we ditched the dairy...now we are going gluten-free, too!

yep...we finally did it - ditched the gluten! we went cold-turkey almost 3 weeks ago and after a couple of weeks of feeling sickly and crappy, we are finally feeling the better for it!

yesterday, i had a baby shower to attend and everyone knows a baby shower is all about the 10 million trays of sandwiches!!! i ate one tiny egg salad sliver of a sandwich and started paying for it before the shower was even over!!! it's strange how quickly your body reacts once you've eliminated something from your diet. so now to figure out what to do with all of the flour and pasta we have in our preps. we'll slowly now begin adding almond, quinoa and rice flour for the occasional times we'll make flat breads and pitas. we just had quinoa pasta for lunch and there is no difference in taste or texture. it is definitely more expensive than wheat pasta but with us being off the dairy and not spending a kajillion dollars on dairy every month, we'll be able to build up a stockpile of the quinoa pasta.

kids - we did not do this lightly. we both love bread and pizza. we love toast. we love sandwiches. but we were both starting to feel sluggish and gluggish. i suspected it was gluten. and if you suspect a food isn't good for your body - eliminate it from your body for at least 2 weeks. then try that food and see how you feel. you'll know almost immedietely after consuming it. so that's why we've been staying under the radar and just sticking close to home. lots of napping and lots of good food.

it's really starting to look like autumn - especially when the sun bounces off the ridge out front.

it's our birthday month - woohoo! i'll be 46 in a few days and jambaloney, whose birthday is 7 days after mine will be 51. we are just at the right age where changing our diets can really have a big impact on our health and we're happy with that.

here's some delicious liver and onions - we love liver!

and a delicious chicken stirfry - yummeh!

i just made another batch and a half of regular nappa kimchi and because i had some bean sprouts hanging around, i made a little jar of bean sprout kimchi - deelish!

can you believe it's november 7th and i harvested this from the greenhouse?!?!?!

we are still eating fresh tomatoes if you can believe that! that greenhouse is awesome! and here's jambaloney's jar of "never-ending pickled hot peppers":

he's been eating pickled hot peppers everyday since mid-july when i first made that jar of pickles for him. and ever since then, every few days a few more peppers ripen and i slice them up and fill his jar again - he loves them!

here's our quinoa pasta that we had for dinner today with a sausage/tomatoe sauce.

rounded out with the bean sprout kimchi and some pomegranate seeds. it was really good and the quinoa pasta seems more filling than wheat pasta.

we've had a quiet couple of weeks doing our daily jobs, getting the harvest in, eating good food, getting ready for winter - jambaloney is building our wind-break/heated cloches/plastic thingy on the front of the house - he'll have a post up soon about how we save on heating by using an ugly, but very worthwhile, heat trap. he's also been busy working on his contract every single day for months now. we've been busy gathering seeds, drying herbs, canning, preserving, etc. and just getting ready for winter.

tomorrow is a big day for our american friends and i encourage you all to get out and vote. the rest of this week should be interesting to say the least.