Roller coaster of good intentions, european chocolate, HBO, and skin care products

Today is Thursday. It is 7:24 p.m. Typically, I would be knee deep in the most hectic time of my day, dinnertime followed by bedtime. My husband and I both work full-time and have two young children. The minute I walk in the front door from my workday, I go into marathon mommy mode. The kids are beginning to transition from positive energy to frantic energy. I quickly whip up two meals, one for the kids (which has to be gluten-free) due to my youngest son's Celiac Disease and something for my husband and me.  Then it is clean up time, bath time, story time, and clean up time - again. Then there is peace and hopefully quiet - and if I am really lucky a Netflix binge session and a Ritter Sport chocolate covered biscuit to be savored.

My favorite 

Wednesday night was no different except that I agreed to go to a friend's house for what I thought was going to be our once usual pizza night with our families only to learn that the gathering was not our usual family play date but was going to be a launch party her new business as an Arbonne consultant. I had heard of the Arbonne brand and its business model through a co-worker who embarked upon selling these products to make extra money earlier in the year.

My friend profusely reiterated that I need not buy anything at all, but to allow her the opportunity to learn her business with the support of a few friends. Understanding this and in addition to the fact that I am consciously trying to save money, I felt little pressure to buy products.

In the less than two hours I spent at my friend's house, I offered to not only buy products with my next pay check, but I found myself offering to host an Arbonne party to help grow my friend's fledgling business and agreeing to schedule a call with the VP of Regional Sales for Arbonne to discuss my new part-time job as a consultant.

Although the VP that was training my friend was good at her job, I am also very impressionable, in a good way. I get excited about things easily, I get motivated very easy, and I often bite off more than I can chew - and then I get sick and throw up.

Initially, I fell for the allure of the savvy VP who drove a huge white Mercedes SUV, the green and clean product lines and the women helping women angle. I also fell for the $2,000 per month income that was promised to part-time consultants.  With my husband and I both working at nonprofits, the added income was an enticing option to say the least. Plus, I like white Mercedes SUVs.

When I got home from the launch party,  I attempted to tell my husband all about my new and fully imagined and very successful business, but he was too involved in watching the pilot of HBO's True Detective while hypnotically folding piles of laundry. Not to be deflated, I decided to do some research on Arbonne to determine if it was as wonderful and green a product as I was led to believe and to figure of this whole new business thing might actually be a reality for me.

Within seconds of my Google search, I came upon this blog post by Meghan Telpner. In this entry, Ms. Telpner examines the Arbonne's product line and explains that the products are not all that they are cracked up to and the company  (which is owned by a board of directors and who was founded by a man) is engaged in green washing. While reading the post, I could feel the air being sucked out of my unbridled enthusiasm and optimistic hope for a fancy and looming vacation. By the end of the episode of True Detective, I had decided to not launch my new business and hesitant about hosting a product party on my house, but I was intrigued by the HBO series and really wanted to eat a Ritter Sport.

My new binge series

The Tiger Runs.

Litters in his homeland could be up to twenty per birth. His mother had just short of this number. He never fully bonded with his siblings or anyone else. Maybe this why he first began to run.

Tigers are active; they run, jump, leap, and stalk. The Tiger was no different except that he excelled as a runner - his speed and precision were beyond any of the others in his village.  He loved the give of earth below him, the accent and decent of mountains and valleys, and the way his mind felt when he was running - alone or a part of pack. It was clear, crystal clear.

One day he started running and didn’t stop. Eventually he could not stop.  He ran thousands of miles away from his homeland through valleys, rivers, over an ocean, through city streets and country roads.

Lost in a haunting maze far from where he started, years later, he is still trying to follow the curves of roads, find the mountains and valleys that once sheltered him, the smell of the sea that once calmed him. Instead he is stuck in this place - this conforming structure he can't escape. Is he too old to escape, to run away, to go back home?

 

Once he travels back,  he will choose another path to follow. He will lead the way. He will choose when to stop, when to sleep, when to chase, when to let go. 

Right now he tries to find this path back wherever he goes.  He looks for creaks and crevices and freights and people to help.  His body is tired and weak. His mind is weaker. It has been a long time since he has been home and he is thirsty.  But, he keeps running.

The Tiger

As a child, I remember watching The Tiger venture into the water, never the ocean; only the safety and confinement of the pool.

The pool was dirty, cold and unopened. The vinyl lining had caved in and crumbled into the sand and water stirred together for more than 10 years.

The Tiger couldn't swim. Parents from his country scared their young away from the cold sea for their own good. Most young never learned to swim. 

The Tiger would venture into the pool with trepidation and flirtation. He liked it. And, he feared it. He respected the depth that called him.

Looking for home, he followed his emaciated soul into that which was below the crumbled lining. 

Just so you know. 

Loving Brene Brown's 

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Worth the read - or listen.

Celiac Awareness Month Heros

The National Foundation for Celiac Awareness (nfca) is featuring gluten-free bloggers in the final week of NFCA's Heroes Within Us campaign.  Check out these gluten-free bloggers and learn something new about Celiac Disease and gluten related diseases and sensitivities. campaign.www.CeliacCentral.org/awarenessmonth

Nothing like a good doctor

My son's doctor called earlier this week to confirm that his endoscopy and biopsies supported the recent Celiac Disease diagnosis. The staff at Boston Children's Hospital, the Celiac Clinic, and the Growth and Nutrition program have been truly amazing. The medical providers and support staff are incredibly knowledgeable, helpful, and supportive. The receptionists call us to book follow up appointments. They advise how us on how to position care for optimal insurance coverage without us having ask any questions. Not once have the doctors made us feel rushed or unimportant. Our doctor offered us his cell phone number and e-mail address. In thirty something years of life, I have never had a doctor give me his/her cell number or e-mail address.  Am I dreaming? Is this really 2014? Doctors do this? Boston Children's Hospital is best practices in motion and we are incredibly grateful.

The next step is for us to attend the Celiac nutrition class offered monthly by the Growth and Nutrition unit. It is here that we will learn about all of the intricacies of Celiac and a gluten-free diet. In the meantime, we have been making it work and it has not been half bad. Well, last night's gluten-free pizza take out was half bad. Otherwise, it has been going well.

Voila! It's a cookie and I made it without using gluten!

Success. My very first gluten-free baking experiment. No blending. No boxes. And, not a lot of chemistry. This is how last night's baking experiment began.

Enlarged to show decadence.

Thanks for the recipe. Yummy Mummy Kitchen. If you're interested, here's the recipe from Yummy Mummy Kitchen.

Didn't realize I need a BS in Chemistry to make gluten-free cookies.

Blending is apparently the “thing” in gluten-free baking. There exists an array of gluten-free flours that are best when blended together. Not all flours work well with one another, while others are the perfect complement to one another. There is arrowroot flour, almond flour, quinoa flour, sorghum flour, brown rice flour, and a bunch more. Who knew? Sometimes, I wish I did not know.

I thought that I would be all set with my 5lb impulse buy of almond flour. After purchasing this baby, I had visions of myself baking pizza dough, making bread, and perfecting my chocolate chip cookies for my son’s preschool class. Two weeks later, the bag remains unopened in my pantry.  

It is not that I don’t want to bake. It is that every time I get ready to try a gluten-free baked good recipe, I learn of one more obscure gluten-free ingredient that the recipes requires in order to be edible, like xanthum gum. 

What the hell is xanthum gum? It sounds intimidatingly scientific. I feel uncomfortable even using the word. I don’t know enough about chemistry to use xanthum gum in a sentence. Well, I am starting to. One needs xantham gum or a tapioca paste in order to help bind ingredients in order to optimize GF baking.

And, the almond flour? Well, apparently one is advised to blend almond flour with coconut flour. Why? I don’t really know. It just appears to be what people do and what people recommend.There are a myriad of ingredients – of which I am completely unfamiliar – required to bake something gluten-free from scratch, and it is a little much - for me any way. 

I love to cook, but cooking is forgiving. It is less of a science and more of an art. This how I approach cooking anyway. I can mix and match. I can improvise. I can make a meal out of 5 ingredients.  This does not appear to be an option for gluten-free baking.  Not to mention, gluten-free grocery items are also super expensive. 

I still have not baked anything from scratch because I still don’t have the basic "toolkit" of GF ingredients, which includes sorghum flour, coconut flour, and xanthum gum and some sort of yeast I have never heard of. It is actually sort of frustrating. 

I have used a variety of mixes to make GF brownies, muffins, and such. The results have been mixed. The baked goods came out “OK”, not great, but not terrible. The only thing that actually came out really well was the mixed berry muffins I made using the King Arthur Muffin Mix.

I would really like to bake something - from scratch - tonight. It is a “school night” though, so I am not sure I will have a whole lot of extra time or patience; and I certainly don’t have time to hit Whole Foods for the third time in three days.  

I’ll see what I can whip up. I was never really good at science, but I can attempt to create something out of nothing, which will be a success in and of itself.

Cheers.

What am I going to do with all of this almond flour?

In acknowledgement of Celiac Awareness Month and in support of my three-year old son who was recently diagnosed, I decided to take a pledge of going gluten-free for the month.  
  

I have been impressed by the wide-array of support which has contributed to making this journey fairly easy. Gluten-free options avail at groceries stores and at restaurants. For the most part, servers have been knowledgeable and helpful – no one has made me feel like a high-maintenance, trend-following customer when I ask about gluten-free options.

I recently bought a 5lbs bag of almond flour and I have no idea what do with it.  I keep spending money on gluten-free groceries because I don’t know what else to do. Somehow, I think that buying all of this shit is going to help heal him, help soothe him, to help soothe me, and provide me penance for not catching “it” sooner.

The specialists explained that we needed to re-introduce gluten into my son’s diet before the endoscopy and biopsies.  My husband and I have had a hard time doing this, especially since we have seen a noticeable and positive difference in our son’s health since he has gone gluten-free.   

We decided that once the appointment was a week away, we would re-introduce the gluten and give him on gluten filled item each day.  The surgery was today.  According to the doctor who performed the procedures, the cillia growth was not conclusive. She decided to conduct seven biopsies to help enhance the diagnosis. I am now fearful that we did not give him enough gluten and we will have to go through this again. The saga continues and we will know more in about a week. In the meantime, we are back to leading as close to a gluten-free lifestyle as possible.

I have been 100% gluten-free since May 1, that is, until this past weekend. I gave myself an “out” for three reasons – 1) it was my birthday/mother’s day 2) I ran my first 5K 3) my son has been eating some gluten this week in advance of his procedure.

 My first non-gluten free items were not mind blowing in any way. It was an entirely impulsive choice to even go off the diet. It was Mother’s Day (Sunday) and I was running my first road race. I have never done anything like this before and did not realize how much of a big to-do it would be. Since the race was for charity, there were tons of donations made by local restaurants. I ate about 1/8 of scone before the race and a half of hot dog after the race.  I split the hot dog with my son. To him it was just another hot dog, yet to me it was an example of me giving in, giving up, and sacrificing my integrity.  For what? Free food? Instead of feeling satiated by the gluten bites, I felt shame and guilt. 

I don’t have celiac disease. My gluten-free crusade is optional.  It is for a month. I did not even last two full weeks before having a lapse. Celiacs don’t have a choice. My son does not have a choice.