This will be my shortest blog.
After a decade on The Specific Carbohydrate Diet, I am once again able to eat occasional moderate amounts of restricted sweets and starches with no apparent consequences. Since my celiac disease was never formally diagnosed, I cannot claim it is curable or was cured but it is now six weeks since I resumed eating foods I have not had in ten years as well as foods purported to be cross reactive with Latex Allergy.
Ultimately I decided to be ver
Everything old is new again, at least it is in my kitchen. The neighbor passed along a lovely little George Foreman grill she had no interest in and although I can't take photos, text or place phone calls with it, the shiny little white griddle looks fine next to the juicer and food processor. It cooks a range of foods in no more than ten minutes and they are done on both sides with the juices dripping into a little tray placed at the front.
Pluses: The food is juicy, cleanup is relat
We read almost daily about recalls of commercial foods which we thought were safe for a celiac disease diet. We are informed of contamination and undisclosed ingredients regularly right here at celiac.com thanks to vigilant posters. Jennifer and Destiny have both pointed out that which I have found is typical.
You probably know, me as an unofficial self-designated drum beater for the SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet) which is probably stricter than your hated third grade teacher becaus
So you cheated on your celiac diet and got away with it? ( Or so you may think.) The IRS may not come after you but the BGB (bad gut bacteria) are almost certain to. The wrong foods feed unfriendly bacteria and cause them to overgrow and interfere with digestion. You say, you felt no immediate pain? The consequences may be delayed for weeks, but you are not likely to draw a "Get Out of Jail Free," card. If you have been on a healing diet like the Specific Carbohydrate Diet for many months. All
The barbecue season is upon us. When pungent fumes envelope the neighborhood, although I may want a clothespin on my nose, I still crave a nice steak or burger on my plate. There was a time when the sight of a char broiled steak inflamed my senses and stirred the salivary glands, but now I just find the taste bitter. I stopped smoking thirty years ago and since contracting celiac disease and MCS am very sensitive to smokey odors. Fire regulations prohibit balcony barbecues here and, in any cas
I mentioned in a previous blog, "Outsides, Insides" that Specific Carbohydrate Diet breakfasts out are a cinch. Breakfasts at home are even better. They almost make the day begin (Like breathing out and breathing in). Starting here, starting now-- breakfast is going to be "Wow." By now you may think you have heard enough about "the most important meal of the day." You know that breakfast gives you energy, prevents low blood sugar, puts enough into your stomach to hopefully nudge something out.
Do the eating-out holidays like Mother's and Fathers' Day strike fear into your tender tummy? You crave the warm company of other humans, a chance to escape serving and cleaning up, and a reason to dress up (or not). I just finished the Open Original Shared Link and can really relate. Despite my having developed some good dining out strategies, invitations to leave home for a meal still generate some conflict and anxiety. Breakfast is a cinch. The family likes a retro grill which has been operat
I steal! I live a stolen life but try not to lie or cheat.
This imitation of Oliver Twist includes adapting ideas from Iron Chefs, Hellish Kitchens and my favorite Canadian Chef, Laura Calder. You can Google Laura and also find her on The Canadian Food Network Website and there you can watch her "French Food at Home" videos and read her recipes.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and being a true Recipe Robin Hood, I share and don't get paid for the adapted kno
Every diet has its day, its foods and even its decade! My pre-Celiac days with The Ladies Who Lunch, passed pleasantly for decades before celiac disease found me. In the forties we liked Danish pastry and crullers, in the fifties, ordered toasted English muffins or bagels. Next we graduated to continental croissants and Caesar salad following was the launch into an era of Muffin Madness...up to twenty variations or more, and they reached gigantic proportions. Muffins became so popular bakers
My aunt is nearing one hundred and one. My mother-in-law lived to be one hundred and two. If my maternal grandmother were alive today, she would be one hundred and twenty. They were all great cooks without recipes. My mother in law always declared her secret...old hands and old pans. Her Primo, Numero Uno prize winning dish was Potato Pudding or "kugel" as it is also known. It was light and fluffy inside and had a hard crisp outer crust with magnificent crunchy corners. We all vied for the four
What do the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and Cirque de Soleil have in common? They both require balance!
It frustrates me that even doctors are under the misapprehension that the Specific Carbohydrate Diet is a No Carb or Low Carb diet. It is fairly limited in carbohydrates (grape juice, carrots, a few carbs in the dry curd cottage cheese) for the first few days. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet starts with a brief introductory diet that clears the decks and notifies bad bacteria that
Remember DOS? It was the most commonly used operating system for the PC back in the 1980's. Since it is now as extinct as the Dodo, we can amend the acronym for our Celiac Diet in order to ask, "What is your DOS (Diet Operating System)?
When my allergist and I were uncertain about what was suddenly ailing me eight years ago, I was handed a printout for a two week EXCLUSION diet. Different foods or groups of foods were to be removed from the diet, with the possibility of being reintro
Remember that Billy Joel song, "In the Middle of the Night?" I have had a very unwelcome night visitor many times in the past few years. It is the typical dermatitis that goes hand in hand with Celiac disease, or better stated, "hand and nail," because the uncontrollable compulsion to rub and scratch cannot be contained. Here is the sequence. I awake from a sound sleep - conscious of a localized hot spot which is red and round and very visible. Quickly it becomes pimply and extremely itchy.
I've been rice-free for eight years and suspected rice as a problem just as I discovered I was a Celiac. However it apparently is not and in fact I show almost no sensitivity to it when compared to nuts and treated dairy, which I tolerate but occasionally react too. I tried two types of rice. One was a processed white rice which was combined with vegetables. It tasted like chlorine or iodine so I don't plan on that again. However, brown rice cakes were a limited success. I say "limited" beca
Are you anything like I was, addicted to starchy foods most of my adult life? I could make an entire box of Wheat Thins disappear faster than David Copperfield. Bars lost money when I dove into their pretzel bowls. My kids knew if they asked me to babysit they would have to replenish their stock of Saltines, Triscuits, Cheese Ritz and Goldfish crackers the following day. I had to say goodbye to those forever. But hope and snacks spring eternal. A door closes, an oven opens! By gosh I stil
It's been eight years since I have had Arrowroot, buckwheat,
corn/maize, potato flour, rice, rice bran, rice flour, sago, tapioca,
soy, soy bran, or soy flour.
All are gluten free! Yet, all are prohibited on the diet I have been following for celiac
disease management, since December 2000, the Specific Carbohydrate
Diet.
Why? Because they may be gluten- free but they contain starch.
Digestion of starch is effected by hydrolyzing enzyme
An introductory diet lasting two or three days precedes fuller implementation of The Specific Carbohydrate Diet. One of the suggested foods on the"intro diet" is a cheesecake made with dry curd cottage cheese from cow's milk; it is 73% protein and very low in fat. The mention of food like this strikes fear into the heart of a person who follows the gluten-free casein-free diet They usually arrive believing dairy consumption is a most contentious protocol. making it vital to understand the nuance
Latest Dietary Guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture endorse eating three to five servings of nuts (20 to 30 pecan halves equals one serving), seeds or legumes each day in order to maintain a healthy diet. Nuts are gluten free! They do not have cholesterol. While nuts and seeds tend to be very high in fat and calories, most of the fat is polyunsaturated or monounsaturated (e.g. almonds, pecans, walnuts). Nuts are high in vitamins and minerals and are an excellent ingredient for c
Do you buy lottery tickets, bet on the horses, frequent casinos, or take your vacation in LasVegas? Over seven decades, I've won once at roulette, once on the slots and asked someone at the racetrack to put down my two dollars on a thirty three to one shot- - - a filly with the same name as my poodle. The horse won but the friend forgot to place the wager. What was even worse, subsequently the poodle ran away and died from eating garbage. With health matters, bookmakers would have a blast with
"Sugar, Ah,Honey, Honey" is the title of the hit song of 1969 by a garage band called, "The Archies." Their lyric includes this lovely analogy, "Like the summer sunshine pour your sweetness over me." What a melodic way to describe my primary sweetener of choice and necessity. HONEY! Golden, clear pasteurized honey with few or no traces of bee pollen is a natural, anti oxidant and an ideal ingredient for cooking and baking as well for use as a syrup. Once accustomed to honey, you may find refin
Do you wear paper cuts like medals of honor, because being a Celiac means not licking glue strips on envelopes? This morning I moistened the sealer on an envelope with a wet cloth and was soon reeling and swelling like a watermelon on growth hormones just from the fumes out-gassing. The diet I follow does not mandate avoiding substances that are not ingested. So while toothpaste would qualify for restriction, glue and play-dough would not. Which is why historically, I paid little attention
I'm not much on closeups of bloody surgery scenes like those on TV series like"Grey's Anatomy" or "Nip/Tuck." The closest I've came to seeing my own interior was watching my dreaded and dreadful second colonoscopy on closed circuit video, commercial free while it was in progress...and while I was semi comatose! Our insides exist largely as an invisible world until something goes wrong, something like Celiac Disease. Electron microscopes provide two million degrees of magnification making clos
Twice a year, twenty or more people on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet gather for a potluck luncheon in Southern Ontario, Canada, usually in Toronto. Over time, the roster of homemade food from these occasions has become classic. We are such a small segment of the world-wide Specific Carbohydrate Diet community, so it is flattering that our recipes rank high in popularity among those recipe sites and cookbooks that abound with the Specific Carbohydrate Diet gluten-free creations. The recip
When it comes to technical and scientific articles on Celiac disease, this web site is a gold mine! I've been here less than a month and although I haven't read every article and blog, I certainly plan to. I've been too busy writing my own thoughts and have some about the old KISS formula, "Keep It Simple Stupid." Well, we are neither simple nor stupid; Celiac disease is far from simple. I am going to over simplify the comparison of two diets: The Gluten-Free Casein-Free diet and the Speci
Celiac disease has a long and ancient history. The Roman physician, Aretaeus chronicled the very symptoms we associate with it today and a number of historical celebrities, including royalty were afflicted. When Marie Antoinette uttered her most famous quote, she didn't have us in mind. Still it's good to know that "Let them eat cake," can be applied to us. Elaine Gottschall had her daughter treated by celiac specialist, Dr. S.V. Haas over half a century ago. She received few instructions. an
