Tag Archives: GlutenFree

Back to school and corn can do one…..

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So upset today. Really really moody and horrid.

Back to school is getting me down, big time. Why? Because only one is going back, and he has to be proper gf for the first time ever, and I need to bake again, and baking corn (and egg free and gluten free) free is a bloomin nightmare, and I dont like baking and Im picking faults right now, with everything.

Why cant I just go to the shop and buy the bread we need? Why cant they just bloody make it??? Im feeling miserable and sorry for myself and I want to scream and stomp my feet and throw things.

I hardly ever have days like this, everything thats been thrown our way these last few years I have taken in my stride and just gotten on with…. but today, I am hard done by, I am miserable and I want our school to have uniforms and I want shops to stock stuff we need and I want to be in Dubai not here and I want someone, anyone to come do my laundry because Im so friggin tired I think I could sleep for a month. Maybe two months.

And Im home sick, and I dont know where home is, or what Im missing and Im so upset and sad.

I want both my kids to go to school tomorrow and I want to be alone sometimes, even just an hour or two. And September is coming, and every September for forever she gets pneumonia, then again in October and November and bla bla bla and I cant do it anymore. Can I please just sleep instead…?

Im not depressed, honest. Tomorrow, or later or whenever I will be just fine. But sometimes I just bottle it all up, for so long and then I need to just let it out, a bit atleast. Then I feel so bad, because there are people out there with real issues, people who have terminal illnesses and others who are fleeing wars and orphans and all sorts, and I feel like such a selfish brat for complaining, I have no right to complain. Its not so bad being me really…. is it?

Deep breaths and all that. Tomorrow will be a better day.

If anyone knows of GF, CF, EF breadmixes, please let me know.

😦

Germs, school rooms and dreaming of a farm!

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Not feeling very “bloggy” lately. I can honestly saw we are all exhausted.

End of May, I finally went to the hospital and handed all our papers in. So many hospitals working together on our case. I just wasnt ready to hand it in sooner. It looks like they will still want us to go to Warsaw to check something there. We have the unexplained signs of autoimmune activity and bla bla bla. Bla bla bla may seem a bit blasé, but I just cant manage more then that right now. Im tired of “it” constantly being what our life revolves around. Waiting now to see how often we need to re test her igg’s also.

On a very positive note, she has not had pneumonia since she was taken out of school. TOUCH WOOD (as she sits downstairs with a big wheeze and a cold). She even had the same 48 hour cold / virus that here brother had a few weeks back, and hers ALSO lasted 48 hours. I almost cried with relief. I had no idea her immune system knew how to do that!!

The doctors are hopeful that this break is all that we need, but lets see, only time will tell.

On the school front, we have our plan, and our back up plan. She will have tutoring in school 3 times per week without germy other kids around. Hopefully she will still be ok with this once flu season starts, if not we will have to take her out fully. Im ok with all of this, I have gone over the plan in my head a million times!

New house is looking fab, and thanks to my Pinterest research, our school room eats other peoples school rooms for breakfast! We LOVE the school room, its probably our favourite room! A couple of more things to do, then its all ready.

We had Celiac kiddos birthday party just a few days after moving in, and it was fab! I thought the preparations would send me in to a stress fit, but it really wasn’t so bad! Guess Im becoming a pro at catering to people the gluten free way. Even the corn free and egg free is getting a tad easier, although I do miss being able to buy bread!

Our biggest enemy lately is not gluten anyway, its those pesky germs that everyone carries around, the stuff that lives in peoples noses, the stuff that little kids sneeze out and cough out and touch and then attack celiac kiddo with. Ok, fine, nobody is attacking, but sometimes it really feels like it. Its SO hard keeping her safe without going overboard.

I go to the supermarket early in the mornings now when its not so busy, that way she wont need a mask, more times then one Ive changed checkout after seeing a snotty cashier sneeze / cough in her hand and then carry on moving peoples groceries to bags. I don’t even want to start thinking about the stuff we don’t see!

Im telling you, the only safe way to live is in a house in the country, where you grow and raise your own food! It used to be a sort of joke I told, but I am more and more serious about it as time goes by! haha (any excuse to wear wellies full time really).

So, thats us! 3 more days of school, then maybe, hopefully, we can all re gain some energy! Which might mean more blog posts. Lucky you 😉

-Linda

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The image is of a big scary germ. Obviously. Just incase you didn’t get it 😛

Zucchini Fritters

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Im back on LCHF. Because you know… Im getting a bit to blobby. Yesterday I had SUCH bad cravings for crisps or popcorn and sweets and, well, pretty much anything non LCHF. So Pinterest to the rescue (again) and I found some zucchini fritters. Hurraaah. I had what I needed in the fridge! So, 1 zucchini got itself sliced and 1 chunk of parmesan got itself mini choppered in to a powder and in the oven it went. and about 10 minutes later I had this AWESOME snack in my mouth, and the kids LOVED it which is always a bonus when you have kids, so Im totally doing this again. Forgot to take photo of finished product because piggy here had to eat them straight away. Ha.

So easy. Slice zucchini, add grated parmesan (I salted and peppered my parmesan to add flavour), add some evoo and pop in a hot oven for 5-10 minutes. Thin slices = crispy yummy zucchini thingies, thicker slices = softer and SO delicious! Originally saw this on pinterest here zucchini fritters,  if you search zucchini fritters or baked zucchini on pinterest, you will see HUNDREDS 🙂 -Linda

On a pancake mission – day 2

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Ok, nobody tell anyone its been like a week since the last pancake.

Today again I searched and found lots of different egg free pancakes, I wanted one without an egg replaces such as chia or banana or apple sauce, because sometimes, we just dont have all that stuff lying around. I found a few recipes and modified them to make them suit me and obviously make them gluten free.

This one was awesome, but I can imagine the flour is the make or break here, I had to adjust the amount of liquid a few times until I was satisfied, but do note, the batter will be super thick. As the baking powder sits and does its thing, you may even need some more liquid towards the end.

  • 3dl all purpose gf flour (I used a cake one as they are less dense, you may be able to use a bread flour, but start off with a bit less)
  • 4dl milk (I used lactose free)
  • 1tbsp (yup, a WHOLE tablespoon, no joke) baking powder
  • 1tbsp sugar (I tried without this at first, but they kindof need it, try honey if you are a no sugar kindof person)
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • butter or oil for frying, plus a big dollop (about 2tbsp) for the batter

Mix all ingredients together, I never faff around with dry first or whathave you, just whack it in a bowl and blitz with an electric whisk. Like I said, this batter will be thick, its normal, it needs to be.

Start of with a pretty hot pan and lower to medium after the first pancake. Turn each pancake once edges are solid and it almost stopped bubbling.

Verdict: Celiac kiddo loved these, she says they are even better then the previous one which she gave a 5/5. She also says Im a super hero at pancakes and if there was olympics in pancake making I would win (GOD I love my kids!) Big brother says they are super super yummy. He gives them 5/5, he says they were pretty much equally good to the other ones. I also tried even though Im back on a strict low carb diet, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised! You actually can make pancakes without egg and gluten and make them taste like the real thing. My only critique would that they are a tad doughey in the middle. Next time I will try adding some flavour to these, I think they would be great with some chocolate chips or blueberries! I give them a 4/5 and thats comparing them to a pancake with egg! So not bad at all.

Linda

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On a pancake mission – day 1

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Gluten free was easy. Gluten free pancakes taste amazing and I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t love them (they are better then gluten ones, trust me!). But then you go almost completely lactose free and egg free and you sort of sit and wonder, if pancakes are lactose free, egg free and gluten free, are they still pancakes?

Well, after almost a year of being pancake less I decided to go on a pancake mission.

Pancake 1

This is a combination of several recipes I found online, the base recipe(s) had more milk and fancy flavours, they also had gluten. So, this is what I did.

  • 1 ripe banana
  • 1,1/2 dl gf flour (I used a cake one rather then a bread one, but whichever should be fine)
  • 3dl milk (lactose free or whatever tickles your fancy)
  • 1tsp baking powder
  • a pinch of salt
  • a squirt of evoo (or melted butter is fine if that works for you), a bit in the batter and some more for frying

Mash the banana in a bowl and add other ingredients, whisk well so its not to lumpy. Fry as you would a “normal’ pancake.

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Verdict: Well, there is one thing in the world I will not eat or try ever, and its banana. I apparently didn’t like it even as a baby. My mum forced me to eat one in childhood at some point and I promptly puked. I cant even stand the smell. So, I almost died having to mash the thing. Honest. But almost dying is worth it for my kids, so mash I did, with my head turned away and running to the hallway for breathing breaks. I cant tell you what it tastes like. But Celiac kid ate almost all of them! She was screaming and jumping up and down from being so happy about pancakes, she says they are the best everrrrrr! I guess thats a pretty good verdict 🙂 From a cooking point of view Id say they burn pretty easily, I had to keep the temp lower then “normal” pancakes. They were also a bit runny, so a bit bigger then what we usually make, but maybe more flour would have fixed this. Anyhow, daughter gives these a 5/5. I wont rate them as I didnt try, and big brother is in school so missed out on these.

Pancake number 2 tomorrow!

-Linda

EDIT TO ADD: I managed to save 1 little pancake which big brother ate cold after school, he gave it a 6/5 and drew me a “best pancake maker in the world” certificate. I think we are on to a winner!

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Being in a gluten free cult……?

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Its been a while since I blogged about our journey. I feel like there is nothing new, just more of the same….

Christmas came, we were all sick. Celiac kid had another pneumonia, older brother had a virus with high fever for a week, and I had a bad throat infection. Merry Christmas to us!

I finally got around to open our letter from Karpacz and make the next set of appointments, I just wasn’t emotionally ready until now. We already went and saw the celiac specialist, and he is convinced her Celiac is WELL under control and all her vitamin levels etc point to us doing a great job in not exposing her. He is putting the not growing down to long term use of steroids, and he agrees with the Karpacz specialists that there is probably something wrong with her immune system. We are now booked in to go to yet another hospital and run a series of tests there. If they come up with nothing there, there is one last specialist in warsaw that may be able to help us…. my stomach  my stomach is in knots just saying this. After being told about the next hospital stay I felt like I couldn’t breathe for two days, I was walking around my house just trying to remain sane…. the stuff in my mind, the pressure, the thoughts whirling around… its unbelievable. How the hell do you stay normal through all this… how do people cope? 

Needless to say the whole family is under a huge amount of stress right now. Lost it with some idiot online the other day who called people who eat gluten free “part of the gluten free cult”. People really need to think before they speak. Such stupid, idiot remarks are totally unnecessary. Im pretty sure no one would say “insulin cult” about diabetics or “chemo cult” about cancer patients… nooo, because that would be offensive. Joking about Celiac and glutenfree should be no different.

My family have been through so much, we don’t need belittling by total strangers (or assholes!).

Im tired beyond belief. Not the kind of tired that can be fixed by sleep, but the kind of tired that leaves you spending a whole day just sitting and staring and doing nothing because you cant get your head together.

What else? Oh yes…. big brothers Celiac test came back. Inconclusive.

I mean, hello!!???

I actually had to laugh, its like some great big joke.

Big brother will now eat gluten for one more month with more added in as he may not have been eating enough of it, then we will do the bloods again and also the genetics and if needed the biopsy. He’s being brave, but he wants to stop eating gluten now because he says he feels confused. Im guessing he’s trying to describe brain fog? (A common symptom in celiacs). Either way, its all good, we just need to know for sure so we can do the right thing for him. Usually he eats 98% gluten free anyway, only has gluten at friends houses. Obviously if he’s celiac that cant continue.

So, thats my update.

Happy New Year!

-Linda

Ooooh, and we had snow and made snow angels!! 😀

Christmas is approaching, FUDGE TIME!

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7 of December, and I was done with ALL my gifts over a week ago. First time ever! Usually Im running around like a headless chicken until hours before getting myself together. But no. This year, I am calm, organised and dare I say a perfect little wife. Tree is up, decorations are up, kids are watching the Elf movie and here we go. Bliss. Or…. boredom…?

I decided today is the day I will make christmas sweets. last time I made Christmas sweets I was probably 16. It was the one thing I always did at Christmas as a kid. Time to revive this tradition. Only obviously now, gluten free. Or maybe they always were? I remember things dipped in chocolate and fudge and ginger biscuits.

I am going easy on myself, starting with fudge 🙂

You will need;

  • 3 dl sugar
  • 2dl heavy (whipping) cream
  • 1/2 dl coco powder (make sure its gluten free as many are not!)
  • 50g butter
  • vanilla sugar or essence, or if you dont have, scrap it!
  • chopped nuts or seeds. (OPTIONAL)

Im going bare, no vanilla essence or nuts in my fudge. I like it plain.

In a pan with a thick bottom, add your sugar and cream and stir. Bring to a boil and lower the heat. You want it to continue to bubble, but not rapidly. The temperature needs to get to 122 degrees apparently, but a meat thermometer will NOT work. I do it the Swedish way and do “kulprovet”. This means you drop a small amount of liquid in a glass of cold water, when the liquid balls together to a lump and you can easily mould it with your fingers, its ready. This took around 15 minutes. Add your coco powder and stir until there are no lumps. Turn your heat off and stir in the butter (this is where you add your vanilla and nuts if using). DO NOT TASTE THE MIXTURE. Its hotter then hot and your tongue will be on fire for the rest of the day. Trust me.

Pour the mix in to your pan of choice that you prepared earlier. I lined mine with parchment paper, but you can use butter or oil if you like. The bigger your dish/pan, the thinner your fudge.

Leave it to cool. You can leave it out or pop in the fridge, up to you. Once its cool, take it out and cut in to squares on a chopping board.

Eat!

Store in fridge and eat within 2 weeks.

Linda

There are many versions of fudge. Some like it grainier, some like it chewier. Cook longer for less chew and more grain. Mess about with it, try adding the chocolate at the start, try it without butter 🙂 Anything goes in chocolatey gooey fudge world 🙂

Check out my pinterest Christmas board for more gf goodies!

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Playdough Contamination.

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I had a discussion with a lady who runs a big (gluten free) blog here in Poland about Playdough. She said its ok for her (celiac) kids to play with as long as they wash after, Ive always said no way Jose. Playdough residue sticks to your hands, under your nails and gets everywhere. Any classroom with gluten free kids should (in my opinion) be a gluten playdough free zone. If other kids play with it little bits will get everywhere, on the floor, on their shoes etc, the risk of contamination is just to large, and one that is easy enough to eliminate.

Our school uses playdough, but Celiac kids class all use gluten free playdough. I bought enough for the whole class and I have extra at home that can be brought in any time. You can also easily make it, but Im lazy 😉

We are on week 3 now after contamination. Something went wrong in art class and celiac kid got given a piece of playdough to stick something on to something with. She wiped her hands after, but with play dough, wiping is just not enough. There should be nail brushing and plenty of hot soapy water all supervised by an adult and even then its just not a great idea as residue may still remain on the hands or in the environment.

I picked her up that day and her tummy was huge. Imagine a 5 year old girl about 7 months pregnant. Thats how her tummy looked.  Of course at that point I didn’t know why, I just knew there had been contamination. I also knew it must have been little, because she was not in extreme pain.

Celiac kid was home then for a couple of days, I cant actually remember why, but for the following two weeks she had diarrhea and also a few occasions of vomiting. Horrendous stomach cramps, mainly in the evenings or after eating.  Of course all this has its own issues, fear of using the toilet, having small accidents in school and being embarrassed, ashamed and insecure. Fear of eating because after eating there is more stomach pain. Tearful, cranky, very very tired etc. I obviously don’t know all the symptoms, because many of them she would be to young to explain to me.

It took a week or so to get to the bottom of what contaminated her. I am not angry that it happened, its all a learning curve, for all of us. The art teacher had not received the same paper work as the other teachers and was not aware playdough had gluten in it. I blame myself for this, although some may argue its the schools job. I say its all our jobs. And now me, the teacher and support staff will be sure to remind / point out an extra time that playdough has gluten and where the gluten free one is kept. Celiac kid herself is also old enough to ask and has been told that asking is a good idea.

My point here is, that gluten playdough is not really safe. There is a risk involved. If you have Celiac kids, please do not allow them to use gluten playdough in school. Make gluten free one (I have a ton of pins on pinterest), or buy it. Below is a gluten free brand widely available in many countries.

So we continue on with week 3 after contamination, we continue being dairy free while she heals, and give extra cuddles and probiotics. For some playdough, all this, is definitely not worth it.

Remember also, that not everyone will have a clear reaction, damage on the inside still occurs! 

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-Linda

Lipgloss, nail polish and other stuff girls want.

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When your little girl comes to you and says, ‘mummy, I want nail polish, just like you’, do you feel proud or all mushy inside or does your heart sink?

Things are not so straight forward when you have a gluten free kid. Nail polish, like a gazillion other things, can contain gluten. Nails, are on your hands, and you use your hands when you eat bla bla etc, so nail polish must be gluten free. You cant just go out and buy a nail polish and hope for the best. You can google obviously, and you will find TONS of lists online saying which brands are ok, but if those results are over 6 months old you have to consider the fact that the recipes may have changed. I tend to google for companies that have proper gluten policies, rather then just one product thats gluten free. You could also go for one of those companies that specialise in making only gluten free products, but the truth is that they are expensive, and do other girls and women want to have just 1-2 companies to choose from? Obviously not.

So we went shopping, for lipgloss and nail polish. I already knew I would go for essie with the nail polish and I was hoping to find a lipgloss once there. Armed with my google results and my smart phone we found 2 awesome people in the makeup shop who helped us with the lipgloss, we ended up with a Loreal one that cost well over 100dhs/zloty. No cheap barbie stuff for this little girl! haha.

As a parent its important to me that my kid doesn’t feel super different, in the case of makeup (which she will absolutely not wear fully until she is in her teens thank you very much) it means mummy has to help, that she cant have one of those beauty pouches from the toy shop full of glitter and raspberry flavoured stuff. Thats ok. Putting on some lipgloss and wearing nail polish every now and then is part of growing up, so I will buy the right stuff and thats that.

In our family everything is ‘the right stuff’. All our soaps, shampoos etc are gluten free. Always.

People are always asking me to make lists of the stuff we use. The truth is Im not so comfortable with this, because information can change so fast, and if someone used something because I said its safe I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night! So just remember when you check something, don’t trust just one source and make sure the info you are getting is current. If you have questions pop them on the blogs facebook page and ask, or ask here 🙂 I also pin LOADS of body and house stuff on my pinterest boards.

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-Linda

 

 

Blood tests, ambulance rides and extra oxygen.

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Well, I guess I knew it already as I was writing my last blog post…. we got to the clinic and they wanted to call an ambulance to send us to hospital straight away (in my opinion a slight over reaction on their part). I refused the ambulance (why scare the children more then needed?) and drove home to grab bags and iPads and food. Dropped son at neighbours and went to hospital where we were admitted.

This latest hospital stay was actually the smoothest one yet, maybe because I am getting so used to them? Or because I know exactly what we need? I actually have a bag thats always partly packed in a wardrobe, likewise we have a small bag partly packed for son. After this latest stay the bags will be improved further, but they sure do help a lot, especially if someone else has to go to my house to get stuff.

The hospital stay in itself was eventful…. Every test they could think of and then some has been done. It seems Celiac kids haemoglobin is high, her body responding to oxygen levels that are too low and trying to adjust them….. clever on her body’s part, but not good for her. The pneumonia was also a bit of a mystery, a strange kind, very severe, not the kind of pneumonia ‘normal’ people get. Well, my daughter is anything BUT normal, haha (that haha is mildly hysterical by the way). Its almost as if she enjoys playing games with science, because her test results are always a bit strange and baffling.

We were sent to a different hospital to be tested for Cystic Fibrosis. Its a sweat test. Above 60 is positive and below is negative, but a negative should really be below 30 or it needs to be investigated further. Celiac kids result was 49.

I am calm. Hubby is stressed. And I remain calm. Sortof. Celiac kid is super exited because the trip to the other hospital was by ambulance, and the super cute ambulance guy gave her both lights and sirens the whole way after she asked to hear them! Haven’t seen a smile like that in ages!

Normal people don’t GET this many pneumonias. Is it still her RSV as a baby giving us crap or is it the celiac and the crappy immune system being silly? At this point I think we need more answers, because if my counting isnt completely off we are now at something like 11 pneumonias, a handful of bhronciolitis and countless upper respiratory illnesses.

I actually think we struck gold at this latest hospital visit, because they are as concerned as I am, and I didn’t have to be assertive (read bitchy) in the slightest to get some action.

We were admitted on monday evening and they finally let us go Saturday evening after some straight talking to from hubby. They just cant feed a celiac kid in a hospital here, and if you really want someone to get better they need proper food! Thankfully her oxygen levels weren’t super low so she was only on 1-2 litres until Friday then she managed ok without.

We have been back to the hospital daily since. She is having her last antibiotics today. Next week we go to a mountain town that has a specialist hospital to be admitted for a few days, there they will check her lungs properly and hopefully before they let us go we will know more definitive answers as to why she keeps getting this sick.

We did the Cystic Fibrosis genetic test too, Im guessing they will repeat the sweat test next week also. The genetic test only checks for the more common genetic mutations but around 90% of Cystic Fibrosis should show up in this. To be honest I don’t really trust the sweat test anyway because I’m so used to my daughter having results that aren’t ‘normal’.

I wasn’t really going to write about this at all, but then I figured that its probably good to write about it, because no matter what the results are eventually, our story can probably help others. Much of the information about cystic fibrosis is pretty scary, but to be honest, if she does have it, then we already lived with it for 5 years anyway, so putting a name to it (whatever it may be) can only be a good thing so that we can help her. We are obviously hoping its something else, but lets see.

Trying to explain now why we are going to hospital without being particularly sick has been harder. Then the question ‘will they poke me?’, which breaks my heart, because obviously they will but I so don’t want to tell her this and make her cry! By poke, she means needles. She is still bruised black and blue on her arms from the IV going in last week, her veins kept bursting and it was only attempt 5 that was ok!

Anyway, thats whats going on with us. Hopefully you are all having a better month then us.

I have decided to stay as positive as I can, feed the kids the best and most nourishing food I can think of and just breathe deeply as much as I can. Me losing the plot is hardly going to help.

– Linda