The Unplanned Life...

This isn't just a cooking blog. It's about living a life you didn't plan. I didn't plan to cook all the time-  I never even liked to cook. It was one of those necessary evils that rated right up there with cleaning the bathrooms and doing laundry. But I also didn't plan to eliminate half of the American food chain from my life. It's a funny thing...  the more foods you don't eat, the more you have to cook. It doesn't make sense really, but then that's the life I didn't plan. So cooking is a big part of it, because I spend an awful lot of time in the kitchen.

In my experience, one of God's greatest mercies is refusing to tell us the future. A younger me thought that if we simply knew what was ahead, we could plan. It would be great. An older me knows how naive that was. How do you plan for the great difficulties of life?  Talk about a joy-robber.  So I thank God everyday for ignorance. For permission to live life today, without stressing about tomorrow.  For the joy of so many little things I would have missed if he hadn't made me slow down and be in the kitchen.

It started with illness and then a diagnosis of celiac disease.  Great to fnally have a diagnosis, not so great to live with it.  Embarking upon the gluten-free diet resulted in constant hunger. I found I was always hungry no matter how much I ate. The "wheat hole" in my stomach was never filled because none of the substitutes tasted like wheat. I craved wheat. Nothing sounded good to me because all I wanted was wheat.

Furthermore, despite the deprivation I still wasn't well. I was meticulous about the gluten free diet, but something was still very wrong. While many symptoms had improved, other terrible ones remained. The boatload of prescribed pharmaceuticals turned out to be worse than the symptoms. So I "just said no" and started looking for answers in places without ominously long warning lists. The search led me right back to food, discovering that not only gluten...  but dairy, soy, pork, corn and all corn by-products (which means virtually all processed foods) were doing terrible things to me. "What can you eat??" became the most common question I fielded. To which I had no good answers. The unplanned life.

So the journey began, and much of it has taken place in the kitchen.  Multiple food allergies instantly turn you into a pioneer.  I make my own mayo, ketchup, worcestershire, vanilla, and a million other things. Me-  who didn't like to cook.  And it's ok. I like this "me" better anyway. I've learned many things along the way that have made the journey easier. I'll start today with the first thing that helped me keep my sanity. The new recipe box.

I had to totally start over. I literally packed up my old recipe box and stacks of cookbooks and relegated them to a distant storage shelf, saved for my daughter someday. My new recipe box was empty. I only put a recipe in it when I had suceeded with something that we actually liked and wanted to eat again. And when such a recipe was put into the box, I counted it a victory. Every new recipe, successfully added to the box, was cause for celebration. This is still the case. With so many restrictions, each success is a big accomplishment, and you have to approach it that way. You can't solve the whole eating problem. It's WAY too overwhelming. You have to look for one success. One victory. Years later, I'm still thrilled with a new food discovery. What new breakthrough will I discover this week which will bring a culinary joy I've been missing for so long, or never had?  One success, one at a time. This day, this victory.  It's the only way to survive, and it applies to plenty more things than an unplanned life of cooking.