BlessedMommy

Awesome example for the newbies   Thanks for posting!  Next time we go on a vacation, I think I am going to buy a hot plate and a small skillet to make real meals with... the hotel doesn't have to know, LOL!

Is it against policy to make meals in your room? This morning I cooked breakfast in my hotel room. 

It's so great! I also have made great meals with my rice cooker and waffle iron on the road too. Sure beats risking CC or starving!

Just thought that I'd post a photo from our recent road trip. It's so easy to whip up some food on the road and cheaper (as well as reliably gluten free) too!

This particular cooking implement is a toaster with an attached egg cooker. We stopped at the rest stop, found a plug in, and sliced up some of my home baked millet sandwich bread on my flexible plastic cutting board and then boiled up some eggs at the same time as the bread toasted. With some spreads for the bread, some mixed nuts, and some veggies and fruits, it was a complete meal.

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If you are looking to save money on healthier foods, have you checked out Aldi's? They have some awesome produce specials each week and great prices on a lot of other staple foods. My Aldi's even has some gluten-free foods and some delicious hummus for a great price.

Thank you for the thoughts. I would rather know now before I drop money on something.

I love my silicone utensils and oven mitts, but maybe it's not the best material for everything.

So far, I'm happy with baking in glass bread pans anyway.

Thanks for the link, Irish, I will check that out.

I think that for the future, I'm going to keep on looking for alternatives to teflon pans, because it seems like they don't stay nice very long and things start sticking to them quickly and ruining the finish. 

Irish, what do you use for a cookie sheet?

Anybody use these? What are the pros and cons? How do you like them?

It's possible to be strict with your diet without having a fully confirmed DX. I'd be the first person to say that if you can get one, do it, because it makes things easier, but as an adult, you can still maintain a 100% gluten free life without one. I don't even have positive bloodwork, as I got hospitalized in the process of trying to get there and my doctor agreed that gluten caused the hospitalization, so my family and I feel that it's more prudent in my situation to just stick with 100% gluten-free.

Most people are not going to ask or care about the details of your lab tests, just let them know that it's imperative that you stay away from all traces of gluten and stick to preparing and bringing your own food. Talk to family and try to educate them if you can.

My inlaws are supportive of my diet and they went so far as to buy a brand new separate grill (voluntarily out of their own pocket!) for the gluten free people, to avoid cross contamination. I also keep a flexible plastic cutting board at my IL's.

I tried this recipe and everybody, including the gluten eaters in the house gobbled it down fast. That's the only downside to the recipe is that now I have to go make more loaves. 

I'm dairy free, so I used powdered soymilk in place of the powdered skim milk in the recipe. I also used medjool date puree instead of the honey and olive oil instead of the canola oil.

It turned out great and the texture was wonderful!

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I really like Udi's hamburger and hot dog buns. My favorite bread for sandwiches and toast is Canyon Bakehouse. I also have baked my own in the past and plan to do some more baking.

Do keep looking around, because this is the rest of your life, so you may as well find some bread that you like, no use suffering with the horrible stuff for the next 50 years. I remember when I first started eliminating wheat (almost 6 years ago, so 2008), the bread options that were around then were horrible! We didn't have Udi's in our area and Canyon Bakehouse probably didn't even exist back then. 

I remember the extremely hard cardboardy unpalatable gluten-free bread. Ew! I'm glad that they have better options today. 

My house is 99% gluten free. (except for the isolated few gluten items that come in for my hubby and that are quarantined carefully, cooked on separate implements and removed from the house in a timely and controlled fashion) My husband and my child that don't have any gluten issues at all, eat the Canyon Bakehouse (or whatever we have at the time) right along with us and they think that it's fine. I got tired of cleaning up bread crumbs and worrying about CC all the time, so this is one way that I can relax a little in my own house.

I hope that you figure out a solution that makes you feel comfortable.

I think that must be because society is so bread centered or something.

There are SO many foods that are safe and delicious! I'm even a gluten free vegetarian and I don't really lack for options. 

By "flunked" serology, do you mean that your antibodies were way higher than a normal person's would be?

Most vegetarian burgers are quite gluten heavy, as they are based on soy and wheat gluten usually. So the burger that I was referring to on their menu was a gluten free veggie burger, not a gluten free conventional hamburger.

That makes it even more extraordinary that they offered the item since it is not a very common item to begin with. As a gluten free vegetarian, I really appreciate it when gluten free vegetarian options pop up.

Hamburgers made of pure beef with no fillers should be fine. Some restaurants put fillers in their hamburgers, though, so never assume anything.

Man, I just studied their menu and they even have a gluten free veggie burger on their hospital menu! Ope's brand organic veggie burger!

I hope to never need to go to the hospital, but if I ever have anything that isn't an absolute deadly emergency that would force me to go to the nearest hospital (Bronson is an hour's drive away from us and my son was transferred there via ambulance, because he needed an orthopedic surgeon), I would definitely pick this one!

Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, MI has a gluten free menu. When I went there with my son when he fractured his femur, I ordered food off the gluten-free menu. I remember them bringing me fresh fruit, gluten-free toast, and soy milk. I also remember their gluten-free cheese quesadilla. I'm not sure what they do about preventing CC, though, at the time when my son had just had a major leg break, honestly I didn't even think to ask.   Being that the celiac support group meets at Bronson, though, I'm guessing that their gluten-free menu really is gluten-free. 

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Cyclinglady, I had to chuckle about your comment about your husband not having to go to jail or to the hospital.  That's about what it boils down to, for most adults. There's very few situations where a DX would make that much difference to my situation. I just politely let people know that I won't touch gluten with a 10 foot pole. 

Even if I did have to go to the hospital, I'm sure they wouldn't make me show proof of celiac in order to eat off of their gluten-free menu. 

Yes, there are many places who specifically work to accomodate celiacs. Places like California Pizza Kitchen, PF Changs, etc.

Nasoya and Mori Nu are both reliably gluten-free. 

Sounds like a good plan to just switch doctors! I surely know where you're coming from as I would not eat gluten for anybody. I won't make myself ill and hospitalized to fulfill anybody's diagnostic criteria.

The great thing about celiac is that the treatment doesn't require your doctor's permission to do.

Could you ask around for a friend's recommendation for a good doctor?

^I agree. If one glutening caused your antibody levels to raise that much, then nobody would need to do a 12 week gluten challenge for diagnosis.

Lots of good points about cross contamination though. That is exactly why the more aware I get, the less I eat out. 

I'm all for biopsies if a person gets them done before going gluten free or shortly thereafter. But it seems a little odd to me to have a doctor recommend that a person who has clearly positive antibody tests and a positive response to the gluten free diet and knows that they get VERY sick from eating gluten, to go purposefully make themselves sick (and possibly even hospitalized) just to prove a point. 

What on earth?!!

Sounds a bit like insurance fraud to me, ordering a test that they KNOW that you have no need for.  What's the point anyway? Do they not believe the lab?

 If the doctor does anything, it should be ordering a biopsy, not making you redo the blood work that is obviously very positive. You want want to just tell him to go to a biopsy or just skip to another doctor altogether. Could he refer you to a GI doctor?

I'm sorry that you're going through this. It's amazing that anyone gets a diagnosis, with as ridiculous as some doctors/insurance companies are. 

I replaced my own boards and I keep a flexible cutting board at my IL's (because they have bread crumbs around their wooden cutting board quite a bit), but I do eat single ingredient foods cut by other people occasionally (watermelon, veggie trays, cut lettuce and tomatoes, etc.)

That's the thing, is that I want the best chance of my daughter being able to finish the gluten challenge. So that's why I don't want to dose her up with any more than I have to. 

This is a newly opened restaurant down in rural Kentucky. Kristina is an old friend of mine.

There are a lot of gluten free items on the menu and they are as careful as they can, not to CC them.

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I'm prepping for my visit with the new doctor that I'll be switching my oldest to in order to pursue celiac testing. 

The one thing that I'm unclear on and have gotten conflicting information on, is how much gluten a day should be consumed for a gluten challenge?  U of Chicago says 1/2 slice of bread or 1 cracker a day for 12 weeks. That doesn't seem like very much.

I've also seen information elsewhere that suggests more like 1-3 slices a bread per day. Is there any actual consensus on this? I don't want to feed my kid any more gluten than necessary, but don't want false negatives either.