Truth be known! I love the honesty and frankness here. This is real. This is the reality of living gluten-free.
I’ve never been diagnosed with anything, because I found, on my own, what was making me feel so incredibly poor. I just started eliminating gluten and I felt much better. When I mentioned to my General Practitioner that it could be a gluten allergy or insensitivity, she just said, “Yeah, I don’t know if I believe in that.” I have never had the desire to go back on gluten and suffer, just so I could, maybe, get a diagnosis. There is no guarantee of a confirmed diagnosis, but there is a guarantee of pain, discomfort, and distress. No thanks.
I was cooking frequently (every night dinners for the family, baking extra treats on the weekend, making my own pizza crust and sauce just for the taste of it) before going gluten-free. I still cook, but now I cook differently. But not so much differently. My family has been incredibly supportive. We are not a gluten-free household, since they still have their bread and bagels and dry cereals. But anything that gets cooked for the entire family is gluten-free. And they don’t mind it (too much). Gluten-free pastas, GF noodles, GF flours for thickening sauces, GF cookies, GF cakes for birthdays. My husband and I cooked an entirely GF Thanksgiving Dinner last year and it was outstanding! Everything was GF, including biscuits, gravy, stuffing, homemade mushroom soup for the fresh green bean casserole, homemade french-fried onions for the fresh green bean casserole, pecan pie… *everything*! It was absolutely, without a doubt, the best tasting Thanksgiving Dinner ever! And I firmly believe it was because everything was fresh and homemade with care. Oh, and the leftover mushroom soup made the best base for leftover Turkey Pot Pies with an absolutely amazing top GF crust!
I’ve been through all the grieving and anger and frustration and cross-contamination setbacks. It is a new reality that cooking at home is actually easier than taking the family to a restaurant. Since one advantage of restaurants is the selection, I am now on a mission to find recipes and cook the things I can’t have at a restaurant when I’m with my family. Things like Chicken-fried Steak, Tomato Bisque, French-Onion Soup, Minestrone Soup, Meatballs, Lasagne, Quiche Lorraine… oh the list goes on an on and on. But I have now made all of these things gluten-free at home. And they have all been fabulous! And each and every time, I count my blessings for such wonderful, tasteful food. And each and every time, I thank my family. I thank them for letting me cook these things at home so that I can enjoy them. It just so happens that they have loved eating these things along with me! Just this past weekend I made the French-Onion Soup GF (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/french-onion-soup-recipe2/index.html), with a Udi’s GF bagel on mine (regular bagels floated in everyone else’s) with gruyere melted across the top. We often rate the things we make at home and this one was off the charts with everyone! It was so incredibly good!
Oh, the pleasure of good, good food.
Hmmm… did I mention the GF Monkey Bread? Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.
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