Gluten free is lonely

I've been doing 80-90% gluten free. Obviously the weekdays are easier than weekends since I cook and prepare breakfast and lunch on Sundays and don't have to think too much on a daily basis. Traveling has messed me up since I haven't gotten the hang of traveling gluten free. Unrelated but interesting, I discovered I am allergic to bivalves. No great loss, but I can't get paella anymore. I think the problem I have is gluten is so undefined. It's the one allergy that is not required to show up on a food label because no one has defined what gluten is. Gluten is dusted on individually wrapped candies to make sure they don't stick to wrappers. Gluten is in salad dressing. It's in low fat dairy and many low fat products since they need to use crap to fill in the nutrients they remove when the create the low fat item. Ketchup, soy sauce and root beer contain gluten. Gluten can be called "modified food starch", hydrolized vegetable protein, malt, dextrins, and "natural flavoring".

The good news is most of the food items above are processed food and I shouldn't be eating them anyway. I've been making my own salad dressing for years. I make my own soup, eat very little low fat dairy (that's another post about the evils of the low fat diet), and I can't remember the last soda I drank. I hate ketchup and I've found gluten free soy sauce.

I think the best part of this long journey, which started before I realized gluten was killing me, is the impact to my immune system and allergies. I didn't get sick this year. No colds, no sinus infections. I haven't taken allergy medicine in 2 years. I used to snort Nasonex like it was going out of style. Now, I can get through allergy seaon without even sneezing. I also discovered that my blood pressure is finally coming down. For all my life, I had been a steady 110/70. Two years ago it started to creep up to 120/85. Not horrible, but not trending the way I want it. On Friday, in the middle of yet another workmans comp physical, my blood pressure was back to 112/78. I can live with that.

The real challenge in going gluten free is lack of education. Hubs is an awesome cook and he wouldn't do anything to hurt me. But, he thinks if he only puts a few breadcrumbs in a recipe, I will be fine. I won't be. I need the bread crumbs to be made from gluten free bread. From just a few breadcrumbs, I'll get stomach cramps and joint pain. I don't want anyone going out of their way to make me food - I really am fine. If I can't eat something, I simply won't eat it. I won't get mad. There are enough naturally gluten free foods that I can find.

Tomorrow I am going to test out some recipes from the Gluten Free Girl. Lemon olive oil cookies is up first. Then I'll find something from her beautiful cookbook. I bet I stain up the books before I return them to the library. I sense I'll buy both books this summer.