jacattack

Annie Banannie is featured on FridayPuppy.com this week!! Take a second to vote for her as this week’s cutest puppy because, well, she is!!

Sorry about the lack of posts lately, I’ll be getting back into the blogging groove shortly.  In the meantime, enjoy the newest Geico commercial that brings tears to my church-laughing self every time.

No, I really don’t.  No bread, no beer, no pizza… nada.

It’s called Celiac’s and it means that you can’t eat gluten… meaning wheat, barley, rye or oats.  If you do, stomach problems ensue.  And for some reason, to some people, that means EVERYTHING.  Um, not so much. 

Issok, I make you sandwich!

I can eat rice.  And there is rice flour to substitute wheat in certain things… like pasta, bread (still haven’t found a good one), crackers and the like.  I can eat corn based products, like chips, cornmeal, etc.  And, of course, all of the veggies, fruits, and meats that I want.

Now, time to address the responses when I get when I’m forced to reveal to someone, “Sorry, I can’t eat anything with wheat in it.”

“So you can NEVER go out to dinner?”

Not the case, yo.  Luckily, there are plenty of area restaurants with several gluten free options.  My favorites are P.F. Changs, Outback, Sherry Lynn’s Gluten Free Bakery, Smokey Bones, Uno’s Pizza, and Quaker Steak and Lube wings.  If I don’t go there, I order something sans flour (usually a salad, or grilled chicken or steak meal of sorts) and tell the wait staff that I can’t have gluten.  They’re 99.9% of the time cool about it.

“Wow, you must have lost all kinds of weight from eating so healthy.”

Uh… not really.  There are many people who do lose weight from this kind of diet, just as a result of not eating as much take-out and cooking at home more.  Well, I was never really a take-out junkie.  I love to cook, and have always made a strong effort to eat plenty of fruits and veggies (thanks, Mom) and control portion size.  However, most gluten free substitutes are higher in fat (something’s gotta hold them together), which I learned the hard way.  And those gluten free frozen dinners are chock full o’ sodium just like the regular ones.  In other words, don’t just decide to go on a gluten free diet so you can lose weight.  Depending on what you eat, it is not necessarily healthy.  It don’t work like that, homie. 

“NO BEER?!?!?!?!”

Yeah, I thought my life was over, too.  But I’ve since begun to appreciate hard liquor (anything but Everclear as it is a grain alcohol… and no one should ever drink that anyways) and wine.  And now that Wolff’s Biergarten serves Green’s Gluten Free beer, I hit them up when I need a beer fix.

“So what CAN I cook for you?”

Almost anything!  Just be mindful of ingredients… read labels to ensure it doesn’t read “wheat, rye, barley, oats, or modified food starch.”  A lot of food companies have made it easier and it says at the bottom of the list “Contains milk/soy/wheat” products.  At cookouts, I eat burgers without buns and check the label on the BBQ sauce before I bathe my steak in it, and eat as many chips, veggies and fruit salad as I want.

All in all, it is not as bad as people think and it really isn’t a big deal.  I’m going to start sharing my favorite GF recipes every so often on this blog, so stay tuned.  If you or a family member or friend has Celiac’s and you’re stumped for dinner ideas… Google is your friend!  I use Google for recipes all the time, and I check out Suzanne Mangini’s Gluten Free blog on the TU  for the latest GF news.

In the meantime, cheers to Celiacs and being gluten free!  And stay tuned for recipe ideas!

Catch my guest post over at On The Edge here!!

One of my lifelong (well, maybe more like a year-long) dreams came true this weekend.  I got to see Lady Gaga in concert in Boston!!!  Obviously, the show was sick… and all week I prepped myself by watching the “Telephone” and “Bad Romance” music videos to name a few.  It got me wondering, how the heck did she get her eyes to look all doe-eyed and creepy in the “Bad Romance” video?

I came across this today whilst getting my evening news fix.  While they answered my question about how the Gagster’s eyes got to look like that in the bathtub scene of the video (digital enhancement mumbo jumbo), I guess now there’s a problem with young girls buying illegal, non-FDA approved contacts online to achieve the same look.  There’s risk of eye infection and even blindness with these buggers!

Call me crazy, but I prefer this slightly more natural look

Now, I think it looks pretty cool for, um, maybe Halloween… I really don’t see the appeal in this trend?  I never really “got” the colored contact thing either, so maybe it’s just me.

Would you do this to your eyes??  Am I wrong, or is this almost as weird as putting a vodka shot in the ol’ socket?