When I moved from one side of town to the other I had to look for places to eat out again. I don’t know about you but I’m all about eating out when my kitchen is still packed in boxes! I managed to build quite a list of really good, safe places to eat.

Chains:

Red Robin-They have a gluten free listing that a manager will be happy to print out for you if you need it. Anyone who is familiar with their diagnosis shouldn’t have too much trouble ordering. They will do gluten free fries.

Five Guys-The best burger place by far if what you really want is an actual burger. They do hamburgers, cheese burgers, and bacon burgers…and the occasional hot dog. They fryers fry french fries in peanut oil and nothing else. I have yet to be cross contaminated by simple requesting a bunless burger, but they do have a ‘gluten free’ protocol and will change gloves and such if you make them aware of your needs.

Extreme Pizza- Only the location on North Academy. I did a full blog article about them a while back. They have a full gluten free handling protocol, dedicated gluten free utensils, a gluten free prep area. The whole 9 yards. They even had a medical expert come in and instruct them on how to keep us safe. Not only that, but their gluten free crust is quite good!

BJs- Their gluten free pizza is quite good. Their salads are really good too. On my first visit I spoke with both a manager and one of the chef’s. After than I became quite a regular. They have a full listing of allergens on all their foods and I never had any trouble with special requests.

Biaggis-Upscale Italian. They actually offer gluten free pasta, which I never tried. They will make a gluten free ‘foccacia’, which I think is their pizza dough with a little seasoning on it, but delicious and something to snack on while everyone else devours bread in large quantities. Their gluten free pizza was my favorite in town. Many of their other dishes were easily converted to gluten free and they have an actual gluten free menu, which often means the kitchen has specific training. They have a very evil and decadent flourless chocolate cake for dessert that even my not-gluten free husband really enjoyed. Highly recommended.

PF Changs-Another large chain that takes their gluten free seriously. They have a gluten free section right on their regular menu and even offer 3 dessert selections at last count.

Ted’s Montana Grill- Your basic steak place but they have an actual gluten free menu so you can avoid hidden allergens.

Independents-

Bird Dog Barbecue-My favorite barbecue place in the springs. Everything except what goes in the fryer is gluten free. Gossip with one of the managers while waiting on my order one day suggests that one of the owners has children with food allergies, but that’s just rumor. Ask them for a gluten free prep and they’ll use a paperplate on the scale, change their gloves, pull out a fresh knife and a clean cutting board. All the sauces are gluten free. I highly recommend the wasabiQ sauce!

SilverPond-A quiet family owned Chinese place. Their gluten free menu avoids anything breaded and mostly goes gluten free by leaving out the soy sauce, but the flavors are still excellent and they are careful. Good food.

There are probably many others, but these were my favorites.

We moved out of the house I really really loved and put it up for sale.

We downsized our possessions by about 50%.

We got completely moved in to a small ‘temporary’ home. But by temporary, I thought I meant a year.

I went to a great business conference and made some brilliant connections.

Mike got his dream job.

My grandfather died, not unexpected but still very sad.

My cat was diagnosed with kidney disease.

We moved to DC.

That’s a very, very busy summer.

Now its November. Mike still adores his job. It really has been the dream job even though  this weeks project has him staying late every night. I’m moved into my new home (mostly) and I really like it very much. Its a good layout and the space suits us. My cat is responding well to her medication and is quite healthy.

And I’m starting to make local friends.

Per my last post in March, I did take my cortisol by the bucketload during all the stress. I also got my T3 prescription. But with all the other insanity going on any health benefits have been indeterminate. I’ll start focusing on my health again come January. Right now I’m giving myself permission to just relax and settle in.

I can’t decide if I should continue this blog or start another one now that I’m not based in Colorado anymore. Opinions?

I’ve been on cortisol supplements for about a month. I’ve noticed all kinds of improvements but today I’m very excited about just one.

I have more energy.

For about 4 years I was a regular at the gym. Never less than twice per week, 4 days was the norm. I’m not an athlete by any means, but I enjoyed what I could do and regular progress towards doing better. It felt good to do things and feel strong and healthy.

Then it got easier to skip days. And then it got easier to skip weeks. To take breaks. Until finally I just wasn’t going at all because it was so exhausting. It got to the point where I could either make a trip to the gym, or get in a productive work day, but not both.

I felt terrible. Like a lazy slob. Like I’d given up.

I’m glad now that I did.

I’m not sure how we get so conditioned to always believe the worst of our selves. I’m not lazy. I don’t have a particular problem with procrastination (not that I’m not happy to ignore housework or filing for a while, I’m human after all). Why did I believe that it was a problem of motivation when that isn’t really my personality?

Now I know that a lot of other issues like food sensitivity and too much extreme dieting did a number on my poor adrenal glands and wore them out. The car just won’t run if there’s no gas in it. No amount of will power will make it. So pushing made things worse instead of better.

I’m just glad I’ve found a way to make things better. The gym on Friday was good. Saturday when I was sore from it a little less so, but by Monday I was ready to go back and have another good workout. And I did. And it felt good. Wednesday will feel better.

If just cortisol supplementation feels this good, I can’t wait to see what happens when I get my hands on some T3

I recently posted some support for Planned Parenthood on my Facebook page. A friend who happens to be a conservative male sent me some opposing opinions and asked what I thought. I had a great deal to say.

I’m really appalled by what is going on and how the facts are being spun, so I’ve decided to go ahead and share my real opinion. Here’s most of what I sent my friend:

 
I did definitely look at the links you sent, and I do most definitely refute them. Those articles are all about propaganda and spinning the facts to suit a particular agenda rather than presenting facts for consideration. What passes for news these days.

If your operating budget is 1,000,000,000, then 83,000,000 left over is a sign of aggressive fiscal responsibility, not ‘profit’. If you cut off a few zeros I think you might agree that if your budget was 1000 and you had 83 left at the end of the month, you’d consider that responsible spending. It isn’t profit either, it would be ‘profit’ if it were then redistributed to the people who work for the organization or shareholders, but instead it represents a savings cushion for reinvestment this year. Because you know, a lot of republicans got elected last year and they would rather mess with social issues than deal with multiple war zones, responsible health care, and a seriously messed up economy.

Have you ever been to a Planned Parenthood? Probably not, since you’ve never been a teenage girl with unavailable parents, or a young woman who couldn’t afford any other kind of health care. I’ve been both. I have never had an abortion, because Planned Parenthood was there and easily accessible *and affordable* when I needed to make choices, so I made better ones instead of worse ones.

Sure, maybe abstinence would have been the best solution before I was married, but abstinence only education hasn’t worked as a strategy since the beginning of time, so I don’t feel badly that it didn’t work for me either.

I’ve known 2 women (and only 2) who used PP for an abortion. One because of birth control failure and one because of a date rape. Both of them had to go to another state, because contrary to the negative propaganda, not all branches even conduct abortions, must less encourage them. Because its too dangerous. Clinics that perform abortions get bombed. Because the right to possibly save the life of an unborn, not yet viable child is more important the the right to life of adults making hard choices, and innocent young women who just want access to information and health care. Who want to avoid STDs and getting pregnant in the first place.

If I had my way, everyone who pickets and lobbies aggressively for an end to abortion in this country should be required to adopt an unwanted child. But no, they want to end an option without providing any better solutions and definitely without dirtying their hands or inconveniencing their comfortable lives. I grew up in the south, and the number of aggressively pro-Life parents who sent their daughters to private clinics to have ‘accidents’ taken care of quietly is depressing, if unverifiable. You can’t stop hormones with platitudes and if kids had any sense they wouldn’t need parents.

I feel very, very strongly in my body, my choice. My choice to have sex, my choice to decide what to do about any possible consequences. The only *man* who should be allowed any opinion whatsoever in a woman’s choice on how to handle a pregnancy is the man who helped create that child in the first place. Certainly not a bunch of old guys who are desperately out of touch with the pressures placed on teens in our society who are only out for the political capital.

I also feel very, very strongly that federal regulation and prohibition of abortion violates the separation of church and state. Freedom of religion requires freedom *from* religion.

I realize that there are some concerns that my opinions don’t address. That’s the nature of opinions. But that’s what I think. If anyone wants to nitpick something I didn’t address, you’re entirely welcome to do so, but I probably won’t participate.

That said, there have been 3 deaths on my peripheral this month, and its made me think about a lot of things.

Not very long ago, a man decided that instead of going to court for sentencing, he’d rather publicly jump to his death off the top of a down town building. I wasn’t there, but I easily could have been, its an intersection with several businesses I frequent. That made me ask a lot of questions. Didn’t this man have a family who would miss him? Or maybe stand by him while he went to jail? Why did he get all the way to the court building and run? I couldn’t really see myself in his place, so I guess I’ll never understand his choices, but it made me think. And feel badly for those people who happened to be on hand to witness it. That must have been really traumatic.

And then there was my friend who posted that after 19 years, his senior cat was to sick to struggle any more, so was helped to pass on. Its sad to lose a pet. I’ve been there and done that. What affected me here, aside from my grief for my friend, is the fact that I remembered that cat from the end of our college days. He was a good cat. His passing means that my beloved Tesh is the senior cat in my circle now, and that is pretty upsetting. She’s happy and pretty spry for her age and quite healthy, but at 18, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

Just this weekend someone I didn’t know well but was quite close to many people who are very important to me dropped dead completely unexpectedly. She was having some chest pains and went to check herself into a hospital in the morning. I’ve heard that by then she was in the 7th hour of her heart attack and there was nothing they could do to help. She’d fallen the day before, so assumed that the arm pains she’d been having were caused by that. She would have been 50 in August, which is precisely the age of my husband.

These 3 incidents have inspired much thinking, and I’ve come to 2 conclusions.

1. I don’t have any real problems. Sure, there some concerns, some things I’d rather were different, but in the grand scheme of things, nothing that is an actual serious problem. Its very easy to get caught up in challenges and see them as problems. For a while, I know I’ll have them in their proper perspective.

2. Make the best of everything you have and enjoy it to the fullest. Make choices every day to do your best to enjoy what comes along, appreciate what you have, and love the people you’re with. Something I’ve tried to do anyway, but this was quite a reinforcing lesson.

This week has been exceptionally cold, and it has reminded me to appreciate a modern miracle that I think we mostly overlook.

Heat.

Yesterday as I was on my way to bed my husband made note  that there was an 80 degree difference between the internal and external temperatures here at the house.

80 degrees. That’s just astounding.

I’m a big history buff. I know a lot about historical clothing and life styles. Let me tell you that for most of human history, and still in a great many places now, that is unimaginable. That we can sit in our homes in any room and work dressed in a relatively conservative number of layers. My skirt, blouse, and sweater are pretty comfortable indoors. I can sit relatively still and type and my fingers are a nice healthy warm temperature.

Ever been to a castle? They were never toasty warm. A house heated solely by a fire place? Nope. It was all about layers and layers and eating enough to sustain your shivering and trying to stay warm enough to last until spring.

For all the modern problems we may have socially, and my regular rants about the quality of our food supply, I am ever so grateful to be living here and now, warm and safe.

Also I’m big on the regular bathing.

Had my second appointment today. The first thing the nurse, S, did was get me a copy of my lab results for my own records. How often does that happen at the average doctors visit? Then she gave me a copy of a diagram from her own personal files on the endocrine function process so I could see a flow chart of how it works and where my particular system is broken.

Not that my adrenals are broken, they’re just severely over worked and under appreciated.

At my first visit I cam home with a few supplements. One I can’t take at all. One threw me into a catastrophic detox which put such a strain on my system that I got well and truly sick for the first time in 4 years. A full blown miserable cold plus a 2 week stint of laryngitis that left me completely voiceless for several days. Nothing but notes and had signals, even with Mike.

I’m now on the one supplement that didn’t cause a problem, and the one that put me in detox but at 1/3 the dose originally prescribed. Up from 1/6, which is where I started once I was mostly healthy again.

Next up is supporting my pathetic and sad adrenals with Isocort as soon as it comes in, plus a bunch of stuff to take at night so I get better rest. I believe I’ll be starting that supplement at the lowest possible level for a few days to avoid and complications like the last time.

I’m still impressed with Dr. Klein’s knowledge and manner. A lot more sharing and paying attention than we’re trained to expect of the modern medical system.

We don’t sufficiently appreciate our medical system though. It definitely has its problems, but at least we’re able to continue to pursue treatment in any fashion we’re willing and able to pay for for as long as we’re willing and able to pay. If I wanted, I have the legal right to order my own meds and treat myself, as long as they aren’t controlled substances like narcotics. I have a good friend in another country who doesn’t have that right. She has a similar health issue to mine, but her doctors are constrained by their system to do things that are frankly harming her, and she doesn’t have the option do do anything about it. That really upsets me.

Despite the panic attack that I always have when visiting a new physician, I was very hopeful about this, and my hopes have been vindicated.

He rocks!

Before you even go in to your first visit, you have to fill out a 10 page form. I think this is excellent because so many things that can be subtly wrong add up to something bigger and less obvious. Also, in several places it invites you to attach another sheet or use the back if something requires more explanation, so my 2 page ‘story so far’ addendum was welcome instead of an annoyance.

If you’re all-Western-medicine-all-the-time, he’s probably not the doctor for you. He talked about how emotions effect your body environment, how different kinds of people are affected differently, and some other ‘fluffy’ stuff like that. I think its exactly right. Every year research shows that the body and mind are more completely intertwined than they thought the year before. Every year we learn to measure something important that was previously thought to not matter.

I strongly believe that any time holistic medicine has a theory and western medicine says ‘there’s no proof of that’, its just because we don’t have the right ruler to measure it yet, not that it can’t be measured.

After a nice half hour of talking about the story so far, philosophy of medicine, billing, and other things, I left with

2 homeopathic remedies out of Germany, where they’re a little more open minded

1 Chinese herbal preparation, which has probably been in use for about 1000 years

1 test kit for an allopathic Adrenal test, to get some hard numbers before we think about bringing in some allopathic hormonal meds.

I’m tremendously encouraged and looking forward to building a professional relationship and making huge improvements in my health.

Yay!

1c softened butter

3/4 c granulated sugar

4 eggs

1T vanilla

2 tsp nutmeg (I cut back a little when its grated fresh)

1/4 tsp salt

3 1/2 cups Namaste’ brand biscuit and pancake mix or Perfect Flour Blend

1spt xanthan

Use the usual methods for creaming, then adding flour, add the xanthan in about halfway through the flour. Gluten free doughs come out very sticky, so this will need to be thoroughly chilled before you try to make logs.

The original recipe talked about making long logs and cutting them into smaller pieces, but I just grab about a small walnut sized piece and make individual logs. Let them cool all the way before frosting.

Bake 350 for 14-16 minutes.

Frosting

These cookies are extremely pedestrian until you add the frosting.

1/4 cup butter

3 c confectioners sugar

1tsp vanilla

1tsp rum or almond extract

2T half and half- but its much better if you use actual eggnog if you have it on hand.

1tsp nutmeg if you aren’t going to sprinkle the final cookie as decoration.

I don’t use eggnog or half and half. Coconut milk works fine, but I really prefer to add and extra T of butter for more richness and use much less liquid.

If you have the time and inclination, once they’re frosted, run the tines of a fork down the cookie to make lines, then sprinkle with more nutmeg. They’re very pretty that way, but I’m usually bored by the time I’m done frosting and don’t bother.

This was adapted from a regular recipe. Almost any recipe can be modified to gluten free. Just substitute one of the excellent gluten free flour blends available, and I often suggest adding an extra egg, and or xanthan gum, because gluten is the thing that makes flour hold together properly.

So if you’re using regular flour, just leave out the xanthan and you’re good to go.

As a side note, for warm weather, if you take out the nutmeg and use orange extract in the cookies and then make a tangy frosting using orange juice and lemon juice, this recipe also makes really spectacular orange cookies.

First, to give credit where credit is due, the best article I found when doing my research was this one by GlutenFreeGoddess. Its very useful, but quite long.

One of the points of her article is that there are a number of commercial gluten free blends that work very well as a 1-1 flour substitute. I like Namaste’ brand muffin and pancake blend, or their new product Perfect Flour Blend. I’ve used it for cookies for most of a year now and its predictable and tasty. I just substitute that for regular flour in any of my favorite baking recipes, and I’ve had really good luck using it as a base for gravy.

Pamela’s brand (unfortunately, no relation) bread mix is perfect if you want something with a bready texture. I have a recipe for a coffee cake that I invented that I’ll be making for Christmas morning and this mix (without the yeast) gave a very chewy, satisfying result. I haven’t tried it for just cookies yet but I’ll report back when I do. Pamela’s brand also makes some really lovely commercial cookies. A wide variety in a standard size and a convenient resealable bag of minis, which is what I prefer, it keeps portion control a little easier for me.

I recently found a product by Bella Gluten Free (a Colorado based company). Its become one of my favorite mixes, it doesn’t get at all gritty the way some of the others can. I’ve made a lot of successful cookies with this mix.

Another mix I think very well of is Cherrybrook Kitchen Sugar Cookies. Its a simple box mix that goes together quickly with just vanilla and milk. You can use almost any form of milk, rice, hemp, almond, personally I use coconut milk in tetra packs from So Delicious which I can now get in my regular grocery store. You can sub the vanilla with another flavored extract and get a nice variety. (You can also add in 1/4 tsp Koolaid powder for flavoring, did you know that? But in that case, keep the vanilla.) I would like to warn you that Cherrybrook Kitchen makes a ready-to-use frosting in a can. DON’T! It is perfectly awful. wretched. Even added sugar and orange juice couldn’t save it and it rendered the frosted cookies inedible. They get a fail on that.

Another fail I need to mention is Robs Red Mill. I’ve always been a big fan of their products, but their gluten free baking mix makes use of bean flours. Many people swear by them. I just swear at them. I tried their mix once and threw out the batch. The texture was nice, it was easy to use, but I just don’t like bean flavored chocolate chip cookies. The bean flavor was overpowering to me, and my beloved cookie tester also hated them. All their gluten free baking mixes use the same base. The bean flours do add protein and nutrition, so it might be worth a trial, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I’ve discovered that many of my cookie recipes have been much improved by adding an extra egg in the mix. Just one whole egg. The referenced article mentions that gluten free flours have much less protein, so they aren’t as sticky, so that could be a reason. I’ve also had good luck adding a small amount of xanthan gum. Its a vegetable gum that acts as a binder and a thickener. A very little goes a long way!

If you’re making something that should be soft in the final result, honey adds to the texture. My current favorite are Hermit cookies and I only use honey and molasses, no refined sugar at all. They are regrettably addictive.

The other commercial products I’d really like are Rudy’s gluten free bread, a fairly new product but the best I’ve tried, even better than Udi’s, which I’ve recommended before. Kinnikinnick makes some lovely donuts, if that’s your downfall.

One final note, people talk a lot about how gluten free things ‘just don’t taste the same’. That may be true, but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t tasty. Mike says the toast isn’t quite right, but he eats it happily. The cookies haven’t gotten a single comment past “these came out really good!”

Happy Baking!