Last February my girlfriend was diagnosed with Celiac Disease, so I did two things, I went on a learning spree and I began eating only what she could eat while we are together. (We don't live together so this means I was gluten free about half-time). I made a gluten free shelf in my pantry and in my fridge and I learned all about cross-contamination, etc.
I read:
-Gluten-Free Diet: A Comprehensive Resource Guide- Expanded and Revised Edition
-The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook
-Cooking with Coconut Flour: A Delicious Low-Carb, Gluten-Free Alternative to Wheat
-Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine
and I got her this bread machine for her birthday (it is AWESOME and it goes with the above-mentioned book):
-Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme 2-Pound-Loaf Breadmaker
Then, in October, I had a conversation with my mom and it turns out she is allergic to wheat. I have inherited the rest of my mother's allergies (grass, trees, etc), so I thought what if I am also allergic to wheat. There is a distinct difference between Celiac Disease and a Wheat Allergy and in my effort to understand this I read:
Healthier Without Wheat: A New Understanding of Wheat Allergies, Celiac Disease, and Non-Celiac Gluten Intolerance.
So, in mid October I went wheat free permanently. This fit nicely into the Paleo stuff I'd heard about so I read:
-The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet
-The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat
Both are brilliant books that I totally recommend. So, totally sipping the kool-aid, I got myself some tools:
-Deni 7600 3-Tier 9-1/2-Quart Stainless-Steel Digital Food Steamer
-LUX color changing egg timer
-Calphalon HE600CG Removable-Plate Nonstick Countertop Grill
-Blanched Almond Meal Flour, 5 lb.
So that's the rundown of the prep and information gathering. Lots of great books and information out there. Next was testing out new tools and there's the little detail of learning how to cook. Seriously, notice the hard boiled egg timer, I couldn't even hardboil eggs properly so I have to get tools to make up for my shortcomings. The most major shortcoming is that I don't enjoy cooking at all, in fact I'd go so far as to say I resent it...deeply. Cooking *with* someone else is okay, or watching cooking shows with the girlfriend. As a shared activity, spending time together, I don't mind it, I can ask really stupid questions and we're cooking or eating together. But alone, in sheer terms of feeding myself, it is just a huge timesuck so anything I can do to make it more hands-off the better. It is an important recurring event that deserves more attention and time than I want to devote to it and there is the problem. Enter the tools. :)
The maiden voyage of the Calphalon grill included unboxing, reading the manual, preheating, slap the steaks on, take a guess and set the timer and walk away, return upon ding, et voila there's dinner and some lunches. Same for the steamer; each basket has 6 evenly spaced subtle little divots to place an egg in so I hardboiled 18 eggs just by checking in on my LUX egg timer. Now I know the time ballpark.
So, between my cool new tools and others out there also embarking on Paleo ( like Dagney's revelation of making her own mayo), well there may be hope for me yet.
