TechChix Thinks Aloud

Recently I’ve been making some terrific multigrain GF bread and enjoying sandwiches of all variety. Well I decided to incorporate green olives from the salad bar at my store. Now, I must allow that I seem to usually be alright with a food item as its advertised. If there are no glutenous ingredients listed, I am usually fine.

Not so with olives. I have now tried several brands and come to the conclusion that in some way gluten is involved in these precious gems of lovely deliciousness. (sadly)

My readers - I would like some feedback from everyone if you have any knowledge or experience with gluten-free olives. Are there such creatures?

November 4th, 2007 | Category: | |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

The ever-joyful GFG Karina evidently hurt herself recently - which is too bad and I hope it doesn’t keep a her down for long. On a side note, I love the post linked here because I utterly agree with her about the “love” comments.

And yes, love ain’t neat and orderly… it’s messy. But loving the one you’re in the foxhole with means committing your life to someone in a way that does not mean you are tied down - it means you are free to be who you are without judgement from at least one other person in this world. Love means accepting the good and the bad, and the times when one spouse needs more from the other.

I can totally relate to this situation, Karina. In my case it was not breaking my hip, it was severely injuring my back and having 2 bulging discs. Fun, fun, fun.

Before hubby and I got hitched, I was bending over the tub one morning in my own apartment when something just clicked in my back and BAM - excruciating pain like you would NOT believe. I hobble to my bed and cry outrageously until my roommate got back from walking her dog. She calls 9-1-1 and the long story short is that for 6 weeks I could do NOTHING for myself. Between my hubby (who was my fiancé at the time) and my roommate, they had to get me dressed, help me go to the bathroom (because I couldn’t even pull my own pants down, let alone sit by myself), help me shower, put me carefully on the couch each morning with plenty of fluids and food within arm’s reach.

The experience was…. humiliating. It was utterly humbling. And I will never again find disgust in how dependent elderly people are upon their caregivers. It is the kind of situation in which you try to retain some shred of dignity. Ultimately, it brought my love and I closer together. When you go thru crap together, you learn a lot about each other. Like whether someone can “stick” in the hard times. And we eloped 2 months later because that situation taught us how short life is and how precious our time together truly is…

CHEERS, Karina! My prayers are with you during this time and I hope your recovery is speedy. And good job for Steve - a nice pat on the butt while you feel like crap is the perfect thing to bring a smile to your face….

October 23rd, 2007 | Category: | |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

As my mother was recently reminded that she is Gluten-intolerant (and she has been ignoring it a bit), I recently got a chance to show her my kitchen staples and some “Do’s and Dont’s” of a gluten-intolerant kitchen. This was actually fun, because it reminded me how vigilant we need to be about what is going into our bodies. Manufacturers can (and do) change their formulas. Always, always, always - read the labels. My philosophy? When in doubt - DON’T eat it!

Here are some tips I gave her that has saved me many times.

1. Keep GF snacks readily on hand. This does not mean buying processed goods at some super specialty market and letting it sit in your cabinets for eons until it becomes some crumbly hard mess. What I do is make a batch of hummus (easy to make GF and I’ll be posting my favorites recipe and variations soon), store it in a plastic container with a tight lid. So if I come home hungry and there is nothing to make, I snack on that while I am fixing my dinner. (snack, not eat the whole container in one sitting no matter how good it is…)

2. Keep some tried and true recipes handy on your counter. I have several recipes in clear plastic sleeves (the kind that you put in a 3-ring binder) on my counter. They sit off to the side and merely serve to remind me of an ingredient or two if I forget during preparation. Examples of freqeuntly used GF recipes: guacamole, hummus, spicy chicken tacos or burritos (recipe coming soon), my salad inspiration page, and spring rolls with peanut sauce (these require assembly but are SO worth it).

3. Stock items you know you like. For me? It’s Lara Bars and the Green Apple Glutino Bars - YUM. Also, included is rice cakes because they are filling and taste good when you just dab a bit of peanut butter on them.

4. Try New Foods AND Don’t Stock Weird Ingredients. Do not spend all your time trying to duplicate those muffins, that bread you love or other similarly glutenous items that you cannot eat any more. My opinion? It’s a waste of time. See your gluten-intolerance as an opportunity to embrace new things! Try that vegetable at the store that you’ve never heard of and create NEW tastes for you to enjoy. I find that trying to duplicate a taste I cannot have anymore just makes me crave it further. By the way, stocking weird flours and ingredients to make those flavors is expensive!

5. Control the situation and Don’t Apologize. Whether travelling out of town, to a friends house for dinner, or dining in a public restaurant… DO NOT apologize for your condition. It is beyond your control and it’s not as if you CHOSE to have this one. LOVE yourself a little more, babe. Bottom line, you are blessed with an incredible appreciation for the savory flavors available outside of bread, muffins, bagels, and pizza dough. Most American appetites lean so heavily on breads and grains, they have forgotten what a good pomegranate tastes like… even if its a lot of work!

Those are my tips for you all - although number 5 is a “life” tip really. Hope this helps other people out there. And if you’re only recently diagnosed as a celiac, don’t worry… it gets easier.

October 21st, 2007 | Category: | |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

I receive inspirational emails frequently from several services and this one in particular touched me.

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

“Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh. May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
- Galatians 6:12-14 (NIV)

Quotation:
“Thus was the Cross of Christ, in St. Paul’s day, the glory of Christians; not as it signified their not being ashamed to own a master that was crucified, but as it signified their glorying in a religion which was nothing else but a doctrine of the Cross that called them to the same suffering spirit, the same sacrifice of themselves, the same renunciation of the world, the same humility and meekness, the same patient bearing of injuries, reproaches and contempts, and the same dying to all the greatness, honors, and happiness of this world, which Christ showed on the Cross.”
… William Law (1686-1761), A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life [1728]

October 19th, 2007 | Category: | |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

Personally, I am going to continue posting any GF/soy-free recipes on here but the focus of this blog is going to change. I will be posting personal thoughts and other random things as well.

Visit my Raw Food blog here - http://rawfoodlove.blogspot.com/ - where you can continue to read about my journey into becoming a 90-100% raw foodist. As an intriguing tease for you, I have lost 26 pounds so far eating about 70-80% raw and I feel terrific. You might want to consider researching this lifestyle for yourself. I cannot say enough good things about it.

On a side note, I am the type of person who is continually trying to improve myself on all fronts… mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, professional… and one of the fave blogs in my RSSreader is Pick The Brain. I highly recommend this blog as it is all about self-improvement.

For example - Has anyone ever tried to change a bad habit? This article provides a step-by-step process and encouraging ways to help you create new and positive habits… Cultivating Good Habits

October 16th, 2007 | Category: | |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

I am in the mode of simplifying my life. As such I will no longer be updating this blog. Instead - check out www.mcdougalfamily.com for any and all updates.

You see - I used to keep separate blogs for myself personally, my thoughts and experiments with food (both raw and cooked), and our family. But…. I have decided that since I never plan to make any commercial venture from my blogs, that I am consolidating all into one place.

Easier on me and easier on you, readers. because now you can just click on a category and get exactly what you want. no more jumping from place to place.

October 2nd, 2007 | Category: | |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you all a newsletter I receive from BLI (Better Life Institute). On staff there is Dr. Chet, who creates these wonderful email newsletters filled with FACTS and medical studies and all sorts of powerful information. Particularly, my favorites would be the recent series he has been doing on Weight-Loss Myths - such as “walking vs running”, “maintaining muscle”, and other subjects.

This day’s newsletter caught my eye because I have been seeing more recipes - both Gluten-free and raw - incorporating coconut oil and other byproducts. Just to shed more light on the topic… More »

August 29th, 2007 | Category: | |  Email This Post | Comments (2)

It came to my attention recently - thanks to Karina, my favorite GF goddess - that there is at least one blogger out there who is posting other blog recipes without attributing credit properly. Even worse, this blogger makes these recipes seem like their own - even pasting verbiage and pictures directly from other foodie blog sites.

SO. Thanks to the great collective wisdom I bring you (drum roll, please) …. TA-DA! My new copyright notice - courtesy of Creative Commons. (do you appreciate the irony in that statement?)

Here is the ENGLISH version in plain language. And here is the legal code for those who care to read it. ENJOY!

August 28th, 2007 | Category: | |  Email This Post | Comments (2)

I have been a bit absent lately as my hubby and I embark on a new journey in our lives….. Raw food. Sounds weird, right? Well, you can view my journey with this process and change in lifestyle on the blog I setup for it. Having said that, I miss the process of cooking. REALLY miss it.

Cooking is so creative. It brings me such joy to bring a dish to fruition from my imagination to the plate. The whole process - the trials, mistakes, and finally making a dish the perfection of your own tastebuds. That is what I call fun. So although I FEEL better eating raw food (about 80% raw now), and I feel a lot less sluggish.

Actually, I feel more rested in general and a lot of the random aches and pains are gone. It always sounds crazy if you try to describe to people how you feel BAD all the time. Don’t get me wrong, a bunch of that was totally attributed to gluten and once I cut that out of my diet I did feel a tremendous difference. But still there were times when I could just tell things were not right with my body. Excercising has helped, although I am infrequent in the pattern - so that will be something to tackle in my life - regularity with working out.

I will post more soon as I am starting to develop some interested GF/Raw recipes.

August 28th, 2007 | Category: | |  Email This Post | Comments (2)