The Garden Production/ Canning Jars

I filled my first quart jar yesterday with cucumbers, dill and garlic.  All from my very own garden. I made refrigerator pickles.  I also sliced (on a Japanese slicer) zucchini, red pepper (from grocery), onions (from grocery) and jalapeño (from grocery) into a two gallon restaurant container, salted it all, topped with ice cubes and left it to rest in the porch fridge.

Today the zucchini will become bread and butter pickles.

I have carrots and a very nice cauliflower and will use them to make a jar of salt cured pickle for my daughter.  How quickly we moved from wondering if the garden will "grow" to having to manage the produce as it comes into the house. I always find it shocking.

I was actually quite surprised to find so many large zucchini and yellow squash out there yesterday.  The time before there had been only two medium to small squash and no pickles.  the pickling cakes are going to be difficult to find due to the way I arranged the plants.  It's going to be "hide and seek" out there--and hopefully no hidden cukes growing to monster sizes.  That shuts down production.

I am moving onward to testing beef.  The nightshades were good.  No reaction.  In fact, no bloating and good elimination.  The eye rash is caused by dust, pollen, not food.  Goes away as soon as the Zyrtec starts working.  The ozone alerts have been worse.  My breathing issues get so much worse and there is stress on my heart.  Rescue inhaler is being used.

I have added coffee back into my diet.  It isn't supposed to re-enter until months from now.  But I felt I needed something to drink besides water and smoothies.

Yesterday I had a banana muffin, the kale strawberry pineapple smoothie and Jasmine rice with peas, and fried yellow squash.  I also had cold chicken wings.  I was supposed to have a large salad with the wings but didn't.  I was just too lazy I guess.  All that food was spread out over the day.

Today I have had the last of the smoothie, coffee so far.  I will be making a chopped salad (I have a list of possible ingredients from Food52's morning email) which I hope will be very good.  Dinner I think will be pasta.  My own cherry tomato sauce with rice noodles or zucchini noodles.  So far, the rice products have been pretty darn awful.  The flour is gritty, sandy.  The milk is --well, it's water. I am ambivalent about trying the rice pasta I bought.  At best, it would be "not as awful" as I thought. At worst--it would go down the disposal.

I have come to the conclusion that if one is allergic to gluten--one should just give up on substitutes. None of them are anything like the "real" thing.  I was going to try the "most favorite" recipe in the Elimination Diet Cookbook.  The rice flour tortillas.  I may have enough rice flour left in the bag. But wonder if I want to waste the time on making them.  I can't see how they would hold together as the muffins (even with so much banana) crumble into a pile of moist sand at the first bite.  The sand does taste good-- but it's not a muffin.

Any readers out there on a gluten free diet?  Do you bake?  I was tempted by the tiny loaves of  (expensive) rice bread in the freezer section by the bakery.  But they had ingredients (like eggs) that I can't add to my diet yet. Toast is a favorite of mine--topped with avocado.