Wednesday 5 December 2012
Gluten-Free Adventures
I may...or may not...have recently experienced my first full blown gluten reaction. This, kids, is why you listen to the doctors and nutritionists when they tell you that you're going to go off of gluten for 4-6 weeks and then expose yourself and see what happens. That last step is, in fact, important as it turns out. Otherwise when you abruptly experience abdominal pains that last for days, people tend to panic and say things like "it could be all sorts of things" "appendicitis" and "we need a CT scan."
Suffice to say, I have recovered. My insides appear not to have exploded. I even avoided expensive exposure to radiation. But my doctors and I are none the wiser about precisely what happened. If, as I suspect, this was a gluten reaction then my entire side trip into an episode of some medical drama could have been avoided had I actually purposefully exposed myself under more controlled conditions. Now I shall have to wait a sufficient length of time to allay any fears that I am suffering a "relapse" and then go back to the plan of purposefully exposing myself so that I can compare symptoms and find out for sure. There is just some part of the mind that revolts against the concept of penciling into one's calendar "abdominal cramps: 3-7 days" no matter how logical one knows it to be.
On a side issue of the gluten-free adventures--admittedly a more trivial one, I suppose, I've been trying to decide how risky I feel like being about the Scottish oats question. Oats grown in the US are almost always cross-contaminated with wheat unless they come from specific dedicated gluten-free farms & processing plants. Scotland doesn't grow hardly any wheat. So there is far less cross-contamination. And yet people in the gluten-free community get really edgy about actually considering them "safe".
I know that in Scotland there is now certified gluten-free haggis. But you can't import it. US Food Safety gets really touchy about things like ground up sheep lungs for some strange reason. The favored American producer of haggis doesn't do a gluten-free one. But they *do* import their oats from Scotland. So, that makes them a lot less risky than Quaker, but still more risky than Red Mill Gluten-Free Oats. Sigh.
Well, once I actually expose myself to gluten and see once and for all what my reaction is going to be, then I can just try things that are hopefully safe and know afterward whether they were or not. There aren't a lot of foods that I would risk three days of misery and four more of discomfort for, but haggis may well be one of them. What does it say about me that I would rather role the dice on that one than learn to make haggis? Well, if you knew anything about making haggis, you might understand.
Monday 23 July 2012
Fiction Progress
I'm writing again. That shouldn't be such an accomplishment, but life, other creative commitments (of the more poetic and musical variety) and then writer's block conspired against me for a while. So I re-read the entire thing to date in the hopes that would get me back in the mindset. And it worked! I finished off a partial chapter. I'm splitting another into two and expanding the halves.
I've now passed 60,000 words where I'd been stuck a bit about 50,000 for the past 6 months.
For the curious, it needs to be around 100,000 to be novel sized. Whether it will be "done" at 100,000 is another matter entirely. I've known for a while now that, by the "shape" of the story, this will either be a rather massive novel or it will be two volumes. I think I know where the breaking point could reasonably be in the story. But I may not get there until around 120,000 wds or more at this rate. I'll just have to see.
In the plotter vs. pantser debate (do you plot everything out or fly by the seat of your pants?) I definitely land more among the pantsers, though I've done more than usual plotting on this book. But even so, I view my outlines more like guidelines. If I spend too much time going "how on earth am I going to get that character over there?!" then perhaps the character wasn't meant to go "over there" after all.
On a funny note, I've found my weak spot when it comes to research for fiction. The topic I was researching for the book last week made me squirm more than anything else I can think of, more than my research on poisons and what they would do to people, more than burial rituals--even the creepy ones. What was I researching? Varieties of mosquitoes, midges, and other biting insects in cold wet climates. Yeeick. I really could have done without the inevitable close-up pictures of mosquitoe-with-proboscis-in-skin. Blech. Now I'm all paranoid and twitchy though mostly we've had flies this season rather than mosquitoes. Touch wood.
I've now passed 60,000 words where I'd been stuck a bit about 50,000 for the past 6 months.
For the curious, it needs to be around 100,000 to be novel sized. Whether it will be "done" at 100,000 is another matter entirely. I've known for a while now that, by the "shape" of the story, this will either be a rather massive novel or it will be two volumes. I think I know where the breaking point could reasonably be in the story. But I may not get there until around 120,000 wds or more at this rate. I'll just have to see.
In the plotter vs. pantser debate (do you plot everything out or fly by the seat of your pants?) I definitely land more among the pantsers, though I've done more than usual plotting on this book. But even so, I view my outlines more like guidelines. If I spend too much time going "how on earth am I going to get that character over there?!" then perhaps the character wasn't meant to go "over there" after all.
On a funny note, I've found my weak spot when it comes to research for fiction. The topic I was researching for the book last week made me squirm more than anything else I can think of, more than my research on poisons and what they would do to people, more than burial rituals--even the creepy ones. What was I researching? Varieties of mosquitoes, midges, and other biting insects in cold wet climates. Yeeick. I really could have done without the inevitable close-up pictures of mosquitoe-with-proboscis-in-skin. Blech. Now I'm all paranoid and twitchy though mostly we've had flies this season rather than mosquitoes. Touch wood.
Thursday 19 July 2012
Gluten-Free Time
Gluten free meal of the day:
1 Adele's sausage - chopped into half-circles
1-2 large leaf(s) of chard - torn to bits
1/3 small can of Bush's Baked Beans
1 slice cheddar cheese
Put the sausage & chard in a pan and cook (browning the sausage and wilting down the chard). If too dry add small amounts of water. Once browned add beans. Once hot add cheese to get melty. Serve.
It might be a little high in fat & calories for some people's tastes. But it is fast (5-8 min.), yummy, and anything with chard can't be that bad for you, right?
And yes, for those who haven't heard yet, I'm currently eating gluten-free. Probably forever. Sometime after Pennsic (so mid-August) I will probably eat a bite to confirm whether I react now that it's out of my system. But I think yesterday's adventures confirm that I do.
Yesterday there was some drama surrounding getting milk to put in my coffee. I have completely forsaken sweetener in my coffee and even, more dramatic and eccentric, from my chocolate beverages. So it's very important to me to have good milk to put in.
Anyway, at last, at my lunch break, I obtained milk to bring back to the office to put in my coffee. Full of blissful anticipation I took a sip. My mouth felt...strange. Kind of dry even while it was wet. Kind of tight. Well, freakish things happen to me all the time so I didn't worry overmuch. I swallowed my coffee. I had another swallow, turning my attention back to work. Except by the fourth swallow my throat was starting to throb painfully and my mouth felt even more tight and strange.
I stopped drinking the coffee, had some water and food and in time the sensation faded. Just to confirm the correlation--lest denial eat at me later--I took the coffee to the sink once I no longer had symptoms, took a mouthful and swished it around my mouth...and felt that odd tight-dry feeling returning. I rinsed my mouth and resigned myself.
You see, the thing that was different about this coffee was that we'd run out of regular so my co-worker had made Vanilla. And I'd been warned that many flavored coffees use a little gluten as part of their "natural and artificial flavorings" to help the flavor adhere to the coffee beans. The only reason I can think of why I would suddenly react to Vanilla coffee--the exact brand of Vanilla coffee I've had dozens of times before without any reaction back before I went gluten-free--is that they must in fact use gluten and I must in fact react to it.
What's interesting is that this is not at all the expected reaction. Stomach cramps, bloating, headaches, vagueness, even hormone-like emotional wonkiness...I've heard all these reactions to gluten from the gluten-intolerant. But this? Odd.
At any rate, it looks like I'd better settle in for the long haul of gluten-free living. So, recipes!
My philosophy is definitely primarily towards eating foods that never really wanted gluten to begin with. There are some exceptions. There is a gluten-free bread that's not bad for when I really really want toast (so 2 or 3 times in the last month). And I have done some substitutions. I'd been making turmeric quinoa to eat with other things and then discovered last weekend that it goes rather beautifully with fresh-made pesto. Yum.
But I've also been in a total bannocks craze. For those who are less familiar with Scottish cuisine, bannocks are oatcakes. I've been making them with combinations of bacon and/or cheese and/or pine nuts. Very tasty. Making the bacon is the most time consuming part so I may have to try them with butter or oil or some other source for the fat. Made plain, you'd really want to eat them with something else. But they are solid and filling and tasty.
You just have to make sure to use gluten-free oats. Oats don't naturally have gluten but crop rotation wisdom says that alternating oats versus wheat every other year does good things for the field productivity...and means that you get miniscule amounts of stray wheat gathered in the oats and likewise trace amounts of oats in the wheat. If you have an allergy that reacts to trace amounts of things, this can be a problem. So gluten-free oats are simply oats that are grown in fields that only grow oats (or that only grow gluten-free grains I suppose, but I think in practice they just grow oats in general). Scottish oats are often gluten-free because oats grow a lot better than wheat in the Scottish climate. But we've been getting certified gluten-free ones at the house.
I had a recipe for the bannocks at first, but we've lost it and it's become rather arbitrary.
Take quick oats. Add some fat (bacon grease is our fat of choice). And add enough hot water to stir up the oats to a dough-like consistency (the dry end of oatmeal). Add any other mix-ins you'd like (bits of bacon, grated cheese, pine-nuts etc. Or you could use a more neutral fat and go in fruity directions instead....though I've not actually tried this, wanting bannocks for meals not desert). Mix well. Take a clump of oat-dough and form it in a ball and squish it to about 1/3 inch thick. Put in pan and cook on medium heat until just begining to brown. The edges will just begin to curl up subtly. If you use non-stick pans and perhaps even if you don't you shouldn't need to grease the pan at all. Once browned, flip. The second side will brown more quickly. Repeat until you've cooked up all the dough. Eat hot or cold. Enjoy!
The original recipe called for either baking powder or baking soda. Whichever it was we used the wrong one and it didn't seem to matter so then I tried cutting it out entirely and that didn't seem to matter either. Simple is best.
1 Adele's sausage - chopped into half-circles
1-2 large leaf(s) of chard - torn to bits
1/3 small can of Bush's Baked Beans
1 slice cheddar cheese
Put the sausage & chard in a pan and cook (browning the sausage and wilting down the chard). If too dry add small amounts of water. Once browned add beans. Once hot add cheese to get melty. Serve.
It might be a little high in fat & calories for some people's tastes. But it is fast (5-8 min.), yummy, and anything with chard can't be that bad for you, right?
And yes, for those who haven't heard yet, I'm currently eating gluten-free. Probably forever. Sometime after Pennsic (so mid-August) I will probably eat a bite to confirm whether I react now that it's out of my system. But I think yesterday's adventures confirm that I do.
Yesterday there was some drama surrounding getting milk to put in my coffee. I have completely forsaken sweetener in my coffee and even, more dramatic and eccentric, from my chocolate beverages. So it's very important to me to have good milk to put in.
Anyway, at last, at my lunch break, I obtained milk to bring back to the office to put in my coffee. Full of blissful anticipation I took a sip. My mouth felt...strange. Kind of dry even while it was wet. Kind of tight. Well, freakish things happen to me all the time so I didn't worry overmuch. I swallowed my coffee. I had another swallow, turning my attention back to work. Except by the fourth swallow my throat was starting to throb painfully and my mouth felt even more tight and strange.
I stopped drinking the coffee, had some water and food and in time the sensation faded. Just to confirm the correlation--lest denial eat at me later--I took the coffee to the sink once I no longer had symptoms, took a mouthful and swished it around my mouth...and felt that odd tight-dry feeling returning. I rinsed my mouth and resigned myself.
You see, the thing that was different about this coffee was that we'd run out of regular so my co-worker had made Vanilla. And I'd been warned that many flavored coffees use a little gluten as part of their "natural and artificial flavorings" to help the flavor adhere to the coffee beans. The only reason I can think of why I would suddenly react to Vanilla coffee--the exact brand of Vanilla coffee I've had dozens of times before without any reaction back before I went gluten-free--is that they must in fact use gluten and I must in fact react to it.
What's interesting is that this is not at all the expected reaction. Stomach cramps, bloating, headaches, vagueness, even hormone-like emotional wonkiness...I've heard all these reactions to gluten from the gluten-intolerant. But this? Odd.
At any rate, it looks like I'd better settle in for the long haul of gluten-free living. So, recipes!
My philosophy is definitely primarily towards eating foods that never really wanted gluten to begin with. There are some exceptions. There is a gluten-free bread that's not bad for when I really really want toast (so 2 or 3 times in the last month). And I have done some substitutions. I'd been making turmeric quinoa to eat with other things and then discovered last weekend that it goes rather beautifully with fresh-made pesto. Yum.
But I've also been in a total bannocks craze. For those who are less familiar with Scottish cuisine, bannocks are oatcakes. I've been making them with combinations of bacon and/or cheese and/or pine nuts. Very tasty. Making the bacon is the most time consuming part so I may have to try them with butter or oil or some other source for the fat. Made plain, you'd really want to eat them with something else. But they are solid and filling and tasty.
You just have to make sure to use gluten-free oats. Oats don't naturally have gluten but crop rotation wisdom says that alternating oats versus wheat every other year does good things for the field productivity...and means that you get miniscule amounts of stray wheat gathered in the oats and likewise trace amounts of oats in the wheat. If you have an allergy that reacts to trace amounts of things, this can be a problem. So gluten-free oats are simply oats that are grown in fields that only grow oats (or that only grow gluten-free grains I suppose, but I think in practice they just grow oats in general). Scottish oats are often gluten-free because oats grow a lot better than wheat in the Scottish climate. But we've been getting certified gluten-free ones at the house.
I had a recipe for the bannocks at first, but we've lost it and it's become rather arbitrary.
Take quick oats. Add some fat (bacon grease is our fat of choice). And add enough hot water to stir up the oats to a dough-like consistency (the dry end of oatmeal). Add any other mix-ins you'd like (bits of bacon, grated cheese, pine-nuts etc. Or you could use a more neutral fat and go in fruity directions instead....though I've not actually tried this, wanting bannocks for meals not desert). Mix well. Take a clump of oat-dough and form it in a ball and squish it to about 1/3 inch thick. Put in pan and cook on medium heat until just begining to brown. The edges will just begin to curl up subtly. If you use non-stick pans and perhaps even if you don't you shouldn't need to grease the pan at all. Once browned, flip. The second side will brown more quickly. Repeat until you've cooked up all the dough. Eat hot or cold. Enjoy!
The original recipe called for either baking powder or baking soda. Whichever it was we used the wrong one and it didn't seem to matter so then I tried cutting it out entirely and that didn't seem to matter either. Simple is best.
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