I got the letter.

Have you ever been waiting for something, perhaps something not very nice, and it when finally comes you still feel a little lost and it takes you awhile for the facts to sink in? It takes a bit of diary writing and thinking to just actually realize that no, it's not a dream. It has happened.
Finally.

I've been waiting for six months to the day for that letter. Finally it's come and I can try and get my head around it.

You see, today is my last healthy day for over three weeks. Tomorrow I'm going to start eating gluten again [I have no idea what it'll do to me] I've got to eat it for three weeks to produce enough damage for them to see it on the biopsy.

For those who don't know what a biopsy is it's basically taking a sample. The kind I'm getting is a tube with technology at the end shoved down your throat into your gut to look around and take a sample. No, not nice at all.

Guess where they're heading... yup, that dark squigly bit [unless I'm mistaken.]

One one hand it's great, I'll finally find out whether I've got coeliacs and I get to spend three weeks eating my favourite foods. My little sister just reminded me that I can eat crumbed fish, and lets not forget the legendary tuna, lettuce and mayo sandwiches. I'm going to write a list of all the foods that I love that perhaps, if I have coeliacs, I will never be able to eat. Never again in my whole life.
I'm so eating several packets of gingernuts and squiggles.

However on the other hand it's quite scary. It's kind of like a Dr telling me that I have to drink poison every day for three weeks, but in this case the poison tastes nice. I could get a bit deranged and not be safe to drive. Or perhaps I'll puke my guts out after every meal. It's more likely though that I'll get really tired with a slightly mushy mind and have regular gut aches.

I think the worst part of stuff like this is the anticipation. I've been in that boat for that past six months and it's getting really tiring.

I suppose all I have to do is wait till tomorrow.

I'm going to blog about my experiences with this, so if you're not gluten free you can learn to understand what it is like to be on 'the diet' and if you are... well, you know what's going on and you can feel for me.

internet fasting, books and food.

The title says it all, I've put myself on a little Internet fast. Obviously I'm not breaking the rules, the fast has been broken and now I'm binging. I've got a little bit of paper blue-tacked to my monitor that says "no distractions allowed. EVER." It reminds me that I was only allowed to view websites to do with study, use google only for study research and keep to the limit of two visits to gmail per day. Only two.
Imagine that! For a person like me who snacks on the Internet all day, constantly grazing by having multiple tabs open at once while doing study; the diet was quite extreme.

Anyway, enough of that.

The annual library book sale was last week. It was truly a momentous library sale and will go down in the library sale history book as being one of the most legendary since we first went to the sale.
My brother arrived first. He had come from tech and though he isn't really that much of a book nerd he was first in line. I took the girls with me earlier than mum and dad just because I can. We obeyed what we felt was good que etiquette and dragged Mark back 10 people in line to play cards with us.
It was going to start at 4:30, we kept checking out watches and txting mum and dad to see how far they were away because they had the card we needed to get in. It was almost 4:00 and I was probably going to win the game of cards. "Oh, we're moving!" Someone behind us said. Frantically we threw the pack of cards in my bag, gathered up our shoes and everything to head for the entrance. The others were nervously glancing at me with questioning looks. It was up to me to get us in. I couldn't try the "I'm gonna cry if you don't let me in!" thing, no, I had to be logical and nice.
Flashing last years card which dad had so kindly bestowed on me before we left I pleaded with the un-intimidating bouncer. [Like you need a bouncer for a book sale! You'll only get nerds and old people trying to get in!] She wouldn't budge. We had to wait.
We looked through the glass doors mournfully at the old people bypassing our favourite table as they flooded into the room. We talked to the bouncer, explaining how mum and dad would soon be there and how we had a tradition of visiting the 'AV' table first to find dvds.
Then suddenly she said "Ok, I'll break the rules and let one of you in."
I turned around to do 'paper, scissors, rock' but the others all looked at me expectantly. It was unanimous. I walked into the hall, determined to make a little show of it I raised my arms in triumph before heading quickly to the favourite table.
Then Katrina was beside me. My triumph was greatly lessened, mum and dad had arrived just as I walked into the hall.

I managed to find lots of cookbooks [as you would expect] and a few novels. Nothing of much amazingness really, it was just generally a good haul. I found a few dvds of operas and musicals which I'm looking forward to watching. Perhaps I'll eat some cupcakes while I watch them? Like these ones perhaps, they make great brain food.
Then also I'm going to show off my first ever gluten-free battered anything. It's sweet and sour battered chicken. I used to love this meal when I could eat normally, and it's just as nice when you use chickpea [Channa] flour for the batter.


So tell me, have you had any scary: 'they're not going to let me in! Oh no!' moments and how did you overcome them?

Dreaming about bread.

I don't know if I've told you this before; but I used to dream about food. I'm not talking about the "day dream" kind, this was the real thing. I feel like a real food geek because these dreams happened quite often. My most regular subject was tuna, lettuce and mayonnaise sandwiches. Perhaps a slice of tomato would be added to the mix, but only sometimes. It was probably my own fault because I would go to sleep thinking about what I was going to have for breakfast. Don't get me wrong, I loved the dreams. I would wake up wanting food which, on other days, was strange for me because I'm never hungry before 10am.

However when I started on the gluten-free diet I knew that, should I dream about sandwiches again; I would probably wake up depressed or in tears. How could my own mind treat me so cruelly? How could I expect to stay strict with the diet if every night I indulged in imaginary eating or just looking at delicious sandwiches?

Thankfully I was aware of the possible problems so had the opportunity to prepare myself. Actually, when I started on the G-free diet I made up my mind to hardly even look at real bread. When the others were eating it I would use every ounce of my self control and other resources to think on other things, or just ignore them. I'm pretty good at it now, I must admit.
With that conscious decision not to think about bread the dreams stopped.

The good streak didn't last that long though because the other day I woke up and realised that I had just had my first bread dream since being G-free. I remember sitting in the lounge, feeling like eating something and walking into the kitchen. I looked in the pantry and my eyes were drawn to our bread bin. I knew that we had lettuce, mayonnaise and a tin of tuna that I could open. No one else was in the house. I was alone in the kitchen and the temptation was immense. I got out the bread bin, took a slice out and looked at it. It would be so easy to just make a simple sandwich. It would taste so good! I could easily imagine the texture, taste and the beautiful sensations that would go along with a prefect tuna sandwich. What would I do? Would I eat some, hoping that it wouldn't affect me much and that no-one would know?



Why didn't I just dream about rice or potatoes? When I started on the diet I thought it would be hilarious if I dreamed of an unreachable sandwich which would always elude my grasp in the way common in dreams. I would be running, arms stretched out but the sandwich would always be too far away. I would probably wake up, arms stretched out screaming "SANDWICH!!!" I would feel like a fool, giggle then tell everyone and it would make a great blog post.

It didn't happen by the way.

Back to my dream. The temptation was huge. In the back of my mind I knew it was a dream so it wouldn't hurt to have a bite. Surely?! Still, I as the dreamer couldn't do it to my dream self. It would have been so easy! But somehow I resisted. Why didn't I just do it?
I still don't understand.

I woke relieved to discover that it was a dream. I also noted that if I can withstand a sandwich in dreamland where I have considerably less control of my actions than in real life, I can withstand any onslaught of gluten temptation in real life.
I used to be concerned about a bread dream making living the gluten free live more difficult. But the real result turned out to have the opposite effect. It turned out to be one of the most encouraging things ever. Now I know that my self control in that area can handle the bread temptation.
It is such a relief!

Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

I finished this amazing book last night, in fact I was reading it during most of yesterday. It's been a long time since I have read anything that was so light and amusing so as to allow me to read it through most of the day without getting a severely muffy brain. That kind of tells you about the stuff I read ay: quality literature. Sadly however it can only be taken in small doses.

Last night before heading to bed I wrote a couple of lists, one detailing the good things about the book, the other bad.

"A few of the guests, who had the misfortune of being too near the windows, were seized and feasted on at once."

Lets start with the good things.

• Zombies, you have to admit, are unorthodox. Do you think a book called 'Pride and Prejudice and Vampires' would sell quite as well or get quite as much hype and publicity as the strange occurrence of Zombies in a Jane Austen book? I think not. Zombies do not have characters, are not suited to the era the book is set in and are altogether... strange. That's a good thing. If they traded zombies for a monster or vampire I probably wouldn't have bothered to read the book. Zombies are a novelty, that's nice.
• Although Jane Austen's name was on the front of the book [along with Seth Grahame-Smith] you had the awareness that no character was safe from becoming 'stricken' or perhaps eaten. The new co-author was allowed to insert amazing fight scenes just where you as the reader would have wanted them. [Think Darcy's first proposal to Lizzie, she kicks him in the face. Lady Catherine and Lizzy try to kill each other and Wickham... well, Kitty and Mary decide to kill him but he gets his just deserts from another quarter - so does Lydia.] It was great to read through a book that I know so well but yet not know what was going to happen on the next page.
  
• Lets face it, there aren't many people who, [after seeing the cover and actually reading the book,] don't enjoy watching fictional people kick butt. The Bennett sisters are famous warriors, Lady Catherine is more famous though - she once beat up 1,000 Zombies with nothing but her fists and a wet envelope. Awesome.
• It was very, very entertaining. That of all things this speaks the loudest of all. I like being entertained as I am sure do you.

Now for the bad things:

• I wasn't a quarter through the book before I decided that it could have had a better editor. Perhaps one who may have read it twice? It certainly didn't look like the editor read much of it at all. Ok, perhaps that's being cruel but I found too many mistakes for my liking. Also some of the sentences were a little hard to understand, not because of the vocabulary but because the co-author didn't know what he was doing.
• Seth Grahame-Smith had quite a different style to Jane Austen. Granted, it must be very hard to mimic Jane's style, especially if you like writing about zombies. However I found it a little distracting.
• The co-author also had a thing with vomit. Why? Surely the steely Lizzy Bennett wouldn't have to delicately vomit into her handkerchief so often and if so, where did she put it afterward? That was my question anyway.
• I think that, although it was entertaining, he could have made Lizzy a little less violent. I'm talking about strangling people with their guts, holding a heart in your hand [or biting into it], perhaps even thinking about coating yourself in someone else's blood? Hmm... not very Lizzy Bennett, especially when Jane Austen's kind of Lizzy steps in. I didn't have too much of a problem with it, just there was too much contrast within the main character which could have been avoided.
• And now, the final and probably most serious [not counting the editing] bad thing of all. I thought that the co-author didn't gain much from his crude, sometimes rude jokes or references. Although they were, admittedly funny, I couldn't help feeling that Jane Austen would turn in her grave to know that her name was put on the front of a book containing things that she would have probably been shocked to read. Perhaps she will jump out of her grave and go running after Seth Grahame-Smith screaming "BRAINS!" - That would be great!
  

However after all of those considerations I would still recommend Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to anyone who has read the book several times and seen at least one zombie movie. Or if you have seen the movie at least 10 times and are also a fan of stuff like zombies [as in my brother's case.]

Bragging about food.

When I got back from the library this morning I didn't know what to eat for lunch so I sat down and looked at all of the cook books that I had just loaned. I didn't gain anything from them, in fact I only lost time. The headache was getting worse and I didn't want rice.

So I looked in the fridge. Trust me, there is nothing like looking in the fridge for inspiration. Right at my eye level were a whole bunch of eggs, I remembered the salmon I had opened the other day and the pastry/pasta I had stowed away in there somewhere.

Check out the result:

When I was taking the photos Dad said "Ooh, another blog!" I insisted that I take photos for the fun of it and no, these little quiches are not blog-worthy. But then I ate a piece and it changed my mind.
I also made one with a crust [below]. Next time I'll stick to the self crusting version [above.]


I also made gluten free cupcakes the other day. They turned out better than the gluten version[evil laugh].


And while I'm bragging about my food conquests, I will tell you about my mini cheesecakes. I know that I should have used a recipe because I've never made a cheesecake before. However I just couldn't be bothered. I used paper muffin cases and they worked out amazingly well. Oh, and the taste! AMAZING!

And this is what they looked like on the inside:


Are you hungry yet? Are you going to raid the cupboard in search of yummyness? I know that I am.
Ahh, those cheesecakes were so good!