Roll Call June 2013

[aklap]

Wow - the year is half over with already... Good grief!

Wisconsinites are waiting for the weather to warm up a bit. It's been a cold & wet spring. I've been doing a lot yard work the past couple of weeks:

Remove 4 arborvitaes in the front of our house and replaced them 2 sets of different types Hydrangeas.
Planted our small garden. I have to finish fencing the other half. We have rabbits that like to frequent "the all you can eat salad bar". :)
I have a Lilac tree that I need to plant today. It's in memory of Peg's dad, who passed away in 2010.

I've been trying to lose about 15 lbs of winter weight. This has been the worst winter for that! Cutting back the carbs, started walking/jogging again now that it's warmer outside.

On the GF front... We got 3 new members in our support group. YAY! I am still prepping for GF 101 class. GIG supplies all the info for it, but I am tweaking it.

It's funny how news travels and how we are reaching people even when we don't know it. I spent an hour on the phone with the wife of our pastor from over 20 years ago. Their daughter's friend has a child that was just dx'ed and knew that I was knowledgable about GF. She wondered if I had any info I could send to her. Now, it's no secret that I'm GF, but we only occasionally run into our prev. pastor and his wife [usually at the grocery store] and my GFness and support group are not usually the topics of conversation.

So, what's going on in your world?

[jcc]

Al, thanks for starting Roll Call!

I've been super busy with coordinating many fundraisers for Jana's theatre group. I enjoy doing it and work with many great people... but it does keep me busy. I am about the only one who doesn't work a real job, so I am taking on the bulk of it. It has been feeling like a full time job!

My 3 day juice fast ended before 3 days. It was a fun little trial. I will have to fill you all in when I have time... including my opinion on juicers vs blenders.

All for now!

[Razzle0]

Still trying to get stabilized on the TPN (food through a vein in my arm) and hydration has been a challenge, but otherwise not much new going on here. One advantage to being housebound is no gluten exposure from grocery stores

I tried replying on the May roll call thread a couple weeks ago, but my post apparently wasn't approved...sigh.

Take care,

-Razzle
Gluten Sensitivity, GF since 2005
Allergies, Lyme, Gastroparesis, etc.

[nick's mom]

we've been doing good here. i'm enjoying my 3 grandbabies, 2 that i watch all week while mom and dad work. i've been feeling better than ever avoiding all grains and dairy, except for some butter. eating very low carb and have more energy (which i really need watching these active little ones all day!), no rosacea and no wheezing. it's been wonderful!

nick's having more heart issues. after just having his 4th open heart last year, he's now having problems with his left arm, pain and weakness, and it looks like his subclavian stent is probably narrowing again. we're waiting to see if the symptoms continue (i hate when they do that) but if they do, they'll be scheduling him for another cath and will probably be ballooning it. unfortunately, when they ballooned it last time, 3 or 4 years ago, it was already cracking and broken in some spots. it was working well enough to just balloon it then but i'm not sure if it will hold up to another stretching. we weren't able to see his regular cardiologist, who is also the one who does the caths and stents, but hopefully i can talk to him soon and see what his thoughts are. we have an appointment with him in july but will call sooner if his arm issues continue or get worse. seems like it's positional so he can avoid the problem sometimes by changing his arm position. apparently certain positions cause the stent to close up more. but for now we wait and see. no pain the past two days so that's good!

oh and my granddaughter, lilly (10 months old), saw the nick's cardiologist after her primary care doctor heard a significant murmur. fortunately, after thorough testing, he found it to be a benign murmur that she would probably just outgrow. so that was wonderful news!

[jcc]

Luanne, I'm sure you were so relieved to learn Lilly didn't have a serious heart problem! Glad to hear you are doing well, and I'm sorry to hear Nick is having continuing problems.

[canoe]

May has just flown by. One of my DIL is quite ill, and have been very busy with that and her.

Luanne glad to hear that your grandbaby is okay. Sorry to hear that Nick is still having problems.

RazzlO, Sorry to read that you have to be on TPN. I am sure that it is a challenge. Hopefully it will help.

Congrats to Al and on the new members too.

We will be having baby snapping turtles sometime. The mother laid her eggs behind the garage on Friday, and then went back to the pond that is way at the end of the lot. Don't know much about them, but we are able to see where the eggs were
buried, neat little mounds.

Marilyn

[mg12061]

Wow is it really June already?? Life is pretty calm right now. Kathleen has been feeling pretty good. She will be done with school on the 10th of this month. We head to the Jersey shore on the 23rd. Kathleen is scheduled for surgery on July 8th, This should resolve her hydronephrosis that is caused by neurogenic bladder. It is an appendicovesicostomy she will be in the hospital for about 5 days.

AL, I just planted my garden over the weekend and I can't wait ot start picking and eating it! I have always wanted a Lilac bush, it's my very favorite flower. Luckily my neighbor ahs 4 huge ones that I pick from and bring into the house. I'm just sorry they don't last very long.

Nick's mom, Kathleen was born with a heart murmer also luckily it actually closed to a safe size and she didn't need surgery. We waited and watched it for 4 years. We were so happy when it finally closed.

JCC, so how did the juice fast go? We still use our nurtribullet several times a day. At least a shake a day for each of us. I also found I could make a pizza sauce for Kathleen. I just throw in a few tomatoes, fresh garlic, spinach, broccoli, and carrotts and just blend it up. I used ot cook it all on the stove (and have to peel the tomatoes)for a couple hours. Now it takes about 15 minutes.
It's great to see this forum so active and it hasn't been taken over by facebook.
Mary Grace

[jcc]

The juice fast ended primarily because by the end of the first day my daughter and I just felt really really lousy. Not hungry... but nauseous and sick. She ate a piece of bread with peanut butter and felt a lot better, so I followed suit...and felt a lot better. I tried all of the juices on the "menu"... there were 5. Most were ok for me... my daughter was disgusted by a few. We continued to make some of the juices until all my groceries for it were used, but we gave up on the juice fast.

I had a 30% off coupon and $20 of Kohl's cash, but when I went to purchase... Kohl's did not have the NutriBullet in stock. While I had been shopping online, I saw the Ninja blender which was a full blender, but also comes with two single cups with separate blade attachments (like the magic bullet). So.. that was in stock and I purchased it instead.

Love the blender for fruit smoothies but were not crazy about it for some of the veggie blends on our "menu" because they came out very thick and sludge like due to all the pulp. I pulled out my old juicer from the basement which is only 250watts... and low and behold... it worked just fine. I had to precut everything into small pieces because it didn't have a large mouth feed, but the thing worked! I guess it was the clean up I never liked in the past, and it also doesn't have a very large capacity... so there is stopping, pouring, cleaning one or two times for each round.

The cleaning wasn't as bad as I remembered, but maybe that is because I now routinely keep a dishpan in my sink for hand washables in addition to my dishwasher. I used a tooth brush to clean the fine grate which was something I remembered being a problem to clean, but using a little brush made it a breeze. I also cleaned immediately rather than let anything set and dry on. So, although it was a bit of a production to do the juicing, we liked the results much better.

We tried a second vegetable juice recipe in the blender and again it was just to thick with pulp, and we ended up pushing it through a strainer and drinking the strained juice.

I know that some vegetable blends would work better than others in the blender, but I was trying to follow this set recipe. One included juicing beets and sweet potatoes along with other veggies... so you can imagine the blender version might be sort of thick.

So... we will use the upgraded blender for making fruit smoothies, and can see how I could easily toss some veggies in the blender... but ones that would be high liquid content or else mixed with other things that were. The big surprise was that my old low watt juicer did a pretty good job so I feel no need to go get a new one. Here are the juice recipes I was following: Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register....

[NancyM]

I am starting a new diet. Well, actually I started a couple of weeks ago. It is along the lines of the ketogenic diet Jimmy Moore has been doing. Basically, I'm lowering my protein to 60g max (trying anyway) while keep non-fiber carbs under 20g.

My FBG has dropped 20-30 points and I'm feeling much more energetic. If I can get into Dr. Sigfried's anti-cancer diet range of ketones and BG then I'll be pretty happy, but that is pretty difficult to get to. We shall see if I can work toward that.

[mg12061]

JCC, I'm glad you've been trying the juices and smoothies. I think the diet of nothing but juice is a little extreme and can see how you may not feel well on it. We use the nutribullet as I said but really they only sugest one nutrishake a day in order to feel better. It's a way for us to get the right amount of fruit and veggies a day.(especially my son who never would eat fruits and veggies). he says he feels more energetic. I guess it's a trial and error kind of thing what tastes good to you and is healthy. We use things like spinach,bananas,berries,kale,apples,pears,blueberr ies, etc... Still trying some different things. Sometimes we add a little yogurt. They're good frozen too. I'll check out the recipes you use thanks...
Mary Grace

[jamietwo]

Thought I'd pop in to say hello. My son and I just got home from a camping trip with friends. I made all our food in advance: gluten-free bread for his pbj and buns for his bean burgers, trail mix, oatmeal pumpkin snacks, salad, baked sweet potatoes, kale and brown rice, apples, and carrot sticks. It was perfect weather for sleeping - sleeping is usually a novelty for me when we're camping, but I actually got some zzzz's this trip! :) I posted recently about recommendations for pans for baking buns. Well, I stumbled across some ceramic ramekins at Walmart that were the perfect size. I bought 3 since our bean burger recipes make 6 burgers, and he always builds a double decker sandwich! Hope everyone has a good month! J

[Purpel1]

Hi everyone, I'm here and enjoying training for a marathon at the end of this month. I'm walking the half marathon, I'm not completely crazy, yet.*ohno

Razzle, I hope you are feeling better soon.

Nick's Mom, sorry to hear Nick isn't doing so well, but I am glad Lilly is all right.

Canoe, hope that the DIL feels better soon.

[GFStephanie]

Nick's mom, I'm sorry to hear about Nick.

I'm just on my usual super gluten free diet. My garden is producing a lot and I'm working hard getting my more tender seedlings transplanted, harvesting and processing for winter. I'm also building some new beds as well as a hardy kiwi arbor. I've got one hardy kiwi planted, and two more waiting to go. My arbor set up arrives today. My male plant died before I even got it hardened off and a replacement has been shipped. I hope it arrives in better shape than the other one.

Just when the garden is getting done here, my husband just got a job 650 miles away and in a worse climate. This isn't going to be an easy transition, but in some ways it will be nice to start over and do it right this time.

[annelb]

Back from WI. Finally got to see my grandchildren. The girl will be 2 in July and the boy is now a month old. Its is very busy. Was nice to come home.

My heart has been behaving but while I was in WI my BP would rise higher than I like - around 130. Not sure why this is happening. It had been running almost too low.

While Al is building his gluten group, I have dropped out of mine. I turned over management a year ago and now have turned over the newsletter too. I am no longer an admin on the FB page for my group. I will still go to the meetings. Now I need to find a something new.

I was messaging my son who is in Japan. He casually mentioned that he has dropped sugars and carbs and just eating real foods. The only grain is the rice that comes with sushi. Says he has lost some weight, sleeps better and has more energy. Yea! Now if only I could get the other son to get off the sugars and processed foods. Both have been GF for years.
Anne

[JudyLV]

We just got through our graduation season. Each of my 3 kids are moving on to new adventures in their lives. My garden is growing well. We are enjoying a lot of lettuce, and the snow peas just started coming in. I also picked a lot of basil this morning to make pesto.

--Judy