Three Weeks now

For the ONE person who is actually reading my blogs (and persuaded me to start doing this), here is an update on our gluten-free lifestyle. It is now three weeks since we started abstaining from wheat, barley and rye, and I think it has been positive. Bill says he feels better, and is having a lot less flatulence (and less stinky). I have lost some weight, although I have to admit that I am not 100% sure that is because of being gluten-free. I have to give a lot of credit to the lap-band because I am certainly limited on how much I can eat at a time!

I have made several gluten-free dishes that we have both liked, although Tim hasn't cared for them much - except for the Hawaiian Dream Drop Cookies! He didn't care for the Banana-Pineapple cake, although Bill and I both like it. So far the dishes I have made include Tamale Pie, Chicken with Noodles (gluten-free of course), Fruited Rice with Chicken, and Tuna Casserole. I have also made of couple of our traditional dishes that I knew didn't have gluten in them - Chicken Stew and Lima Beans with Ham Hocks.

We have also purchased several things from the health-food store that are gluten-free. I particularly liked the ranch-flavored crackers, and Bill has fallen in love with the shortbread cookies. I finally found a teriyaki marinade that is gluten-free (most of them have soy sauce in them and that contains wheat) and I have found a line of bars that are gluten-free and pretty tasty - Larabars. I particularly like their cherry pie and cinnamon roll flavors.

However, I have to remind myself that gluten-free is not necessarily low-calorie. When I was in San Diego I made a pig of myself with the two boxes of See's candy that my cousin provided - as I had gone on-line to find out that See's is gluten-free (at least their prepackaged boxes of candy). I have also given up (temporarily) on going lactose-free as well as gluten-free. I find dealing with one deletion from our diet is enough to handle right now - but I have it hovering in the back of my mind that I may have to give up chocolate in the long run.

Gluten-free is also not a cheap way to eat - at least at the start. All the specialty flours get expensive, although they last for a while. Funny - I haven't really missed bread at all. We bought some gluten-free brands but I don't care much for them. Of course, with the lap-band I wasn't eating much bread before either.

Oops - running out of time. I'll post again later - just for YOU, daughter dear.

Daughters and Sons

One of my all-time favorite books is 'Seven daughters and seven sons' by Barbara Cohen and Bahija Lovejoy. It is based on a folktale from Iraq that has been around since the 11th century. As in many countries, having sons is considered a blessing, while having daughters is considered a curse. One brother is 'blessed' with seven sons and considerable wealth, while the other brother is 'cursed' with seven daughters and poverty. The story tells how one of the daughters turns the tables on her uncle and cousins.

However, despite the fact that we live in an 'enlightened' time, there is still a bit of the 'sons are better than daughters' philosophy floating around, especially in certain countries. In China, for example, where there is quite a push for couples to only have one child, a male child is much more preferable to a female child, because sons have to support their parents when they grow up - and daughters don't.

If you have ever seen the mini-series 'Thorn Birds', you will hear the mother state that a mother only takes pride in her sons, and not in her daughters. An Irish professor once told me that in old Ireland the sons were treated like kings by their mothers. And from personal experience, it almost seems to be a 'given' that every man wants to have a son.

So - when I tell people that my younger daughter is expected her FOURTH girl, I tend to get sympathy from people. They express the opinion that my son-in-law must be disappointed, if not my daughter. And I am here to tell you that this sympathy is wasted on them, because they are both THRILLED to be having another daughter.

Little girls are a lot of fun - as I know for a fact since we had two daughters ourself. I was recently at a conference where an entertainer mentioned that he has three daughters and he is 'crazy in love' with them. He didn't appear to be the least upset not to have a son.

Don't get me wrong here - my daughter and son-in-law would probably be equally thrilled to have a boy. Whatever the Lord sends them, that's what they want. Every child of theirs will get just as much love whether they are male or female. Just don't go giving them any sympathy because they have a family of females because they don't need it. Besides, you have to be careful what you wish for. As I said before, we had two daughters and no sons - and now we're raising our grandson!

This is harder than I thought!

I have discovered that going gluten-free isn't for wimps. AND, it really needs to be planned out ahead of time. I thought we had, but now that we have been on this new lifestyle for about 5 days, I find myself woefully unprepared.

Just about every day finds me over at Marlene's Health Food store looking for another gluten-free item. Bill is living on almond-butter sandwiches (on non-gluten bread of course), and we are all getting sick of the chicken stew that I made up on day one. Obviously I made a LOT of it, because it is still going strong.

I finally got the cookbook in the mail that I had been waiting for, so today I thought I would actually try out one of the recipes. I needed to make up the various 'mixes' that are used in the recipes, so I went down to Marlene's (AGAIN!) and bought tapioca flour, white rice flour, potato flour, potato starch, soup bases, etc. I also went to Wal-Mart to get some canisters to put these mixes in.

Guess I should have done my homework a little better. I only picked up 4 cups of white rice flour, and it is needed (in large quantities) in just about every mixture. So I made up a small batch of the 'featherlight mix', and the 'gluten-free mix', and ran out of rice flour before I could make up the soup base mix - which I needed for the recipe I was going to make today. Blat! Fortunately I hadn't started boiling the gluten-free noodles yet. (Can you believe it? - this recipe book suggest you make your own noodles! Wow!)

Tomorrow I have to spend my morning taking my older daughter to a doctor's appointment in Seattle, but I imagine once I get her back home again, I will be heading over to Marlene's to get MORE rice flour.

I ought to mention that you have to be a bit careful when dumping these flours together as they puff up quite a bit. In fact, part of my kitchen look like a powdered donut. I really should clean it all up and do the dishes, but I worked last night, and it's getting late, and I'm working tonight . . . so I think I'll just let the boys wonder what happened when they get home and see the snowfall! Hope Bill enjoys his almond-butter sandwich tonight.

Harry Potter wannabe?

Sometimes when something is extremely popular (and there is no denying that Harry Potter is VERY popular), other things come along that seem a bit similar. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Well, I recently finished reading 'The Lightning Thief' by Rick Riordan. I enjoyed it enormously - enough to buy the other books in the series. However, when I got to thinking about it, there are a LOT of parallels with the Harry Potter world.

The protaganist, Percy Jackson(Harry Potter?) finds out that he belongs to a special group of people that live unbeknownst to the rest of us. He is a demigod - or half-god, half-human (Harry Potter is a wizard). Even among this special class, he stands out as being a bit extra special. Sound familiar?

He has to go to a special school for demigods - Camp Halfblood (Hogwarts?), where there is a kindly mentor to help him out - Chiron (Dumbledore?) There is also a person in authority who doesn't like him at all - Dionysis (Snape?).

At this camp, people are divided into different houses, depending on their sire. Percy is in Poseidon's house (Gryffindor?), and his best friend is a bit of a doofus - Grover (Ron?). He gets most of his help from an extremely intelligent girl - Annabeth (Hermione?) who knows everything about everything.

Through no fault of his own, poor Percy is thrown headlong into adventure after adventure, just because of who he is, and the main evil guy - Kronos (Voldemort?) is out to get HIM. But Kronos has been defeated before, and is trying to make a comeback using other people - like Luke (Professor Quimbly?)

Well, enough said. Please don't get the wrong impression - I have always loved Greek mythology, and I really enjoy how it is integrated into the 'Percy & the Olympians' series. But the next time you read one of these books, just see if my observations have some merit.