I must say that Karina from Gluten Free Goddess is a genius! Everything I’ve made from her site has been wonderful! I made bread yesterday and it turned out so soft and didn’t taste strange. Ahhhhh, bread. Once I get comfortable with gluten free baking, I will try to figure out my own gluten free flour mix combo and try my hand at some homemade recipes. I did try that with brownies but quickly learned buckwheat is a terrible sub all by itself. The brownies were completely nonabsorbent! I stuck them in a bowl of milk to soften them up and they refused to take any of it in!

So hopefully soon some new blogs will begin to appear. This season is always so busy. I am trying to get the Christmas cards out and I didn’t realize how time consuming they are!

Social Workout

I joined a few weeks before December started and was excited to do the challenge. So far I hover around number 5 on the leader board. It’s a great way to encourage yourself, give it a try!

I have totally sucked at keeping up with this blog. I think mostly because I’ve been trying to figure out what’s going on with my diet and I feel scattered brained because of it.

I’ve gone a few different directions with the Candida Diet. I began allowing sugar in a few weeks ago mostly to test things out. I also allowed gluten. Things actually seemed fine with the sugar but once I started having lots of things with gluten in them, my sinuses began threatening an infection. I hurt for days and lessened my sugar thinking that was the problem. Afterall, why would it be the gluten, my stomach wasn’t hurting. But then I came across some posts online where people said their sinus infections were in fact caused by gluten. I figured I would go ahead and see what happens if I took gluten away again and kept a modest amount of sugar. Well, within 2 days my sinuses cleared up and my headaches and brain fog went away again. Seems to me I definitely have a gluten intolerance that just manifests a bit differently. I’m not excited about this but I’ve had some time to get used to the lifestyle so I don’t feel overwhelmed by it right now. It’s a good thing I like rice!

Stay tuned!

Since I know there will lots of yummy goodness tonight and to help myself avoid temptation, I borrowed a recipe from Karina from Gluten Free Goddess and tweaked it a little. Instead of coffee in the cupcakes and the icing, I just used more chocolate Now I DO have pictures for that! These are gluten free, sugar free (I used Stevia) cupcakes, icing included. I think I will mess with the recipe a bit, these seemed a little too heavy and I’d like to lighten them up a bit. I know I’ll have cupcake cravings in the future!

I hope this is easy to read, let me know if you have problems.

Tomorrow the hubby gets paid and that means I need to come up with a food list for the next 2.5 weeks and buy it ALL tomorrow. Budget? $150 for three people.

When we lived in Virginia I started buying food every two weeks and discovered I saved a TON of money. Way more than if I did it every week. I also rarely used my entire budget, it was much more like 70 bucks for 2 weeks – which is pretty amazing Part of the low dollar amount could be because I hate buying junk food. I feel like its a huge waste of money. Don’t get me wrong, I love junk food! But I usually stare at the potential product, weighing the yummy taste against its cost and end up not getting it or figuring I can make way more for less at home.

That’s the other thing – home cooking saves you a ton of money and is so much healthier for you – even if what you are making is full of sugar and cheese!…Much healthier than the processed store stuff. I don’t want to make it sound like I never buy stuff at the store, I do. I just try not too.

Also, I am still working with this candida diet and finding what works best for me. I’ll be having tests soon to determine if gluten, soy, casein, dairy (which I already know) or anything else is a problem for me. My stomach really has never felt better. My head feels clearer. I can wake up without headaches. It’s great and completely worth not eating donuts – almost. After I come up with the next couple weeks food plan, I will be sure to share it here with any original recipes. I’ve been forced to get creative so there’s a lot more of me in these recipes than usual.

I don’t wake up with headaches anymore. Often I can breathe out of BOTH nostrils. My stomach doesn’t torment me with horrible bloating as much. But perhaps the biggest surprise of all is my disappearing back pain.

Just over 4 years ago I fell down the stairs while holding my little boy. Soon after that I had back pain so intense no position would relieve the pain. I finally went to a chiropractor with him, and then 4 after him, claiming he would make me all better. Well none of them ever did. I always got to this plateau where I was in pain, stiff, sometimes worse days than others but at least I could lay in bed without hurting – sometimes.

So for the last 4 years I have been in pain and tried everything I could think of to relieve it. I tried pain relievers, then stronger pain relievers. I tried ice packs, warm baths, yoga (which helped the best out of everything), massages, capsaicin and even cobra venom to relieve the pain. NONE of them worked.

Now suddenly with my new diet I am waking up minimally sore and most noticeably, not stiff. This is huge. This is major incentive to keep going with the diet and forget about processed foods.