Breaded Chicken Tenders

This isn't my picture but rather comes from the internet but the finished product will look very similar to this.

Ingredients:

6-8 Chicken Tenders
Olive or Canola Oil
2-3 eggs
1-2 cups Gluten Free Flower
2 cups Gluten-free Breading Material
Kosher Salt
Fresh Cracked Black Pepper



For the breading material you can use gluten free corn flakes or you can use gluten free Chex Mix.  We use the Chex Mix since it's cheaper.  With both of them you'll want to crush the cereal to make something close to bread crumbs.  It can be a lot of work to crush the Chex Mix but I found out using a food processor or stick blender can help things go faster.

For both the flour and breading you'll want to hold back about half of it and then just add more as you need it. This helps to avoid wasting as much flour or breading since you cant re-use the leftovers once the chicken has touched it.

Directions:

1) once the chicken tenders are thawed flatten them out. you can also use chicken breasts and cut them into one inch strips and then flatten them. The way I do this is to use a sturdy spatula and just push down on them until they are between 1/8th and 1/4 inches.  The will get a lot wider during this and it will allow them to cook faster.

2) making sure they are mostly dry (see 'not dripping wet') put them in the flour (also put the salt and pepper in the flour to taste) until they are well coated, shake off the excess. Dip them in the egg till they are fully coated, let the excess drip off for a few seconds.  Then dip them in the breading making sure they are well coated.

3) Then put them in a skillet that has about 1/8 inch oil in it.  In this case you want the oil hot enough that when you put in the chicken it starts to sizzle, but not so hot that it will burn them in less than a minute.  On my pan on my stove medium heat is what is needed.  It should take about 2 minutes per side and they should come out the same color as the picture above.  If you use Chex Mix it'll be more of a fine texture, but if you use corn flakes it may have the texture above.

4) Here is where it gets a bit tricky.  You may have to put them in an oven at 350 degrees for an unspecified amount of time or you may not. Most of the time, just frying your chicken above will not have fully cooked the inside.  The ones I did last night came out looking just like the above chicken and it needed probably 15-20 minutes in the oven, but if you had more heat or cooked yours in the pan longer you may not need as long.  My advice is to put them in at the 350, cook for 10 minutes, and then check ever 5 minutes thereafter till done.

Now pour some gravy over those and enjoy!

Thus begins the recipes

I have been under orders to be gluten free for 62 days.  There have been a few times that I've unknowingly at the time had gluten food.  One was a deli chicken, and the other was some ground up steak thing at a local restaurant. I've lost around 10-15 legitimate pounds - and I say legitimate cause its not from being sick.

There are a few difficult things that I've discovered so far:

1) it's really difficult to eat out.  This wouldn't be so bad if I could have dairy, but trying to find something that is dairy and gluten free and still worth paying for is very difficult. as such our eating out budget is now 1/6th of what it used to be.

2) pot lucks suck.  they suck a lot.  The challenge here is that if i'm going to have something I have to know every ingredient, and the only way to do that is to ask the people who made it.  Despite what you may think, it is really hard to ask them about each ingredient in minute detail without sounding like either a jerk or a complete food snob.  

3) planing makes like far far easier.  Before I had these issues, I would come home, figure out what to have for supper and less than 30 minutes later I would be eating something tasty.  the first few weeks after being gluten free it was very difficult to figure out what to cook, and it all takes forever to actually cook.  I send 2-3 hours each day cooking and generally don't get to eat until 2 hours after i've come home.  If I plan our my 'menu' at the beginning of the week then when I get home I don't have to spend an hour figuring out what I can eat with the things we have on hand. Planing ahead also helps to insure that I have food to take to work the next day.

However, overall things are going OK.  I am pretty busy so there wont be that frequent of updates here but I am using a website called pinterest to amass recipes. you can find my account here: http://pinterest.com/markdelarm/

There is where I will be putting all the gluten free recipes I find.  To post in it I have to have a picture of the food, so some times i'll post a recipe here that doesn't exist online with a picture.  This'll allow me to post it on my pinterest.  

Till next time, stay strong!

G-Day: 0 Hour

My fellow Celiacs,

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The  hopes and prayers of food-loving people everywhere eat with you.  In company with our brave allies and brothers-in-limitation of other foods, you will bring about the destruction of the GI war machine, the elimination of Immune system's tyranny over the oppressed villi of the small intestine, and security for ourselves in a Gluten-free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your pasta enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 2011! Much has happened since the Immune System triumphs of 2009-10. The GI doctors have inflicted upon the White Cells great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air-freshener offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the nose. Our local farmers market has given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of fresh vegetables and quality meat. The tide has turned! The Gluten-Free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! 

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

Tip of the ice berg

This week seemed to be a bit of a roller coaster. Since I had not really been that busy this week I spent a fair amount of time researching celiac and learning quite a bit about it. For instance, once I go gluten free it won't just be for less pain in my gut and less time on the pot - it'll be because if I continue to eat gluten my odds of getting cancer go up by 10,000%. For comparison (since that is such a huge number) the odds of a smoker getting cancer are only 2,000% higher than a normal person.

In addition to this, there is a ingredient that is common to many foods called 'natural flavor'. These are basically various compounds taken from who knows where and put into food to give it a distinctive flavor. Like in pop, for example, it's the natural flavor that separates a pepsi from a coke, and it's also the natural flavors that they fight over accusing one of copying the other. Obviously, with the specific natural flavors being such a closely guarded secret they aren't just going to tell some kid which ones they put in their drinks. The part of this that poses a problem to me is the fact that some natural flavors have gluten in them, and since I can't have gluten I can't safely eat or drink anything that has 'natural flavors' as one of the ingredients.

Mountain Dew, my sweet lover of many years, happens to be one of them. I had known for a few days many of the things I couldn't have and I was willing to part ways with them - even Doritos - but Mountain Dew was a difficult one to swallow [pun intended, lol]. For a couple days I was bummed out over having lost it to this disease. I even posted my lamentations of facebook inviting the world to join in my mourning of the one whom I would miss the most.

Fortunately, after a period of mourning it was brought to my attention that only some of the flavors have gluten, and so even if I don't know what favors are in my beverage I could atleast find out (by asking the makers) if there were any gluten based flavors in there. So I emailed pepsi and they replied with the following:

Dear Mark,

Thank you for contacting us at Pepsi with your inquiry.

While this company does not make gluten-free label claims, none of the ingredients in Pepsi-Cola products are derived from grains or flours that have been linked to malabsorption syndrome associated with gluten sensitivity.

We want to assure you that our products continue to be suitable for gluten-sensitive individuals with Celiac Disease. Please know that we fully understand the seriousness of this issue, which is why we have shared this information with Celiac Sprue Association and the Celiac Disease Foundation.

Please visit www.pepsiproductfacts.com for additional ingredient and nutrition information on all our beverages.

Thanks again for writing and for your interest in our products.

For the entire day after that email my countenance was lifted. Of course I was aware of the bad that came with that good news - mainly that it will not be as easy to lose weight on this new diet as I had hoped - but I was happy regardless.

Also this week I learned that my mother (who has lupus, liver disease, blood clots, colitis, terminal colon cancer, a stoma, diabetes, osteoporosis, and probably a few things i'm missing) may have gotten some of her ailments from celiac. As it turns out some of the things she has are actually long term results of untreated celiac. Of course, as far as either of us know she has never been tested for it, so it's hard to say if it's true, but celiac generally runs in the family so strongly that if one family member has it there is a 1 in 22 chance that another immediate family member does, too.

On a slightly happier and out of order note, one good thing from the pepsi email is that they mentioned other celiac organizations which seem to be an ever better source than what I had already been using!

Well, that is basically all I have for right now. Please be praying for me that the trials I face would not be lost on me, but would rather work towards making me mature and complete, trusting God in all I do.

Good Night.

Good news - at first...

[If you have a weak stomach, this first post may not be for you, but feel free to read the rest. I'll get the bad stuff out of the way and then talk about more productive stuff going forward, I hope.]

Hello World,

My name is Mark, and on June 6th, 2011 I found out I had celiac disease. This is only 7 days later, so I still remember my reaction. My instantaneous reaction was, "That's good news, what a relief!" If I had to guess I would say that is not a typical reaction to someone finding out they have celiac.

To understand why I was in the vast minority here you must first understand something about my family. My mom has quite a few health problems. She has lupus, diabetes liver disease and colitis (which runs in our family). For most of my life I have had unusual BM's. It has basically just been that I've gone a bit more frequently that most other people, and gone in smaller amounts each time. However, probably since high school I would get diarrhea whenever I was under a high amount of stress. I had always thought this was simply just stress related and was nothing really to worry about.

Over the past few weeks I have been planning a pancake fundraiser which is something I've never done before. I was having a lot of stress about it and was also under some stress at work. This lead to me getting sick enough to actually have to stay home. I even lost around 10-15 lbs. After the 3rd or so time of having to call in sick I decided that I needed to go to the doctor. I went to the doctor and we talked about my family history and since my symptoms sounded a lot like colitis the doctor's best two guesses were either IBS (which is like saying "something's wrong with your gut, but we have no clue what it is") or colitis. However, they took some blood to test for a slew of things just to make sure it wasn't one of them.

I went into the doctors office that first day a bit bummed out cause I was fairly certain that it was colitis. For those who aren't aware, colitis is nasty stuff. If I had colitis it would mean that my diarrhea wasn't just a symptom - it was a foretaste of what the rest of my life would be like. It meant that diarrhea wasn't abnormal, but rather normal. It meant the pain I felt in my gut, the urgency to have to go to the bathroom, the pure liquid stools were no longer a rare occurrence but rather they are now what it means to be me. Since my mom had colitis pretty bad I could also see what the future held. That some day, around 10 or 20 years in the future, I would get cancer in my colon. I would then, most likely, have to get my entire colon removed and would have my small intestine empty directly into a bag that would attach to my side. This bag would leak frequently, it would limit my flexibility, it would be an issue when I carried things, it would be an issue when I slept, it would be an issue on trips, it would change my life in many complex ways. And that's all assuming that they had gotten all of the cancer.

So when I first started having symptoms, when I first went to the doctor, when she agreed with my suspicions, when she referred me on to a specialist - during all of this I had the terrible scenario above in my mind. It reminded me of an old saying from India:

If I have been brought into this world, then I must live.

If living is poisonous, then I must drink it.

In laymen's terms the above scenario is what it means to be me and I just have to deal with it. This is the hand that God had dealt to me, this is my fate, this is what living now means for me.

Now, given all of the above, one can easily see why celiac wold be, for me, a great relief. In fact, I was living on cloud 9 that whole first day. It meant that the pain I had, the symptoms I had, and even the resignation I felt towards it all did not have to be! This was no longer the 'norm' for me, it was no longer my fate, I was not doomed to this symptoms! I could take action to change them all! I am glad that I found out in the early morning cause it made my whole day fantastic. I felt as if I had been pardoned from a life sentence and instead given a simple fine and probation. A great load had been taken off my shoulders, and I felt free.

Day 2, however, was a bit of a mix of emotions. By day two the overwhelming relief had lost it's edge and I was able to give some thought to what celiac would mean for me. My realization was rather slow. I had learned, at that point, that I basically wouldn't be able to have foods that contain wheat, barely, or rye. Over the next few days it began to sink in exactly what foods that would be entailing. It started simply with me having a slice pizza and realizing I wont be able to eat it any more soon, or having a doughnut and wondering if it's my last, or smelling bread and understanding that smelling is all i'll be able to do. Surprisingly these weren't that shocking to me. I happen to know a lot about cooking and I felt semi confident that if I desired I could mimic a lot of these things.

The shocks more started when I began to put this in a social context and realized that when I go to someones birthday party I wouldn't be able to have birthday cake. If someone served cookies and milk I wouldn't be able to have one or possibly both of them. Most types of breading have flour in them so basically everything deep fried - cheese curds, chicken, tenderloins, chicken nuggets, fish fillets, country fried steak - would all be off limits to me. If I got invited to olive garden, old chicago, applebees, mcdonald's, steak and shake, culvers, hamburg inn, or even a pancake breakfast I would be hard pressed to find anything I could eat. If I running late for work and don't have time to pack a lunch I can no longer just grab ramen. For crying out loud I cant even buy a can of tomato soup from a store (they have flour in them for some reason, it's weird) and even if I could I couldn't put any of the crackers that I so loved into it. Dorito chips themselves would be fine since they're made with corn, but the delicious powder that coats the chips (and your fingers if you eat them) contain wheat. So I cant even have those unless I wash every chip before hand which would just make them disgusting and soggy.

Of course, these realizations were all just part of me being a negative-nelly. When put in a larger context this disease may quite possibly end up giving me a longer life span. I currently weigh 350 (when i'm hydrated and not spending all day with my good friend, the john) and that is entirely too much. For a guy my height with my build I should probably actually weight about 150 to 200 lbs less than that. The types of foods that I can still eat are the various leafy greens, all the different vegetables, all the different fruits, the vast array of spices and seasonings (that don't have wheat, rye or barley), distilled spirits, and anything made using flours from rice, potatoes, or other similar starches. Basically it sounds like a pretty healthy diet. If I toss in some exercise (which living in iowa city there is a gym on every block), then I stand to lose a ton of weight over the next few years and to likely get in good shape. Since my bad eating habits have infected my wife, i'm sure my good eating habits will infect her, too, as well as our upcoming baby (december 24th due date, huzzah!).

At the end of this month I have an appointment with a gastroenterologist who will confirm the diagnosis, determine the extent to which i've damaged my small intestine, and probably check for cancer (if you don't treat celiac, thats what happens). After that I will likely see a dietitian to help with figuring out meal plans to adjusting to the celiac life style.

The point of this blog is to keep you guys up to date with how it's all going for me, and also to probably post some of the new recipes that I find that are celiac friendly.

Thanks for reading!