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Despite my new gluten-free diet, I still love food. Perhaps I love it more than ever now that I have to be more mindful of it. Tonight I am grateful for the importance of food in my life, and I celebrated it with a homemade meal of pasta (brown rice fusilli) with marinara sauce, and blue lake beans sauteed in pancetta, garlic, and extra virgin olive oil infused with lemon. It took less than an hour to prepare everything, and was utterly worth it. Mind you, I won’t stop loving my curry take-out, but there is something inimitably satisfying about a good homemade meal, especially when shared with appreciative loved ones.

Yum. If I weren’t so stuffed, I’d enjoy another helping right now!

(This entry is part of one month of gratitude.)

After three months of a gluten-free diet, I can safely say that I am tired of this brave new salad-riddled world and want to go home, my fluffy pastry home with the doughnut doorknob.

Initially, I was more than happy to give up gluten if it meant feeling good again. There is no question that even my bad days now are better than my best days were back then. I won’t go back to how it was before, no matter how bleak it seems right now.

And right now it seems very bleak.

I suppose this is merely a slump, an expected one since I jumped into a gluten-free life without real consideration to how my eating habits — ALL of my eating habits — would have to change. Today I am mourning the ability to be the effortless dining companion I once was. Some cuisines are easier for me than others because of the variety of options their menus provide. Other cuisines daunt and depress me. When once I would order anything (aside from squid) depending on my whim, now I have to scour and study each menu item, ask servers endless, nitpicking questions, and ruin my friends’ good time because I can’t eat most dishes that people like to share.

It’s not that I miss any particular food; I love so many different foods, plus there are viable gluten-free options for many things now. I miss my easy-going glutenated self. I miss being able to say “whatever, whenever” to food with friends. I miss being able to focus on the company rather than the components. When I have to mention my dietary restrictions to anyone, I feel high-maintenance and lame. Food used to be such a vast pleasure for me, but now I am constantly self-conscious about it. I do not like the dynamic of requesting special treatment, but the alternative is a plethora of horrible side-effects.

I know it has only been three months. It has been a long three months.

The last thing I want to write about is the first thing on my mind these days. For the past couple of years, I have suffered from a ghost illness I self-diagnosed as “stress-related”, with symptoms that include gastrointestinal distress, severe headaches, extreme fatigue, and inexplicable mood-swings. Though my two major sources of stress (my last relationship, and my last job) are no more, my symptoms have recently intensified, sometimes to the point of incapacitation.

A researcher by heart, I started reading up on my symptoms, which were compounded a few months ago by a troublesome rash not unlike chicken pox. “Celiac Disease” kept coming up, so I read more and spoke with two friends who have it. With their information, and with my beloved’s encouragement and support, I decided to go on an elimination diet, attempting to avoid all wheat, barley, and rye.

I immediately felt better. Immediately. I’ve been living with these symptoms for so long that I forgot what it was like not to feel sick after eating, to be my usual cheerful self, to be able to stay awake after work, and to go 48 hours without an eyeball-searing headache. Not everything has been perfect — eating at restaurants is particularly tricky — but the past two weeks have been amazing. So the next step has been taken: I have an appointment with an allergist next week.

Today is a not-so-good day, because I ate something at a restaurant last night that I should have guessed was thickened with wheat flour. It is also a not-so-good day because I am new at this, and feeling more than a little overwhelmed by the reality of a lifetime change in diet. But since the cloud is lifting, and since I have loving and supportive people all around me, I know I can do this. For the first time in a long time, I have hope for my health.

I would do the “five things you don’t know about me” meme that is floating around, but after nearly nine years of keeping an online journal, I think you know everything about me I’m willing to catalogue.

My farewell dinner was fantastic: hanger steak in marsala cream sauce with lentils. It smelled so good in here while the MSG was cooking. I’m sure I’ll eat well in London, but I’ll miss this a lot.

Since I’m not usually very girly, I feel the need to document girly moments in my life, such as the glee I felt when acquiring these Camper boots on sale. The right boot has vowels on it and the left has consonants. Glee!

I wish I could sleep. In just a few hours, I need to be functional enough to do some work and pack up before heading to the airport. Every time I try to lie down, I fidget so much that I wake up the MSG. I need some inner peace, stat!

Work overwhelmed me this week. For the first time since I started, I felt like maybe I had made a mistake, like I was losing my grip not because I was new but because I really couldn’t do it.

And just when I was feeling so proud of myself for pushing myself outside my comfort zone, and for dealing with instances in which I didn’t immediately know how to do something or where to find something. Then this week happened, and I’d like to chalk it up to the final push of Mercury in retrograde but really it was that pause between being new and being a full-fledged part of something. This is a good time to learn some humility.

._.-.

My second course of antibiotics is now complete, which means that if I don’t feel better by Monday I’m going to have to see the doctor again. Always a pleasure. I am avoiding the thought of this by playing my favorite old Commodore 64 game, Little Computer People, which was sold by Activision in 1985. Though I have lost interest in The Sims, its flashier descendant, LCP still holds my attention. Thanks to the Power64 emulator, I don’t have to know why; I just play it.

._.-.

The MSG took me to one of Oliveto’s truffle dinners on Thursday. I hadn’t spent much time savoring truffles before meeting the MSG. I think they might be his favorite food, if he had one. Now, I eat them whenever I can, not only because I think they are inimitably delicious but because I want to experience something he is so passionate about. The dinner was outstanding, to say the least, and I wish I had photos for you but I forgot my camera. Duh me.

No truffles tonight, but a great-smelling homemade chicken soup is almost complete. The MSG made even the stock from scratch. It is like having my own personal chef, and I try not to take it for granted.