Going Without Bread

Bread. Warm, fresh out of the oven, home baked bread. Toasted and smothered in butter and jam, bread. Does it even get any better than that?

Something I've given up eating over the past year is bread. Despite being a massive bread eater most of my life. When I was little and impatient for dinner, mum would say have a piece of bread. When I spent as many hours riding my bike as I possibly could, and then stuffing myself with as many carbs as I could manage to keep going, bread was a staple. I could put away a loaf in no time at all. I used to go to bed of an evening, already looking forward to my next meal of baked beans on toast and a strong coffee [the coffee is another story entirely]. So to say that giving up bread has been a challenge is something of an understatement. 

My problem with bread, you see, is a little protein called gluten. Found in wheat flours, it is what helps bread become stretchy and soft. Sometimes there is even extra gluten added to bread to make it a bit softer and fluffier [read: yummier]. So it's not just bread that I avoid eating, there's plenty of other foods on the list, but bread is definitely one of the more difficult foods to give up. That gluten though, it does not do good things for my body. It leaves me feeling tired, sluggish, just generally 'not good'. I know that now because I've tried going back to eating bread, and the effect is quite immediate. I also know that it will give my baby a tummy ache when I breastfeed him after eating gluten.

I've tried the usual substitutes. The tiny, ridiculously expensive loaves of gluten free bread at the supermarket, that become even tinier when they're toasted. I ate them for a while, but the fact is, they're just not the same, and the appeal just isn't there. Oh and they're ridiculously expensive [like anything made 'gluten free'], and I really couldn't justify spending $14 on two tiny little loaves of bread. So, back to the drawing board. We tried a box of bake at home gluten free bread, which was one of the strangest and most unpleasant things I've eaten. The chooks got most of that, I hope they liked it better than we did. I'm still looking into alternatives to stock standard bread, but also letting bread slip out of my life. 

Breakfast stir fry.

So, life without bread. Breakfast looks pretty different these days. If I want baked beans, they are served on cooked potato instead of bread, which is pretty good. Or eggs cooked up with potato and a few other vegies. Or a rice based breakfast [hello rice porridge, goodbye oat porridge], a breakfast stir fry is a weekend treat. And what of lunch? Sandwiches are no more, sometimes rice cakes can be a substitute, but for the most part, I end up eating leftover dinner or a more 'cooked' lunch. The food I eat is generally better than a sandwich, but it does require a bit more preparation and cooking, just like with the breakfast foods.

But I'm doing it. I've trained myself to not rely on bread as my 'go to' easy food. If it didn't affect my body adversely I'd be back to eating it in a flash. But it does, so I'm not. And I'm getting used to life without bread. It's all good, it's just different. 

Do you avoid eating gluten? Do you have any suggestions for yummy bread substitutes? Or are you a bread lover from way back [like I was..]?

Homemade: [sort of] Castile Soap

Let me just say that making soap has been on my list of things to do for a while now - I distinctly remember contemplating a first attempt back at the start of the year when I had a great big baby belly to contend with. Of course it didn't happen back then, but it finally has now! I was given a great recipe for a [sort of] castile soap from the kind folks behind Eco Market, and the moon and the stars aligned and I happened to have all the ingredients and materials on hand and with my husband keeping our baby boy at bay, I got busy and made my soap. I am absolutely hooked. My mind is bursting with different things to try next time... and the time after that... and the time after that. Anyway, this is what I did for my first go. Oh and I say a 'sort of' castile soap, because a castile soap [as I now know] is olive oil based and although this recipe does have a lot of olive oil it also has a fair amount of other oils. So it's sort of a castile soap.

The Recipe

Ingredients:

800ml olive oil

800ml sunflower oil

600g coconut oil

900ml water

300g caustic soda [lye]

Essential oils of your choosing

Equipment:

A stick mixer*

Protective gear [gloves, glasses, apron]

Digital thermometer or milk thermometer 

Large stainless steel pot 

Soap moulds

Scales

Measuring jug
Cooking spray

What To Do:

1. Wear protective clothing unless you're a complete pro. Caustic soda burns, you don't want to get it on anything, yourself included. Open up windows to ensure good ventilation. Cover your work area in newspaper [if you value it]. And grease your moulds with cooking spray.
2. Measure out all your ingredients. Put the oils in the stainless steel pot. Put the lye in a small bowl, and put the water in a measuring jug. Keep the essential oils close by.
3. Heat the oils slowly to about 45 degrees celsius, mixing as you go. When they reach this temperature, carefully add the lye to the water in the measuring jug. This will go nuts and heat up really quickly, and you want it to be the same temperature as the oils. Gently add the lye and water mix to the oils.
4. Remove from heat, and blend with a stick mixer for about 10 minutes. You need to blend until it reaches a point called 'trace', which is roughly when you can see ripples on the surface of the mix. Be careful not to overheat your stick blender [like I did...].
5. Add essential oils, and blend again until they're mixed through.
6. Pour it into your moulds, then wrap them in a towel or tea towel to cool slowly. After about 15 hours, it should have set enough that you can tip it out of the mould and cut it into bars.
7. Leave it alone for 6 weeks, on a rack where air can circulate. This is the hard part, as I'm finding. Turn it over ever other day or so to help it set. This part is really important, as this is what makes the soap into a good solid block that will hold together well.

The End Result
Awesome. Like I said, I loved doing this. I can't wait to start using the soap, my patience is being sorely tested. And I want to make more! There are just so many combinations I want to try. This time around I used Ylang Ylang essential oil. I would love to try it also with Lavender, and Sweet Orange also sounds nice. Plus there's different options for adding colour [paprika anyone?], and even making exfoliating soap [by adding poppy seeds!]. I love the homemade look about it. And if it all just sounds too hard but you still want the benefits of homemade soap - head on over to Eco Market and see what's on offer, there might just be someone selling some near you.

Do you make your own soap? I'm sure a few readers are old hands at the soap making thing, what advice would you offer to a newbie soap maker?

* Only one stick mixer got harmed in the making of this soap. Let me just say - read the instructions of your mixer carefully. If it says 'don't mix hot oil' and 'don't mix for more than 15 seconds at a time', then it's probably not a good idea to hold it in hot oil for 10 minutes. Or even 8 minutes for that matter.

Tired Days

Well, it's hardly surprising, really. I'm tired. Today I finally feel really, really tired. A more interrupted than usual night, which saw me sighing and putting the kettle on at 4am instead of continuing the battle for more sleep. I have only myself to blame. I ate bread last night. We were down to bits and pieces left in the cupboards, my planned grocery shop didn't eventuate [I knew it wouldn't when I squeezed in that 20 minute bike ride]. So we agreed that leftover soup would suffice for dinner, rounded out with some cheese on toast. 

A not-so-tired day.

We are blessed living where we do. It's a solid drive to nearby towns for a supermarket shop, takeaway isn't an option, nor is a quick cafe fix. All good points in my book. But we do have a general store in town for the essentials of life - milk [not soy yet but I really should ask for it], tea, chocolate. And bread. Baked at a bakery in the town I used to live in, so it's not the mass-produced commercial bread. It is yummy bread. There's just one little problem with it - a thing called gluten. 

I make an effort to avoid eating gluten. I actually started avoiding gluten when I was pregnant. At 14-15 weeks, when I was thinking my energy levels would pick up somewhat, I was more exhausted than ever. I went to my TCM doctor, who gave me some great reading about eating during pregnancy, and gluten was one of the things best avoided. I tried it, and low and behold, felt about a million percent better for it. So that's where the avoiding gluten started. And I've just kept it up.

I still eat gluten in small amounts, but bread, pasta, flours - are generally of the gluten-free variety or avoided. And small amounts aren't a problem. So I figured a bit of bread wouldn't be a problem either. Oh but it was. Cue 8 hours past the first bits of bread being eaten, and my darling boy had an upset tummy. It happened once before too, with a yummy bread eaten for lunch, and our baby boy in tears and unconsolable that night. My poor baby, with a sore tummy that we can't do anything about, and all because I ate bread.

So, I am off the bread for good now. I should point out that there was extra gluten added to this bread, not just what was in the wheat flour alone. The mass produced bread is probably easier to eat, sadly. It's a horrible feeling, knowing that my breastmilk is giving my baby a sore tummy. I'm refusing to be a guilty mum though. Best to just learn and move on.

So that's why we were extra tired today.