My First 3 Days of Gluten Free

It's breakfast time on Day 1 of the g-free project. So we started out with scrambled eggs cooked with corn tortillas and salsa, and a mixture of fruit and yogurt for breakfast. Then we had quiona and sausage stir fried  for lunch--made up with what was in the fridge, basically. (I hadn't had time to plan anything better.) But then we had a decent dinner of honey peppered salmon, quiona salad made like tabouli, and roasted asparagus. I can see now that quiona, which we ate occasionally before, will be a regular on our table from now on. This gluten-free grain offers a lot of fiber and nutrition, which I feel we are loosing out on when we give up wheat.

Even though this was a lovely meal, all of the first day of g-free, I felt like I was in mourning for all the lovely things I had always made out of wheat: muffins, biscuits, waffles, pancakes, yeast rolls and breads, holiday baking, and not to mention pies, cakes, cookies and things like that! David mourned his breakfast cereals he loves, and hamburgers most of all...So the first day, though partly exciting, like a new adventure, felt very sad for the things we were saying good-by to.

Day 2 of g-free
I woke up feeling great! However, David woke up not as great, and had a couple grumpy spells of depression during the day. I read that this is normal for some people when wheat is taken out of their diet--the body is readjusting. I personally wondered if it was from the lack of carbs--since carbs give you a sense of well being. This is not a carb free diet at all, but there are definitely less carbs. We had eggs again for breakfast. I spent most of the day doing lots of research on how to cook and eat out when you are gluten-free.

My plan had been to just eat fruits and veggies and simple meats all summer--then figure out how to add some  gluten-free baking to our diet. Baking seems to be rather tricky with gluten-free flours. However, David looked up Houston Gluten Free Bakery, and wanted to go there, so we did. The bread there was $7.00 a loaf--a small loaf. We passed it up and went to Whole Foods. There we found some baking supplies. Then we tried out Walmart and found a good selection there too. I bought a gluten-free pancake mix and cornbread mix, plus some special flours to make muffins out of. We got David some Corn Chex, so he could have a breakfast cereal. Here again though, it bothered me that we were buying a cereal pretty low on the nutrition/fiber chart.

For lunch I cooked salmon patties with the leftover salmon, using arepa pre-cooked cornmeal for the coating on them (instead of bread crumbs). We had the quiona tabouli one last time, and sauteed zucchini and asparagus.

For dinner, we went to El Rey (a fast food Mexican/Cuban restaurant). It was pretty easy to order gluten free food. That felt like a reward. David said the problem he saw with the diet, is that he feels hungry between meals. I am not sure why this is, but I have kind of felt that too. We did remember we can eat ice cream, so we did that tonight!

Day 3
I woke up with a headache, feeling achy, and low energy. That was really discouraging. I sometimes wake up like this...but was not expecting it today. I wondered if maybe I had unknowingly eaten gluten at El Rey...but couldn't think what it would be...So I decided it was my "detox" period, kind of like David had yesterday. He seemed to feel better today himself.

I made rice flour pancakes for breakfast, and it almost felt like old times! They were good. We have been eating lots of fruit--more than our usual amount. We eat it more for snacks now, since there are a lot of snacks we can't eat. Yesterday I began pulling out all the gluten laden foods from the pantry, freezer and fridge to give away to Julia and Carissa. There was a LOT!! Today I arranged all the new foods in the pantry.