If I could eat gluten...

A few days ago I was cleaning my room and discovered my old Beauty and the Beast notebook. It contained many lists, schedules and notes to self from several years ago.

Do you keep a diary? I do.

Whenever I read it I feel all nostalgic, sad and happy at the same time. Sad because of all the memories that are often not that great (ie, being sick) and happy because of all the nice memories and funny things that I wrote.

Well, I felt similar to that when I looked through my old notebook.

There are two things from the notebook that I want to share with you:

1) (This one isn't very exciting) I wrote "lampshade" on almost all of my "to do" lists - but 2 years later I still haven't finished it. Shame on me!

2) The list of gluten food that I wanted to eat.

When I got the results to my blood test, I went gluten-free straight away. I knew that I would have to binge on gluten before my small bowel biopsy, so I wrote a list of all the foods that I wanted to eat during that time. Here it is: I didn't do the ones that are crossed out.

• Crumbed fish
• Tuna, lettuce and mayo on toast.
• squiggles
• Gingernuts
• Liquorice
• 100's and 1,000's
• McDonalds
• Subway
• Pizza
• lots and lots of homemade bread.
• Shrewsberry bickies.
• Mum's baking.
• Homemade pasta.
• Pies. Lots of pies!
• Cookies and cream ice cream.

It's quite a humble list ay? But it wasn't like that when I wrote it. Back then I thought that I would never eat a squiggle again and believed that gluten-free pizza was a lost cause. I feel sad now, because I remember that feeling. I couldn't fathom a life without liquorice.

But I also feel happy now, because I know that I have eaten almost all of the things on the list while I was gluten-free.

See here:

• Crumbed fish 

• Tuna, lettuce and mayo on toast.

• squiggles

• Gingernuts (I'm saving that one for later!)
• Liquorice (I plan to try the Molasses liquorice sometime when I feel extra depressed/need something awesome to eat. I'm also putting it off because it might taste gross, and then where would I be? A world without liquorice isn't much of a world.)

• 100's and 1,000's (some brands are now gluten-free!)

• McDonalds (I like dunking the chips into the ice cream... yum.)
• Subway (Not happening. *sad face*)

• Pizza

• Lots and lots of homemade bread.

• Shrewsberry bickies. (I plan to make a gluten-free replica sometime.)
  
• Mum's baking. (No photographic evidence, but I'm sure Mum has made something that's gluten-free!)
• Homemade pasta.(I made some... of sorts.)

• Pies. Lots of pies!

I think this sausage roll counts... right?

Then how about these? hahahaha! YUM!

• Cookies and cream ice cream.

It feels really good to know that I can still eat all of my favourite foods. Crumbed fish is possible. My life is ok. But the other thing I realise from reading that list is that my food tastes have changed so much over the past few years. My horizons have widened a bit more. I look at adzuki beans and say "YUM!" when I never would have before. So, although I thought that being gluten-free would make my food world smaller, in many ways it's actually made it bigger. Heck, I eat quinoa now! Nuff said!

On the next page of the notebook I wrote a plan for a "gluten-free feast". It was my way of reminding myself that being gluten-free isn't that bad. First on the list was cake. Party!

If you had a chance to eat gluten again, what would you eat?