Starting out

I've been toying with the idea of this new blog for a little while, figuring that as long as I'm figuring out quick, easy recipes that are gluten free, I might as well share it with others.

To start I figured I'd give a quick little overview of our story. Last February my husband had his appendix out. After the regular recovery period he was kind of back to normal, but his digestion never quite returned to normal. He was put on a lactose-free diet for a few months. It was tough figuring out substitutes at first because we love dairy. Just when I was beginning to figure the lactose-free diet out, Jake went back for the check up with his gastroenterologist. Because the lactose-free diet didn't do much to help, the doctor ordered some tests. The tests came back indicating Celiac Disease. The day after Jacob's birthday, an endoscopy confirmed it was, in fact, Celiac Disease. And thus Jake became the Silly Yak in the family.

We read up on a gluten free diet, bought Living Gluten-Free for Dummies, met with a nutritionist, stopped going out to eat at restaurants, and started going to Sunflower Market and Trader Joe's more often. I began the process of de-glutenfying our kitchen. Before this diagnosis I usually baked bread from scratch, including grinding my own wheat, which means little particles of flour were scattered all over the kitchen. I had to clean out every cupboard and drawer, wiping down all the surfaces to rid them of gluten. I went through my bakeware and got rid of most of my cake pans, cookie sheets and the like. I actually kept one of each size, and our muffin tins and currently store them out in the garage for those rare occasions when I might make real cupcakes for my daughter's birthday, or something.

We were faced with the decision of should the whole family go gluten-free, or just Jake? Not a tough decision for me since I'm not so self-sacrificing as others might be. I like my cereal, if nothing else. We (more like I) decided to go gluten-free for dinner, since I am much too lazy to actually make two separate meals, and that would just cry out for cross contamination. But for breakfast and lunch most of the time we wouldn't worry about it. We don't go through much bread, so we stick to only gluten-free bread for now, though when my kids get older and I have to make lunches for school, rather than just leftovers from the night before, which is more often than not, what we eat for lunch, I might break down and go with gluten bread, and separate peanut butter and jelly jars for the Silly Yak.

Having decided to go gluten-free for dinners, I proceeded to go through my pantry and get rid of all the stuff I no longer had any use for: cream of mushroom, chicken, and celery soup (so sad to see my biggest cooking staple go, but boy, was I SO happy when I found gluten-free versions a few months later), cake mixes, muffin mixes, etc. I also went through our stash of food and did the arduous task of figuring out what was or was not gluten-free. This involved many google searches: "Hormel chili gluten free" "gluten free A1 steak sauce" "Kroger spaghetti mix gluten free." Anything I couldn't find out online I put in a box and either emailed or called the company. During that first week or two I often thought, "If I could just have someone who has had celiac disease for more than a month come to my house and go through this with me, I'm sure this would be a lot quicker." Oh well.

With the kitchen cleaned out, and the glutenous food cleaned out (or at least moved to two dedicated gluten shelves in our pantry if they were things we'd still eat even if Jake couldn't), I was ready to begin figuring out what we could eat besides steak, roast, chicken, potatoes and rice. And I guess this blog is here now to share what I've learned since then.