Learning to be...

It appears that 2.5 - 3 weeks is my "get over glutening" time frame. I've just started feeling better in the last 5 days or so from my Christmastime poisoning. In those five days, I've cooked three times. No, really. I suck at cooking. But it's getting better.

I'd like to be like my other GF friends who can eat a bunch of carbs and be fine, but I'm not sure I'm one of them. I'm finding that after really carb-heavy meals or snacks, my stomach is hurting. Hopefully that goes away, but in the meantime, I'm trying to minimize grain contact. Well, minimize is a relative term. I'll watch that bridge to see if it needs crossing or not. :)

Let me leave you with this nugget of wisdom: if you make cornbread from scratch with Maseca corn flour, it will taste like a big honkin' fluffy corn tortilla. And if that sounds appetizing, you're just hearing wrong. Ugh. GF substitution fail.

Planning Green Stuff

There are a lot of season rituals up here in the Midwest that I don't get, but one has been tugging at me, and I've finally succumbed: mid-winter garden planning.

The websites. The catalogs. Looking longingly out in the middle of my yucky dead flower beds encircling the house and thinking that this year will be different. This year I'll plant beautiful flowers and veggies. This year I'll keep up with the upkeep. This year I'll plant and they will grow and I will water and weed and love.

Ah, the Midwest Midwinter Dreams of Utopia.

There are several things that I know I want to plant. Where to plant them, when to plant them, what variety to plant, and fixing those stupid beds are the issues in my head. But that's okay. That's what seed catalogs are for.

What do I want to plant?

Tomatoes (mostly paste). Bell peppers. Cucumbers. Carrots. Maybe some spinach. Maybe a hot pepper of some sort. Basil. Rosemary. I don't know if oregano can grow here. Thyme. Pretty roses. Amaranth. Sugar snow peas. Onions. Garlic. Potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Other things I can't think of at the moment because I have a cute little boy who has decided that it's time for his turn on the computer.

I'll think on this some more, while looking at some more Midwest Midwinter Plant Pron. :)

Steamroller, baby...

Yeah, that steamroller rolled right over me.

Been trying to eat cleanly gluten-free since the holidays. Theoretically, I haven't consumed gluten in 2013. But I feel like a weird low-level BLECH and BLAH have been hanging with me. It could be the stress of the holiday finally catching up with me and not letting me go. I could be being glutened, but I don't know how. My daily meds are the gluten-free brand. Otherwise, there is nothing I'm having on a daily basis, or really, at all, that I wasn't eating during my first gluten-free period between mid-October and post-Thanksgiving.

I really, really, do not want to start doing the big honkin' "what did I eat, what did I do, how did I feel" type of journal. I am not moving toward some elimination diet, GAPS, etc. That being said, I don't know what to do.

This is frustrating.

Playing with Photography

Focal length: 18mm
Exposure time: 1/20
f/3.9
ISO 800

Subject: Birdie
Date: 11/22/2012
Edited: Playing in Picasa

Beginnings.

Things get away from me. There are so many little beginnings in my life, and nowhere to consolidate the information my brain needs to get out. I figure a little tiny bit of public accountability, even if the only "public" is some imaginary internet reader, will help.

So, yeah, moving along...