How did it all add up?

One of the things I wanted to look at for this month was how much money we spent eating gluten free for 30 days. We started on June 6, but to make it easier, I just analyzed the month of June and compared it to the month of May. Both months were similar in our activities: In May we were out of town for 4 days for a wedding and in June at the beach for 5 days. May also had my kids' birthday party so there were expenses, but we did get to eat the leftovers. I couldn't really compare to other months easily because before May, me and the kids were at my parents' house 2-4 days a week for all of our meals. Last June wasn't good for comparison either because I had just had a baby and we were eating out of the freezer and from other people's meal support.

So how did it add up? Was gluten free that much more expensive? First let's look at the grocery stores. This does not include any Walmart/Target/Walgreens trips that were half household items and half food. Both months had multiple of these trips so I figured it balanced out to leave them out. So just with actual grocery stores, we spent about $80 more in June than in May! Not nearly as bad as I thought. Remember, there was that May bday party, but I thought this number would be hundreds more! Looking at the actual number, I am shocked though! It has been a long time since we have actually filled in our budget. Wow! I know grocery prices have gone up, but over $500 a month for groceries for a family of 4 seems a bit high. How much do you spend on groceries these days?

Now eating out was a big shocker too! Even with adding in $50 to the eating out total for June (for half of what my parents spent on food at the beach) we spent HALF of what we did on eating out in May ($300)! Granted, this doesn't count any cash spent on eating out which does happen when I buy a drink a few days a week. But imagine how much more this would have been if we really could eat out while we were on vacation?

So what have I learned: GF does save money on eating out and hopefully makes up for the extra cost of bread, pasta, and special products that way.

Well, now what?

It has been 8 days since we have officially finished our GF-CF challenge. I started out eating a little bit of dairy for the first 3 days and one day I had an ice cream sandwich and therefore had gluten. But other than that I haven't had any gluten yet even though I planned on eating gluten starting on day 4. A friend of mine from high school, who is now a smart neurology person (but not a MD), told me that in neurology trials it takes 4-8 weeks to really make a change in the brain. So she recommended I stick with this diet a little bit longer. So as a result of that, Daniel still has not had any gluten or casein. Until a few days ago, I was eating a bit of dairy or gluten every day. But I had some severe abdominal pain and I am attributing it to eating too much dairy after not having any for a month.

So, what have we been eating since? Well, not much since I really didn't plan on having to be on the diet this long and I got the flu this week so Sam is lucky he is eating at all ; ) I made another huge Whole Foods run this morning and spent another $100+ there. One thing I did buy was some Probiotics. Since we haven't been eating any yogurt, I feel like that may be making us both a little "sluggish". I am hoping that they help because they are pretty expensive. The link I posted talks about how it can also help with milk intolerances. So we will be trying that out for the next two weeks or so.

So tonight I am making Chicken and Rice Soup. I am pretty much just making up this recipe, and since I don't do that well, I am kinda nervous. I am pretty much going to put chicken broth, leftover chicken, rice, carrots, and celery. Hopefully it will turn out ok. I will let you know.

Day 30: Last Day of the Challenge

So this is the final day of my 30 day challenge. Overall I am very pleased with this month and I can't wait to find a scale to see how much weight I lost! (My husband is certain that it is at least 5 pounds). So for the last day and last meal, I decided to make pasta. I wanted to try some GF pasta because if I would be on this diet longer, pasta would have to be on the menu. I tried some brown rice rotini pasta and it was so good. I highly recommend trying it even if you are not GF. I had a hard time finding a pasta sauce that didn't have some ingredient in it that we shouldn't eat. There is a lot of hidden cheese in pasta sauce so be careful. I ended up getting Hunts sauce (onion and garlic). It is not listed on the website as one of the safe ones, but the ingredients looked pretty safe. I added ground turkey to the pasta and sauce and served it with salad and corn. Let me just say that Simon (the baby) has never eaten so much dinner at one time! He ate bite for bite with his daddy, which was pretty impressive! Daniel did try one "lick" and that was it...; )

I took the kids to Chuck E Cheese today for a little post-holiday fun. It was fun, but exhausting with two kids going in opposite directions. The hardest part though, was smelling that cheesy pizza! Now I know what we will be eating as soon as I can eat cheese AND gluten again.

Day 29: Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July! Our guests left a day early because I overfed them and one of the tummies was not happy : ( So we had a nice relaxing day at home. For breakfast I made Waffles with Bisquick GF mix and they were very light (in color and texture). We added dairy free chocolate chips and you couldn't even tell the difference.

We still decided to do some grilling even though we no longer had company so we set up the kiddie pool to keep the kids busy and busted out the grill. We grilled burgers and corn on the cob. The corn was from Whole Foods and was so fresh and crisp, they didn't even need butter! We also had baked beans which is something I thought was off limits but found some that would work. I used my GF french bread as a bun and it worked well, although it was a bit crumbly. Sam's grandma brought us some wonderful homegrown tomatoes that we sliced up for our burgers and Sam grilled some onions to add the finishing touch. YUM!

Day 27 and 28: Almost There

I can't believe that 30 days is almost over. This diet really hasn't been as hard as I expected it to be. With a little planning and not much eating out, it is a very doable diet. For those people with Celiac, I am sure they have a few other challenges and considerations that I did not take into account (like getting a new toaster or using separate cookware). But overall, I am glad that we tried it and saw a few results.

So what is next? Are we just going to quit? No. The plan right now is to slowly bring dairy and gluten back into our diets and see if there are any noticeable changes. I am going to start eating dairy again starting on day 31. Then 3 days later I will start eating gluten again. If I start noticing changes in Daniel, then I will go back to eating GF or CF again. If we don't notice any changes, then 3 days later he will get some dairy and 3 days after that, gluten.

So what have we been eating the last two days?

On Day 27 I made Country Style Ribs, potatoes, and asparagus. For the ribs, I boiled them for about 1 1/2 hours. Then we covered them in Sweet Baby Ray BBQ sauce and baked them in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes. This is my favorite way to cook ribs because I am not so good at grilling them. Boiling them makes them really tender and they almost fall apart when you take them out of the pot.

In other news, remember that fruit bar that I bought from Whole Foods that was not GF? Well, Daniel found an open one in the living room (that my lovely husband left there while he was feeding the baby) and ate the whole thing! I didn't really notice much of a difference today though. So much for being COMPLETELY GF during this experiment.

On Day 28 Sam's grandma and uncle came for a visit so I made them a special meal: Crawfish Pie. Now I don't really like crawfish at all, so I didn't really mind that I was missing out on their fabulous lunch. I don't know how I could make that meal GF-CF unless I found a GF pie crust and somehow figured out how to make canned mushroom soup from scratch.

I also made a GF-CF cake (Betty Crocker mix again). It was very good, although not as good as the chocolate. We decorated it to celebrate the 4th of July (a day early) with lots of strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries!

Daniel even helped decorate it! (That was a first!)

Day 26: Naked Chicken

Today we ate salads again. I did make them a bit fancier by going to the grocery store and getting a few specialty items off of their salad bar. It only cost me $1 and we had peppers, olives, bacon, and some fancy cheese (for sam) to put on our salads. I also grilled some chicken to put on it. I also forced my son to eat some "naked chicken". He fought us hard, but once he did eat some he kept eating it as long as I held it for him. Hopefully, this will be a start of him eating chicken in another form other than nuggets.

And you know what sucks? I spent over $200 in groceries this week between Winn Dixie and Whole Foods. After this month I am going to see how much I spent this month compared to other months in the year and see how much more expensive this diet is. Although, I am buying less dairy and snacks and we are eating out less, it still seems like the cost of all the "special" items makes up for all that.

Day 25: Pork Chops

Tonight we made Italian Breaded Pork Chops, another recipe courtesy of allrecipes.com. That is the site I get most of my recipes from. I like to follow recipes and not just wing-it in the kitchen. That makes me nervous. I like to know exactly how much of everything to put into a dish. I am not big on taste testing my food, so that is the only way I know it will turn out. So anyway, Sam found this recipe while at work and sent it to me. I pretty much followed it exactly except that I used my GF bread crumbs (corn meal) and since they were unseasoned I had to make them taste Italian (parsley, Italian seasoning, garlic, salt and pepper). I also used almond milk and two eggs instead of three. I baked them on a broiler pan so they would stay crispy. I made steamed asparagus and sweet potatoes to go with them. For Sam and the baby, I made some GF mac and cheese (unfortunately it was real cheese so I couldn't eat it). I forgot to take pictures of this meal so just imagine how wonderful it looked!

I also had an unscheduled meal at a fast food restaurant today. I brought my son to school and as I was on my way to Whole Foods to restock our GF pantry, a friend called me to ask if I could watch her kids while she went to the doctor. Well, we ended up meeting at the park near the hospital and I watched her two kids and my one kid for about 2 hours. While I was at Whole Foods I bought some cut fruit so me and the kids could snack at the park. I also bought the kids some fruit bars (not GF, this was a mistake as I found out later). Once my friend got out of her appointment it was too late for me to drive all the way home and then come back to get Daniel so I asked if she wanted to go out to eat. We went to Wendy's for lunch. I had looked at their GF menu befor so I know their salads were all GF except for the croutons. I wanted to try the new Berry Almond Chicken Salad. It was good, but I forgot about the cheese and ended up eating a little before I realized it. It was good and nice to go out to eat fast food again. Although I did miss the french fries : )