So What and Why this Blog?

So why another blog about living gluten-free? There are already plenty of them out there. Many very fine ones, each with their own niche and points of interest. Often they focus on recipes, or where to find gluten free foods, or how to live gluten free on a budget.

This blog is the story of my continued journey into learning and loving the gluten free life, and the discoveries I make along the way. While it's a life I never anticipated, since it was thrust upon me a year and a half ago I've come to enjoy it and the challenges it presents. I've learned so much, had fun beginning to experiment with the completely different chemistry that's necessary to cook and bake with these new ingredients, and found that life on a gluten free diet is as much full of joys, delights, and "normalcy," as any other could be. Far from the miserable nightmare that I heard about when I started, it has surprised me how easy it is in many ways!

Also when I am done with the challenge

A delicious looking bread recipe to try, courtesy of Living Without. I love oat bread and maple syrup, and this looks wonderful in the picture (but doesn't food usually ;).

Oatmeal Maple Gluten-Free Bread

MAKES 2 LOAVES

Ingredients
    2  cups brown rice flour, preferably super-fine grind
    1  cup gluten-free oat flour
    1½  cups sorghum flour or millet flour
    1  cup tapioca starch/flour
    ½  cup potato starch
    ½  cup sweet rice flour
    2  packages (2¼ teaspoons each) active dry yeast
    1  tablespoon + 1 teaspoon xanthan gum
    1  tablespoon salt
    5  eggs, room temperature
    4  tablespoons maple syrup or amber agave nectar
    ½  cup shortening or non-dairy margarine, melted
        2½  cups milk of choice (rice, soy, hemp, nut milk), warmed to 110 to 120 degrees
    1  egg white, lightly beaten with a fork (to brush tops of loaves)
    ½  cup gluten-free oats

An Unexpected Crisis: maybe I'm not Gluten Intolerant after all?

This gluten challenge hasn't been entirely what I expected.

Anticipating it, I assumed I would be exhausted, miserable and sick in my stomach right from day 1. And that over time that would get worse until I was pretty much bedridden. This assumption was based on my memory of how I felt before I went gluten free. Turns out, it didn't happen quite like that.

What about genetic testing?

In my post about how it's necessary for me to do a gluten challenge to get a celiac diagnosis, I didn't mention anything about another form of celiac disease testing I had originally considered: gene testing.

Genetic testing for celiac disease determines if you are genetically predisposed to contract it. It will never tell you if you actually have it - just that you could some day get it. It even helps determine how likely you are to get it, based on whether you have one or both genes (DQ2 and DQ8). However, gene testing is most useful for ruling out whether it is possible for you to get celiac disease or not. If you have neither of the genes, it is extremely unlike you'll get it. Some believe it is also possible to tell your potential for having a gluten intolerance as well.

Points in favor of gene testing: it's quite easy - it can be as simple as a swab of saliva from your mouth or some bloodwork. And, best of all - there is no change in diet required. If you haven't started a g-free diet fine, and if you are already on it, fine too. Since it's in your DNA, you can't ruin the results.
 

Let them eat (Poppy Seed Lemon) CAKE!

Let no one tell you that when you are Gluten Free you can no longer eat cake. Au Contraire! As long as you make it without Wheat, Barley, Rye (yeck! in a cake?), and in some cases Oat flour, you can have all the cake you want and your waistline will allow.

Once I am back (sweet relief) eating a Gluten Free diet, I intend to make a gf version of this poppy seed lemon cake from smitten kitchen.

       

The Gluten Challenge: Now or Never

Perhaps it seems strange to begin a blog about living gluten free during a time when I'm doing a Gluten Challege, and thus not following the diet. However, in less than 2 weeks I will finally be back full time, hard core on the gluten free diet. And I find that I can't wait. Even Hubs can't wait. He doesn't have any gluten issues himself, but he is so used to my gluten free cooking that he told me it feels weird eating "all this other stuff" and "I can't wait to go back to eating normally." Normal for us, is gluten free. 

So why am I off the diet? Well, after self-diagnosing myself 1.5 years ago and eating gluten free ever since, I've decided to try to get an official diagnosis. It's a long story for another post how I finally learned I was gluten intolerant and embarked on the huge life change that is going gluten free. But suffice it to say for now that due to the medical care I had at the time I self diagnosed, it just didn't happen. No one told me I should get tested, and I was feeling so much better that I didn't look into it.

Since then, as I have read more about celiac disease and gluten intolerance, I've realized that I should have been tested right away when I suspected what the problem was. The wonderful healing that comes from a gluten free diet is also knell of doom for accurate diagnosis (and diagnosis is hard enough to get accurately anyway). And the longer you are away from gluten, the more you heal and the harder it is to tell.