The Hellenic calendars, the Hebrew Lunisolar calendar and the Islamic Lunar calendar started the month with the first appearance of the thin crescent of the new moon.
- "Month", Wikipedia
This year, April 14th is a new moon. It closely coincides with the beginning of a one-time, 34-day feast in our house that will be observed starting on April 16th. We will call this day Gluten Day, and the period until May 19th will be Gluten Moon.
Back in October, when R was pregnant, she was a diagnosed with a gluten intolerance following a blood test. However, we've held onto a dim hope that the intolerance was brought on by the pregnancy, rather than Celiac Disease. Normally, a positive blood test is followed by a biopsy to make an accurate diagnosis for Celiac Disease. You have to keep eating gluten until the biopsy, but R had to get off the gluten immediately for the sake of the pregnancy, so the biopsy was scheduled for May 19th. In order to make a conclusive test, she has to eat gluten for several weeks leading up to the test -- our doctor said about a month.
Technically, a lunar month is about 29 days, so we're stretching it a bit. But who can blame us? If you were given one last chance to eat gluten, you would want to make it a good one.
R is going to make a ranked list of things that she will miss the most and we are going to make sure we hit as many as we can without making her terribly ill. Because some things are harder to replace than others, there are some items (that aren't necessarily her #1 favourites) that will make the list just because she'll likely never get to eat them again (at least not quite like she is used to):
- submarine sandwiches & restaurant club sandwiches
- hamburger buns & most fast food fries
- pizza (especially delivery)
- German pancake, French toast and Cora's Surprise
- ginger beef and lemon chicken (but we've probably found a replacement)
- fresh-baked rolls, pastries, cookies, etc
- angel food cake and a host of other desserts
- flour tortilla burritos
- regular, flour-thickened beef gravy (ie: Sunday dinner & poutine)
2 comments:
If you are breast feeding, getting gluten back into your diet would not be wise. Delay the test until after you're finished breast feeding, or better, don't go back on gluten at all. The things that you listed that you will be missing are available on a gluten-free diet - you just have to sub gluten-free ingredients.
Having just read your History, you might be pleasantly surprised that, with a gluten free diet, if you decide to have another child, there will be no need for fertility treatments (despite what the fertility docs might tell you about "mechanical problems, etc.) Do the research - gluten intolerance (not necessarily just celiac disease) causes infertility and miscarraiges.
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