Things Are Changing At Court St. Kitchen

Wow. It's been a very long time since I've blogged. I've wanted to. I've not stopped with what my intent was when I started to blog.  I've still been seeking out a way to feed myself and my family in a better way while doing it cost consciously. 

However, things changed. I lost my oomph. I suppose this is common with blogging, in some ways. You get this grand idea to blog and then, after a while, it becomes like everything else...another thing to do in a day.  Thinking of something to make, making it, photographing it, blogging it, editing the blog, publishing it...blah, blah, blah.  It's time consuming, yeah, but I really did enjoy doing it. Something was different though. I did not only not want to do this anymore.  I lost my oomph for a lot of things. 

For the last 8 months I've been under the care of a gastroenterologist. I've had issues since I was a teenager and it was just casually diagnosed as IBS with no direction given at the time. I had a pretty bad flare a couple years ago that I sought medical help for and was given some direction at that time. Last summer things hit hard. I waited it out figuring it was just another flare. I think my doctor did too because what ended up to be such a simple and quick diagnosis took 8 months.  

I received a phone call yesterday morning from my GI, who sounds very much like Heidi Klum when she speaks.  This is all I can think of when I listen to her. She doesn't look like her but she is definitely the most glamorous doctor I've ever seen, by far.  So, you add that to the voice and it's kind of hard to believe she deals with THAT end of the body all day long!  She was calling to give me the results of some blood work. Blood work she hadn't realized we hadn't done yet in all our time together, along with an endoscopy that's yet to be done, before she sent me on to Beth Israel hospital in Boston since she couldn't figure me out with the one obscure finding that did show up in one of the many tests I've done since October 2012.

"Jennifer dear, you have Celiac." "This is why you are having problems." "I am so sorry we did not do this sooner."

What a flood of feelings. I don't even know if deep inside I knew I had it all along.  I did know that eating gluten free definitely made me feel better.  I did know that while my GI symptoms did correspond with the GI symptoms of Celiac, that they were maybe not as severe as other have them.  I did know that I have experienced a lot of the other non-GI symptoms of Celiac since I was a teenager, including the recent exhaustion and fatigue that led me to stop blogging. I just didn't want to self-diagnose. I did not want to jump on the trendy band wagon of "needing" to be gluten free for no particular reason other than it was what the current diet trend was at the time. 

Today is the day I've woken up with the full knowledge that I have Celiac Disease.  I'm still processing it all but boy, oh boy, does this throw a curve ball into my eating and the point of this blog.  Essentially, it should not be that hard to incorporate all the things I'm striving for into a gluten free diet. However, I'm not a veggie loving girl and I'm picky as all get out which means that I will struggle my way through this whole process. 

I did start to experiment with a gluten free diet towards the beginning of May. Up until a couple days ago, I'd only bought pre-made gluten free food. I've been 100% overwhelmed with the thought of gluten free baking.  The ingredients are expensive and from what I've tasted from commercially made gluten free baked goods, home baking could definitely be a challenge with limited equipment to manipulate these strange ingredients into tasting AND feeling like the real deal.  

That is where I think I will be changing the direction of this blog a little bit.  I will still incorporate the original premise of the blog into my entries but I will be working, for the most part, with gluten free foods.  I will always love baking with wheat flour but will be saving it for my family and for occasions when we can take it with us to share with others.  For now, I am content with the fact that I cannot have gluten. I know how I feel when I eat it and how I feel when I don't. It's not worth feeling like that when there are alternatives out there. Even if there were not such good alternatives, I still don't think it would be worth it to feel like that. This is what I am saying now, my first full day as a diagnosed Celiac.  Talk to me 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 20 years from now...I'm sure I'll be singing a different tune and screaming at someone to just give me a piece of REAL, crusty artisan bread or making someone's life really miserable because I want a piece of real cake but I, and whoever is in my way, will cross that bridge when we come to it!

I've got some rolls that I made the other nite so I hope to throw together a post about them soon.  They're interesting, that's for sure. Until then...thanks for stopping by and reading!