Diet Update

We have gone several weeks now trying to avoid gluten and dairy and I am happy to report it is going well.  I had a short spurt of eating only soup because the weather turned cool and I discovered soup is an easy thing to make without gluten and dairy.  Here are some of the meals we've tried:

Sloppy Joe stuffed potato boats-  I baked some potatoes scooped out some of the potato to use for another meal and filled it with sloppy joe.  I put it back in the oven for a bit and then topped it with crushed up potato chips.  The children loved this, it's a definite keeper.

Our good ol' stand by fried rice which everyone likes

Spaghetti stuffed squash-we stuffed a spaghetti with marinara meat sauce and baked it.  The children loved this.  Pete and I had quinoa and chicken sausage stuffed acorn squash.  It was really good.

Salmon Salads

Roasted Vegetables with Chicken Sausage

Tacos-surprised to find no one misses the cheese or minds using corn tortillas

Soups-chicken wild rice, chicken pot pie soup, alphabet soup and cream of vegetable soup.  These were all really good, but I did have some requests from my family not to make them all in one week for our meals.

It has been really great to see that there are still fun culinary options for eating despite the need to do without many things.  I have been putting off this change for a long time in fear of being a burden to others with our special diet.  It does take extra time, money and effort but the health results for us have been so encouraging.  I am still working on getting over the hurdle of letting go of having what I want when I want it and the other hurdle of having to plan and inform others that I can't eat dairy, gluten, corn or tomatoes and a few other items.  I've always tried to live by and teach the children that we eat what we are served in gratitude.  I do believe that if others are willing to serve me by cooking for me I should have a grateful heart and never put forth demands.  These food intolerances I am finding are a huge blow to my values and I haven't worked through how to manage the situations we encounter eating with others.  Initially I thought it wasn't very often that this would come up but now I realize it's all the time!  We can't simply run through a drive through, there's too few options that or family can eat.  If we are invited to some one's house I haven't quiet figured out how to communicate our needs.  Perhaps the hardest is celebrations with others where I feel like I don't even want to go because I have to bring a separate meal for some of our family and then explain, explain, explain why we don't eat certain things.  Depending on the crowd and family the reaction is often that I am a paranoid freak.  Which perhaps I am, but would rather not admit to others!

So the physical part of our experiment is having some great results.  The emotional part is a different story.  I didn't realize there would be an emotional part to this and feel a little side swiped.  Thankfully I have been feeling a lot better which gives me a lot more margin to deal with these issues as they come up!