Day 3 5/30/08 Gluten Free Week

Same menu as before only change was I drank liquor instead of dinner. I was riding the bus to wpb and didn’t have a chance to scarf anything down. And when I got home like 3 in the morning I ate a red lobster cheddar bay biscuit. I know I know, bad tnt, bad tnt.

Day 2 5/29/08 Gluten Free Week

I had a horrible sleep last night, I ended up pushing the mattress on the bed last night and it didn’t make any difference. So again, I hit the snooze button for forever. But I finally got up. My stomach is still off! It feels like a brick is sitting at the pit of my belly. As a result, I am going to skip breakfast, and I am still debating about whether I should eat lunch or not. It depends on how my stomach feels.

today rocked out loud…

after my tummy calmed down, I started feeling the hunger pangs, and I ate 2 arepas, with mozzarella, spinach, and homemade strawberry jelly. sweet!!! and then I left work early, so I didn’t have time to eat a snack. Then I got home, and made 2 servings of homemade cheesy, enchilada bake, with olives and hot sauce. Yes Yes Yall

No bloated belly, no constipation, smooth sailing. but wait, I had a monster sweet toothfuses. and I went to mother earth, and  I saw some gluten free chocolate chip cookies. ooooooooooooooooooh delish. but i read the back of the label, no gluten, no gluten, no gluten, but oh wait these chips are baked in the same effing factory as wheat products. no thank you, I don’t want to take that chance. Its only been several hours, and I guess he gluten made its way out of my system and I feel fine. Don’t want to risk it. So I got some dried papaya spears. They aren’t chocolate chip cookies, but they are good. Yeah thanks AK for that suggestion and loveliness.

and then I remembered that I have a little tinny tiny bit of chocolate cookie dough left over, and I was sooooo tempted to eat it. “O its just a little bit, it won’t hurt me at all” yeah I decided to not risk that at all. I need to throw them away, but I’ve been taught my entire life to not throw food away. Like seriously, its impossible for me to throw food away. Shoot. I am going to have to give it away.

menu:

l. 2 arepas homemade strawberry jam mozzarella spinach

s. papaya spears

d. cheesy enchilada bake hot sauce olives

s. papaya spears

Day 1 5/28/08 Gluten Free Week

This day completely tore me a new one. Either I am not completely eliminating gluten, or my body is having a hard time withdrawing from it.

Here is my menu for the day:

B. 1 homemade corn arepa with homemade strawberry jam and mozzarella, 1 glass of Florida’s Own OJ, Walmart brand multi-vitamin and L. Acidulous pills, and 3 Naproxen painkillers, New England Hazelnut Coffee with Coffeemate original creamer

S. more coffee

L. 2 corn arepas with mozzarella and homemade strawberry jam, 2 oranges, water

S. more coffee

D. enchilada cheesy bake, with spinach

S. corn tortilia chips and homemade salsa

I was in sooo much pain all day long. My poor little tummy was bloated and I had the worst case of indigestion. And around 2.30pm I almost completely crashed. I almost forgot to mention that it took forever  to get out of bed. I hit the snooze button for an hour, and I was still tired. I didn’t fully awaken until around 10.40am. And it took me forever to fall asleep when I finally got home. I laid down at 12.30pm and I was still laying in bed awake at 1.30am. I thought going gluten free was supposed to be better for me! But if you ask my tummy, I guess not.

But I shall preserve, my creamer might not be gluten free so tomorrow I will eliminate that from the menu.

 

 

 

Gluten Free for a Week

Hypothesis: To determine if gluten is the root cause of my myriad health problems.

Purpose:I believe after reading numerous tomes, volumes, and blogs relating to others health problems caused by gluten, that gluten is the cause of mine. I am also doing this to determine if I want to go through the trouble of trying to make a doctor test me for gluten resistance. I do not have the best luck with doctors, they are constantly trying to brush off my concerns, and I want to have evidence to back me up. So I will monitor my body’s responses to gluten free foods.

Materials:

• Gluten Free Foods
• My body

Procedure:

Ensure that only gluten free foods pass through my body, and observe reactions.

Day 4 and 5 Suave vs. Baking Soda

Day 4

no changes; same results as days 1 and 2

Day 5

We went to St. Augustine Beach. Both deodorants kept odor away, while they lasted, even in the hot Florida sun. I did notice that the underarm where the baking soda was applied will develop an order rapidly if the baking soda is somehow removed and not reapplied immediately.

Conclusion:

I will fully switch to baking soda as a deoderant. Although it can feel gritty at times, either that feeling disappears after a while, or I subconsciously start to ignore it.

how awesome am i?

o don’t worry, I’ll tell you.

I’m so awesome that I made my own homemade jelly, and then canned it. You can’t find that kind of awesome in the store!

My house smells like strawberries and sugar. mmmm.

AK-47 made a suggestion that will kick my awesomeness into the stratosphere. I causually mentioned that I am on a canning streak, and I need to figure out what to can tomorrow, since I only used 4 out of the 12 super expensive mason jars I purchased. I have no patience, I also need 1 to 2 hour projects to occupy my time and prevent me from napping during the day, naps ruin my sleep schedule, so canning my own preserves was the perfect mini-project. But I didn’t have any mason jars, neither did AK, and the buses that I catch to wally world stop running at 8pm, and I just had to do this project today, which meant that I had to purchase jars from winn dixie, and which meant that they were super expensive but they were totally worth it. Back to the point, she suggested that I make apple butter. Dude, I love apple butter so much, that if I could, I would marry a vat of it and bear its sticky sweet children. Yeah its that great, and making it by hand will make it that much better. But it all depends on how tired I am tomorrow, since the apples have to simmer for an hour. This would not be any problem if I or AK had a slow cooker, but alas we don’t. So tomorrow after a long day of work, I might have to first purchase a pound of apples, core them, cut them up, and then simmer for an hour. AND THEN I would have to sterilize the jars, fill them, lid them, and then boil for another 10 minutes, and then let sit overnight. Oh did I forget to mention that you have to let the jars sit 12-24 hours before you handle them? Silly me ooops. The canning would go a tad bit faster if I had a dishwasher, since you can pop jars in there for a cycle for sterilization. In addition to apples, I need to purchase some tongs. I can make do without them, but its dangerous and I run the risk of either dropping a scalding hot glass jar on the ground (shattering it into thousands of scalding hot glass pieces) or horribly burning myself. Not a good look either way. Sigh. I will let you all know my final decision.

Here are the jars of homemade strawberry jelly. They have to settle overnight and then I can move them. I apologize for the grainy picture, but I don’t feel like using the digital and uploading and all that.

I am also going to remove gluten from my life. First I am going to do a trial run similar to the Great Baking Soda vs. Suave Experiment, and I will blog my observations. And at the end of 5 days I will make a decision about whether I will excise gluten from my diet or not. In the meantime head over to Gluten Free Girl’s blog and check out her amazingness. Although I have toyed with the idea of going gluten free before, and ultimately chickened out, her blog re-inspired me to do it now. Her blog demonstrates how easy it is to make the transition, it triggered my memory of doing the Atkins diet (I lost a billion pounds almost overnight, it seems, and it would seem like an simple thing to just go back and do it again, but I’m a vegetarian now, so no dice), and it just seems like gf living would make me healthier, just like eschewing meat has made me healthier. So tomorrow will start my sojourn of gf living.

I still have no effing clue how I should wear my hair at my mother’s wedding!!!!! The wedding ceremony takes place on June 7th, 2008, at 4pm. In addition to being without a confirmed hairstyle, I still need shoes, a full line girdle or corset, and I need to get my make up professionally done several days before the ceremony.

Everyone knows that you shouldn’t make any major hair and/or make up changes right before a major event like this, because something horrible might happen. But me being the great procrastinator that I am, did not follow that dictum. So I absolutely hope that things will work themselves out, and that I will not look like a crazy banshee woman and ruin my mom’s big day. In addition to giving her this super sweet 13 piece bar glassware set, I am toying with the idea of giving her 1 or 2 jars of the homemade jelly. Didn’t I tell you that I am awesome? But really, why would I give a diabetic a jar of jelly? That just doesn’t seem right to me? What do you all think?

I love Billie Holliday, and I love magnolias. I never noticed how many magnolias are in Gville, until this summer. The big, floppy, super white blossoms remind me of Lady Day and lynchings (re: “Strange Fruit”). And although the flowers are surrounded in sadness for me, I can’t get enough of them.

I am going to post tomorrow about the fantasitcal memorial day weekend that I totally enjoyed to the max. So you can look forward to that post.

Until tomorrow,

cordially my love,

[initials]

p.s. Selected songs from the “preserve making and canning playlist”

(all songs sung by the Great Late Billie Holliday)

Twenty-Four Hours a Day

No Regrets (this one receives heavy rotation)

Let’s Call a Heart a Heart

Summertime

Easy to Love

He Ain’t Got Rhythm

That’s Life I Guess

Guess Who

I Can’t Pretend

What a Little Moonlight Can Do

The Way I Feel Tonight (another one that receives heavy rotation)

no tan lines!!!

well that’s half true…i’ll only go topless, and that’s only if we go to the island part of the beach, and only my back will be exposed. come on! i don’t want tan lines showing up in my ma’s wedding photos!

but the point of the exercise is that I AM GOING TO THE BEACH, after like a year.

swwwwweeeeettt!!!

congressional food stamp challenge

Congressional Food Stamp Challenge Blog

The average food stamp allotment is $21 a person per week. Several Congressional members are trying to live on this budget for one week to foster an understanding of how people living on such a small budget make it. The blog reflects their experiences. And from what I saw, they don’t know how to make money stretch. At all.

I would support the experiment, but guess what? I’m already poor. No I take that back. I’m not poor, I just don’t have as much money as I would like. But I was poor growing up and I learned alot at my mother’s knee.

And although I am not currently on food stamps. I once was. For one person I had an allotment of $152 a month. I lived regally, but that was only because I know how to purchase food in bulk, make big meals, and look for deals. But again, that only comes from experience, and we were poor growing up and on food stamps. But my ma (who grew up poor) knew how to make things happen and she imparted this knowledge to me.

“Its hard for poor people to travel to the better grocery stores” “Convenience stores don’t carry large quantities of fresh fruit and veggies” “The cheapest foods are carbohydrates” These are all true and all have combined to make the punch of poverty extra hard to sustain. But there are ways that we (the populace) can counteract them. Many neighborhoods consist of sprawl, as far as the eye can see there are gated and/or fenced communities, many of which are not on bus lines and so. As a result we need to develop intelligent, place better grocery stores in the poor neighborhoods, and teach better ways of food/money management.

future plans

For a planner I kind of suck at making plans for my life.

Everybody else I know who has graduted already have job offers, and have moved to their respective new cities and lives. me on the other hand…nothing. I have a vague inclination to move wherever I have a job, but I have only applied to like 3 or 4 jobs.

I feel like a depression/crying jag is coming on. I might have to take this 3 day break to hole away in my bed, so that I will actually go to work next week.

Suave vs. Baking Soda Day 3 May 23, 2008

7.45 am cleansed both underarms, again baking soda underarm super easy to clean. suave underarm needed several scrubs and I still felt some sticky residue. repeated applications as before

10.30 arrived at work after 15 minute brisk walk. no order, but suave underarm is super sticky. baking soda feels gritty on left pit.

6pm suave underarm smells like funk is trying to build, but still covered with baby powder scent. baking soda pit smells strongly of baking soda but no funk