Mount Lemmon

If you are lucky enough to live in Tucson and you like camping, you must go up to Mount Lemmon. Less than an hour away, 8000 feet elevation, and 30 degrees cooler than town, it's heaven. Head up to fish at Rose Canyon lake or take a day hike, or pack up the car and the dogs and spend the weekend. Our favorite camping spots are off Mount Bigelow Road, around mile 20. The road is off to the right about a quarter mile past the ranger station.

Go - early and often.

Sunny approves.

(sorry the picture is weird. I couldn't get it to work.)

Trader Joe's and gluten-free

If you're eating gluten-free and you enjoy shopping at Trader Joe's, go into the store, march up to the counter, and ask them to print you a list of all of their gluten-free products. Then grab a basket, wander around, and notice all of the products marked with this:




They can't promise that the product was made in an entirely gluten-free facility, but they do promise it was made with gluten-free products. And for me, for right now, that's good enough.

cheers

Cheers to summer.

Cheers to a wonderful salad topped with farmer's market tomatoes and sweet onions.

Cheers to Wednesday night.

Cheers to farmer's market beans, with their crunchy, meaty texture and their sweet flavor.

Cheers to beef tenderloin on sale for $5.87/lb at Basha's. If you have a husband that likes to moonlight as a butcher thanks to Alton Brown's whole beef tenderloin episode, you can have 3 1 lb tenderloin roasts, 3 dinners of two filet steaks, a pound of stew meat, and more than a pound of scraps for beef broth out of a 9 lb side of beef. (Search youtube for how to clean a whole tenderloin, or set your DVR to Alton's Tender is the Loin episode.)
























Cheers to enjoying most of your filet mignon before remembering to take a picture.

If you're really lucky, you're toasting with some wonderful cabernet franc from Sunce in Sonoma County, a great winery run by a really cool Croatian winemaker named Frane. Join their wine club. It's the best deal around.

what's in your lunchbox?

Starting week 2 of being gluten-free and still feeling great. The biggest challenge has been trying to pack lunch if we don't have dinner leftovers. This morning I was late to work because I made a salad. Tonight I tried to remedy the situation by making a brown rice something-or-other with goat cheese, sundried tomatoes, basil, onion, mushroom, fresh tomato... ugh.
I need to find some gluten-free non-lettuce salads to make on Sunday night for lunches for the week.
Also, I need to stop eating what I make before I can even pack it into Tupperware.
Goat cheese, yum.
PS I want to give myself a pat on the back for hitting the gym 4 days last week for classes. Now if only I could turn that into 5-6 days a week.

take me out to the ballgame

Last night David and I went to a Tucson Toros home game at Hi Corbett field. It was $5 for general admission and a gorgeous 80 degree night.

If you're lucky enough to live in the Old Pueblo, I recommend you check out a game. All the games start at 7 pm. What a great place to enjoy the beautiful weather.

gluten-free might be for me

I've had digestive issues for about 3 years now. It started midway through second year of law school - I started to notice lower abdominal cramping every day in the late afternoon. I thought it was related to my feminine parts, so I saw my ob/gyn, who recommended I have an ultrasound. The ultrasound didn't show any ovarian cysts, so I saw my primary care physician and also told him about my cramps as well other, um, digestive trouble I was having. Ok, well I guess I should tell the whole story - I was having a lot of constipation. So my doctor sent me to a GI doctor who recommended that I have a colonoscopy. No way, I thought. So I tried to eat more fiber and yogurt and went on my way. The troubles didn't stop, and last summer while I was studying for the bar I had fresh blood in my stool. I freaked out and thought I had cancer, so I called the GI right away. I went in to see him and scheduled a colonoscopy for early September. I went to Italy in late August with my best friend from law school and had a couple of 24 hour bouts of blood in my stool. One episode was particularly jarring - the toilet literally looked like a murder scene.

The colonoscopy went off without a hitch - everything looked fine. (And if you are ever lucky enough to get a colonoscopy, do your self a favor and buy baby wipes for the day before.) The biopsy, on the other hand, came back with a diagnosis of microscopic colitis. The GI doctor told me there wasn't much I could do to treat it except to treat my symptoms with fiber and yogurt and an anti-spasmodic for bouts of diarrhea.

So, since then, I've been doing my best to get lots of fiber, eat lots of veggies, and treat my symptoms. Unfortunately, the cramping hasn't ever stopped. Neither have the swings between diarrhea and constipation. Sorry, I know this is gross, but if it helps one person out there going through the same thing as me, then the embarrassment is at least for some good.

Cut to recently - I began talking to my friend Carrie about her Celiac's disease diagnosis and how she eats gluten-free. I've done a lot of research and think I might have a gluten allergy. Since yesterday, I've been cutting - trying to eliminate entirely - gluten from my diet. And this sounds silly, but today, I didn't have cramps. 4 pm came and went without any abdominal pain at all. So maybe there's something to this gluten-free thing.

I'm setting up an appointment with a new PCP and will schedule a Celiac's blood test at that appointment. However, I have read that you can have a false negative blood test if you've already cut gluten from your diet, so I'll be asking the new doctor about that. And I'll keep you posted.


Ok, so after all that, here's my gluten-free dinner recipe!

Caramelized Scallops and Sesame Snap Peas


















image from Cooking Light

We made some Rice-a-Roni white and wild rice on the side because we didn't have enough rice noodles for two people. The recipe would be great with quinoa, as well. And the best part was that it took less than 20 minutes. Oh, also, we followed the recipe in the little leading paragraph for the sesame snap peas. Don't forget to string the peas first!

what a wonderful world

Congrats, Mr and Mrs Wallace!