12 Step for Writing?

So, hello. Yes, it's me. I need to slow down on these annual posts, don't you think? Ugh! "THEY" say writers are the worst about actually writing. I guess that makes me a TERRIFIC writer. But, I'm gonna try it again. Another gluten-free compadre on Twitter and Pinterest (@GFDougie) has lectured (I'm sure he'd say ENCOURAGED) me to do more tweeting on my gluten-free Twitter account and sharing. So, since this is the stereotypical day to start anything, I'm giving it another go. If you choose, and are on Twitter, I'm at @MilliNoVilli. I just changed it to that. I have to write it down here and there so I can find it later. Because I KNOW I'll forget it. I was quite tickled at coming up with that but it's way too kitchy for me to remember. Cool, I'm not.

Just a word of warning, I'm not one of those fancy cooks. I love cooking shows on tv, food magazines, cookbooks, cooking blogs, etc. But my own experience has no culinary schooling or even real medical expertise. I can only share what I've learned, what I like and what's going on in my own daily life. And it's not centered around my cooking or blogging. At least, not yet. If you stick with me you'll learn I'm midwestern, simple, cheap and very un-politically correct. You won't read long, lengthy, scientific rants about non-GMO foods, how eating non-organics is appalling or the scourge of red meats, sugar and butter. I grew up eating much like Ree Drummond's "Pioneer Woman" and Paula Deen...without quite so much butter. But, yes, VERY southern roots.

I didn't grow up battling gluten-intolerance or food allergies. I've been told I had some issues when I was an infant but I grew out of them pretty quickly. Fast-forward 47 or 48 yrs and I suddenly had digestive and other problems and couldn't find out why. I'm not one to go to the doctor much and after only about three different doctors not having much clue, I started researching for myself online. I concluded I needed to write down what I was eating and how I felt afterwards and when I experienced problems and what kind of problems they were. I think writing it down was key to finally seeing a pattern emerge. My body seems to take 1 1/2-2 days to fully react, making it a little more difficult to see. I started making a list of foods I seemed to be bothered by and one-by-one would take them out of my diet. With every food I eliminated the degree of being bothered would lessen. I ended up with a list of 6 foods: glutens, dairy, eggs, beans, rice, nuts. And when you consider our usual diets, eating became quite challenging. I learned that my gluten-intolerance was caused my the gluten killing off the villi in our intestines and that probiotics helps keep those healthy and active. Since I couldn't do dairy, yogurt was out. But I found an allergy-free supplement and took double doses for a few weeks to heal my "leaky gut". Once it was healed, I could get to work at improving my diet. In time, one by one, I managed to work some of those foods back into my diet. At least now and then. A little bit. Which REALLY does help when in social settings. And if I CHOOSE. I still have issues with more than just a little rice, nuts and beans. Glutens are still my worst and I really try to stay away from them as much as possible. I stumbled onto some help with dairy after visiting an uncle, who had become lactose-intolerant also. He could have lactose-free milk and said if he had some of it daily, it helped him digest a little bit of cheese or ice cream on occasion. REALLY? You know as soon as I got home I was zooming to the store for lactose-free milk! And I could also tolerate it well! YAY! So just being able to cook with a milk that tasted like milk and cooks well was SO helpful. And I also found I could do the cheeses and ice creams too. A little. Occasionally. And soft cheeses do much better than cheddar. Go figure. I have no idea why.

SO. That's a little about my journey so far. I'm sure I'll fill in some blanks now and then in the future. I will probably also repeat myself. I'm sorry about that. I seem to have come to that point in my life where I do that. I'll try to keep it at a minimum. Blessings.

Need to change our FQ--Food Quotient

It's been a few months since Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" was on television enlightening all of us about what our public schools are feeding our children every single day. It was also Jamie Oliver that pointed not only the schools, but the harried and brainwashed lives we parents buy into about jam-packed schedules and desire to feed our family, as well as ourselves, food that will soothes and comfort us.

We have are a society of 3 generations that grew up increasingly ingesting fast foods and having fewer and fewer home cooks. Our palates have increasingly become accustomed to smoother, greasier, cheesier, crispier, sweeter and more carbonated everything. We have had the invention and inundation of engineered foods, producing more and bigger things that were once completely healthy like vegetables, fruit, milk, cattle and poultry. Many would still argue their healthiness. I'm not arguing that point at all at this time. I'm not a militant vegan or vegetarian or stockholder on the beef council. I am simply a middle-aged wife and mother that enjoys cooking, eating and feeding my own small family. But after being hit, myself, suddenly with many food intolerances, I was unknowledgable and unprepared as to how to deal with it or cook for it. Fast foods and eating out, largely, came to a complete stop for us, as a family. Many, if not most restaurants have very little to offer someone like me. In researching, I learned that 1:130 are gluten-intolerant, if not an official Celiac, or one that cannot ingest wheat, rye or barley. Now, a large percentage of those 1:130 are also bothered by other foods/food groups. Now, no one expects restaurants to cater to everyone and all the different allergies. BUT, the first step would be to educate the food service industry about the new epidemics that are plaguing their customers. Educating chefs and staff is a start, but not only are professionals needing educating, the homecook needs a comeback along with new knowledge and confidence in providing foods for our families that are for health, not just comfort.

Where did alot of us that DO cook learn? Watching FoodNetwork, of course! The cornacopia of foods and ethnicities we've learned through the years have made this world and its food cultures a much smaller place as our palates have expanded and enjoyed truly great food. We all expect more from our dining experience. Now, with the explosion of obesity and diabetes in our country, I am looking to the FoodNetwork to step up and teach us what we need to modify our palates and how to put healthy moderation onto home tables again.

Now, FoodNetwork isn't to blame for the unhealthy conditions we have today, we DID forego exercise and the outdoors, choosing sedate activities such as video games, NetFlix and computers at the same time that processed and fast foods were becoming the norm. But what I'd like to see is the FoodNetwork have MULTIPLE programs geared to healthy cooking and programs for allergen-free cooking. Watching and experiencing explanations with the cooking educates very well. Home cooks would learn better ways and understand what we are eating for. Perhaps the stigma that is rampant amongst restaurant servers believing a gluten-free diet is only a trendy, Hollywood diet. Extended family of those that can no longer enjoy old family favorites at Thanksgiving will no longer believe we are only trying to be high maintenance or that "just a little won't hurt" really WILL hurt.

As much as I LOVE Paula Deen and want to eat absolutely everything she fixes, one show's worth of her "fixins" would kill me, as I'm one of the 1:130. I will still love watching "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives", watching all the wonderful fried, cheesy things that are "the BOMB!" And I will still tune in to other channels to watch never-ending contests of eating ginormous amounts of food in an hour. Its all fun and gastronomically enticing. But we need much more balance and Food Network sets the standards in teaching not only the basics of cooking, but what we should be eating and living.