Showing posts with label GF (gluten free) living. Show all posts

[Slide, Goo Goo Dolls]

On with tasty gluten free recipes!

#2 Homemade Vodka Sauce with Grilled Chicken over Pasta

This sauce was INCREDIBLE.  I based it off of this find online; I actually followed the recipe on this one, though I'll adjust it to be healthier in the future.  I won't go through the steps of how I made the sauce, since I followed the recipe online.  That said, here's a pic of the ingredients I used:



The only thing not pictured (I think, since it was over a week ago) was the butter because it was melting on the stove when I took this pic.  Oh, and the chicken.  It was just two regular boneless, skinless chicken breasts from a bag you can get in the freezer at Costco :)  I just put on a little freshly ground salt and pepper, scored the chicken to help it cook evenly (that just means I cut slits into the chicken about a 1/4 of an inch thick), and then grilled 'em on our grill pan .

Once the (not so good in texture... overly mushy though I cooked them for the appropriate amount of time!) noodles were done I put the sauce over the top, added the sliced up chicken breast, and sprinkled on some tasty parm.  Yummy!

Two things:  we only used 1/2 the sauce, so the next night I grilled up a little shrimp, added in the leftover sauce, and then put that over some rice. We realized that we love rice, it's super cheap to buy a huge bag from Costco, and we're just going to start replacing noodles with rice.  The noodles just sort of ruined the first dish... I mean, the sauce was amazing, but the noodles not so much.

That said, it's so pretty!  Here's an alternate view:



Secondly, next time I'm going to try using olive oil instead of butter and 1/2 and 1/2 instead of heavy cream.  But if it doesn't thicken up right then I'll just suck it up and eat in moderation, because if making a recipe healthy makes it gross then what's the point in eating that?  Dumb.

All right- onto the last one!

#3 BBQ Chicken w/ Homemade BBQ Sauce over Rice



The biggest bummer, honestly, has been that we discovered this amazingly tasty BBQ sauce at Costco called Sweet Baby Ray's.  It has a chance of cross-contamination, which means it doesn't specifically have gluten but the plant where it's made does and could cause traces of gluten to get into the sauce, so... no Sweet Baby Ray's for us :(

That said, don't feel sorry for us because I made my own BBQ sauce and it was amazing!  I'm going to use measurements below, but those are estimates... I like to cook ninja style and make things up on my own!

First, I melted 2 TB of butter over medium heat.  Then I added about a cup of ketchup, a squirt of lime juice, 3/4 cup of water, 1 TB yellow mustard, 1 ts worcestershire sauce, 2 ts liquid smoke, 3 TB brown sugar, salt, pepper, a dash of paprika, cumin, and chipotle powers and... actually, I think that was it!

I stirred constantly until it started bubbling, and then I reduced the heat to low and stirred occasionally for about 10-15 minutes.  Once the oven preheated to 375 I put in the chicken, poured over the sauce, covered it with aluminum foil, and baked it for 30 minutes with the skin side of the chicken up.  Then I removed the foil, sprinkled on a little brown sugar (to create a wee bit o' crispyness!  Mmmmm!), and baked it with the foil off at 400 for 20 more minutes.  We have a meat thermometer and the internal meat temp was 170 F- perfect!

I put it over rice and it was delicious!  I'll admit, though, that after I took this pic I poured over some of the extra sauce in the pan... it's just not as pretty :)  Tasty, though.

And, with that, the great "I'm not really here but I'm posting more than I ever do when I am here!" fest of 2008 is over.  May the next post be me actually home, not a scheduled post ;)

... but it's real.

[Love Story, Taylor Swift]

Gluten Free recipes, part 1 of 2

I love- LOVE- my husband.

As most of you know, he recently found out that gluten causes horrible lesions on his skin.  I mean, he knew about the lesions, he just didn't know they were because of gluten.

Because I love my husband, I chose to make our kitchen gluten free.

At first it was exciting- new, different life.  Food was a foreign object, all fresh and interesting and different.  Who'd ever heard of sweet sorghum flour?  Not this one.  I discovered polenta and creative ways to replace sandwiches- like putting all of the sandwich ingredients in big, organic, leafy lettuce and making tasty crispy wraps.

But then... then things got ugly.  The raved about local gluten free pizza was... ick.  I mean, everything was good but the crust.  I miss my favorite Oroweat Oatnut bread.  The gluten free mix for our Sunday-brunch-tradition pancakes (yay for having church at 5pm!) is flat and has weird texture.  And gluten free noodles?  Blech.  They always end up either too chewy or too mushy and nasty.

I just want a piece of pizza.  Normal, full on wheaty-crusted pizza.  A piece of Oatnut bread toast.  Normal ol' Krusteaz mix pancakes.  And noodles- good, tasty whole-wheat noodles.

I've been feeling a little sorry for myself, if you can't tell.  Making the gluten sacrifice for a loved one sounds noble, really, it does, but it's not so glamorous.

That said... here are some really tasty things I made in recent weeks, stuff that reminds me that gluten free doesn't have to mean gross. I'll keep adjusting my attitude and remembering that I love Jesus, I love my husband, and gluten isn't that important.

Though, to quote a comedian I heard this week, "I tried gluten free bread at Thanksgiving.  I don't know what gluten is, but apparently it's DELICIOUS!!"

Loved that, and Jason busted up, too :)

Anyway- the foode!  Enjoy!

#1 Polenta Casserole

We went to a potluck for church recently (not church wide... our church isn't all cheeseball like that!  It was for a small ministry within the church that we're a part of) and I brought this to ensure that my J baby would have something to eat!

It's loosely based on this recipe , though I did a lot differently.  Here's a pic of the ingredients I used:



If anything is missing, sorry!  So here's what I did- I browned up some chicken Italian sausage.  I added onion and garlic, chopped up the two zucchini and put 'em in, and then put in the marinara sauce and spinach. On the side I boiled water and made the polenta according to the linked recipe.  That's actually the only way I followed that recipe, actually!  I put the goat cheese (it was about half the container) into the polenta to create a tasty creaminess.  I mixed the polenta and marinara together, topped it with some cheddar, and then baked it at 375 F for about 20 minutes.

It was delicious!  Not like "good for gluten free", but actually GOOD.  Me gusta :)

I'll post recipes 2 and 3 in the next post; I'm prewriting it (today's December 23 but I'm anticipating being gone for Christmas) so I'll have it post tomorrow, the 28th, in the morning.  Hopefully I'll get home safely tomorrow night and I'll be able to post a quick "we're home and we're safe and warm!" message upon arrival!

Hasta, kids!

[Let It Snow]

It's crazy snowy here.

Seattle + Snow = City Shuts Down

Seriously- I was one of like 6 people who had to show up at work today.  It was crazy, driving down a main arterial at rush hour and seeing two other cars.  Usually there'd be two cars close enough for me to touch them if I leaned out of my car far enough!

I don't have any pics (forgot my camera this morning, dang it!) but you can check out these various links, from the general (Seattle Times) to the hyper-local (Greenwood blog, though I live in the Green Lake neighborhood, but really they're almost the same; Ballard, the third link, is where I hope we eventually buy a house.  It's like 10 minutes from my current neighborhood but I LOVE it there!).  Anyway, maybe I'll take some pics tomorrow.  Until then, you can see how nutty we are about a snow day around here:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/home/index.html

http://www.phinneywood.com/

http://www.myballard.com/

The good news, btw, is that though the roads were extremely frightful and my Ghettro wasn't exactly made for snow.  I grew up in the mountains and I can handle it; plus, the husband (lovely man, really) camped out with the laptop and free wi-fi at Les Schwab yesterday for 9- yes, NINE- hours to get new all-season tires put on said Ghettro, so that helped.  I didn't even come straight home from work- I went to Fred Meyer to do a little Christmas shopping.  The only scary part was actually parking at home, because we live on a very steep hill and coming down that hill was not fun, what with the road being, literally, a sheet of ice.

I do have to say that the snow is actually kind of really fun.  Like, I hate the cold and the winter, and I live in Seattle because the temps are usually in the 40's in the Winter, 60's in the Spring and Fall, and 70's-80's in the Summer.  AKA climate PERFECTION.  Spokane, on the eastern border of WA and where I lived for 5 years after college, was much more temperate and they almost always have decent amounts of snow in the winter (though they got a record 30 inches in 24 hours yesterday!  Oy stinking VEY!).

The deal is that it's kind of fun, though, because some 80% (total guess, I can't lie!) of my Facebook friends live in either the Seattle area or Spokane, so it's been fun to peruse the gazillion photos people have posted of the crazy snow.  It's kind of a cool feeling, being bonded over the shared experience.  And seeing kids sledding down the roads no one dare drive on was pretty cool, too.  Oh, and best of all- my sexy JasFace used some pool deicing stuff after shoveling our sidewalks so ours are the only clear ones on the block- pretty sweet :)

Anyway... rather uneventful day.  I didn't eat enough- I was so caught up in conversation (both of my employers were home today, since one works from home mostly and the other had a snow day and didn't have to go to work; mutual friends brought over their baby and it was really fun!) that I only ate one small piece of pizza and then forgot to eat more, and by 4pm I was SO FREAKING HUNGRY.  Dinner was healthy, though- simple rice with a wee bit of Tamari sauce (gluten free equivalent of soy sauce, basically) and a chicken breast grilled on a grill pan on the stove with salt and pepper to flavor- perfect!  So tasty. The 4 almond rocas and 2 servings of chocolate and 4 pieces of candy (Applets and Cotlets, for you Washingtonians) were not so healthy though... meh.

I'm mostly just rambling and I feel like I had better things to say but I can't remember them now, so I'll just be done now :)

Ok, not really.  But tonight's dinner was AMAZING.

I've made this before, though I can't find any posts and/or pictures, but this is one of my best- at least favorite- dishes!  I always just call it "thai dish".  So... here we go.

First picture-- the ingredients.

Second picture-- a quick trick to not spend 15 years chopping garlic and ginger:



So here's what I did for the whole recipe:

First, my husband makes PERFECT rice, so he made the rice- just normal, with a lid on the stove top.  The only special thing I did was add about 1 1/2 TB of the OJ concentrate to the rice as it cooked.  It just added a little bit of extra flavor to the rice.

While the rice cooked away, I heated a couple TB of canola oil over med-hi heat.  Then I added in the chicken (cut into small cubes- I like to cut it up small because it cooks faster and you feel like there's more chicken when you get some with every bite... at least, we feel that way!) and ginger / garlic.  After about three minutes I added the red pepper flakes (about 1/2 ts), and a TB each of the curry and cumin, then just a teeny pinch of the cloves.  I sort of forgot to put the onions in at this point, though I was supposed to.  I put them in after adding the brown sugar, tamari sauce, a splash of lime juice, a touch of the frozen OJ concentrate, and the peanut butter.  After all of that meshed together (still over medium-hi heat) I added the coconut milk.  I let the flavors meld for about 10 minutes over low heat as I chopped up some peanuts and fresh scallions (green onions).

So...


At long last, the final product-- so good!


I hope you enjoyed this foray into our culinary pleasures.  For now I must stop staring at the computer screen and watch me some Gossip Girl and How I Met Your Mother :)

Hasta, kids!

[Black Balloon, Goo Goo Dolls]

I was going to write a witty and wonderful (wonderfully witty?) blog post but then I helped my husband with something "quick" and it took over two hours.  Now it's nearly 11pm and I'm sleepy.  I have an appointment with an endocrinologist tomorrow morning so I need to sleep so getting up at a normal time won't be an issue :)

So, this short post will show you tonight's amazing dinner!  I'm on a roll this week!

My parents gave us some venison when we were with them for Thanksgiving- yup, I'm from a small town (tiny town, really; it has less than a thousand residents in the city limits) in the mountains and my parents totally hunt each fall and own many rifles.  I don't have any objections to these things, though I personally don't own, nor really ever wish to own, any guns and don't hunt or fish or any of those things now that I'm out on my own.  Anyway, one of the packages of venison (aka deer meat) is meant for a stew, so I made a venison stew today.

First, I spiced up some gluten free flour (sweet sorghum flour) with paprika, granulated garlic, a touch of cumin and coriander, salt and pepper, and a wee bit o' chili powder.  Then I coated the meat in it and did a quick browning of the flour-covered-meat in some olive oil.  Here's what it looked like:

Meanwhile, as the meat browned, I cut up an onion, two small red potatoes, one large yukon gold potato (I thought I'd use two but there wasn't enough room), a yam (I want twins !), and had a bag of baby carrots on hand.  A LARGE bag of baby carrots, because I loves me some cooked carrots!  Additionally, we had two quarts (quarts?  I'm not sure and I'm too tired to go look) of beef stock for the occasion.  I thought chicken stock wouldn't be hearty enough and beef did the trick.  Here's a pic o' the shindig on my cutting board:


Then I put it all together in the crock pot for a cookin' party.  I added about 90% of the second quart of stock (not pictured, since I am sure you all can count) and then put the rest in the refrigerator; you'll understand why in a minute.  This is the beginning of the stew party in my handy dandy crock pot (btw, I have an actual name brand Crock Pot- yes, I do know I should always use the proper noun form, ie capitalize it, but I don't care- so I refuse to say "slow cooker".  Now you know.)  Anyway, enjoy the pic:


After cooking on low all day, while we were at church and the like, the stew was smelling SO good!  I used the refrigerated leftover stock to mix up a few TB of corn starch; I added it to the stew about 5 minutes before serving and the thick consistency was perfect.  As the thickener did its thang I chopped up a few sprigs of fresh, organic flat leaf parsley.  Then, I spooned the stew into a bowl, added a dollop of sour cream (my husband was disgusted, because he thinks he doesn't like sour cream, but then when he had seconds he added it on his own because he realized that I was right- it really does add a rich creaminess, another layer of flavor, to the deliciousness of the stew!), and sprinkled on the parsley.

Here are two pics of the final product; the first is with flash and the second is without.  Usually I think a flash washes out the food, though it doesn't here, but just in case you get both views :)




It was SOOOO good!  Warm and comforting, tasty and filling, very healthy and totally gluten free, so my husband won't get sick.  Plus, the meat was so tender- usually venison can be a little tough, but cooking on low all day made it super tender and it had the same melt-in-your-mouth consistency as beef.

So... that was dinner :)  Yummy, right?

Hasta kids!

[Grow Old With You, Adam Sandler]

The sexy husband and I are watching The Wedding Singer.  I love this movie :)  Adam Sandler is one of my favorite actors, along with Will Smith and Mark Wahlberg.  Now you know.

Here is how hot and sexy my man is; this was him working really hard last night:

Too funny :)

So tonight's dinner was nearly a major disaster; I tried to get creative with the rice and ended up with some almost form of risotto that looked and pretty much tasted like vomit.  See for yourself.


Gross, right?  I gave up on the rice and started over.  You'll see much better results in a moment, I promise.

Another problem was that the fresh, organic dill I purchased only two days ago looked like this when I went to chop it up for our salmon:


I couldn't choose between the two pics so here is another view:


However, despite the rotten nastiness- believe me that I know how to buy fresh food and it looked much better when I made the purchase- dinner turned out really well.

Indeed, I was able to save the day- I picked out a few not-rotten parts, chopped 'er up, and then put it with a wee bit o' lemon juice on some frozen salmon in a zip and steam bag (or whatever they are called).  For the rice I toasted some pine nuts, added pesto (I know, kind of redundant), a splish (less than a splash) of lemon juice, and goat cheese to the pan and stirred until the goat cheese melted.  After the sauce was done I stacked the salmon on some rice and pesto sauce, sprinkled on a little grated parm (parmesan reggiano) cheese and a wee bit more freshly chopped dill.  Here are two views of the final (gluten free!) result:


Have I mentioned how much I love our new camera?  Because I LOVE our new camera!

It was so delicious, totally gluten free, and pretty stinking healthy.  Yum-ay.

So I was sorting through a few pictures and came across the following pics that make me miss my long hair :(


Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the photo journey.  It was kind of spur of the moment, but don't you agree?  My hair was so gorgeous when it was long!  Shucks.

Hola.  I have many random thoughts today.  The first of which is that my quoted song is my new song obsession.  The Fray are definitely in my top 5 favorite bands, maybe even top 3 (I should figure that out.  I have homework.  A meme, perhaps?) and I've been waiting rather impatiently for any new material from them.  This song honestly blew me away with its wonderfulness.  Plus, I watched the LOST video set to this song on iTunes and it only made me love the song more and increase my yearning for January 21, 2009.  Shucks.

Moving on.

I find it incredibly... something... that Britney Spears is six weeks younger than I am, basically.  She was born on December 2, 1981, and two days later I turned six weeks old.  That's crazy to me... just how incredibly different our lives are despite being essentially the same age.

Also, sadly, I'm still dealing with... gastrointestinal issues... but I just need to say that Dulcolax is AMAZING.  No, really.  I'm very grateful.

The bummer is that I weighed myself this morning and I was 365.5 pounds.  I was SO upset for about 5 seconds.  But I just have to believe that it's random stuff- PMS [insert pet peeve- I HATE it when people say "PMS" to describe when they're on their actual period.  PMS means PRE-menstrual symptoms, as in the stuff that happens before you actually start bleeding.  Totally annoys me.] is hitting hard.  My breasts are swollen and tender, so that must mean there's some sort of fluid causing it.  I'm going to tell you something I really probably shouldn't- I say "breasts" on here, sounding all proper... but in real life I say boobies or boobs.  How embarrassing.

ANYway... so PMS is hitting, then there's the whole constipation issue (ack!  I actually said it!), plus the gallon (ok, mere exaggeration) of saltwater I rinse with every day to prevent infections in my mouth wounds, the probable reaction of my body to all of the various narcotics I've been pumping into my body.  And there's just no way I have eaten nearly 40,000 extra calories in the last two weeks since my last weigh in (I was 354 a couple of weeks ago).  It's just not possible.  So yeah, I'm disappointed, but I can't freak out about it.  If I do I'll set myself up for a possible binge and then I will eat extra calories.

The good news is that I went for a 25+ minute walk yesterday and today, and I plan to tomorrow as well.  I sweat so much both times that my (very short) hair at the nape of my neck became so wet that I was uber cold for the next hour and a half after I cooled down.  I am not even exaggerating.  It's pretty sad.  It was like forty-some degrees out and yet I sweat as if I were in my last chance workout with Jillian AND Bob from The Biggest Loser each time.  Gross.  Anyway, I also ate really well both days.  Honestly, I've been eating really well in general.  I made a poor choice on Monday out of extreme hunger (I didn't have time to eat before J's appointment and was so hungry afterward that I was ready to pass out, almost literally) to eat Arby's, plus some dumb choices on Thanksgiving day,  but other than that I've been really on point.  I feel good about that.

So the deal is, I just weighed myself, in clothes and only a few hours past dinner, and it was 366.7.  I have to believe that this morning was a fluke.  Plus, the laxative has worked kind of overly well (I know you get that!) and I've had multiple opportunities to... drop some pounds today, all post weigh in.  So I'll redo it tomorrow morning, hopefully with much better results.

A trick I have found, for myself, is to eat ice cream bars at night instead of any other dessert. Jason and I just really love ice cream for dessert, but I so tend to overeat when it's from a 1/2 gallon container.  Since I can't really handle the crunchiness of my beloved Skinny Cow cones, I have some Dove bars.  Triple chocolate, baby!  It might sound like, "Ack!  Girl, you eat a 280 cal bar for dessert?" but if I were eating regular ice cream it would likely be closer to a 400-500 calorie bowl.  So i'sallgood.

Lastly, dinner tonight was AMAZING!  See, this one loves herself some twins.  I want twins.  I've ALWAYS wanted twins.  They don't run in my family, nor Jason's, but I am just believing God that I'll have twins!  Adopt, maybe, if need be.  But, so you can understand my neuroses, I heard once that in cultures with a high consumption of yams there is a greater preponderance of twins compared to non-yam peoples.  I, of course, have since desired to consume many a yam.  However, sweet potatoes are easy to find... yams not so much.  Since yams and sweet potatoes are not the same thing, not even remotely (true story !), I've felt robbed of my ability to convince my body twins are for me.

All of that said, my favorite local hippie store had organic yams and so tonight's dinner was a chicken breast (seasoned and grilled, no oil) and "yam fries".  Basically, I handcut two yams into fry shapes, put them in a big ziploc bag with 1 TB of canola oil, salt, pepper, a touch of curry and seasoning salts, and paprika.  I then baked them (thus removing the actual "fry"-ness) 10 minutes on each side, and they were AMAZING.  Jas did the chicken PERFECTLY (love my all caps when I'm excited about food?) and it was so tasty, and it was under 500 calories.  Ooooh, and totally gluten free!

And... because my INCREDIBLE new camera (ours is black... my lovers' fave color and I aim to please) came today y'all get a pic!  Too bad I discovered that it has a cuisine setting (a cuisine setting!!) post-dinner consumption.  Wah-oops.  This in no way displays the superiority of my new camera!  I also discovered the super macro (as in super up-close) mode after the fact, as well.


This pic, however, does display the awesomeosity that is our new camera:


Yup.  That's my eye, all sorts of up close and personal.

Here's my man, looking mad fine:


Aight, I should wrap up.  I have a very deep post en route, but it will be long and detailed, unlike this one ;), and I want to really let the processing happen before I dive in... I never used to do that, but I guess that's how I know I'm growing up.  Twenty-seven should mean something, methinks.  That said, something wonderful happened today- a reader nominated me for a blog award .  If you don't keep up with the times, I am aka Tami (Tam, Timtam, Tamalam, Tizzam, Tam* [pronounced Tamstar, as in Tamstar, as in Tamstar Runner.  If you get that, you are very, very cool.  Or you went to college.], Tamitha, Tamela [like Pamela], et cetera.) to most people.  As a result, I am the "Tami" in her nominations.  Her words re: me are very kind, incredibly generous, and I am truly humbled.  I'm not quite cool enough to nominate anyone, at least not tonight.  Sleepy, I am.

[Yoda is my step-dad's cousin, twice removed.]

On that note, I'm out.

Hasta, kids.

[Black Balloon, Goo Goo Dolls]

Today:

First, the downside.  Today Jason and I cleaned out our entire home of all products containing gluten.  There will be some pics later.  But, the deal is, after I planned out our meals for the week I went shopping at a small local chain that carries a lot of local, healthy, organic products.  It's like Whole Foods, but local and way better.  I purchased many healthy foods; in fact, you get to see our tasty dinner later via pic.

The deal is, I bought two moderately unhealthy items- some barbecue chips (for Jason's lunches) and some organic, gluten free ice cream.  I had just purchased a heck ton of fresh produce and was trying to find a gluten free chip for Jason (again, one of two unhealthy items purchased out of about 20 items), totally minding my own business, when a guy walked by, said, "WHOA!!!" in a very loud voice, and totally pulled me out of my reverie.  I looked up just in time to see him going around the corner, and could hear him say, "Did you SEE her?", in a very condescending voice.  He then said something else that I couldn't hear but I could hear him and his male friend laughing.

That hurt.  I was embarrassed, ashamed, kind of wanting to cry, and pissed, all at once.  I had to remind myself that I have every bit as much of a right to shop there, at a health food store, as anyone else.  I have had way more ugly, mean, and judgmental looks for being a fat person buying food at health food stores than I ever have at "normal" stores.  The thing is, I had a great conversation with a sweet girl who was buying 3 gallons of honey to make homemade wine.  As I was thinking about this, I realized that the rude looks (and sometimes comments) are rarely from the people who true hippies.  Instead, it's the "we're trying to be cool" hipsters who look down their noses at me.  Interesting.

And, freaking eh, if you want to hate on fat people, at least go point and laugh at fat people at the McDonald's line.  Because there, at least, I could be like, "Yeah, you're right, I am fat and making really bad choices."  But at the health food store, nay a processed food in my cart?  But, really, I have to focus on myself and my health and let the haters hate because, honestly, they must seriously hate themselves if they have to hurt someone else to feel good about who they are.

That was the down side of today.  The good news is that it wasn't even that painful to lose all of our gluten infused foods.  Check out the haul that we are giving away (hopefully to you, Rachface!):

It's not super easy to see everything, but there's a whole lotta stuff there.  Unopened bags of flour, organic pasta, whole wheat flour that was crazy expensive, cakes and soups... oy.

But the great news is that we had a delicious dinner.  I made some amazing fried chicken.  I used some sorghum flour, kosher salt, paprika, curry, granulated garlic, and chipotle powder for the breading, which I coated the chicken with after an egg wash.  We have an electric skillet so I can regulate the temperature; if you keep the temp at 350 when you fry chicken then it absorbs very little oil; I used canola oil, too, so it was pretty dang tasty.  It was not greasy at all, which was amazing!  As a side  I made this creamy polenta, slightly modified- I used sour cream instead of creme fraiche.  It was SO good!  I also made roasted acorn squash- I just sliced it up, coated it with olive oil, sprinkled over some kosher salt, and balsamic vinegar.  'Twas tres tastee.

Here are two pics; the first has a flash, which allows a good look at the chicken and squash but washes out the polenta.  The second is flash free, so you can see the polenta much better, but it doesn't do much for the chicken and squash.  remember that you can click on the pics for a much larger view.  Anyway, it was pretty healthy and incredibly good, and so totally gluten free.  Not half bad.

Enjoy the pics, and have a lovely Sunday :)

[Don't Look Away, Kate Voegele]

Operation: Gluten Free Living commenced today.

Here's what's up: my beloved husband, one Jason Jay Hizzlindometrius, has suffered from nasty psoriasis for the last 10 years.  It causes these icky puss filled lesions to form, mostly on his knees, elbows, and... other unpleasant places.  They itch and burn like crazy, the poor guy.  The only effective treatment has been this massively expensive topical cream, which he has to apply, sit around for 30 minutes, and then shower off.  When he finally went to a new derm (read: our term for dermatologist) here in Seattle to renew his prescription for said meds the derm told him that it looked like a classic case of dermatitis herpetiformis (DH).  After a skin biopsy it was confirmed-- Jason has a severe allergy to gluten which causes the nasty lesions to form, and his DH has gone undiagnosed for 10 years. (If you are really curious about DH you can read more here .)

Here are two pictures of what one of my baby's right knee area looks like:



The thing is, not only do 75-90% of people with DH have Celiac disease (the common gluten allergy; it basically makes those same icky lesions form on the inner lining of people's intestines), which Jason is going to also be tested for, but it is linked to numerous other autoimmune disorders.  It also heightens the risk that Jas will develop lymphoma (cancer of the lymph nodes).  What is really scary here is that his dad had lymphoma in his late 40's, which already means Jas is at higher risk to develop the disease.  Also, DH is hereditary and our children will be likely to have the condition.

So, we have to go strictly gluten free.  Especially for the first year-- we can't risk Jason eating anything that could be cross-contaminated with gluten (which is found in wheat, barley, and rye).  It's insane how many things contain gluten, though- check out this list (scroll down about 1/3 of the way to "What do I need to avoid?").  We can't eat out anywhere, save for maybe PF Chang's (they have a gluten-free menu and seem to be GF friendly, understanding that even gluten-filled flour particles in the air can cross contaminate food... at least, so I have heard.  We'll see.) and I hear that Outback and Red Robin also have GF menus but you have to request them.  This is all new to me, and we don't really eat out much, so we'll have to figure it out as we go.

By the way, you may see Outback and think, "Gluten free at a steakhouse?  You just don't get a roll, right?"  But, actually, even steak seasonings frequently have various elements with gluten.  It's crazy how many things you can't have- even soy sauce.  Salad dressings.  Ice cream.  Anything with starch, especially modified food starch, even vegetable starch.  Any thickener.  Pretty much just about anything you can think of!

The deal is, we can't just not eat out- we really shouldn't even eat in anyone else's kitchen.  A crumb on the counter, a fork not cleaned enough, etc.  So it's not just not eating the food people bring to potlucks, but we should bring our own food, our own dishes, etc.  I should note here that I say 'we' because, though Jason has the disease, I need to fully support him.  I can't risk that food I have in the house will make him sick (read: cause horrible skin lesions and increase his risk for cancer), or that even kissing me after I eat something with gluten could affect him.  I know this seems extreme, but I refuse to take chances.  Thus, it's Jason's illness but by the association of marriage it's mine, too.  So, we don't want to be 'that' couple, the high-maintenance one who can't eat anything or anywhere.  But... it's his health, and possibly that of our children.  I would totally oblige for any friends in the same situation, no matter how high-maintenance.

There's a silver lining, a blessing in disguise, in all of this.  But... I am tired of typing.  And, to be honest, I look cute.  Today Jason and I went to a couple of local stores to check out the GF products, so I wanted to look pretty for him :)  And, since I'm feeling a little prettier than normal, I figure I will post a vlog.  But a very cool thing happened today, and you should check it out.  I'll embed the vlog below.  It's actually something that I think will really encourage and bless many of you, and I know it's a wee bit long, but I really hope you enjoy it.
I really need to figure out how to look cute and smiley at the end, so that the picture doesn't make me look like a complete tool :)