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!

Inspiration: Paint the Beauty and the War

"So build yourself as beautiful as you want your world to be. Wrap yourself in light then give yourself away with your heart, your brush, your march, your art, your poetry, your play. And for every day you paint the war, take a week and paint the beauty, the color, the shape of the landscape you're marching towards. Everyone knows what you're against; show them what you're for." — Andrea Gibson, evolution

I came across this quote on the blog of one of My Sister's best friends, and it was too good not to share.

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!

Research: Increased risk of inflammatory bowel disease in women with endo

Women with endometriosis have an increased risk of developing inflammatory bowel disease, according to research published in the September 2012 issue of the journal Gut.

For an average of 13 years, researchers monitored the long-term health of more than 37,000 Danish women who were hospitalized with endometriosis from 1977 to 2007. They found that 320 of the women monitored developed inflammatory bowel disease—228 of which were diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and 92 with Crohn's disease.

Women with endometriosis have a 50 percent higher risk of developing inflammatory bowel disease than the general population. After restricting the study to those women with surgically confirmed endo, they discovered the risk jumped to 80 percent.

The researchers think that the diseases may share similar causes. Or it's possible that long-term treatment of endometriosis with oral contraceptives increases risk of inflammatory bowel disease.

Lizzie O'Leary on Endo

If you haven't yet, check out the Cosmopolitan.com article on Lizzie O'Leary and her battle with endo. I wish her the best as she continues her battle with her symptoms and hope that the Cosmo article and other stories about her struggle will help raise awareness of the illness and its effects on women.

She says in the article, "What I want people to know is that it's OK to talk about it." I hope that message comes across loud and clear—the more awareness we raise about the many women affected by endo, the more likely we are to see increased research, informed doctors, and an understanding and perhaps even supportive public.

Insurance Woes

I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the American health care system sucks. The quality of care keeps decreasing as costs keep increasing.

I can't even imagine having had my surgery or my son without insurance.

At the same time, insurance companies are near the top of most people's least-liked lists—mine included.

My very first job out of college was with an incredibly small company, so my company-provided insurance was an individual plan. From the start, I learned all about preexisting condition exclusions when the insurance company said they wouldn't cover: my back (I'd had back trouble and treatments for it in high school), my thyroid (because I once had a swollen gland on my neck that wouldn't go away for quite some time, so I had it checked out, only to have it go away on its own), my kidneys (because I had small kidney stones that required no treatment), and any allergy treatments (because I took prescription medication for seasonal allergies).

Ack. Can you imagine if I actually had something seriously wrong with me?

Fortunately, not long after that, the company grew rapidly and we were able to get group insurance.

But a few years later, when I left my full-time job to finish my master's degree and work as a freelance writer and editor, I once again had to apply for an individual insurance plan.

Fortunately, I was on the plan for many months before my ovarian cyst became known, so my doctor's appointments and my surgery to remove the cyst were covered. A few months after the surgery, we applied for maternity coverage, knowing sometime in the near future we'd want to start a family. I was flat-out denied because of my cyst and endo diagnosis.

Fortunately, not long after that, I ended up landing a job I loved (that had good benefits). So once we finally were ready to have children, I had maternity coverage.

And then (bet you never know where this is going), a while after our son was born, I went back to teaching part-time, freelancing part-time, and staying home with our little angel part-time. So, yes, I'm once again on an independent insurance plan.

I learned my lesson after the first few times and now pretty much don't go to the doctor for anything if I can help it, so I didn't have to report anything on my health insurance application aside from my cyst surgery and a breast lump I had to have biopsied (that was fortunately benign). Miraculously, all of that happened long enough ago neither the endo nor the breast lump were considered preexisting conditions that could be denied coverage. Whew!

Based on all of that (which only happened in the span of about 7 years), it should come as no surprise that I've been a supporter of the healthcare reform bill, optimistic about the fact that people with preexisting conditions will get the coverage they need and that women on individual insurance plans can get maternity coverage.

Yet last week I almost changed my tune, when I found out that multiple insurance companies weren't willing to offer me maternity coverage right now. My current insurer said it was because of my ovary, endo, and breast lump. When my dedicated insurance agent pressed them on why they weren't worried about those things enough to deny coverage of them when I first applied for my insurance plan, yet now they were listing them as preexisting conditions for denial of maternity coverage, the insurance company said it was because they'd had to make their guidelines more stringent since I first applied in August. Whatever.

So we decided to apply to other companies, big and small. They all denied me too, but not because of preexisting conditions. They said they denied me because of the new health care bill.

It turns out, insurance companies are now required to cover any children born to a woman who has their maternity coverage. So rather than risk getting stuck with sick babies, they apparently decided to stop offering maternity coverage until the rest of the health care law kicks in starting on Jan. 1, 2014 and they have to offer it. Or at least that's their excuse.

Yes, that's right. Even though I'm willing to pay double—or even more—per month than I am paying now for health insurance and am willing to wait an entire year before I even try to get pregnant (which guarantees the insurance company at least one year and 9 months of that gargantuan monthly rate—and that's only assuming I would get pregnant immediately), they're still not willing to offer coverage.

I started doing some investigating to find out what other options are out there and how things might change once the health care law (officially called the Affordable Care Act) is completely implemented.

It doesn't help me at all in this situation, but I did learn that some states (including Illinois, where I live), have state infertility insurance coverage laws that require coverage of infertility treatments, so if you are concerned about fertility coverage this site from the American Society of Reproductive Medicine is worth checking out.

Many states, including Illinois, also have Medicaid and other programs designed specifically to provide coverage to women who meet certain income requirements. Unfortunately, that doesn't help me either, but it is an incredibly important benefit offered to many women across the United States.

Finally, to bridge the gap between now and when the rest of the Affordable Health Care Act is rolled out in January 2014, people who have been denied coverage because of a preexisting condition, have been uninsured for at least 6 months, and can afford to pay insurance rates can enroll in the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP). Since I currently have insurance—just not maternity coverage—this doesn't help me, either. But I bet it's a lifesaver to others out there.

The best news, of course, is that beginning on Jan. 1, 2014, maternity care will be considered one of the 10 "essential health benefits" that most individual and small-group plans in the United States will be required to offer—and people who apply for insurance can no longer be denied or charged ridiculously high rates for preexisting conditions or maternity coverage. I'm not alone in rejoicing over this fact.

Once I finished fuming the other day and started to think about my current predicament a bit more, I realized perhaps it's for the best we were denied maternity coverage now. We had planned to start coverage Feb. 1. So in a year, when we could finally try to have a child, the Affordable Care Act would already have been in effect for a month.

Instead of forking over all that extra money for the next year, I guess I'll keep my cash and try to apply for new insurance coverage next January. With my luck, some sticky situation will come up that will somehow exempt me from maternity coverage again. But in theory, next year I should be able to get the coverage I need without paying exorbitant rates or dealing with a waiting period.

We'll see.

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!