Friday Link Love: Gluten-Free Cooking Blogs

I've always been a voracious reader of cookbooks, cooking blogs, random recipes clipped from newspapers, you name it. I love to try new recipes, from good old home-cooked favorites to rather involved over-the-top creations with way too many ingredients.

Now that I'm adjusting my diet in the hopes of finding some relief from my endometriosis symptoms, rather than feeling stifled and limited in what I can cook, I'm discovering a whole new world of cookbooks and cooking blogs and random recipes from newspapers I might have overlooked before.

Cooking and eating can be a bit more challenging when you ditch gluten or dairy or eggs or whatever it might be you're thinking of eliminating because of endo. It's true. But cooking and eating can also become an adventure, where you're challenged in a good way—to try new ingredients and get creative and become incredibly thoughtful about what it is you're making and consuming.

I didn't really intend to hop on my soapbox before I shared my links this week, but I think I may have just done that. Sorry. It happens to me. Often.

Anyhow. Before I fully committed to eliminating wheat from my diet, I bought the cookbook Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef. I devoured it, not only because it has wonderful recipes but also because the authors tell a really great story, too. Cooking to me is so much better when it's not a chore but an inspiration, a tale unto itself.

Then I started pinning gluten-free recipes I came across on Pinterest.

And I started finding more and more gluten-free cooking blogs to follow. They run the gamut, from the sort that offer easy, on-the-table-fast meals with simple ingredients to those that are rather aspirational, five-star-restaurant-caliber affairs.

One cool thing, too, is that a lot of these gluten-free cooking bloggers are conscientious about not only gluten but also other typical allergens people might be avoiding. The Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef blog regularly recommends non-dairy substitutions for things. And Against the Grain has handy little icons at the top of each post that let you know when a recipe is sans wheat, nuts, dairy, gluten, etc. This can be incredibly helpful for women who are on the endometriosis diet.

If you're looking for some new food ideas, I suggest you check these out.

Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef
Against the Grain
This Gluten-Free Life
Discover Gluten Freedom
Gluten Free Cooking School

What other great gluten-free cooking blogs did I miss?

P.S. The photos are a sampling of the gluten-free recipes I've made recently. I promise to share some of them in detail soon!

Two Weeks Wheat Free

I'm going to admit this upfront: I figured removing wheat from my diet would be hard.

Even though I'd pinned some yummy-looking gluten-free recipes, read Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef cover to cover, and already was accustomed to eating a few gluten-free foods from stealing bites of Little Man's snacks, I still thought I'd miss all my usual wheat-filled treats.

But the great thing is, I really haven't. Since giving up wheat, I have still made chicken and dumplings, pizza, corn bread, spaghetti, muffins, and even snickerdoodle cookies. I've still eaten toast with my breakfast on occasion and have snacked on some yummy crackers. And I've even eaten out—quite a few times—and managed to find plenty of menu options that, even if they weren't labeled as gluten-free, likely didn't contain anything with wheat.

I know things won't go so smoothly. I know there will be times when I am dying for a bite of my favorite sugar cookies or when the fresh bread at a restaurant looks too good not to eat. I know eventually I'll come across some gluten-free recipes I don't like that well and I'll yearn for the "real" thing. I'm sure I'll spend many a nights at restaurants where the pickings are slim for someone who's avoiding wheat.

But right now, two weeks in, I can't complain.

It's too early yet to really know if ditching wheat is making a difference with my endometriosis symptoms. Part of the reason I stopped eating wheat when I did was because my symptoms were the worst they'd been since before I was pregnant.

Over the past few days, my symptoms have definitely improved. But that also could be because I'm at a different point in my cycle now, too. It's really too early to say with any certainty. The digestive issues that had become particularly troublesome have eased up. That, too, could just be a change in my cycle. But I'm guessing that might have something to do with the wheat.

I guess we'll see!

For those of you who have given up wheat, did you hit a point when you lost steam and desperately craved your favorite wheat foods? How did you fight off the cravings? At what point did you really start to notice a difference in your health? Please share your experiences—I'd love to learn from you!

Friday Link Love

From time to time, I'd like to share posts from other bloggers that I find interesting, inspiring, or what-have-you.

I thought about making Link Love something I do every week on the same day, but I'm not going to commit to that, because then if I missed a week it would stress me out. And stress is an enemy of an endo sufferer.

This space is supposed to be a source of information and inspiration for you and a bit cathartic for me, so I don't want to go and mess that up with a set schedule. Still, on occasion I'll throw a few links your way in case you're so inclined to explore them.

Here's what resonated with me today ... 

Endometriosis and learning your levels of pain - from EndoHope

Coming Out of the Disease Closet - The Challenges of a Chronic Illness - from Hormones Matter

And a little bit of yummy ... Vegan, gluten-free apple tart (it looks absolutely divine) - from A House in the Hills

Happy Friday!

Smoothie Success

Whether you're looking for an on-the-go breakfast, a post-workout burst of energy, or an afternoon pick-me-up, a smoothie can't be beat.

It's almost as tasty as a milk shake, but much healthier. And it can be a particularly quick and easy way to boost your consumption of fruits, vegetables, and key nutrients, which are all important for health.

Often my most favorite smoothie is the one shown here. It's just a cup of almond milk, one frozen banana, a bit of vanilla, a squeeze or two of the honey bear, and a large pinch of ground flax seed.

Sometimes there's a bit of ground oatmeal and a generous scoop of peanut butter thrown in (now that's indulgent).

Other times I'll toss in a handful of kale, which turns the smoothie a wonderful shade of green without particularly altering the flavor.

Or perhaps there's a handful of frozen blueberries as a last-minute add-in to the mix.

Any way it's blended, it's a great, healthful snack.

Ditching wheat

For breakfast, I love a fresh, fluffy biscuit or a nice, crumbly muffin. Give me a cookie with my coffee in the morning or for an afternoon snack with my tea and I'm happy as can be. Few things make me swoon like a perfectly flaky pie crust. And a warm, crusty slice of bread with dinner? Don't even get me started.

And yet, as of Monday morning, I gave up wheat.

Why?

Because there are a slew of foods that can exacerbate endometriosis, and one way to keep symptoms in check is to remove these offending foods from your diet. Guess which one is always at the top of the list? Yep, you guessed it. Wheat.

In fact, a recently released study published by an group of Italian researchers found that painful symptoms of endometriosis may decrease after 12 months of a gluten-free diet. The study followed 207 patients with severe, painful endometriosis-related symptoms who maintained a gluten-free diet for 12 months. At the 12-month follow-up, researchers found that 75 percent of the patients reported a significant decrease in painful symptoms, 25 percent reported no improvement, and no patients reported worsening of pain.

What does wheat have to do with endo? Wheat may contain hormones that have estrogenic effects in the body. Some people think wheat may also stimulate inflammation. Or the culprit may be the gluten, which has become increasingly problematic for people with or without endometriosis.

Some proponents of removing wheat from an endo sufferer's diet say that endometriosis pain subsides in as many as 80 percent of their patients, according to Living Well with Endometriosis. And when wheat is re-introduced? The pain returns.

I've hesitated to remove foods from my diet, mostly because the items on the no-good-for-you endometriosis list pretty much cover all of my favorites: wheat, dairy, coffee, alcohol, sugar, red meat. (In some cases, that list is even longer, but those are probably the most-often cited offenders.)

I actually came close to trying a total elimination diet a few years ago when my endometriosis started flaring up, but soon thereafter I got pregnant and—hooray!—my symptoms went away all through my pregnancy and while I was nursing my son.

Now, though, they're back in full force, and I've decided that just "dealing with" these symptoms is getting old—and isn't good for me.

I'm not, however, in enough pain or struggling enough to want to eliminate all the major endometriosis offenders from my diet all at once. So I'm started with removing number one from the list. Yes, my lifetime love, wheat.

At the same time, I am trying to cut back on the others a bit—reducing the number of cups of coffee I drink, making alcohol and red meat only very occasional treats, opting for more fruits and veggies and fewer sweets. I don't do much dairy as it is, except cheese. I love cheese. Next to wheat, cheese may be my downfall. Er. And butter. I love baking with butter. So perhaps dairy is more of a problem than I thought.

Anyhow.

The thing is, cutting out wheat might not be such a bad move, anyway. A lot more people are discovering they have a sensitivity or allergy to gluten. And wheat products have also been shown to contribute to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, depression, and more, as this article explains. 

The challenge is, wheat is everywhere! It's in baked goods, of course, but also in pasta, many sauces, breading, soups, ice cream, cereals, beer, you name it. To start out, I don't know how closely I'm going to monitor every label at the store for wheat products. But if it is a primary ingredient in something, I'm avoiding it. Simple as that (I hope).

Fortunately, it's a whole lot easier to eat wheat-free than it was even a few years ago when I first toyed with the notion of ditching wheat. In recent years, demand for gluten-free food products has skyrocketed—and the quality of those products has increased along with their availability. Now you can find gluten-free menus at many restaurants; entire cookbooks and blogs devoted to the topic (here's my favorite); and decent versions of most wheat-filled foods like pasta, crackers, breads, and cookies are now available sans gluten.

I'll keep you updated on my progress—and share some of my favorite wheat-free recipes along the way, too.

Now I'm curious: Have you ditched wheat to help with your endo? Has it made a difference?