We built a house, it’s lovely and wonderful and felt like home the day we moved in.
We had a baby, he’s 7-months old already, and crawling and standing, and smiling and giggling. He’s amazing and the happiest part of my day.
I’m still eating gluten free. I have experimented with eating bits of gluten here and there, with not-so-great results (I know, you GFers are thinking “Duh, lady!”) A 3 day shooting-pain from my shoulder to head headache isn’t worth a peanut blossom cookie. That’s for certain. I’m not a Celiac, so I feel like I may tolerate some gluten, I have yet to discover what my threshold is, however. I can tell you that I greatly miss beer, real beer. I drink GF beer, and it’s ok, some are better than others. I just miss the deep bodied beers, the choices of different tastes and depths of beer. Some day, maybe some day.
As I navigate being a new mom and eating GF, I try to experiment, but time is limited, and so is money, so I do my best to make intelligent and semi-safe experiments. Like meatballs. I made my own, substituting crushed up Rice Chex cereal for the breadcrumbs. The meatballs turned out great, except the tiny little clumps of Rice Chex tasted gummy. Next time I plan to try to make the meatballs without the Chex to see how they form together. Who knows when the next time will roll around, with all the chasing a mobile 7-month old I do these days. Plus, I found that Sam’s Club now carries Gluten Free Meatballs in their freezer section. Yes!
I still struggle with the cost of gluten free foods compared to non-gluten free foods. I’m overly excited at any coupon I find for a GF item (Target just gave me a coupon to try GF pasta from Barilla, I hope to do that soon). I’ve learned that Van’s Waffles and Udi’s bread are significantly cheaper at Target than at Cub Foods, so I try to only buy those items at Target. I found a co-op reasonably close by that has delicious GF pizza crusts. Personally, I’m not a fan of Udi’s frozen pizza, to me it tastes like carboard with tomato paste on top, and for far too much dough (pun intended, haha).
I’m going to try to update recipes and things I learn a little bit more frequently, going forward. I’d love to hear from any readers on tips or tricks or recipes you have, too!