About Me

I'm posting this as a blog so I don't have a long "about me" section in the corner of all my blogs.

My name is Jessica and I have been married to Bobby for 2 years this coming September. Bob was diagnosed with Celiac's disease 4 years ago in October. We own a small house and 5 acres of lovely wooded land in north eastern Kansas.
Bobby and I met in highschool, though I'd never in a million years have guessed we'd end up married. He is very boisterous and social, always the leader of every group. In highschool I was an artistic loaner and wall flower. He actually thought I was from England, what with my super proper pronunciation and elaborate vocabulary.

We've got Bob's gluten allergy mostly under control now, although he still has inexplicable bad days. As he would be content merely eating a pound of bacon and sausage every day, cooking and meal planning has become something I put a lot of work into. Every week I make a menu of new and favorite recipes. I only buy ingredients for things to make from the menu, so we are not tempted to divert from our menu plan. This helps prevent sad dead veggies from piling up, unused.
My goal with my Wheatstate Celiac blog is to make a comprehensive online cookbook of all of our favorite recipes and to share our experience with Bob's GF allergy with other sufferers. I currently adapt all of the recipes to feed only 2 people, for more efficient shopping trips. I try to include fish at least once a week in our meal plans. For the summer time I also try to do at least one salad per week. Eventually I'd like to include an approx. amount of calories per serving so I can get back to losing weight.

After years of incorrect diagnoses for Bob, most often "irritable bowel", we finally discovered he had Celiac's. My best girl friend's brother went on a gluten free diet (only later to discover that he had cancer, not Celiacs) which made me aware of the condition. I noticed Bob had symptoms more often after things like pancakes or spaghetti and less often after tacos or rice. At a meeting with his Dr. I suggested he be tested for Celiacs. Sure enough, his blood tested positive. After an endoscopy it was doubly confirmed. (Yes, I do get blamed sometimes for the correct diagnosis). Our first trip to the grocery store was horrible. At that time we didn't know much about a GF diet and thought monosodium glutamate (MSG) was a form of gluten. It seemed like there was nothing for him to eat. We stood in the middle of the store and cried. As a nutritionist was far our of our budget, we learned by the seat of our pants. Literally only a year ago did we learn that MSG is NOT a form of gluten. On an already drastically restricted diet, this made a huge difference. I have experimented with various forms of vegetarianism and really would rather avoid eating meat, but try to avoid putting limitations on our diets besides the gluten. Bobby is an unexpectedly picky eater and nearly every week I force him to eat something he is not happy about. He hates beans. He hates all berries except for strawberries and on and on. Hopefully someday he will be more willing to enjoy a wider variety of foods. I'm working on it.

As I am not a Celiac I do occasionally eat wheat products. Hopefully that doesn't upset some of the die hard GF bloggers out there. It is incredibly unfair. As a spouse of a Celiac I think it incredibly important to support your loved one by adapting your diet to the GF diet. It doesn't make sense to have food in the home that your spouse can't eat. Inevitably that non GF food goes bad because I forget it's there anyway. Also when we have kids the likelihood that they will have Celiac's is very high as well. I don't know if it's an old wives tale, but I've heard that you need to be completely wheat-free during pregnancy and while breastfeeding to promote a healthier Celiac spawn. I know when we have a family I'll go completely GF.
My biggest GF sin is beer. I loooove designer microbrewed beer.

I'm also very crafty and love to sew and make stuff. I love interior design (although our house is sadly lacking a cohesive style, thanks to a tight budget) and dream of someday building a sweet dome home on our land. I'm working at becoming more green, although am hung up in creating an effective recycling system for our house. We have to haul our recycling, as no service comes to our rural area.

We both love Burning Man, and have gone for several years with a variety of people. Our camp is called "Camp54". Every year we go our camp gets bigger and more glorious, although this year, what with the rising gas prices, we'll be lucky to make it out there with one dome. I love Burning Man because of the absolute difference between it and the real world. I love making and wearing bizarre elaborate costumes (Halloween is but once a year) and the art is spectacular. It's a chance to be very creative in the presence of other people who work hard at being very creative. There is the obvious hippy/raver contingent to deal with, but the actual organization and heartbeat of the event is made of people who put a lot of effort and time into creating mammoth things that could not exist anywhere else. I will forever rue the day when I described Burning Man to my mother as "Sodom and Gomorrah" as it has convinced her that my participation in the event is a one stop ticket towards a flaming pit in hell. Flaming pit or no, I love having my one week of creativity in this world that doesn't necessarily cater to my artistic talents.

The two people I would want to meet most in the world? J.K. Rowling and Martha Stewart.
Its hard to describe my love of Harry Potter. I listen to audiobooks on my commute to and from work, and always find myself going back and re-listening to Potter. Over and over again, and it never grows old. I would say with some certainty that I've whole passages of "The Deathly Hallows" memorized. Someday when I read the books aloud to my yet un-born kids, I imagine I'll read them just like Jim Dale, my preferred audiobook reader of the series. I think talking to Jo would be so interesting, I've thought so much about the books and have so many questions still.
Martha? A second generation Martha fan, I adore her, stilted awkward style at all. If I were to meet her I'm sure I would be cowed, but a dream of mine is to appear on a segment of her show. Her organization is a font of creative ideas. I DVR her TV show every day, which annoys Bob to no end.

I am, sadly, addicted to the telly. My mother limited our telly watching to the barest, most educational programming. I miss most any 80's cultural reference. Good for my mind, surely, and my reading of books is still voracious. Today, however, the amount of celebrity smut I imbibe is bordering on ridiculous. The advent of our satellite DVR has changed the way we watch the telly. Often I watch 2 shows at once, or one recorded show. I never watch commercials. I can feel my attention span waining as my internet usage increases, as a 9 page article in the NYT seems mammoth, and an article without pictures is more often than not passed on by. Still, I like alot of whats on the telly. There is certainly some interesting work to be seen.