I am on a gluten-free, grain-free, sugar-free diet. Basically, I am starving. Okay, I am not really starving, but my brain thinks I am a lot of the time. I have had to adapt from eating  whatever I wanted, to eating everything I did not want. I have to keep my protein intake up as well, which is not as easy as it sounds. I am this close to hating eggs for eternity.

During this whole process though, I have found a lot of fantastic recipes and meal ideas.  and a few great lessons.

Lesson #1: Cauliflower can be good, and good for you- as long as you chop it with a gas mask on.


One of the new recipes was the pizza with the cauliflower crust I posted yesterday. To be honest, I had never even put a piece of cauliflower to my lips before last week. I am a hypocrite. I used to get my kids to eat it by telling them it was broccoli's brother. I on the other hand, preferred the less albino of the two siblings. When I found the cauliflower recipes I decided to just leap in. As I riced it, the pungent, very unpleasant, odor assailed my senses. It smells like LuLu's farts. (LuLu is my dog, not by daughter.) Despite the awful smell, once it is mixed with other ingredients, it's not even recognizable.

Lesson #2: Never ever think recovering addicts/alcoholics have it easy.

Every time I walk by sugar; whether it is a donut in the bakery, a piece of candy corn on the table, or a handful of smashed Skittles on the sidewalk— I get an instant urge to put it in my mouth. Followed by shame, hunger and then, finally, euphoria at my ability to resist (if I did).

Lesson #3: Not everyone who says white sugar, white flour etc. is bad is a hippy.

My doctor does not look, sound or smell like a hippy and she told me all those things were bad. I have also felt better than I ever have before. So either I was wrong, or I am now a hippy.

There are surely more lessons to be learned, but that is enough for one day.

I will try to post more recipes or meal ideas here for anyone who would like to cross the line and come to the dark side.

Warning – this post is fraught with run-on sentences and overt sentimentality. If you have an aversion to either of those things, you may want to find a blog to read where the writer is not suffering from a minor emotional breakdown.

I often complain about living in North Idaho. The winters are too long, the fall is too long, the spring is too short and the summer is often non-existent. I complain about the location (too far from my family), the strange people with strange ideas (I don’t believe you should have a shotgun with you when you go to the grocery store unless the butcher hasn’t gotten around to putting down your dinner yet), the ridiculous weather changes (yesterday it snowed, was sunny and rained all in the same 2-hour period and the wind almost blew our roof off last night), and the belief that a community is diverse because there is one kid in your child’s elementary class whose mother is half-Chinese (no explanation needed on this one).

Now that we are facing the very real prospect of leaving the Pacific Northwest, I see things I love about it all around me. Where else would a teenager, with no political interests, look forward to meeting an actual presidential hopeful (even if that hopeful is only Ron Paul)? In what other region do you find a hipster drinking coffee in a swanky café one minute and then turned out in camouflage to kill turkeys or deer or some other innocent creature the next? Where else would the following product sell big? (With the exception of Portland, OR, I am sure Moscow, ID has more than its fair share. I might have been tempted if I rode a bike, but alas, I do not.)

http://www.designsponge.com/2012/02/wearable-planters-for-your-bike.html

Everywhere I look these days I see things I am convinced I won’t find anywhere else (I’m sure this is not entirely true, but it feels that way sometimes). The Bagel Shop that claims to have invented the steaming process of heating their very delicious sandwiches, the sound of University of Idaho’s carillon chiming on the hour or playing different tunes for the seasons, the abundance of dogs walking with their owners or sitting at outdoor tables sharing scraps of their masters’ lunches, the feeling of safety when I send my kids to trick-or-treat on their own after dark, with little concern for their safety in our friendly community, the Moscow Co-op’s delicious vegan cupcakes and how I see someone I know everywhere I go. These are just a few of the things I will miss if we leave.