Just when you least expect it, change happens. I recently moved into a larger space and what a joy it's been to break into those boxes of kitchen gadgets art works and art supplies that I haven't seen for 4+ years. Stuff is just stuff but sometimes it says 'home'.
A few weeks ago I went to my favourite gluten free bakery here in Vancouver and inquired about the chicken pot pies. The customer service person was a little distracted, trying to train someone and answer my questions too, but did look up the recipe for me in the big binder to see if there was any dairy in the pies. When the pie was heating up at home, it smelled amazing. I was really ready for something special. I took a few bites and thought; This is too good to be dairy free but I kept eating it. When I was about halfway through, I got a bit scared and so I went on the Gluten Free Epicurean Facebook page to make an inquiry about the pie. Within 40 minutes I learned that not only are the pie shells for the meat pies made with dairy (margarine) but also there is whole milk IN the pie! By that time I had enjoyed every morcel of that amazing meal and decided that what ever would be, I would not regret having eaten it, because THIS pie was the best thing I've eaten in ages!
Later that evening as I braced myself for symptoms, I found instead that I had no immediate reaction. The next morning things were running a bit slow, if you know what I mean and I thought; Hey, if that's all that happens I'm definitely taking note.
Because I could not get that beautiful pie off my mind, I decided to experiment. This past weekend I gathered up my courage to try another dairy-laden chicken pot pie because -- holy moly, if I can eat these pies I'll be a happy camper! Well guess what? Aside from some (normal for me) upper digestive outbursts.... I CAN EAT THIS STUFF!
What's going on? (don't ask me.) I'm assuming that my hormones, body chemicals, (what ever) have changed in some way and or my gut has healed enough from my abstinence of gluten eating, I'm going to embark on a longer experiment of eating things that "may contain traces of milk" to actually eating things WITH dairy in them and see how this goes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going out to eat a bunch of ice cream or eat cheese cake quite yet. I'll take it one step at a time. It's been more than 10 years since I regularly ate things with dairy in them so this is pretty momentous. This is a new chapter in my life so it's nice to be able to mark it with a dietary change as well.
Cheers all! Eat mindfully and be healthy.
July 2013: Just an update on the re-introduction of dairy... it was a fail.
Although I seemed to be able to digest the dairy with out too much discomfort, I later had
48+ hour migraines as the pay back.
This happened at each attempt so I gave it up. So sad. Oh well.
