Gluten, Gluten Everywhere

I promise I will be posting on vacation soon  - I'm loading the vacation photos right now.

My littlest one has some food issues, as I've already discussed here. Egg and peanut allergies we know about now. And they are somewhat easy to avoid. But for the last month, my little girl hasn't been sleeping much at all and has had tummy problems that cause her a lot of pain.

The night before we left on vacation it had been over two weeks since she and I had slept through the night. We'd be up for two hours at least every night between 2am and 4am. My husband and I decided to try having her go gluten-free. And as we're about to leave town and have zero control over how her food is prepared, what better time?

It was difficult to avoid peanut, egg, gluten and tomato (she definitely has an issue with tomato but we're not sure how much it bothers her) but all the wait staff we had at restaurants while on the road were really nice and helped us.

Our first night out, we ate at our favorite pizza place in Santa Fe. We ordered a cheese pizza with gluten-free crust for all three girls and they loved it. The crust was really good and they didn't know till the end of dinner that it was gluten free. Unfortunately that night we forgot about the tomato issue but it worked out ok.

Poor baby ended up eating lots of applesauce and veggie straws (but only the potato and spinach flavors) and yogurt. Fortunately she loves those things.

We saw a difference in her throughout the trip. She fussed less, she slept a little better, her tummy seemed improved a lot. So we are continuing the gluten-free experiment with her.

Last night I made a casserole from the latest Paula Deen magazine. Reading through the recipe, it sounded perfect - corn, black beans, brown rice, chicken. Everything the baby could and would eat and everyone would like it. It was really tasty and everyone did like it. Then I read the label on the cream of chicken - contains wheat! Who would have thought?

I am finding that gluten is hiding everywhere in our food. No wonder so many people have gluten sensitivities. We are inundated with gluten everywhere we turn! A friend of mine who is gluten intolerant as are four of her children told me that most of the time when you see "natural flavorings" on a label, it's gluten. Some gluten wouldn't be a problem - the gluten found naturally in wheat, rye and barley. But it's been added to everything to improve texture and flavor.

Going gluten-free is going to be more challenging than I anticipated - but not impossible. At least with gluten, I don't have to worry about anaphylaxis like I do with the allergies.

God bless the internet - I found several recipes for making my own GF (gluten free) cream of anything soups that I can use in place of canned. Yay!