Blood Work

[ItsaDollThang 1]

I tried the Bob's Mill pancake mix for the first time this month.

I'm new to a gluten-free diet. I'm trying it on my own because my doctor thought I might be sensitive but my medical plan doesn't really cover the cost of such tests. I figured it can't hurt so earlier this month when I went shopping I nixed the normal bread etc, and bought a couple of bread mixes from Gluten-Free Pantry and a package of the Bob's Mill pancake mix.

I can't say I was very impressed with the sandwich bread. It came out okay but I didn't like the taste of it at all, and I'm not really looking forward to trying the other one which was the French bread.

At first I wasn't too impressed with the Bob's Mill pancakes either. The texture was okay, they puffed up like real buttermilk pancakes, but the aftertaste on them, far too beany and acrid, and way too long-lasting for my taste.

The first time I made them a used regular cow's milk, Lactaid, and one egg, and a bit of vanilla extract, some cinnamon, and banana and I made blueberry-banana pancakes. They were okay to eat, but like I said the aftertaste made me almost reluctant to try the mix again.

This time I tried it with almond milk, the vanilla kind, some almond extract, cinnamon, and one whole egg, and it actually came out a lot better. I am still dealing with a faint aftertaste that I don't care for, I don't think maybe I'm going to go for a bea-based pancake mix next time, I'm not a chick pea/garbanzo bean fan to begin with and having them ground up in the flour really doesn't make it more palatable to me, but this time the aftertaste was much more minimal and using the almond extract in the almond milk made for a much better pancake then I made the first time. At least an hour later I am not still sitting here tasting what seems like rancid beans.

Anyway, it was slightly better, and I thought I'd share. I know a lot of people don't really like the bean aftertaste thing, and this might work for some of you if you're not allergic to nuts. It really did seem to help cut it down quite a bit.

Just a note, when I make these pancakes I don't make a full batch. I can't eat that many pancakes. This makes about three small ones. I use about a cup of the flour mix, enough milk to make a decent pancake batter, and one whole egg. They come out a little thicker that way and they seem to rise better when I'm not making the batch as directed on package.

Honestly I can't say that I'm likely to end up a fan of Bob's Mill products if this is what they have to offer in terms of gluten-free items. I'm much more likely to try some other things the next time I go shopping or maybe just get some different flours and try to figure out some things for myself. I think buying the mixes is just too expensive anyway. My local grocery store and the health food store are charging $6-8 for most of the Bob's Mill mixes and even more for some of the ones that he doesn't make.

I blew my whole food budget this month trying to go gluten-free, and now I'm basically starving at the end of the month, because I don't have enough stuff in the freezer and pantry to work with. I got very little for my money, and that maybe reassess how I wanted to do this from now on. I don't think the three mixes that I bought were worth anything like what I paid for them.

Edible maybe. But not very good, and not something I could see myself doing in the long-term. I'm going to have to find some better ways of providing myself with bread and pancake mix and so forth or I will never make this gluten-free diet thing work.

So far so good on what it's doing for my stomach though. I am pretty sure at this point that the doctor was right. The one time this month I eat something with regular flour in it I got incredibly ill. My stomach has been really bad lately, my whole digestive system is messed up, and this is cut it back to the point where every once in a while I feel something, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was.

I'm trying this for six months. Just see what happens. If I can get it in gear I'll probably stay on it since it seems to be doing me some good. I don't think I figured out all of what has been bugging my gut, but I think this was a good start.