I have gf bread, gf pasta, biscuits and crackers.  I have many replacement gf foods but they rarely taste like the foods they are trying to replace.  They often look right or feel right but rarely taste right.  But these little beauties, made by my own freckled hands actually taste like choux pastry.  The texture isn't perfect (yet) but lets face it, food is primarily about flavour.

Meringues in the oven and soup already made for tomorrows little dinner party.  Just a simple affair. Mushroom pate and chicken liver pate with crackers, spicy hot pot soup (i'm undecided to do as it says and serve with rice as i don't have bread - but it is an early dinner so perhaps i don't need it) and of course, half the reason for having folks over - desert of individual meringues with summer fruit (like i have with the choux above) and whipped cream.

It has just occurred to me that i have to prep for my first triathlon on Thursday.  I leave after work on Friday to Leeds for my grans 90th - i'm staying over night with Alison and her boyfriend.  And i will most likely get back late on Saturday.  And the clocks go forward so have to make sure i am in bed in plenty of time.  Its a 2hr drive and i need to be there early!  Geez, I just worked it out. I have to set off at 6am.  Which is really 5am.  Yeah, i won't be getting back late on Saturday then, nor will i be getting much sleep - too many nerves.

Friday night stupor.

I'm currently trying  to motivate myself to go out in the cold and get to the gym.  On Fridays we finish at 4pm so i popped out to the pharmacy to collect my GF food prescription.  I think what i have now will get me through to February, its quite a lot, but i do go through a loaf a week if not more. I also got some pastry mix, so i can bake some mince pies and perhaps a quiche or pie and pasta and crackers too.  I normally don't eat much pasta but with getting home from the gym at 8-8.30 and being hungry and lazy, pasta is the perfect quick food. I dropped in to grab a few bits of food and indulged in some cheese but did grab my gran some biscuits to add to her Christmas hamper.  I'm not much good at waiting to taste new food stuffs so had myself a little snack of crackers and cheese.  Pretty darn good Gorgonzola considering the cheep-ass price!

On Tuesday night i did endurance workout #2 in my book (swimming).   It took me 50 minutes to complete but i missed 225m off the cool down as my goggles leak.  They get worse through the workout and it gets too frustrating to keep adjusting them. I plan on buying some more tomorrow. I'm happy with a 2275m workout and the time flew by.  I really like having a plan. That book really made swimming even more fun.

Last night i ran 8K. I am going to run the Telford 10K on Dec 19th so need to increase my distances over the next few weeks.  Also, i need to do more running.

So, how to i get myself out the door tonight?  How do you convince yourself to go back out once in the warmth of the home?

Yummie Scrummie GF food

If you don't know, i have coeliac disease. I have been diagnosed 3+ years and probably only had my symptoms for a year prior to diagnosis. I was a lucky one. So many suffer without the proper diagnosis for years, even decades.

I read a lot of sports magazines, websites and blogs and there is a big trend for athletes to go gluten free whilst training.  Good for them i think, i probably wouldn't do it if i didn't need to.  Of course, they only go mostly GF and probably ignore things like the wheat in soy sauce, barley in rice crispies and would eat standard porridge oats etc. They leave out the part that makes it difficult to live on a strict GF diet, the small hidden gluten.  And i don't blame them for that.

I have two opinions on this.  First, i think it's that great to have professional athletes using the words Gluten Free for it spreads knowledge to the masses.  For other, lay athletes to ask for GF food in restaurants, to increase sales on GF foods which will in turn make them more available and maybe cheaper eventually, due to increased sales.

But on the other hand, people who aren't on a strict GF diet can also spoil it for those of us who need one.  They say they are going GF but don't really, they don't understand fully (or care) where all gluten is hidden, they don't care about cross contamination, they speak of just not eating wheat products.  This can send mixed signals to vendors, wait-staff and chefs that they will accept eating a particular product, cooked in a certain manor that is in fact not GF, it just doesn't contain wheat.  I wish they would say they need Low Gluten food.

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This past week i have had a baking frenzy.  My Dr f'ed up my prescription, but in a good way.  I ended up with a script for 24 boxes of white bread mix and 24 for brown. Each box makes two loafs.  They are super versatile and you can make biscuits, cakes, crumpets, all sorts of things.  So i claimed just half of my prescription and got baking.

Cheese scones on the left, fruit scones on the right.

Crumpets.

Zucchini bread.

On Sunday my parents are helping out with a fundraiser for the Oriel Cricket Grounds and there will be a refreshment stand.  I decided to add a GF selection.  I plan to make a couple of zucchini breads and maybe some scones.  How nice is it when you have a choice when you weren't expecting to find anything you could snack on?  I understand that zucchini bread is not a popular treat here in the UK, so i think i will simply call it a loaf cake and leave tasting squares to convince them, you only need a little bit to be convinced its good.

So how much would you pay for that slice of moist sweet and delicious cake at a fundraiser?

Chatty Tuesday

Well what a FANTASTIC weekend (not that everyday isn't a weekend for the unemployed)  Friday i did some speed work. I warmed up with a mile jog then I set my ipod to buzz me every 30 seconds, and on that mark, i would run fast, then the next 30 I walked to recover.  I did this for 15 minutes and in that time, i only had to take 2 whole minute breaks. I then did another 1/2 mile cool down jog.  I seriously need to do speed intervals more often, to increase my lung capacity.  Friday night we went out with friends for sushi.  And that was the start of the weekend food debacle.

Every time i go out to eat i wonder how much people care that i am gluten intolerant.  I explain my situation, often saying its an allergy, so people who appear to have no clue as to what im talking about, take me seriously.  Depending on what type of place it is, i will say, 'so i can't have soy sauce' or 'so no toast' or the like, if its a flashy place i expect them to know.  So i told our waitress about the soy etc. and ordered my food.  When it arrived, the roll i ordered looked like it had fake crab in it; which i can't eat.  So when i checked, the waitress asked the chef and it turns out the crab was real, but they add soy sauce to the roll innards.  Well didn't i say no say sauce?  er Yes, yes i did, in plain English..  So i get another one on order, lump crab with no soy sauce and a $4 up charge for the lump crab.  Delicious. In the mean time, i pull the fish off the top of that roll and my companions eat the rest - free food!  And i wait for my replacement.

Saturday we drive to Chicago to see friends and their 5 month old boy Sam.  OMG how cute. I am so so so broody (and have been for 2 years - this doesn't help)  We head out for lunch once Sam has been bundled up, take a stroll down the road to a lovely place with loads of beers but no, they don't have any GF beer :(  I ordered a bun-less burger (as always stating why) and when it arrived, well of course, it was in a bun.  So i have to wait, while everyone else is chomping down on fries, steak sandwiches and breast milk.  5 minutes later i get my food, it was delicious and i rarely miss the bun when i do that. The evening is spent playing with Sam, catching up, a little glass of wine and bed by midnight.

Stupidly though, after our 2 hour lunch with a Scotch coffee, i accept more coffee at 6pm and i couldn't sleep till 1am.  Then, as we are sleeping in a loft with sky lights over the kitchen/living room, i am awake with Sam at 5am and then 7.30 with the sun. I get up at 8.30 STARVING as we only had lunch, as late as it was. I got up and intended to eat a protein bar i had bought, but apparently i didn't read the ingredients too well as i looked again and it had oat flour in it. Thumbs down, guess i'm running on empty then. 

9.30 comes around and Brady is awake enough to come out running with me (he was up at 5am with Sam).  We did a brief walk to warm up and set off on our 3 miler.  He was a great pace man. We were running a touch faster than i normally do, he is speedy and it was certainly a slow run for him, but he was pushing me.  I could talk for the 1st mile then then my sentences got shorter and shorter.  Eventually to one word answers and in the last 3/4 of a mile - nothing.  He made me speed up to get through traffic lights a few times.  But that man can sprint on a whim, i maybe picked up my pace by 30 sec/mile!

All in all though, it was a great run (even with no sustenance).  Off the top of my head my splits were 9.45, 9.51, and 9.something for a total of just over 29minutes (because i didn't see it, i can't remember what he said).  I am THRILLED with that.  My legs could have gone lots further but my lungs were shot. I like that i know its my lungs, not my legs that are tired, but they do seem like the hard thing to workout. So that was my tempo run as that's my goal for the 5K in 3 weeks: 30 minutes.  Now i need to learn to push myself like he pushed me. I really liked having a pace man. I am definitely going to find running partners in the UK.

Brady is covering Sam puke on Bethany's boob - Classy.  ;)

We were all starving so headed out for breakfast at Moonshine.  Really nice place, great staff, when i ordered my breakfast (with no toast please...blah blah..) he said no problem, sure, i'll guard it, no worries. When it arrived, for the 3rd time in a row, it arrives with food i can't eat.   Toast stuck on top of it. I always get nervous that they just take it back in, take off the toast and re-serve it to me.  But i didn't get sick so...what can i say, it was tasty.  Back to the house for a little Olympic action and then drive home.  

We planned to go out to dinner with Jeff's Mum as she is going to be in Florida for the next 3 weeks and is only back the day we leave for Asia.  We went to Crawdaddys which has an actual GF menu.  How about that!  I ordered the jambalaya and you guessed it, when it arrived it had 2 pieces of bread stuck in to it.  I mean, come on. I know we were being slightly excessive eating out 4 times in a row, but really, don't any chefs read the tickets?  Thankfully, i assume that they have a big pot of jambalaya going it was quite quick to receive my new GF plate of food.  And boy was it tasty.  And it was big enough for two meals. It didn't even look like i had eaten any when she took it away to box it up.  Man, they are big portions.

This is a mega post, so i will add the snowboarding stuff tomorrow.

I'm now off to run a 5 miler.  1st time ever.  Nice and easy pace.  Last week i missed my mile total by 3 miles! Gotta keep on top of that, not to happy about it at all.

sunday, lazy sunday.

saturdays run was a little tougher than i had hoped, i did have to walk a couple of times.  there was snow on the ground and for certain portions i ran on the edges of the path on the leaves and frozen ground, which though not nice on the ankles due to uneven ground, i didn't slip at any point.  my calves got tired quickly, which i assume is from the lack of rest day, as friday is also a running day.  but i did tack on a 1/4 mile extra to push myself.  my schedule said to do a 1 mile jog but as i said before i feel i under estimated myself so i ended up doing a 2.29m jog, and glad i did.  in all honesty, the energy spent getting all my cold gear clothes on, those skinny fitting tights and compression tops, balaclava, gloves, gilet and ipod, is so much effort, that a ten minute jog isn't worth it. there is no way im coming back sooner than 30 minutes after that mammoth donning task!!  so i plan to change my schedule and increase by 5minutes or .5mile every saturday, continuing to work on my speed and strength through out the week. 

my mother-in-law spends her time between west palm beach and milwaukee, and while here, she rents a place with a pool. a nice big pool. a pool where you actually have to swim to the other end not just push off and glide like a penguin, though i'm as graceful in water as they are out of water.  so i plan to use that on sundays for my cross training. and maybe even after work sometime.

today i have been truly lazy.  i have spent most of the day in front of the pc reading running related blogs.  i have made a quiche which i am testing if you can steam.  its a long story, but i will let you know. adventures of gf crust making.

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tonight is wii night. i bought batteries so plan to do, i dunno, something involving sweating. i also have a ton of cooking to do. im making a garlic kale tamale tart. it looks good and the base is gf without changing anything, and it looks like a quiche so im rather excited. i miss quiche. though its not the healthiest of meals, i will make up for it with the wii.
i have been very good and used the stairs a lot. all the way up to the 8th floor in Columbia hospital 137 steps, then down then another 200ish in other hospitals. and once when i got in a lift and pressed 4, it occurred to me what i was doing so dashed out of it and took the stairs. i also did some lunges today while waiting for a patient. im hoping that the little things really do add up. but yes, i will also do the big things.
this week i aim to do 4 days of sweating, this is day one