Background

First a little background, A few years ago, my younger sister, Sara learned that she had Celiac Sprue disease.  If you have been living under a rock, and don't know, this is an auto immune disease that means you can not properly digest gluten, which is a protein in wheat and other grains.  When she was diagnosed, I had a blood test that was negative for the disease. (this test also has a high false negative rate.) Through seven pregnancies, I have had a lot of acid reflux issues.  Between a number of websites and a Dr Oz show that he did on Celiac and gluten intolerances, where I failed the quiz he gave, I started suspecting that perhaps, I have a Gluten intolerance, so I decided to do a gluten free trial for a couple of weeks to see if it was indeed gluten that was causing my problems. I ate gluten free for about a week and was feeling really good.  Then I went to Panera, one of my favorite places.  I figured if I was going to cheat a little, I was going to cheat a lot, so I had a half turkey avocado club sandwich on country bread, and a half order of tortellini alfredo and a side of french bread.  I hadn't even finished eating before I was doubled over from acid and gas pains right at my sternum. Holy cow! It was a pretty convincing wake up call.

So I started eating gluten free the best I could.  It turns out that we eat a lot of fast food, and there is very little fast food protein that is gluten free. (There will be some  gluten free fast food posts in the future!)  I did a lot of cheating, mostly because I didn't realize that driving though a fast food drive though is no longer a real option.  And that I would need to pre-plan what I was eating.  I also didn't realize how much of what we ate at home had gluten.  It also didn't help that I started around the holidays when food consists of all my gluten laden favorites. Its a new year, and time for a fresh start and a new approach to eating gluten free.

On top of figuring out that I need to eat gluten free, we also figured out that my husband has hypoglycemia, and needs to have regular snacks every 2-3 hours.  We both have decided that we want and need to eat healthier, exercise and lose weight and get healthy.  We have decided that gluten free is going to be a jumping off point to moving our family toward healthier whole foods diet and leaning towards a paleo/primal diet.  But we want to do this wisely. We want this to be lifestyle change and not a diet. We want to occasionally enjoy a treat. We want this to stick, we want to eat healthy for the rest of our lives.  Gluten free is just a jumping off point for changes that have been a long time coming.

So are you ready? We are! Ready, set, go!

About Me and This Blog

Hi, I'm Katie, a mom of seven great kids, wife to an awesome husband, and a United Methodist Pastor.  And guess what? I am now newly gluten free.  I love bread and pasta! And most of our diet is based on bread and pasta, so this is going to be a huge change and challenge! Which is where this blog starts.  This blog is to help me evaluate and taste test family and budget friendly gluten free recipes, and figure out meal plans for my large family.  As my first forays into pre-made gluten free food has been hit or miss, (some has been horrible, and some has been fabulous!) I am going to be doing a lot of product testing, in hopes of saving someone else the huge learning curve that we have been on figuring out gluten free foods.