Good luck. I wish I could make myself like oatmeal. It’s so good for you. My husband eats it all the time but no matter how much he tries to disguise the taste for me - cinnamon, fruit. I just can’t stomach. More of a texture thing I think.

Good luck! Completely gluten free is hard to do, so many foods have it. My son has Celiac disease.

Breakfast is when I really mess stuff up. Staying away from the sugar coated breakfast goodies is a feat and a half you know. Lately I’ve been having a banana before the kids go to school. Then later a slice of whole wheat toast with peanut butter on it.

It’s not perfect, but it’s better than how I used to have breakfast!

I wish you the best of luck on your journey to cut out the crud we fill our bodies with. I wrote a similar post on Friday, and the dairy thing is the hardest.

Most people do not realize how many things contain dairy! Ugh!

But I feel so much better because of cutting back on stuff.

Good luck to you and your family (who’s adjusting will probably be much more difficult than yours - just ask me, I had six people to convince!)

hehe

So far I’m really enjoying these steel cut oats. They taste nothing like oatmeal — chewier, and kind of nutty.

But I’ll tell you what, after 4 days without gluten, dairy, red meat or refined sugar, I feel worse than before! Someone told me it’s kind of like a “detox”, so I’m hanging in there. But, ugh.

Sounds like a great plan. Just FYI, oats produced inside the US (even Bob’s Red Mill) are not gluten-free because they’re heavily cross-contaminated from the other grains they’re grown with, particularly barley. I have to buy Irish oats to have GF oats.

Even after going off gluten, I still had a lot of problems, though not as many. It was cutting out the dairy that took away the rest of my symptoms.

Probiotics also help the detox thing, and if there’s a possibility that any of your allergy issues are caused by excess yeast in your body, probiotics are essential. I use Probio-Wellness Digestive Enzymes (they’re the only ones I’ve found at the grocery store that are gluten-free, dairy-free), and they have been a godsend.

Almond milk is great, especially for baking. If you ever start craving cream, give coconut milk a try (it doesn’t taste like coconut once you add other things to it). You may have to add GF flour to get the desired thickness, but I usually don’t need the flour. Sadly, I’ve found no alternative to parmesan cheese. Some days I really miss it.

I miss Parmesan cheese, too. I’m making Eggplant Parmigana tonight, and I have a feeling the soy cheese isn’t going to be nearly as good as the real stuff.

Yeah, of all the cheeses, I can easily go without any (I’m going to make a pizza with no cheese soon, and I’m hoping that an olive oil / garlic / herbs / (maybe) coconut milk sauce will offset the no-cheese thing enough to make it still good), but going without parmesan is so hard. I find that adding pine nuts (if you like those) helps me forget that the parmesan is not there.

But I think there’s hope. Tonight I made this awesome Cajun Seafood Pasta that I adapted from allrecipes a while back, and it calls for two cups of heavy cream and 2 cups of parmesan. But I made it this evening with 2 cans of coconut milk instead of the heavy cream and left the cheese out altogether (simmering the coconut milk on about 3 for a while helps to thicken it), and Frank couldn’t tell the difference, and neither could I. It was just as wonderful as always. So yay!

A pesto sauce would probably be a great pizza topping, Sarah. I’ll have to look for that Cajun Seafood Pasta recipe. We do love our seafood.