TGIF

It has been an insane couple of weeks. Work is crazy, the pressure is on to finish my thesis for grad school, and my personal life and commitments - while lots of fun - are hectic as the new year is getting started. The nice thing is that as of today, I think things are slowing down enough to let me breathe some. It's a cold, rainy friday, and I was able to work from home today and take it easy. I haven't gotten out of my sweatpants, and I was able to squeeze in a nap to compensate for last night's fitful sleep. It's been a nice day.

One of the best things about working from home is the pace. I don't have to rush to get out of bed in the morning because I only have to walk a few steps to my computer. I can make a pot of coffee and enjoy it in my house, rather than at a desk with glaring fluorescent lighting. Same with my lunch. And an added bonus: Since The Hubby works from home every day, I get to see him, too.

Lunch today was another one of those "what-am-I-going-to-eat-since-I-haven't-gone-grocery-shopping" kind of meals. The end result wasn't terribly pretty, but it was tasty. I made a caesar salad out of romaine, caesar dressing (duh), parmesan cheese, sunflower seeds, chickpeas, a can of tuna, half an avocado that I had leftover from another day's lunch, and some salt and pepper.



Like I said, not terribly pretty (or pretty at all for that matter), but it tasted awesome. Rich, salty, crunchy, chewy, creamy, crisp...and packed full of protein and other good for me things. I must say, I was pretty impressed with what I threw together. Of course now I have to remember to replace the can of chickpeas for future emergencies. We'll see how that goes.

Tonight we're headed to a birthday dinner for one of our new friends. Luckily, the birthday boy chose mexican food (not surprising considering the majority of the population loves it here and we have lots of yummy choices), which makes my dining experience much easier. We're really looking forward to it.

Happy Friday!
Kelly

You would think...

...that after 2 years of maintaining a gluten free diet that I would learn not to assume.

I have gotten better about it, but every so often I catch myself forgetting to read labels before I buy something at the grocery store or assuming that a certain food doesn't contain gluten. I get comfortable and forget that I have to be careful.

Case in point - pie. My department at work does birthday pie instead of birthday cake, which I originally thought was awesome, considering I assumed I could just eat the filling of the pie, avoid the crust, and be fine. Which has worked in the past with cheesecake and other delicious deserts contained by a shell of gluten. (See - this is where my gluten line is fuzzy where others' are very black and white. Please don't hate me or judge me because I still eat pie out of a gluten-y shell and consider that okay for the most part.) Anyway, yesterday was birthday pie day for one of my beloved coworkers, complete with both chocolate cream pie and coconut cream pie to choose from. YUM! Being one to always find an excuse for eating something bad for me, I opted for the choice that was clearly the healthy option - coconut (hello, it's a fruit!) - and had my way with the absolutely to-die-for filling and perfect whipped cream topping. I even had a second piece today from the leftovers. Then it dawned on me that I ought to find out if the filling has gluten in it - and after lots of google searching and frustration, found out that I basically have a 50/50 chance of one of the ingredients being wheat flour...or cornstarch. Fingers crossed for cornstarch. I have a call into the bakery (who of course thing I'm nuts) and will hopefully find out tomorrow.

Ugh. I hate that I do this sometimes. I feel like there is still so much to learn! It's really hard to completely change your lifestyle after 25 years of living it one way. Maybe by the time I'm 50 I'll have all this figured out. At least it doesn't make me super sick - although that doesn't mean it's not doing damage or causing me a sweet rash on my elbows (more on that later).

Hope your luck is better than mine today!
Kelly

Amateur! Oh and I cooked...

So far, I'm loving this blog. Problem is, I'm a newbie. Amateur. Wannabe. I think of these great posts and then I forget to take pictures of what I'm posting about or even forget to post at all. There's a chance I should have thought about how horrible my memory is before attempting to document anything. :)

Anyway, last night I cooked for the first time in...well, I honestly have no idea when the last time I cooked was. The Hubby and I have been so busy (and on different nights, no less) that it just hasn't been worth it. So, last night I made pork tenderloin, white rice, and caesar salad. Sounds boring, but I jazzed it up. I coated the pork tenderloin (a Hormel tenderloin, to be specific - and it said "gluten free" right on the package!) in an organic dijon mustard that I had picked up a while back for another recipe - really globbed it on - with some salt and pepper, then baked it for about 40 minutes and let it rest for 5. It turned out perfect and had a really good, tangy flavor. The Hubby won't eat brown rice - as much as I try to convince him to - so he cooked up a batch of white rice in our rice cooker, which is my new favorite appliance. Easy! The caesar was just romaine lettuce, parmesan cheese, sunflower seeds, and a few chopped raw walnuts thrown in for a good crunch, tossed in Cardini's caesar dressing. Delish! The whole meal took very minimal prep and was super easy to clean up - it was about as friendly as you can get! I wish I had remembered to take a picture of it - I was pretty proud of myself once I plated it up. Oh well.

I promise I'll get better at this.
Kelly