Last night's No Starch Stirfry
Cauliflower, broccoli, a red pepper past it prime, mushrooms, carrots, asparagus, and a tablespoon of walnuts, sauteed in a tablespoon of olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Cook it til you're bored. Include onions and add gf soy sauce and serve over rice for a more traditional stirfry. Personally, I'm working on minimizing grains, and the great taste is driven by the veggies. Make a lot and enjoy!

I was so taken with the attractiveness of my dinner last night that I snapped a picture of it and shared in on Twitter in a short conversation with @gfdougie (who also has a helpful blog: http://glutenfreetip.com/). I was flattered when he asked for the recipe, because it is essentially just fresh vegetables cut up and and a tablespoon of chopped walnuts sauteed in a little olive oil in a non-stick pan with some Trader Joe's smoked sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, and sometimes (but not last night) I throw on some nutritional yeast. If you are thinking "I could never take the time to chop all those veggies," here are some tricks:

1) Buy them already cut up if possible. Produce Junction sells bags of broccoli florets. It's easy to find mushrooms already sliced. A nutritionist friend of mine suggested this to me a long time ago, and I felt strangely freed from the guilt of not doing all the chopping myself.

2) Since many fresh veggies are fine eaten raw, chop them big (which goes much faster) and cook them longer or shorter depending on your patience level. This won't work for folks who have trouble with raw veggies, but I find them most enjoyable when there is still some structure left to them. Not crunchy exactly, but that place between crunchy and soft. "Cook it til you're bored" is a common phrase in our house for recipes.

3) See my blog post on Beans and Greens (another common go-to dinner in my house) for other ideas for seasonings to keep things interesting. Keep it easy!

At my Day Job we have four-hour-long meetings every Tuesday from 9 am - 1 pm. There are about 30 people who attend any given time. Some people say the meetings are soul-sucking. I usually find them unpleasant but take it as an opportunity to practice my meditative breathing. And catch up on email. Anyway.

The meetings typically leave me feeling rather unsettled, so I've taken to going for a walk immediately after, for as long as my schedule allows (which is usually an hour or less.) I'm lucky enough to have a Trader Joe's nearby, but I'm trying to find ways to soothe myself in ways that are free of calories and chemicals, so I avoid going there at times.  Yesterday though, during my only free 20 minutes of the work day, I walked over to TJ's, had a free mini-cup of their coffee du jour and bought myself an $.85 bottle of raspberry lime seltzer. Since it was a beautiful sunny day, I took a little longer route back to the office, arriving just in time to get myself some ice and pour a tall bubbly refreshing beverage. It tasted like summer and was completely guilt free. I felt quite virtuous. I felt refreshed and renewed. And as I entered another 3 1/2 hours of back-to-back meetings, my day was just a bit brighter with the promise of better hours and days to come.

Take a walk. Get some seltzer. Find your happy place.

Once upon a time I had a conversation with a gentleman in his 50's whose wife had died suddenly a few days before. He was a recovering alcoholic, sober for maybe five years on the heels of a long and unfortunately remarkable 35 year drinking career. When I asked how he was doing, he said something along the lines of "If ever there were a good time to drink, now would be it." But he went on to say that he knew that just one drink would kill him, that he had come to accept that drinking for him just wasn't an option. He didn't mean that one drink would kill him on the spot, but that it would send him back down a path he had fought for so long to get off, and that he didn't think that he could recover again.

It took 8 months to come up with a definitive celiac diagnosis. A dear relative of mine simply opted to stop eating gluten and not pursue a diagnosis. The end result is that we both feel better, have more energy, and have better health overall. So why bother with all the tests?

Because the consequences to the body can be so major, many experts suggest pursuing an actual diagnosis for celiac
disease if you have symptoms or reason to suspect celiac, rather than just cutting out gluten in your diet. One challenge in doing this is that you’d have to keep eating gluten throughout the tests in order to lessen the risk getting a false negative result. If you have celiac and stop eating gluten, the inflammation in your gut will begin to heal and the antibodies will decrease, and any tests after that may not be accurate. If a biopsy of your small intestine doesn't detect damage, you'll be told that you don't have celiac.
 
I think there are two major reasons to go through the testing. The first is that you and your doctors can be on the lookout for problems that may occur from years of eating gluten before a celiac diagnosis happens. Some of these can be quite serious, including lymphoma and diseases caused by specific nutritional deficiencies. The second reason is largely psychological and could have an impact on your ability to start and stick with a gluten-free diet, which is the only treatment for celiac disease. If you allow yourself to believe that perhaps you are just gluten intolerant, thinking that you will just feel bad but not causing actual damage to your system, you may be tempted to cheat and eat the occasional piece of bread or birthday cake or whatever and suffer the consequences. If you know that cheating on the gluten free diet would be damaging your system and making you more likely to get really sick later on, I expect that you would be more likely to stick with it. Just like my 57-year-old alcoholic and his abstinence from booze, you will come to understand that eating any gluten is just not an option.

That said, I know people who have gone gluten-free without testing for really great reasons. One woman I know feels awful when she eats gluten and she doesn’t have health insurance to cover the tests. My dear relative knows that he has a genetic likelihood of having celiac, but he doesn’t like doctors and he’s a man of action and would rather just get on with feeling better than waiting around. I don't think he cheats, but he isn’t as careful about avoiding gluten when eating out as he could be.

And I know a number of people who have tested negative for celiac but have gone gluten free anyway, because they just feel better -- lots better in some cases. My friend Betty cured a persistent cough when she avoids gluten, but she tested negative for celiac disease. A co-worker of mine has terrible stomach pain and other symptoms when she eats gluten, but her doctor told her that she doesn’t have celiac. Another friend has dermatitis herpetiformus, a painful and itchy skin rash that is often found in people with celiac disease even though her tests came back saying she didn’t have celiac. Some people occasionally knowingly cheat on the gf diet and pay the price. The third is very strict and never cheats.

For me, I feel much like the alcoholic who knows he can't drink anymore. Because I have a definitive celiac diagnosis, eating gluten is just not an option, so I pursue the best way to live without it. In the end the decision to go through the testing process is a personal choice. And even if you test negative, that doesn't mean that you wouldn't benefit from a gluten free diet anyway.

There are good books that contain much more information about the medical aspects of celiac disease. I recommend Real
Life with Celiac Disease. It shares many stories of the different ways celiac disease presents itself, paths to diagnosis, and ways to handle a variety of real-life challenges to addressing them. Deciding to adopt a gluten free diet for the rest of your life may seem impossible, but it is something that you can certainly master and it can even become easy. And no bread tastes as good as healthy feels.

I have to confess I have yet to visit a gluten-free bakery that I didn't like. I have a huge sweet tooth and in many ways the celiac diagnosis is a huge aide in my being able to maintain a healthy weight. I am strict with the gf diet, so I never go near the office doughnut temptations and the random bowls of loose candy. When I find myself in the presence of sweets I CAN eat, I do not
show much restraint.

I told you all about Toté and the warm raisin challah. So good! And surely I have waxed poetic about Sweet Freedom in Philadelphia, which is not only gluten free but other-allergen-free. I LOVE their doughnuts and the tomato pie is a real treat!
And the cookies -- I have been known to stash a bag of their oatmeal raisin cookies in the freezer at work so that I too can have a yummy treat for those office celebrations. Yesterday the Gluten Free in Delaware County Meet Up group visited Sweet Christine's Bakery in Kennett Square, and I sampled the flax raisin muffin and the sugar cinnamon doughnut and bought
a pizza to bring home and bake up for dinner. It was all delicious! Clearly I'm a sucker for gf baked goods!

Of the three though, Sweet Christine's is probably the one I'd want to go hang out in. It's right on the main drag in Kennett Square's cute little downtown area, and I can easily imagine taking myself for a nice Saturday morning drive, getting a little something sweet (and actually having to choose among many options), sipping some excellent coffee, and feeling just like everyone else who gets to visit bakeries and eat whatever they want in cute little downtown areas.

That's not to say that the others aren't great. Sweet Freedom gets the award for the "Escape from the office for a treat" award. I could go there and hang out, but the walk from my office to 1500 block of South Street takes a little while, and ambiance of their location doesn't compare to downtown Kennett Square. And Toté gets the award for best loaves of gf bread, which the other two don't seem to be into. That warm loaf of challah after my oscopies will be one of my treasured memories that I pull out when I need a boost. You know, in those guided meditations when you are supposed to picture a place of serenity and beauty?
Mine will feature warm Tote raisin challah. The drawback of Tote is also part of the attraction. It's in the heart of the Italian Market, which is cool, but crowded and impossible to park near, so there is no "Let's just drop in and get  a loaf" when you are out and about in your car. It's easy with public transportation though, and I might give myself the challenge of seeing if I can make it there and back to work in under an hour with the help of my transpass.

I can't help but think how fortunate I am to live in a place where I have THREE gf bakeries to visit, compare, and talk about. And I'm also fortunate that they are not right across the street frrom my house or I'd have a hard time with that whole weight management thing.

I've recently become a BIG FAN of Kind Bars -- nutty and fruity and I want to eat them like candy bars. Hundreds of calories consumed in less than a minute. I need to stay away from them.

Fortunately there are many options. Since we're loaded with post-Easter hardboiled eggs around here, I thought it would be a good time to share my video with tips for fast, easy, cheap, healthy gluten free snacks and breakfasts. Your tips?