My food is being problematic

So yesterday all this glutenny stuff snuck up behind me and smacked me really hard. It's most unfair when I get really sick from eating and I have absolutely no idea what I ate that is the problem.

Any ways, I've decided I'm going to have to do a reversal and go back on a very, very strict diet for the next week or so with the foods I'm 100,000% positive are fine (i.e. vegetables, rice, and chicken - but only when flavored with the appropriate things - and some of the new gf recipes i've found that don't contain other potential dangers), get all this new garbage back out of my system, and then basically start over again. I think the additional areas that are potentially really causing me trouble might be

• soy
• beef (fed with wheat...)
• sugar

From everything i can read, if you're already having intestinal issues, all three of these can exaserbate the issue a lot and cause gluten-like symptoms. Maybe if I try to weed them out of my system for 6 months to a year and give my entire stomach a chance to completely heal, i'll be able to eat them again.

But, it'll be another case of experimentation as to whether or not those threee really are causing me more grief.

I'm just so tired of being sick all the time. It gets very discouraging.

Shoppings

So, thus far this week, I've hit Walgreens and CVs. Last week the sales were pathetic basically everywhere. This week, a lot better! Walgreens is frustrating me a little bit - more on that in a bit - but CVS I did really well at.


CVS

• 1 bottle of baby lotion: $1.88 on sale - $2.00 off any CVS brand skin care = FREE
  
• 2 bags of Chex Mix: these were on sale a few weeks ago 2/$3; however, they were out, so I got a rain check. Love rain checks! 2/$3 - two $.50 coupons = 2/$2
  
• 3 boxes of Puffs tissues: on sale for $.88 each - three $.25 coupons = $.63 each!


• Mountain Dew 12 pack (got to keep Chris' stock up!) - buy 5/$11 ($2.20 apiece)



• 2 bottles of Glade spray. On sale for $.88 each combined with a B1G1 coupon - $.44 each!'


• Neosporin/Johnson & Johnson - $11.77 total - $2.50 worth of coupons = $9.27. (Now a question I've seen around is why not just buy the generic? Well, initially the generic is cheaper. And sometimes it still is cheaper when combined with coupons. However, when you add in things like $5.00 ECBs back - which was the deal on these - then the price difference swings in the favor of the name brand. Otherwise, yes, I would buy generic).

Total before coupons = $32.0

w/ coupons = $26.92

Combine 2 CVS specific coupons (the $2 off any CVS brand skin care and $2 off total purchase of $10 or more) = $22.92

subtract an additional $16.97 in ECBs from previous purchases and my total out of pocket = $6.49 (includes tax)! And I have $5 in ECBs for next trip.

Walgreens


Walgreens has apparently been changing their policies on their register rewards. Last time I shopped they informed me I could only use 1 register reward per transaction (unlike CVS where I can throw them all on together). This time they informed me that their policy has changed even more and if you use coupons on something that is supposed to generate register rewards, they won't give you the register rewards. Now, personally, if this is true and not just that particular store being annoying, I find this crazy and misleading. I've emailed their customer service, so we'll see if I get a response. Either way, I'm taking some items back to WG because of this.

However, that said, they did have some good sales on this week.

• Their weekly paper had a slew of $.39 coupons (not $.39 off the item but the item costing only $.39). So, for a grand total of $5.46, I got Hydrogen peroxide, a pack of college-ruled paper, a pack of mechanical pencils, a fly swatter, 3 boxes of Jiffy corn mix, a box of toothpicks, a pack of gift tissue paper, 3 rolls of tape, and 3 sets of plastic cutlery (for Ugly Tree!)


• They also had a 2/$1 on salt and baking soda, so I got a couple of those.
  
• They had Dixie plates for sale Buy 1 for $3.79 get 1 free. Plus, I had two $.60 coupons, so my total $3.09 for 72 plates (again - Ugly Tree!).


• They also had the Airwick scent refills at 2/$5. Had a $1.00 coupon for that = 2/$4 and I got 2 warmer units for free.


• I also got some Pantene hairspray and gell which was on sale for 2/$8.00. Subtract a $1.00 manufacturers coupon and then a $5.00 Register Reward and it was 2/$2.00. Good deal, right? Frustrating though because I should have gotten $3.00 back in Register Rewards as they advertised, and I didn't.

Total out of pocket - $16.94

Baking

So, my Domata gluten free flour arrived this week, and I decided to see how it works.

Well, I tried two different bread (think needs bread flour type) recipes, and frankly, it was very disappointing. The first batch was hard as a rock (keep in mind I'm not that expert of a bread maker either) and the second just doesn't taste that good. So, I think I'll have to try some of the other gluten free bread recipes I've gathered that require combining your own flours, etc. Domata just doesn't seem to do that good a job in place of regular bread flour.

However, I did make banana muffins with the flour and those turned out really good (although there is the faintest pepper taste to them that I can't figure out for the life of me).

Well, other than the whole exploding part.

Normal banana muffins are very smooth, dome-shaped muffins. These are just, well, let's call it "dome challenged."

I put rice syrup in in place of sugar (as large amounts of sugar really do seem to bother me), and it made the dough incredibly sticky. Not sure if that's what caused the muffins to puff up the way they did, but they sure looked funny coming out of the oven!