Breakfast

When I was first struck with my multiple food intolerances, the meal that was the hardest for me to deal with was breakfast. I don't know about you, but we grew up having "breakfast" for dinner once in awhile. It's a nice break from the usual dinner preparations. Breakfast foods seem easier and faster. And we all just LOVE breakfast foods. So it's a win for everyone. But in the mornings, you NEED eggs, toast, sausage, etc. Or so you think, at least I did. When I couldn't have the breads..toast, waffles, pancakes, etc., and I couldn't have the eggs or the milk, I was kinda lost. I discovered I really need MEAT to feel satisfied for any length of time. And then it dawned on me...I usually always have supper leftovers from the night before! It may seem odd for awhile, but when one is hungry....hey, food is food! So I lived a long time with eating leftover hamburgers or baked chicken and broccoli. My family has never needed, or wanted, a cooked, fresh breakfast. Frozen waffles or cereal has always kept my son happy and hubs would be gone to work before the sun comes up, grabbing a bowl of nuked oatmeal or a piece of fruit. So, dealing with breakfast for myself was always on my own. Just a short sidebar....about oatmeal. I stayed away from it for quite some time as everything I was reading online said those with Celiac and gluten-intolerance should stay away from oatmeal because of cross-contamination possibilities, even stemming back to the fields in which they are grown being used previously for wheat, barley, etc.! In time, I grew too curious and tried some. I found I did well, AS LONG as I stuck with Quaker brand, versus a cheaper, generic brand. And I did well with Irish brands of steel cut oats. But those are much more expensive and I still try to be cheap about some things. I say SOME things so you won't hold me to that about everything I say! I could say so much more. But I just want to stress, today, that if you are finding your diet suddenly diminished due to food allergies or intolerances that you aren't accustomed to, think outside the box. Dinner foods for breakfast isn't normal, but it works. Proteins of any nature, veggies, fruit...think whole foods. I suddenly couldn't have all the things that most people use to casserole things or cream things, combine things with. But I could eat WHOLE foods. Meat, veggies, fruit. Its not always what our American diets are accustomed to meal after meal after meal, but it works! Its healthy and its filling. Think outside the box!

New Focus

Wow, long time no write

I have no idea why I haven't written in so long. The only explanation is life. Life and moods. Have I ever mentioned I'm just FULL of moods? I'll give you a rundown of life around here. And a few thoughts. Maybe this will be the "choke" to getting the engine going again. Don't know what a choke is? Then I'm MUCH older than you.

I made my bi-annual trip to Kansas to visit my mother. With every visit, I am reminded each and every time that I would be a raving maniac if I lived closer and that living 1000 miles away is almost as frustrating. And its the only time I feel very cursed for being an only child. Continued hoarding and her complete belief and insistance that keeping ALL her "pretty" stuff is completely normal although she isn't very capable. And her insistance on driving is just things nightmares are made.

The holidays were spent in relative quietness. Enjoyed lots of family time with my hubby, son and dog.

The normalcy returned at turn of the new year. My son began his monthly treks to his drum corp weekend camps to ready for the new season. He is their field director this year, which will be his last, as he "ages out" this year. His mother gains several more gray hair as he drives the approximate 240 roundtrip miles in Michigan winter weather. February brought a home accident for my husband, costing him 3 broken fingers needing surgery. One required pins and one required the amputation of the top joint. The blessing was that it wasn't worse and it was his left hand. He's right handed. But God has blessed his recovery and he is on the downhill side albeit the physical therapy.

We have been reading and internalizing some great articles and blogs on minimalism. We have reached a stage in life we are very tired of all the years of accumlumating stuff and moving this stuff for the many cross-country moves we've made through the years. We've moved many a box full from house-to-house, state-to-state without opening once in many, many years. After realizing what hanging onto STUFF has done to both of our parents, we decided we desired to do differently. We don't want to wait till we are too old to do something about it. We want the freedom. And most of all, we don't want to do to our son what we will have to deal with our parents' belongings. So we have slowly been going through things and making periodic trips to our local Salvation Army. Its really exciting to think that someone will actually use stuff we have long forgotten about or no longer use.

Even though I haven't been writing on my blog lately, I have been considering possible new directions for it. Perhaps less random. Even though I enjoy discussing whatever is on my mind, I'm considering advice to be more "thematic". Do you have any thoughts on that? I would love to hear from you.

In memory of John

I saw an old friend today. And he filled my heart with love. That was the overwhelming emotion I had this past Sunday as I sat in church. I was listening but my eyes were roaming around seeing the faces of those in our new church, none of which are familiar to me yet. I suddenly spotted him. He wasn't quite the stature of my friend, but there was much about his face, his head that instantly transported me back 20 years in time.


I was in my twenties, single and going on my first missions trip through my church. John was a retired truck driver and he was going to be our bus driver, from Kansas to Monterrey Mexico. There are some people whose physical attributes are memorable and some whose personality is just so big and open that you'd never forget them. He was both. He was a large, muscular man that always wore boots. His head was like Kojak. His eyes and persona was the most loving of anyone I have ever known. Everytime he saw me headed his way, he greeted me with wide-open arms ready and waiting to embrace me with the best hug in the world. Not a squeeze-the-stuffing-out-of-you hug, but a cacooning, encompassing hug. Everyone that met him became his friend.

John and I had many opportunities during that week to talk and share. He had only been a Christian a few years and shared that he had been the stereotypical truck driver before. Memory has made some of the details a bit fuzzy, but around the same time of his conversion, he met the most wonderful woman in the world and they married. He shared with me about his wife's faith and was probably the first person I encountered that challenged my beliefs regarding denominational boundaries. He was very sensitive to that fact and made it perfectly clear he wasn't trying to make me believe as he and his wife did. But I was at a point in my own walk where I had some questions and never heard satisfactory answers. Some of the things John touched on answered those questions and my spirit knew it was truth. John and his wife were just the kind of people you could lay your complete and total trust in their walk they experienced as true and honest.

I left my hometown 20 plus years ago but there's always people, no matter how long or how far you go, never leave your heart. John was one of those. I would hear news about he and his wife from time to time through the grapevine and see him from time to time when we would go home for visits. I always felt like I had talked to him last week. John died of cancer a couple of years ago. I grieved the loss of such a wonderful person from this earth. It needs all the Johns it can hold. But I was so happy to think of him reunited with his wonderful wife in heaven and being a new bright light in the multitudes there.

As time has passed, I have thought of John, on occasion, fondly. And then Sunday, there he sat in front of me. As you now know, it wasn't actually him but someone that looked a great deal like him from a distance. Even though this particular bout of remembering John was fraught with missing John, it was a a good journey of remembering a soul that was one of the best this world has ever known.