Life in the Banana Belt

....not really.  Not for people who are used to real, actual heat.  But for me, it's weird for it to be 80 degrees in April.  Nigh-on witchcraft, that.

So I weeded the flower beds today, which, because it's been so warm, was a big endeavor--the weeds had gotten giant overnight.  Now my fingertips hurt.

I do find that working in the garden is nice, in a contemplative kind of way.  You can let your mind wander and think about all kinds of things, until it's sharply brought back to the present when you find a tiny, white, picked-clean bird skull hidden among the flowering ground cover.

(I don't know what happened to the rest of the bird.)

Anyway, tomorrow we're going to plant the vegetable garden, so I'm trying to let my fingertips recover a bit.  I will just report Sasquatch's theory of bugs:

1) Mayflies are really called "Stangflies".
2) You can tell a daddy centipede because it's smaller than a kid centipede.
3) All worms like being underneath rocks.  They like it best if you squish the rock down hard, so they can be "cozy in their home".
4) You can tell a mayfly from a stangfly because mayflies have 44 feet, and stangflies have 63 feet.
5) It's the mother mosquitoes that drink blood.  And they don't drink the blood of other mothers.  Therefore, in a stunning matriarchal twist, I am immune but not my children.  I probably set this up with the mosquito mothers in advance.  Bwaha, ha ha ha ha, etc.

Cheers,

Breanna

French Cooking

I got inspired to pull out my copy of The Art of French Cooking because I wanted to make chicken, and I was bored with the ways I've been making chicken.  It is more or less this recipe, although I will note the cookbook lists mushrooms as an *option* (one of about six).

The thing about French Cooking is it is like an encyclopedia; it leads you from recipe to recipe, because it cheerfully will tell you to put your chicken and mushrooms ("Supremes de Volaille aux Champignons") with asparagus tips au beurre and a chicken-broth/onion risotto.  This makes you find the recipe for asparagus tips and then the one for the risotto, and it all ends with you going to Walmart for necessary, planned purchases (underpants for everyone in the entire house, literally) and unnecessary, but kind of needed anyway, purchases (heavy cream and asparagus).

The other nice thing about French Cooking is that it was written in the 60s.  This means that while it wants you to have fresh mushrooms and herbs and things on hand, it acknowledges that maybe you won't, and tells you how to handle yourself if you're stuck with canned mushrooms, dried herbs, and (gasp!) canned fish.  In fact, the fish gratinee, which calls for canned salmon, is still one of my very favoritest fish recipes.  The white wine elevates it.  (Of course if you're gluten free, you will not use 3 TB of regular flour that the recipe calls for, you'll either use GF cornstarch or 3 TB of GF all-purpose flour.)

Meanwhile my house has been consumed, lately, by an attack of the naughties.  It struck us in Walmart, in the underpants aisle, when Sasquatch did not want to choose which kind of underpants to get.  He wanted all of them, and none of them.  "These are the stupid ones!" he said, waving a hand at the entire Walmart inventory of boys' clothes.  (This is a kid who, of his own volition, insists on wearing a white button-down shirt to Sunday school every week.  For the kindergarten class.  And who needs his dinner plate to be masculine.)  We might STILL be in the underpants aisle debating the relative merits of the Avengers vs. Spiderman had I not grabbed a package of plain, gray underpants, waved them in his face, and had the presence of mind to say "Just like Daddy's!"  That, as they say, was gold, Jerry.

The other two were easier to please, thank goodness, because I could feel myself spiraling down into that crazy place where you're actually arguing with your five-year-old, as though logic is going to make a dent in his belief that underwear with characters on it is a stupid for him.  Not for his brother or sister or random kids on the street.  But for Sasquatch, it's A Stupid.  We can't have A Stupid.  We might die.

Then on the way out he crashed into a display of cake mixes and collapsed into a weepy pile of rage until we got home.  I kinda think we all need naps, and maybe extra butter on our asparagus tips.

Cheers,

Breanna

Just When You Think You've Dodged That Bullet....

Cousin Avi: Now, this "Boris the Bullet-Dodger." What does he do?

Bullet-tooth Tony (confused): He...dodges bullets, Avi.

--Snatch

I have, in the past, felt pretty good about the fact that none of my kids cut their own hair.  Not that I think this makes me a super parent, or anything, just like Wow, at least that's one thing we haven't had to deal with, that's nice.

Then yesterday I found a hank of blond hair stuffed down in a certain person's laundry hamper, as though Mama would never find it there.  (Alas, foiled by the fact that Mama does the laundry once a week.  Curses.)

She had lopped off the bangs that were growing out.  They're now Darn Short.  I asked her if she wanted short hair ("Which is fine!" I said.  "You can have it!" I said.  "Just don't do it yourself!" I said.)  She was torn.  She kinda wanted short hair (less brushing) but she kinda wanted hair down to her waist, too.  She was disappointed to learn these are incompatible goals.

So, we'll see.  You might be seeing pictures shortly of Eldest with a pixie cut.  Because I'm not sure I can handle finding self-administered haircuts in random hidey-holes.

Cheers,

Breanna

"Happiness" and Strawberries

I just got done reading an interesting book, Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project.  (I know this sounds kind of Oprah-ish, but bear with me.)  In the book, Rubin, who is a biographer living in New York, realizes one day that her life is passing her by.  She has a husband she loves, two little girls, a career she enjoys, and yet spends most of her days on autopilot.  So, she does what any good writer would do and sets about spending a year studying happiness and blogging about it.

Now, the book was mostly interesting to me because it made me think about the little things that make a difference in my own day.  These are not giant, expensive things, and they usually affect nobody but me--unless you count the people around me getting the benefit of me being in a better mood.  I realized, why don't I take the time to make sure that these things happen every day?  Here are some of the things I thought of--you'll see why this was a moment that had me smacking myself in the forehead:

1) Change the wallpaper on my phone to something I like to look at, with flowers.

2) Change my computer wallpaper ditto.

3) Tidy that one shelf on the bookshelf that always gets messy, that I sit directly in front of every morning while I drink my coffee, thinking about how much I hate that it's messy.

4) Put the boxes of toys that were standing out in the basement away into the kids' closets.

5) Get a handheld vacuum for the stairs and my car (this one did cost money; it was $49 and worth every penny--it's everything I dreamed it could be to not have to lug my upright vacuum up and down two sets of stairs).

6) Activate my "achievement button".  This is one that the Husband and I talked about, in reference to him liking to "level up" at things.  (This is one reason why, for example, that getting a business degree in his spare time is not crushing to him, but actually kind of fun.)  I realized I like to "level up", too, or at least to be able to wave a hand and say, "look at that! I did all that! I weeded the heck out of that flower bed!"  So housework, by its nature, doesn't automatically hit my "achievement button"--unless I decide to set it up that way.  (The weeds always grow back.)  But I can arrange my day so that I get at least one achievement per day.  For instance, make a list that has "fold laundry" on it, then fold the laundry and check off the list.  If you keep the list on Wunderlist on your phone, you can look back at the completed items and feel smug.

7) Tidy the closet.  My closet needed to be tidied.  And a good bunch of clothes needed to be taken to Salvation Army--I swear poorly-fitting blouses have babies, or something.  I whittled it down to the stuff I actually like and that actually fits, and also realized that I was getting by with several pairs of worn-out shoes.  A side benefit of cleaning out your closet: you realize that the reason you felt like you were wearing the same things all the time was that you were, in fact, wearing the same things all the time.

It also becomes obvious whether you really need a new item or not.  (Black heels.  The ones I had have the sole ripped clean off, and are older than Eldest.  Time to hop on Thredup and find a new pair.  Incidentally I also sold any not-worn-out name-brand clothes I had to Thredup--I'll report back how much they give me for them.  It probably won't be all that much, but hey, taking them all to Salvation Army would have got me zero dollars.)  I've been wanting a "capsule wardrobe" for a long time--having only clothes that I love and wearing them over and over and over again--and now I've basically got one.  It makes me happy to not feel vaguely like a bunch of worn out, poorly-fitting, stained, or otherwise unlovely clothes are mocking me and slipping off their hangers.

8) There are other things I do to try to up my cheerfulness factor, and some of them are a super spiritual (like keeping a prayer journal or reading Andrew Murray or meditating on Bible verses) and some of them are super silly and obvious (taking my vitamins, going outside to work in the garden, buying fruit, realizing the kids and I should leave the house at least four times a week, admitting I love flowers), but I think most helpful is the simple idea that it's okay, nay, advisable, to analyze your day and put in the things that make you cheerful, and take out the things that make you grumpy and unreasonable.  I guess this idea had struck me, previously, as frivolous, but it's really true that Mom's attitude affects the attitude of the whole household, so it behooves me to work on making it easier for me to be cheerful.

See, one big trigger for me having a day of being Doomy (which makes me want to just sit on the couch and not keep up with the house and homeschooling, which makes me feel worse, which makes me want to sit on the couch, and so on) is not getting enough sleep.  Which, you know, will continue to happen until Bud is old enough to reliably wake up during the night to do his own blood sugar checks, which won't be at least until he's 15 or 16.  So it's going to keep occurring, and I have a responsibility to combat the resulting Doom in as many ways as I can.  I think this is one of those things where God expects you to work with the light you've been given.

Now, the strawberries.

We went to the grocery store after church on Sunday because we were out of milk, and they had big giant boxes of strawberries for $3 each.  (Which makes it $1.50/pound, Mom, not $1, like I inaccurately texted you when we were still excited and gorging on strawberries after lunch.)  I can't quite get used to living in a place where fruit is literally grown right down the road, and you can just buy it with impunity.  It's wonderful, but odd.

Anyway, I encourage you to sit down and think about the teeny changes you could make that would make your day run better, and that would make you feel more cheerful.  Like I said, most of what I have implemented didn't cost any money. Most of us can clean, tidy, and take things to Salvation Army, or use the nice cups for morning coffee, or play some music.  (Amazon Prime Music has a bunch of free music, if you've got a Prime account.)  It's amazing what a difference just removing the little blah items and replacing them with happy items makes in your disposition.

And a bit annoying; if you're like me you think you should be able to be cheerful with ugly computer wallpaper and the crappy coffee cup that the acid-hauling guy gave the Husband as a "please use our company for all your acid-hauling needs" gift at a conference.  (And if that was the only coffee cup in the house, why, sure, you could learn to be content.  Or, you know, take it to Salvation Army, then wander to the front of the store and buy a pretty cup for 45 cents.)  But, when you think about it, it's just silly to make it harder for yourself to stay cheerful when very simple changes make it so much easier.  Life has enough challenges that we can't easily remove--chronic illness, limitations in money, isolation, stress--that honestly, we should save our energy to deal with those and not act as though we're doing something noble by gimping around with the ugly cup, using up all the resilience we need to deal with real problems without yelling.

(Ugly cup is a metaphor.  If you love your ugly coffee cup and it's just the right size, keep it.  Ugly cup represents everything broken, ugly, or poorly-working that you're using just because it seems vaguely selfish to pull out the good one that you already own and use it on an ordinary Wednesday.  I give you permission to go ahead and USE it on the ordinary Wednesday.  And get rid of whatever your ugly cup is...even if it's not an actual ugly cup.)

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.  Seriously, I'm sitting here drinking out of an ugly cup right this very minute.  I don't even know why it's still here.  Maybe I can take off the company logo with nail polish remover?  It's chipping off anyway.  It would be an attractive cup if it didn't have the dumb logo.

Snails and Shaving

Yesterday the kids helped me in the garden, which means they raked a patch of dirt frantically to "smoothen it out" while I carried bags of mulch, planted some potted flowers that we bought at Home Depot, and weeded the flower beds.

We live in this weird little microclimate zone here in Idaho where it doesn't get all that cold, during the winter, so stuff warms up in the spring much earlier than I'm used to.  It's excellent for flowers, fruit, potatoes, and mainly onions.  (Onion trucks travel up and down the big road I can see from my house all year long.  They don't cover them, so whenever they go around a curve they dump onions out onto the street.  If I felt like walking along with a sack, I would never need to buy onions again.)

The farm stands are not up and running yet (yep, we have those too--they're awesome!) but I'm getting things planted into my garden pretty successfully.  My chamomile, sage, and thyme came back from last year; this year I put in lavender and I re-planted my rosemary, which the winter killed.  This year I'm going to try either bringing the rosemary inside in a pot, or putting a cloche over it for the winter.

I also got ambitious and planted a rhubarb, an asparagus crown, and a grape vine in the vegetable garden.  We may or may not be here when those things start bearing, but fingers crossed that we will be.  We put in a border of strawberries, too, after the lady at the nursery laughed in our faces when we asked if strawberries are hard to grow here.  "Oh, they grow here," she said.  "If you can't get strawberries to grow around here you really need to have your soil checked."  We got brave enough to try grapes because we realized there's a vineyard down the road, so they seem...plausible.

Sasquatch found three snails, and tenderly put them under a rock so they wouldn't feel scared.  Nobody tell him that all bugs don't like being under rocks, okay?  Otherwise I'll have to build even more insect houses than I already do.

Then, last night, Bud and Sasquatch decided they desperately needed a shave, because, as Bud puts it, "You know, I'm not growing any hair, but I do think I'm getting kind of a beard, Dad."  So the Husband obligingly took the blade out of his razor, lathered up their faces, and let them solemnly scrape the soap off.  I was called to admire their handiwork, and duly felt their cheeks and told them what a nice, close shave they had.

The Very Manly Shaving had to start, I'm pretty sure, because Eldest and I have "Girl Dates" where we give each other manicures and are very much foofy ladies for twenty minutes or so.  The boys were disappointed that, in our culture, men don't usually wear nail polish...and that even when I offered to put clear polish on their nails that it just didn't turn out to be as fun for them as we womenfolk made it look.

Before he went to sleep, Sasquatch thought of these items to tell Jesus "thank you" for:
1. Chips
2. Flowers
3. Snails
4. New booster seat for the car with FIRE on it (he finally hit the weight limit on his car seat, and his booster has hot-rod style flames printed on it)

....so it was a pretty good day.

Cheers,

Breanna

Ketones...and a Resolution

Tonight is another night where I wake up--either to an alarm, or my own spidey senses (diabetic moms get those) or, this time, to Bud, who didn't feel good.  And sure enough!  Ketones!

I've decided recently to try to reframe this, although getting up and then staying up for hours until the ketones get cleared is about as pleasant, physically, as you'd think it would be.  I'm working on telling myself "I love that we keep insulin in the house for ketone nights"--because the typical style of reframing, "I love getting up for ketones" is lying really egregiously--and finding something to do other than scroll through my phone.

After a two year hiatus, guess what that is?  Hi blog!

Those of you who know us in real life know how our life has changed, since the last blog post.  (I feel like the last several blog posts have been like this, but bear with me.)  We moved to Idaho, Bud got an insulin pump, Sasquatch is starting to read.

But I've been feeling, again, like I need to have a way to record the hilarious and amazing things that happen, day-to-day.

For instance, right now the kids play a game called "Spider".  The game goes like this: somebody hides, usually in a fairly obvious fashion, and then jumps out at another person and yells "RAAAAAAAAR!"  The goal is to make the other person shriek.  The one yelling "RAAAAAAAAR" is the spider, see, and the shrieking person is the insect.

The other day I was trying to get everybody in the car to go grocery shopping, and Sasquatch was having a day where putting his own socks on was too trying, so he and I were the last ones into the car.  As soon as we opened the door, Eldest and Bud yelled "RAAAAAAR!"  I shrieked, everyone was happy.  As we drove off, Eldest observed: "The car is better for playing Spider than the house."
Me: "Oh?  Why is that?"
Her: "Because it's smaller.  Everyone wants to be the spider in the house, but nobody wants to be the insect."

That's some actual philosophy, right there.

In other cute news, the kids are addicted to Dire Straits songs, thanks to a CD Baba gave us, and whenever I play them in the car demand to have the windows rolled down so we can be cool at the neighborhood.

Here's hoping I can write a blog entry every few days, for a while, even without the ketones.

Cheers,

Breanna

Another Diagnosis - Or, I Owed The Family A Blog Post

This is rapidly becoming a family tradition--every spring, we get a diagnosis.  (I am okay with stopping that tradition after this year, though.)

First, the man himself:

He is not doing his Ray Charles impression, he just thinks this is funny.  This is the face (and green jammies) of Type 1 Diabetes.  Just to prove we're doing great.

As you all probably remember, Type 1 Diabetes (hereafter T1D so I don't have to type so much) is an autoimmune disorder: the immune system, for unknown reasons, freaks out and starts killing beta cells in the pancreas, which are the cells that make insulin.  Pretty much all autoimmune diseases can be summed up as "the immune system, for unknown reasons, freaks out and starts killing _____".

Some autoimmune diseases "travel" together--they're carried in the same bit of genetic code, they develop in response to the same environmental triggers, whatever, we really don't know.  But we do know that, for instance, people with T1D are much more likely than the general population to get celiac disease.

Which, by the way, is our new diagnosis: celiac disease.

Random picture of Eldest, who 1) wanted her picture taken and 2) probably has celiac, too, because her growth has been off.

Celiac disease occurs when the immune system freaks out (told you) and decides that gluten, which is a protein found in wheat, barley, spelt, rye, and some oats, is the enemy.  This mainly affects the digestive system, most severely in the intestines.

The intestines work to absorb your food by having a lot--I mean a lot--of surface area; they're covered in microscopic things called "villi"--under a microscope it sort of looks like velcro.  The villi make it possible for you to absorb nutrients from your food.  When you have celiac disease, however, the gut is on high alert all the time and so inflamed that the villi flatten out, which makes it really hard to absorb anything.  You eat, but the food just doesn't really get into your body.

Thus the symptom that made us do testing: Bud's not really growing.  (Neither is Eldest, although we haven't tested her yet.)  We had some bloodwork done at his regular endocrinologist appointment (we see our endo every 3 months for his T1D) and it came back positive for celiac.

The nurse practitioner who called to tell me was upset on the phone; I really wasn't surprised.

Random picture of Sasquatch, who has eschewed pants for the day.

Why wasn't I surprised?  Well, because I always expect the worst (and this was not the worst, we were worried about his thyroid, liver, and kidneys too and by the grace of God they are all fine), and because celiac and diabetes just go together.  In fact, celiac goes with a lot of things, which is why I'm writing the blog post.  As I began researching it (approximately 5 minutes after we got the phone call), I discovered that celiac disease can cause/be linked with:

-psoriasis
-arthritis
-weird unexplained anemia
-iron deficiency
-vitamin deficiencies
-thyroid disorders
-unexplained fatigue
-"brain fog" -- memory problems, trouble with math, confusion, etc
-emotional ups and downs (beyond normal ones)
-osteoporosis (because calcium isn't absorbed)
-endometriosis
-a really painful rash called dermatitis herpeteformis (an itchy rash with blisters)
-migraines
-Sjorgren's disease
-eczema
-allergies

Pretty much the common factor in all of the above is that they are either an autoimmune disorder or they are caused by malabsorption/starvation--anemia, for instance, would be caused both because the inside of the gut is raw and in many cases bleeding, and because the body just can't absorb enough iron to make blood cells with.

Some people who have celiac have gastrointestinal symptoms: diarrhea/constipation, a lot of stomach aches, etc.  But many don't have symptoms, or have had them for so long that they don't recognize them as odd.  (My sister, when I mentioned this, told me that before she understood she was allergic to chocolate, she thought *everyone* got a slight sore throat every time they ate chocolate.)

Random chicken picture.  I think we all need a deep breath, and this picture of a chubby offended chicken might help.  We call this hen Booty McWidebutt.

So when I saw the list above, if you share DNA with me, you know that I suddenly started nodding and ticking off on my fingers the family members I have who are affected by those illnesses.  (Hint: not very many of us don't have at least one, most of us have several.)

Turns out that celiac disease has a strong genetic component--if you have a first-degree relative with celiac, you're much more likely to get it than the general population.  (Even in the general population it's not that rare: 1 in 100 people have celiac disease.  By contrast, T1D affects 1 in every 10,000.)  Celiac disease is also like other autoimmune disorders in that it is progressive, lifelong, and it can trigger other immune system issues.

In other words, it's not that crazy to think that celiac and non-celiac gluten sensitivity (which is a real thing) might have been rampaging through our genetics for generations.  It would explain a lot, yeah?

That's great.  Here's a random picture of baby bunny butts from my rabbits.  That mama rabbit is Sky.  Her sister Diamond is still alive but the other sister Lucy was mean so we ate her.

So, what do you do about celiac disease?

In a way, that's the good news.  There isn't medication to take--no pills, no needles, no patches, no $700 every three months (which is what we have to pay for diabetic testing strips--which is okay because Bud gets to stay alive, and that's always a bonus).  I was happy not to have another pill to hand him.

Pretty much the only treatment for celiac disease is lifelong, strict adherence to a gluten-free diet.  The gut will heal and be able to absorb nutrition again, and since we caught it early, we can stave off a lot of complications.  Even people who already have some of the other stuff (psoriasis, etc.), though, can get relief from a gluten-free diet.

What do we mean, lifelong?

Pretty simple--he'll never grow out of celiac (any more than he will grow out of T1D), and will pretty much have to avoid gluten for the rest of his life.

What do we mean, strict adherence?

I mean strict.  No "it's his birthday, let him have a regular gluteny birthday cake".  No "just a bite."  No "we don't want to make a fuss, just eat the crackers".  To give you an idea, one instance of eating gluten in a celiac (the amount, say, in one crouton) can make them sick for six months.  People who cheat on their gluten-free diet break bones, get scurvy, and die before their time.

What do we mean, gluten-free?

Well, it's pretty darn gluten-free.  The safe amount of gluten in something for a celiac is 20ppm (parts per million).  This means that not only can a celiac not eat anything that has gluten in it, but they can't use a knife that was used to spread mayo on regular bread to make themselves a sandwich on gluten-free bread--that's right, the gluten-free stuff can't even touch the gluten stuff.  Crazy, huh?

Given all this, we've made the decision to just make our whole house gluten-free.  I contemplated the kind of hospital OR-style procedures (and separate dishes and a separate toaster) that it would require to make gluten-free stuff for Bud and regular stuff for the rest of us, and then decided I just didn't like bread that much.

Where do we go from here?

I've been finding websites.  Basically I have a month to study and prepare.  We can't go gluten-free yet, although Bud's pretty miserable, because he has to have one more confirmation test and ironically he has to be sick for the test to show up as positive.

(This test is an endoscopic biopsy--we will go to Salt Lake to the same awesome hospital we were at before, they will put him under, put a small tube down his throat, and take a few tiny tissue samples from the top of his small intestine.  I am more nervous about this than he is.)

He has to be eating gluten up to the time of the test, so I'm not changing anything in our house yet.  In fact, I'm trying hard to use up all our gluteny food, because I'm going to have to do the mother of all housecleanings once we transition.

I am hopeful that going gluten-free will help Eldest with her growth issues, help my allergies to calm down, and just be all around better for us.  We won't be able to eat out pretty much at all anymore, but we didn't eat out that much to begin with, and it should help us save money and be healthier, anyway.

It is possible to spend a million dollars being gluten-free.  I suspect that's because nobody wants to cook from scratch. I already like cooking from scratch, and indeed, if you can get over the need to have bread and pasta every day, I don't see why our food bill shouldn't go down.  Beans, rice, potatoes, and corn are all gluten-free.

At the moment my plan is to make everything--stock, yogurt, spaghetti sauce, jam, salsa, pickles, everything--myself.  This should taste a lot better, and since I can buy bulk produce from a restaurant supply place here in town, should actually save us money.  Plain meat is gluten free (obviously the frozen chicken strips or whatever are breaded and are *not*).  There are a lot of meals you can eat that are gluten-free without any weird gymnastics.

Weirdest part of all this?

I have been a little frustrated at the beginning because it's one more thing for Bud to have to deal with, but it's a lot more doable and less scary to me than T1D was (anything's better than the threat of coma and death!) and we're really good at doing stuff ourselves.  We have a foofy supermarket here that has a lot of gluten-free stuff while we transition (I'll buy a box of brown rice pasta to get us through if I have to) and even Walmart has a gluten-free section these days.

What's funny to me is how many things have gluten in them.  Bullion cubes, spaghetti sauce, toothpaste, envelope glue, play-dough, some yogurt, some jelly, salad dressing, just about every single processed food, chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, most ice cream, cheap peanut butter, shampoo...the list goes on and on.

But there are a whole lot of things that *don't* have gluten in them:
-plain fresh and frozen fruit
-plain fresh and frozen vegetables
-Fritos (huzzah!)
-plain meats (and even some brands of sausage or hot dogs gluten-free)
-rice
-potatoes
-corn
-milk
-beans

That's a nice amount of stuff to build a diet on, there.  There are even a lot of recipes for homemade gluten-free bread (I hear the storebought stuff isn't that great), which I may try my hand at on special occasions.  I do happen, as well, to own an ice-cream maker (we bought it for $25 in Texas), so I can make ice cream that is cream, sugar, and strawberries (or whatever).  Like I said, this should actually improve everyone's lives quite a bit.

I will probably be posting more when we get done with our other tests, but like the title of the post says, I wanted my family who reads this to be able to start going gluten-free *right now* if they feel like it would be helpful for them. (Although I want to make it very clear that WE DON'T EXPECT ANYONE TO GO GLUTEN FREE TO ACCOMMODATE US, we will just bring our own food when we visit you, okay?  No worries.)  I'll keep posting any tips and tricks I find on how to do it without spending a million dollars.