Fodmap Tears. Gluten Tears.
Evidently my body has decided I can not fool it. It does not seem to understand my love for denial. My sister Judi would laugh at that. She always teased me about my love of denial. Eh. Terrible day today with ulcer pain. I was near tears at work and finally came home, laid down, devoured Tums and took some other medication. Eventually, after a few hours, my stomach started to relent. There's part of me that just refuses to believe that this is real...and God knows...I am well aware that this is a minor, minor thing, but, well, hell.
I'd been feeling quite a bit better on my low fodmap/gluten free diet, so, as I was told, I started trying to add things back in. Gluten was a no go. I can do small amounts, but anything more is bad news. Then I tried adding onion back in. For awhile it was ok and I thought maybe my ulcer had healed enough....and then it wasn't. I swore off it and tried to get back to being more careful about fodmaps. Over the weekend I make a Asian-ish pulled pork kind of thing and obediently left out the onion and garlic. It was good, albeit a bit too salty. I felt pretty wretched the next day, and so had a nice bland low fodmap kind of chicken and spinach and potato dinner that night and felt a bit better. Last night Ernie and I were completely unenthused about the salmon waiting for us in the refrigerator and just kind of snacked. I had a a tiny serving of the pork. This morning? Not so good. I got into work late and felt horrid. I forced myself to eat lunch as I've been told you feel worse when your stomach is empty. I mostly ate rice but had a bit of the leftover pork as well. About an hour later I was in such pain I couldn't focus on my work and finally gave in and texted Ernie to come pick me up.
After I began to feel better I started inventorying everything I've eaten for the last several days. Finally I realized that I used the wrong hot sauce in the pork dish. Some hot sauces are ok....the hot pepper is not the problem, rather additives like garlic are. So when I thought back I realized I had used one of the hot sauces (and there was a lot of it) that has garlic in it. Sigh.
I shake my head; can that really have made me feel so awful? And yet, it seems to have. I have been sitting here googling low fodmap/gluten free Thanksgiving recipes. I'm relatively prepared. I've found a gluten free piecrust recipe for my meat pie (tourtière, which is key for Thanksgiving and Christmas for us) and figured that although I can't use onion in it as I would normally, I could add a bit of onion infused oil...so I thought I was good. Then, as I was making a shopping list, it struck me. I use saltines for the binder in my tourtière. And as stupid as it sounds, I cried.
God knows this is an incredibly minor issue, and I certainly know it, but somehow the saltines thing just broke my heart. I'm lucky that having enough good quality food is not a challenge for me, so I do realize how whiny this sounds but it just brought me up short. I mean....it's Grandma's meat pie!!! I've googled gluten free crackers but am feeling suspicious and hostile. Of course a lot of tourtière recipes call for mashed potato as the binder, which I'm sure is good, but it's just not my Grandma's meat pie.
Breaking tradition is tough for me. We'll see what I figure out. THIS is what you're supposed to use in your tourtière: