tomatoes, onions, artichoke hearts, cucumbers, corn

Dinner:
Burgers (diced onion, egg, GF breadcrumbs, McCormick Montreal Steak Seasoning) with cheese (Applegate Farms Pepperjack) and an avocaco, and Ore-ida fries with Annie's Naturals GF ketchup
Spaghetti or other pasta like penne (from Tinkyada) with Classico sauce (sometimes meatballs with GF breadcrumbs) and parmesan
Grilled chicken (with salt/pepper) and baked sweet potatoes or roasted red potatoes and corn or asparagus
Stir fry (rice (make extra for fried rice the next night), pack of frozen mixed vegetables)
Fried rice (cooked rice, egg, vegetable oil, San-J GF soy sauce, green onion)
Pan-fried tilapia (olive oil, onion, garlic, salt and pepper, freshly-squeezed lemon)
Garden salad (romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers) and Annie's Naturals GF salad dressing
Pizza (pepperoni, black olives, artichoke hearts, mozzarella, parmesan, Classico sauce, freshly grown basil) made on a GF crust (that's homemade from Arrowhead Mills & Bob's Red Mill products)
Grilled chicken fajitas (homemade marinade with red wine vinegar, olive oil, onion, garlic) on a GF corn tortilla with homemade guacamole
Grilled cedar-plank salmon
Tacos (corn tortilla chips, ground beef, onion, Amy's refried beans, tomatoes, avocado, black olives)
Pasta salad (Tinkyada spirals, celery, onion, cheddar cheese chunks, black olives, olive oil, balsamic vinegar)



This is just a basic list. We're always looking to expand. My husband LOVES to cook, so he's learning all about gluten-free cooking! :)

-KAGFG

Where are you Betty Crocker?

I really wanted to try the new Betty Crocker gluten-free chocolate chip cookie mix last night. So, off to Walmart we went. We searched the small shelf of gluten-free items and the baking aisle.

No luck! :(

I remember walking up and down various aisles thinking "I can't eat a SINGLE thing in this aisle." Has food become that processed that I can't eat anything in the majority of a grocery store?

After I get my hands on the Betty Crocker mixes, I'll post my opinion. I hope it isn't too grity -- that's one of my complaints about gluten-free baked goods.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to resort to Alton Brown's yummy recipe for the time being!

-KAGFG

Starbucks Petition

I'm forwarding an e-mail from Triumph Dining about Starbucks discontinuing the ONLY gluten-free treat it offered!

Please sign the petition. We need to voice our opinion!

-KAGFG

Despite what appears to be strong support from the gluten-free community, Starbucks is discontinuing its Valencia Orange Cake. This is a tremendous blow to the gluten-free community. It’s already so hard to find good, safe gluten-free options. Having a gluten-free treat at Starbucks was an enormous win for the community. It’s sad to see it disappear such a short time later, without any real explanation.

We’ve put together a petition to let Starbucks know how much we miss the gluten-free cake and to let them know we’d love to see it back in our local Starbucks!

Please share this petition with your support group members and ask them to sign it. The petition is located here: http://www.triumphdining.com/blog/petition-to-starbucks-bring-back-the-gluten-free-cake/.

Dating the Celiac

With this new outlook on life, I decided to start dating. I joined a singles group through meetup.com. I also put up a profile on a couple of online dating sites.

I had never really dated before. I had the long-term off-and-on boyfriend since high school and dated a few guys throughout college and grad school, but nothing serious.

I remember thinking what would be considered a "safe" date. Not safety in terms of personal safety, but in terms of gluten-free safety. It was common that I would go on walks on first dates. Easy enough..I didn't have to worry about food!

However, the time came when I was asked to dinner! I met Medico 6 months before in my singles group. He was there the day after my diagnosis, when I explained to a few people about my diagnosis. I hadn't seen him since that day, although we had e-mailed each other a few times. He had gone to culinary school and knew all about gluten. He asked me where I could go. We went to Outback, because they had a gluten-free menu. I had a wonderful time! We dated for 5 months after that. He cooked me all sorts of wonderful meals and showed me how to incorporate naturally gluten-free foods into my diet.

He changed my life and my outlook on food! He never treated me differently and I'm so grateful for that!

The next couple of boys I dated, I can't say the same about. I was yelled at in a grocery store because I couldn't eat some of the ingredients that this particular boy wanted to include in his meal.

At PF Chang's (another wonderful gluten-free restaurant), I met another boy for lunch. We had a great time with wonderful food and conversation, until the fortune cookie came. I couldn't eat it..nor could I touch it with my wheat allergy. Needless to say, he was out of there ASAP.

It's odd at the end of a date when you can't kiss your date for fear you'll get sick. There is this odd moment of "gee, I wish I could, but I can't."

At times I felt like a burden on the boys I was dating. Then I realized that I couldn't do anything about my Disease. If they didn't like me for me, then I wasn't the right girl for them.

I met another wonderful and understanding boy a year after Medico. Kappy was another boy who loved to cook. We traveled to Atlanta (the second best place in the country to eat gluten free!) several times. It was wonderful. I'm very grateful to him too.

The next boy that I dated, I would marry..and that my friends, is a whole 'nother post! :)

-KAGFG

6 Months After...

... my life looked completely different. So did I!

I dropped 17 lbs in the first 6 weeks. In 6 months, I had dropped 50 lbs.

People at work asked what I was doing. "Eating healthier," I replied. I wasn't eating 3000-4000 calories a day anymore. I was eating between 1200-1500 calories, which was just about right for my body. Just for kicks, that burger wasn't the only thing that was the "last" in the parking lot. I gave up soda and coffee too! (I still miss my grande almond mochas with whip!)

I had so much energy. I felt better about myself. I even started dating.....

-KAGFG

Before the Diagnosis...

....I had 10 years of unexplained problems and inaccurate diagnoses.

In 1996, I was a sophomore in college. My body wouldn't let me consume more than a rice cake and some tea before I'd have to run to the bathroom. I had a lot of lower GI issues. A doctor called that Irritable Bowel Syndrome. He also said it was because I had a lot of stress in my life. Quite true -- my parents were going through a nasty divorce, I had to transfer schools because my father spent my college fund and there wasn't any money left for me to stay at my private school, I had to move back home with my mother who was a basketcase, I went through an abusive relationship and was in another one that wasn't very beneficial to me.

Four years later, I stopped having regular periods...for almost 2 years! I was making monthly visits to my OBGYN for ultrasounds. I also had a lot of bloodwork done, testing for thyroid issues. Doctors thought it could have been a tumor on my pituitary gland. I was put on hormones, but nothing was working. I had a hysterosalpinogram (iodine is shot through the uterus and fallopian tubes, while a camera looks for blockages), which didn't uncover anything wrong. I went to a fertility specialist and she told me that I wouldn't be able to have children, but she wasn't really sure why that was.

A few years later, I started having lower GI issues again, but only after eating certain foods and not frequent enough to really pinpoint what those foods were. Fettucine alfredo seemed to cause issues, but I thought it was because of the amount of cheese. I stopped drinking a lot of milk.

I also had issues with depression. But heck, I had a boyfriend who was unfaithful, I moved across the country by myself, I worked like a dog, I ate bad food, I tried to keep a long-distance relationship with the boyfriend, I got engaged to the boyfriend, and then after I dropped out of my PhD program to move back across the country, said boyfriend decided he didn't want to marry me (after a 10-year relationship).

My life was a bit of a mess. The diagnosis of Celiac Disease saved my life -- quite literally! For that, I'm eternally grateful!

-KAGFG

Diagnosis

It's a day I'll never forget. The day I was diagnosed with something I had NEVER heard of before -- Celiac Disease.

It was January 12, 2006, two days before my 29th birthday. I was running late to my doctor's appointment. I grabbed a burger and fries through the drive-thru and scarfed it down in the parking lot. I didn't know it would be my last trip to a fast food restaurant.

I left the doctor's office that day with a packet of information on what I couldn't eat, which included a several-page document that listed all different kinds of ingredients -- most of which I had never heard of before.

I was living the life of a single professional girl -- working FT and taking graduate classes. I had a mortgage, a car payment, and a dog, and not a lot of time to do anything else, especially eat healthy and take care of myself. My friends knew exactly what I ordered at McDonald's -- a #3 (quarter pounder) with cheese, no onions, and a coke. I was also the heaviest I have ever been in my life -- 196 lbs on a 5'2" frame -- and I hated it.

However, my doctor gave me one very valuable piece of information -- the name of a nutritionist who could help. I am forever grateful to Cathie Ostrowski who held my hand through the local Whole Foods and talked to me about what I could eat and how to read a label. It didn't seem so scary anymore. Hell, I could live on gluten-free frozen foods if I wanted to; and I did...for 6 months!

I took each day at a time, was very cautious about what I ate, and never ate out at restaurants. I tried to find a support group or just someone who had the same thing I did...but I couldn't find anyone. Luckily, I found a great book that had just been published --The Gluten Free Bible. It became my Bible and best reference with information about what Celiac Disease even was (my doctor did not tell me the specifics). It still is.

It's been 3 1/2 years since my diagnosis and I've never felt better both physically and emotionally. I am so much more consciously aware of what I'm putting into my body. It's amazing how naive we've become when it comes to food. So many food products are filled with all sorts of crap, yet we still eat them. This body has to last me a long, long time -- hopefully another 50 years and each day I make choices about how long or how short that time can be.

-KAGFG

How to Succeed on a Road Trip

The biggest personal challenge I've ever had has been eating gluten-free on a road trip. This wasn't just any road trip, this was the 2007 One Lap of America. It was 10 days of full-on intensity. It's basically a giant race to various parts of the country with stops everyday at various tracks around the country. We started and ended at The Tire Rack in Indiana. It was 24-hrs-a-day and there was very little time to stop for food along the way. This involved driving overnight regardless of what the weather conditions were like. We had several tornadoes, heat waves, and snow over the Rockies.

I had to pack enough food to last me until the 1/2 way point in Salt Lake City, Utah. This was my personal challenge, but I survived and here's how:

Fresh fruits and veggies -- Bananas, apples, grapes, and carrots are all healthy.
I lived on bags of nuts for protein -- walnuts and almonds.
I took a smaller backpacker's stove to heat water to make thai noodles, soup, and tea.
I lived on gluten-free beef jerky.
Breakfast bars were a staple for all different times of the day.
Gluten-free pretzels were a great snack.
If I could stop for cheese at store, I did.

Honestly, I ate better than most of the racers or members of the media crew. I never got sick, I had a lot of energy despite getting 0-3 hrs of sleep each night. There were times when we checked into a hotel to SHOWER (not sleep) and then we were off to the next track. Oh..and we did stop at Outback (twice)! Funny thing is, we were so delirious, we didn't realize it was the SAME Outback in Ohio!

It can be done! Pre-planning really helped me, as did talking to my friends who were vegetarian and vegan. As long as I kept up my protein intake (any way that I could), I would do fine and I did.

-KAGFG

The Reasons Why

I was hoping the title of this post would be a play on words from the title of a book by David James Duncan called "The River Why," but it doesn't seem to have worked out so well. Oh well.

I decided to start a post about being a Kick Ass Gluten Free Girl for several reasons: to help others, to help me (I think writing about my experience about pre-diagnosis to post-diagnosis can be somewhat cathartic), to fulfill a requirement for a class project in Web 2.0.

Let me state up front that I am NOT a medical professional, but I have been gluten-free for 3 1/2 years now.

The purpose of this blog is to talk about my experiences living gluten-free, which include dating, getting married, traveling, eating out, my hospital stay with the birth of my child, grocery shopping, and in general, getting healthy. I'll also talk about my favourite food products.

So, sit back and enjoy the journey!

-KAGFG