Juliebove

One of my favorites is a good party food.  Buy cherry tomatoes.  Wash them.  Cut the tops off and reserve (if you want).  Use a melon baller or a small spoon to scoop the guts of the tomato out.  Discard.  Turn the tomatoes upside down on paper towels for about a half an hour to drain the juice off.

 

Meanwhile, cook some bacon until crisp.  Crumble it and mix with some mayo and sliced green onion.  You can add parsley to this.  You can also add parmesan cheese.  Some recipes call for this but I've never tried it.  Add enough mayo to hold it all together.  Stuff the tomatoes with this mixture and place them on a platter that has been lined with a bed of curly parsley.  This prevents them from rolling around.  You can cap them with the tops if you want.  If you do, you'll need to spear them with a toothpick (preferably a decorative one) to keep them in place.

 

These need to be made fresh but you can keep them in the fridge for up to two hours.

If you are buying plain meat at a store, it should be safe.  Unless perhaps you are buying it from the butcher counter.  If so, check there and see if they have any breaded meats, meatloaf mix, or anything else that might have gluten in it.  If there is such stuff, it could have been cross contaminated.  Do beware taco meat at some restaurants because they might put gluten in there.

http://labtestsonlin...yptase/tab/test

ANA as you probably know is looking for any inflammatory issues, too many to mention.
One thing I have learned,.......when ANYONE obsesses on a health issue, and spends a lot of time doing research on their own, you are bound to drive yourself to distraction at one point or the other.

This article leads to another article, on and on.
Before you know it, you have yourself dying from your own self diagnosis.

Quit dwelling on it so much, and you just might feel better.

I must seriously disagree with you!  As a person with mulitple medical problems, I was instructed by different Drs. to do research not only for myself but for my daughter.  The bad thing about Drs. is that each one has his or her own specialty.  They will concentrate on that and tend to ignore all of the other problems.  At least in my experience.  I have yet to find one that would put it all together for me.  That fell to me.  Had I not done research on my own, I would not have known that the statin I was on was causing some of my problems.  Or that the diabetes med I was on was in fact raising my blood sugar.  Or that some of my problems were caused by menopause.  Actually a PA pointed me in that direction!  I also wouldn't have learned about many of the deficencies I've had in my diet.  Yes, I've been tested for some and some where found.  But they didn't find some others.

Yes, I take a ton of vitaming and supplements now.  But I have had to go to the Dr. far less than ever before.  I can't remember the last time I had a cold or the flu.  I did have recent problems that I now know were related to menopause.  I had some skin problems, cause unknown.  And an eye problem.  Again, cause unknown.

I have also found that Drs. are usually of little help when it comes to diet.  Unless perhaps it is celiac or a true food allergy.  They do seem to understand these things.  But they do not seem to understand food intolerances.  Because there is no one standard test for these things.

I have never ever thought I was going to die.  Although at some points in my life I was sick enough and sometimes made sick by medications that a Dr. prescribed and I couldn't tolerate that I sure wished I *would* die!

Perhaps if you don't suffer from things that you have yet to have ferreted out, then you wouldn't understand the lengths that some of us will go to in order to feel better.

And at times I do have to question whether my life such as it is, is really worth it.  Not only do I have to stick myself numerous times each day to check my blood sugar but I have to shoot myself full of insulin most of the time when I eat.  Or eat to try to get my blood sugar back up where it should be.  I have to watch every bite that I eat, not only for the diabetes but my gastroparesis and my food intolerances.  Let's see...  I want a big salad.  But will I actually digest it today?  I have to think about it before I can eat.  Or I am not digesting well.  Let me run my food through the Cron-O-Meter and see where I am lacking.  Oooh!  Time to up the vitamin E again.  Or...  Can I go there?  Let me check it out and see where I might be able to park.  How far I might have to walk.  Will I have to stand in line?  Can I bring food in if I need to?  Will it be too far away for me to drive to?  Because if I spend too much time with my foot on the brake or gas pedal, my leg will cramp up on me.  Will I be out in the sun?  If I am, my Psoriasis might flare.  And then I'll spend a few months (or more) trying to get those itchy red patches to go away.

For me it is always a good thing when I discover a problem and figure out what to do about it.  And I seem to be doing pretty well at the moment except for the thinning hair and the occasional bout of low blood sugar.  Now if I could just get my daughter well.

Ditch the millet !  Ditch the millet !  Cross contamination city, and it can be as bad as oats for some of us.

You need more good fats-  LOTS of fats - from coconut milk or oil, lard, bacon, vegetable or olive oils, nuts, avocado, etc, and some natural carbohydrates in the form of starchy vegetables and fruits, if you are going to eat like this ("sugarless")  and have half a chance of succeeding.   Can you do legumes in the form of peanut butter or very well drained and rinsed canned beans ?  Sweet potatoes ?  Squash ?  One of the most filling things to eat is canned pure pumpkin puree mixed with canned coconut milk, it can be savory for a soup base, or sweet for a breakfast, and sometimes this mixture baked with eggs to form a custard.  Can you tolerate some form of stevia for a sweet taste ?  What about agave or honey ?

You need to get something else in there at breakfast.  A pure rice first meal = not good. Add some fat to that, somehow.  Can you puree part of a banana with some green leafy vegetables and/or parsley and some berries for a smoothie ?   What about a baked sweet potato with some almond butter ?  What about leftovers for breakfast ?  Cannot bear the thought of fish that early?  What about shrimp or chicken?  You can take some cooked brown rice pasta, and mix it up with a fast homemade thai- style peanut sauce and coconut aminos and top it with some shredded vegetables.

You are hungry for micronutrients, and that is why you are having such cravings. The body interprets needs "nutrients" as basic ferocious hunger for sugar.   Most regular people feel this and try to satiate it with highly processed "white" carbs such as white rice, white bread, white potatoes ( I am a big fan of eating some fat if you eat a white potato, such as frying it, so it slows the whole processing thing down) and bad things like white flour pastries, cakes, cookies, etc made with lots of white sugar.  These things are processed quickly and spike a blood sugar high (wheeeeeee !) and then comes a blood sugar crash (and boom goes the dynamite   ).   This sets up a bad cycle of eating "white things" - (as my neighbor calls them )  and wanting more and more of them.

If you do go to using gluten free flours and baking ingredients, try using the highest protein ones you can find, and combining two or more of them for the maximum nutrition.   For example, you can use brown rice flour instead of white, and add a seed or nut meal flour.  A sorghum flour mixed with amaranth or buckwheat can make a good all purpose "breading" coating, for example.

Be careful with your buckwheat sources, you do know that the Bob's red mill brand is all oat cross contaminated, don't you ?   I am grinding the Burkett Mills (Pocono) cereal in a coffee grinder to get my own buckwheat flours.  Buckwheat is technically a seed, as is amaranth.  You can also try quinoa if you can stand the taste.

You can make a fantastic pancake/flatbread with just buckwheat flour and soaked chia seeds (and the other ingredients)  - another way to add oil fat to your diet.  

You can also tamp down the cravings by making sure you take a gluten free B vitamin complex, and a calcium supplement (not tums, try a calcium citrate) and some form of vitamin D and magnesium.

Very interesting.  I rarely get cravings and when I do, I am always lacking in some nutrient.  Like magnesium.  I do use the Cron-O-Meter online often and run all of my food through it.  I can then see what I am lacking and take more supps if needed.

I don't wear them any more.  For most of my life, I hated them.  I did start wearing them in Jr. High but only because that was pretty much what all of the other kids wore.  I was very picky though and the demin had to be very soft.  I also wore them as a young adult and I also wore heels which I no longer wear.

Currently I have an assortment of medical problems which includes gastroparesis.  That means that my stomach is always big but sometimes huge!  I can start out the morning with a pair of pants that are loose, only to have them uncomfortable tight by dinner time.  Or the opposite can happen.  Pants start out tight, then I go shopping and the pants start sliding off.  It's very frustrating.  These days I can only wear yoga pants, sweats, leggings or other knit pants.  Elastic waists work best.  I do own some pants that do not have actual elastic but just a stretchy fabric top.  These have a tendency to slide off of me.

I did have some jeans with an elastic waist but I got rid of most of them.  They just were not comfortable.  And in order to get them that were big enough around the middle, the maker apparently assumed that I had big legs as well.  I don't.  Legs are skinny.  So the fit was kind of funky.

Roommates can be the worst.  I had various troubles with many of them.  Stealing money and other things from me.  Eating my food while I was at work.  Being too messy.  Bringing drugs into the apartment.  Selling drugs from the apartment.  Constantly having BF spend the night then having BF hit on me while she was sleeping.  Not paying the rent or worse yet just disappearing when the rent was due.  And of course at some point they will want to move out for some reason.

I was sooo happy when I was finally able to get my own apartment.  It was super cheap because I was living above a dance studio.  Yes, the music could get loud but I'm a former dancer so I was used to it.  And they never raised my rent.  So I managed to be able to save up some money and then eventually I got what I thought was a nicer/better apartment.  Turns out it was not because it had serious plumbling problems and still does today.  My mom knows someone that moved into that same apartment.  And when she was describing the plumbing problems, my mom said, "Where is it?"  Bingo!

What you might consider doing until you can earn and/or save up more money is renting a room somewhere.  It certainly would be cheaper but it could have its own set of problems such as sharing a bathroom.  Someone could be using gluteny cosmetics in the shower or tub and you might not know it.  And you wouldn't have a kitchen.  But you would most likely have a fridge and perhaps a microwave and they might even let you use a hot plate.

I have never been tested for celiac and AFAIK, I do not have any gluten issues.  My daughter did (doesn't currently) but that's what brought me here.

Long story short with her, she was thought to have ADHD by her teachers.  But I didn't believe this.  After taking her to a variety of Drs., my mom's Naturopath finally said he could test her for food allergies.  He did and said that she had quite a few.  We changed her diet and it was like we got a new girl!  Lots of things cleared up.

What he did was a blood test for IgG allerigies which most medical Drs. will say are not allergies at all but sensitivities or intolerances.  We were told to have her restested in three years.  But...  We did not like this Dr.  He charged many thousands of dollars for the test and insisted that we buy supplements from him that I thought we did not need.

So we went to an allergist who didn't believe in the IgG allergies but said that if the foods caused us problems, to avoid them.  She tested us both and we were found not to have allergies to those foods.  Technically, allergies cause a histamine response.  And this can be life threatening.  I was found to have OAS (oral allergy syndrome) to pistachios and almonds.  But...  The allergist only tested us for the specific foods that we were told we were allergic to.  No others.  Daughter is currently having stomach issues and the GP that she saw suspects food allergies or intolerances that we have yet to ferret out.  The food allergies were tested for via a skin prick test.

We found another Naturopathy (now deceased) who tested my daughter twice (I think) and me once.  Each time we were tested, we changed out diet.

Then we needed to be retested again but I couldn't find a Dr. to do it.  So I did a hair test online.  I know some people think this test isn't valid but it did seem to work for us.

I also have some other issues with foods that I do not test as having a problem with.  But if they bother me in any way, I just avoid them.  Like garlic in more than a tiny amount and melons.

I am sooo sick of turkey!  We have been eating it as is but cut into small pieces and mixed with some boxed gluten-free gravy over some stuffing that is mostly mushrooms, celery and onion with a small amount of bread and some olive oil, Nucoa and turkey broth.  We did like it for a while but both my daughter and I went on overkill I think and we'd both be happy if we didn't see it again until next year!

When I was a kid, my mom would make turkey soup.  I never liked that.  Chicken soup, fine.  Turkey?  Not so much.

My dad would make it into a salad buy chopping it up and mixing it with halved purple grapes, walnuts and mayo.  That was okay but again I would have preferred chicken.

One thing that my daughter and I used to eat a lot of was cooked, chopped up turkey mixed in the same boxed gravy and served over mashed potatoes.  She is on the South Beach diet now and mashed potatoes are not on that.  So, that doesn't work for me.

I gather that you can use it in any sort of recipe in place of other meats.  We just don't like it that way.  Tried a pizza one year many years back.  Called for a Boboli but any gluten-free crust would do.  Spread with cranberry sauce then top with Swiss cheese and your turkey.  Bake like you would a regular pizza.  It was Rachael Ray's recipe but none of us liked it.

Sorry, I had to divide my post into two.  It apparently got too long and it was scrolling on me.  Anyway here is the Kashi link:

http://www.kashi.com...n_Kashi Non-GMO

These are verified non-GMO:

http://www.nongmopro...ating-products/

Here is one list of GMO:

http://www.disabled-...ss/gm-foods.php

Here's another list:

http://dprogram.net/...f-gmo-products/

I think you should be okay on that front so long as you buy whole foods.  Try to stay away from processed  stuff.  Although some say that all corn is now GMO and I think I saw on one of those links that peas are.  Hard to say.

The hot dog with no bun and the chips sounds sooo familiar.  Actually daughter can't have peanuts so Chik-Filet would be out.  Not that we have them here, because we don't.  And we always have to check the chips because some can be fried in peanut oil.  We do have a Taco Time at our mall.  The tacos, beans and rice are safe there.  But mostly we try not to go to the mall because we just really don't like it.  A yearly trip to Nordstom used to be required for shoes but now that her feet have stopped growing, she no longer needs to be fitted.  

One place we do like to go for snacks is the Target snack bar.  They have popcorn, nachos, the hot dog with no bun, chips, fries (they're baked), fresh fruit, smoothies, and even string cheese.  Daughter even eats the salads there.  They do contain croutons which are prepacked and sitting on the salad.  Might not be safe for everyone but never caused her a problem.

Oh how I can relate!  I am an adult now but my mom still doesn't get it.  And she has food intolerances her own self.  

As a kid, she pushed me to drink milk and eat ice cream.  I hated the things.  They made me ill but I didn't realize that they were what were making me ill.  At age 16, a Dr. told me to stop drinking milk.  I did.  I got some better.  But...  I didn't know enough back then to realize that it also meant not to consume foods that contained milk.  Neither did my mom and she still doesn't today.

She is not supposed to have eggs.  She will make a big announcement at dinner and say that she is not going to have eggs!  And then she will order a waffle or pancakes.  When I point out to here that there are eggs in there, she tries to tell me that there aren't.  She did the same thing with me about some soup.  I have made the soup from scratch and I know that it contains eggs.  It is the Greek Avgolemono.  I'll bet that Avglo or something similar even means egg in Greek.  I just gave up on that one.  She kept insisting that it was cream in the soup and not egg.

She doesn't think that some things matter.  Like a little flour used to dredge a pork chop in.

All the time I get how it is just a little bit and that a little bit can't hurt.  Cross contamination can't hurt!  What I tried to do with her...but it didn't work was to use the medication thingie.  She takes some prescription medications.  I asked her to show me her smallest pill.  It was indeed very tiny.  So I said...  "Why don't you give one to Angela?"  My daughter.  She looked at me like I was nuts.  So I said...  "Well it's tiny!  A little bit won't hurt her.  Right?"  She didn't get it.  To me it is very much the same thing.

Sadly some people will just never get it.  And then we have to deal with it.  My mom has even asked us not to mention our foods in front of her.  Because she doesn't want to hear about it.  *sigh*

I know the feeling.  Gluten isn't an issue for me but I can't tell you how many times I have gotten food in a restaurant only to find something in it that I can't have.  Even after I thought I was clear to the wait person.

It might help if you could have the wait person or the manager have a talk with her.  At The Old Spaghetti Factory, the manager came to our table, told us she would prepare our food herself and that they used a special pan to cook the pasta.  This after my dad told us that the pasta couldn't possibly be gluten-free because they cooked it in the same water.  Turns out my dad is wrong about a LOT of things but he talks like he is an expert so people tend to believe him.  Actually the gluten-free food there is prepared in a separate area of the kitchen even.

At home we tend to frequent the same restaurants.  Ones that cater to people with food allergies and have no problems making special meals for us.

But for traveling?  Ah, that can cause a problem.  The restaurant is unknown and even though they do have a gluten-free menu, you have no way of knowing how well they get it.  We also tend to really limit what we get in a restaurant.  Fresh or canned fruit, cottage cheese (for my daughter, not me), hamburger patty, bacon, maybe some form of potato.  Potatoes sometimes aren't safe.

One thing you might consider is packing some food and having your daughter eat in the car before or after the restaurant and while in the restaurant only ordering some small thing that is most likely to be safe. Like a fruit cup.

What we always packed when we traveled were small cans of green beans, canned kidney beans, canned refried beans and tortilla chips.  That way we could make a meal if we needed to.  We also always looked at every stop for things like individual packs of cheese, meat, fresh fruit and veg.

I am intolerant to casein.  I was in the past.  Then according to testing, I wasn't.  The Dr. warned me not to eat any just because of how severe my symptoms had been.  But did I listen?  No.  At first it wasn't a problem.

Then I noticed that if I got the nachos at Target, I couldn't make it through the store even for a quick shopping trip.  The big D would strike.  And did I listen to my body?  No.  Kept on eating it.

Eventually I was eating less and less of it and it got to the point where I was actually kind of repulsed by it.  And now I know for sure.  I can't have it.  Not now anyway.

If you are going to re-introduce it, I would do it at home and just once to begin with.  Then wait a week to try it again, assuming you get no reaction.  Of course if there is a reaction do not have it again.

Then if you find that there is no reaction, have it once in a while.  Don't overdo it like I did.

Ugh!  It's not like a weight loss diet.  That's like the Dr. who said I needed to give my kid with food allergies a break and let her be a kid for two weeks on a vacation with her dad.  I was like...  Let her get sick for two weeks?  She doesn't WANT to get sick!  Some Drs. are clueless.

Yes at some point you will screw up and eat some wheat or something.  You either won't read a label correctly or will get it through cross contamination or from eating something prepared by a well meaning but clueless person.  But in my mind there is no need to do it on purpose.

Using their logic, anything anywhere could have gluten on it.  I could eat a sandwich then go touch something without washing my hands.  But a prepared product in a sealed package?  I wouldn't worry about it.