Officially old and going gluten free

10 years ago, on 04/04/04, I celebrated my birthday, and cut a cake for the first time in my life. At 25, I was at the top of the world. 10 years later, I wasn't looking forward to this day which would mean I am over the 35yo mark - the mark I was determined to not cross before having a family, because I had read of increased risks and difficulties faced by both the mom and the bub, and just didn't want to do it. How life changes your view on things! Now, I just admire the courage with which women (of any age) climb mountains just to be blessed by a child. 

Well, my update is that the results of my Coeliac screening came out negative. Although a biopsy is said to be the sure way to confirm the presence or absence of the disease, I decided against doing a biopsy since I do not have any definite symptoms that makes me think that I may have the disease. At least nothing that Hypothyroidism doesn't explain. So, since this Monday, I am now completely on Gluten free diet on top of the Dairy free diet that I was trying out before, in order to try to rule out any food insensitivity I may have. I didn't think it was going to be this hard though - my main meals almost always consists of rice due to my Asian background, so all I had to do was to healthily snack in between with fruits and nuts and stuff. But that was easier said than done. I have never been a fan of nuts, and fruits, there is a limit to how much I can eat a week. I can't change my fussy eating habits in a week. So what did my gluten free week look like? Besides protein, I ate lots of different varieties of rice based dishes - rice with curries, fried rice, pancakes made of rice flour, rice puffs, rice noodles, beaten rice (specialty of my country back home), risotto and the list goes on. Although that does not sound like fun, I didn't mind that part. However, I found that I am getting hungrier between meals each day. I really need to learn new gluten free dishes, and incorporate them to my daily meals soon.

I did try baking a gluten free cake today using gluten free flour I found in the supermarket. It wasn't the best looking cake, and I mistakenly put a bit more cinnamon than I intended, but otherwise I was pleasantly surprised with the taste. I had read a lot of people say it took them a lot of experimenting to get their gluten free cakes right, so I guess my expectation was pretty low, so maybe that helped! I hope I can improve the post the recipe online after trying to fix a few ingredients soon. I also tried some home made dumplings (my favourite food in the past) using the same gluten free flour, and although it looked great and tested fine, I could not eat a lot of them. And so my journey continues on....