Olive Garden, a Pop Tart, a Bad Reaction, and Kugel

It's been a very glutenous few days! I'll give some of the highlights. On Friday, started off by day by having something that everyone who knows me knows I have been wanting to try for quite some time. I was waiting for the right moment, and now..I will no longer be able to say during "2 truths and lie" that I've never...had a poptart!! I had one! I tried strawberry. Before eating, I made the mistake of peeping the nutrition facts. 410 calories?! What the heck?? People eat those like those are a casual snack! A chicken mcnugget mighty kids meal is 380 (100 for the kids fry, 280 for the nuggets). I only ate one, and it DID taste good..but I'm sorry...not 410 calories good.
I went to a potluck at work and ate a TON. It was just cool being able to eat whatever I wanted, without worrying about if it touched gluten. I probably took advantage of that a little bit TOO much.
 After that...I went to Olive Garden...gluten Mecca. At first, I really wasn't sure what to order. Everything looked awesome! Do you know how weird it is to go to a restaurant and be able to eat ANYTHING on the menu? I ended up going with the chicken parmesan. I started with the bread sticks which were yummy! Nothing gluten free tastes like that- bread is one of the things that really is different. As you can see though, I did not make much progress- that food is so rich!! I took home three bread sticks and probably half of my meal. The pasta though is also very different from gluten free pasta. It's a completely different texture. I'm not sure I liked the sauce though...It was pretty sweet.
Then, miss Sarah Garfinkel "made" me (with not much convincing needed) try the tiramisu. SO TASTY!!!! Again..couldn't even eat so much of it.  
Anyway..On the way home, I started to get a REALLY bad stomach ache. It ended up being a rough evening of stomach symptoms (I'll spare the details :-) ). It was my second bad reaction since the experiment started...but, I'm pretty sure that ANYONE who slept 3 hours in a night, and then ate a ton of food at a potuck, chicken parm, breadsticks and tiramisu, all before 3pm would have a stomach ache!!  SO I'm writing that one off as not Celiac :)
Last night, I went to a Hanukkah party that was amazing!! It was cool, again, to not worry about what was in all of the dishes. For sure, the highlight of my night was the kugel!!! It..is AMAZING. Probably the best thing I've eaten. Most high fat things I'm turned off by, just because I know that it's bad for me but I did not care in the LEAST that kugel is probably the least healthy thing in the world. A gluten free person today told me that they have had gluten free kugel that tastes the same (shout out to rabbi Daniel!)..I have not. I have had potato kugel that is awesome (hi mom!), but not noodle kugel. I also tried sufganyot (well, sufganya)! Also good!
Thankfully, I have not yet gone up a pants size or anything due to all this craziness. I went to the gym a couple times this week to make sure I don't go too crazy...but I need to be going more if I keep it up! I'm going grocery shopping tonight for my first big grocery shopping trip since I haven't been scared to get too much gluten- I'm very excited to see how little money it will cost me.

Until next time...

Gluten all the time

So it's been awhile since I posted, mostly because the novelty is wearing off A LITTLE bit. It's still kind of funny to be able to just eat things. I did have my first REAL sandwich that was made by someone other than me at Potbelly's in Hyde Park. I had a chicken salad sandwich...so it was pretty good..but when I'm used to eating chicken salad, I'm used to really tasting it..and I felt like on the sandwich, I mostly just tasted bread (I even got the kind with 1/3 less bread!). I think I'd actually prefer a chicken salad salad, with a side of that tasty bread.

But WOW, on Sunday morning, I had brunch with three of my favorite people and had toast from a GREAT bakery! This was my first time having bread from an Austrian bakery, it was was delicious- my favorite was the cranberry walnut toast. It was cool eating gluten with my sister!

I've eaten some other random things here and there..I really like s'mores chewy granola bars! I don't know why people don't love these. I also made my own creation today which was Nutella and Pumpkin Butter (from Tanner's!) on honey whole wheat..mmmm. Oh and I had potstickers again- this time from Friday's! YUM! And I joined their stripes club so now I get a free appetizer or dessert- any suggestions (I know I know...cup of dirt :) )...

So I've gotten some suggestions that I'll take into consideration. I've heard that I need to take more pictures. I will do that! I always forget. Also-- I want to give a shout out to all my Celiac readers (I've heard from people that they show their Celiac friends my blog). Leave me comments and tell me what you miss eating, and I'll eat it on your behalf! I have about a month left of this experiment. I need to keep in mind that even though I am not having symptoms, I still might test positive (could be causing damage). So what else should I try?? Some things that sound good are:

Pumpkin or butternut squash ravioli
Mongolian beef
Deep dish pizza
Kraft Mac n Cheese
Warm chocolate chip cookies

Any more??