Today has been a long time coming. Granted, a lot of that time was my own darn fault. Nonetheless, it’s an exciting day: the wheat test.
It was a good day, as far as food is concerned! (Not so much, where work is concerned.)
The Menu
Breakfast
I just emailed Jamba Juice to inquire whether any of their products do NOT contain refined sugar, and received a gratifyingly in-depth response about the sugar content of their products. To make a long story short, the All Fruit smoothies and Fruit & Veggie smoothies contain no refined sugars. But (pretty much) all of their products contain sugars of other kinds. If you’d like to know more, just leave me a comment and I’ll send forward you the email. Yay for another quick food option! 
Lunch
- Challenge Test: wheat
I cooked 1 cup of hard read wheat berries in 3½ cups of water, with about ½ teaspoon of Light Grey Celtic Sea Salt. It takes about an hour for them to cook through, and the only way I know of to tell that they’re really done is to just pop a couple in your mouth. Well that, and the berries will crack open. They make a fabulous breakfast meal, especially with some nice fruit and milk, and maybe a titch of sugar.
A few points to consider:
- Be sure to sort through the berries before you cook them, as you can actually get some stones in there. Which I can personally attest to.
- Contrary to popular belief, you don’t actually have to soak the berries overnight before cooking them. You can, but you don’t have to. Just be sure you have a good hour to cook them the next day. (I was about a half hour late to work this morning because I hadn’t thought to check on this process before going to bed last night.)
- An interesting fact I learned from the Whole Life Nutrition folks: you should not stir grains while they’re cooking. The grains form their own little steam holes, which allow the entire pot to cook evenly. Stir them around, and those steam holes get destroyed and reformed, and the grains don’t go back in the same places, and you end up with some overcooked, some undercooked, and some just-right-cooked grains. So, long story short: don’t stir them!
As my doctor pointed out recently, I really only need to test wheat, for starters. If no reaction, then gluten’s not a problem. If there is a reaction, then I just need to test one or two other gluten-containing grains, to be certain of whether the problem is wheat or gluten. Read on for the results!
Dinner
- oven-baked, seasoned chicken
- green beans
- mashed potatoes with light gravy
- fried scone with honey butter
Our youth group went to the Temple tonight, and we had dinner there afterward. So it turned out to be a great day for a wheat test, since I was able to eat pretty much freely, without worrying a whole lot about what was in everything. I just avoided things that I knew had loads of refined sugar (desserts, in other words), and it all tasted great! And I still feel great!
Snacks
- Cherry Pie Lära Bar
- two squares of 72% Rain Forest chocolate
The Results
Pulse Rate
Frankly, things were pretty crazy at work today, and I was feeling pretty happy that I even found time to eat lunch. So I ended up skipping the pulse rate test.
Symptoms
Nothing to think of!
Verdict
Wheat/gluten: OK!
