Gluten Free Goodness

Going gluten free had a lot of positive health benefits for our family, but man does it make shopping, cooking, and snacking a whole lot tougher. A few weeks ago I got an email from a great company called GoPicnic asking if I would be interested in reviewing some of their specialty snack boxes. They have vegetarian, kosher, and best of all GLUTEN FREE (GF) boxes full of great tasting treats. I immediately shot off a response offering to taste test anything they could send that was GF. Eric is also avoiding corn, but even then, 4 out of the 5 boxes they sent me were perfect for a quick after work snack, travel food, or best of all since he flies all the time, food to eat at the airport.

If you are looking to try these meals out I HIGHLY recommend the family pack of gluten free snack packs. Here are a few of my favorites. My son, husband and myself all took samples and tasted items in the boxes. We all loved the cookies, the trail mixes, and the beef jerky. My three year old didn’t care for the sunflower crunch, but I loved it. None of us liked the cheese in the boxes, but we’re all a bit spoiled with nice, fresh deli cheese. Outside of the cheese we devoured the boxes.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. The great people at GoPicnic have teamed up with us to give one lucky reader a sample pack.

Read how to enter below and spread the word about this great gluten free giveaway!

Contest Rules: VISIT www.gopicnic.com, and then come back and tell me how you could use some of their boxes! Camp, back to school, travel, how could these meals make gluten free, or dealing with allergies, more convenient for you.

EXTRA ENTRIES:
To receive these extra opportunities for entries, you must fulfill the first REQUIRED entry. But for extra entries, you can:
* Tell your own story about how going gluten free has turned your life upside down.
* Tweet the contest with the following text “Traveling the Tightrope Gluten Free Giveaway—GoPicnic Makes Gluten Free Life Convenient: http://su.pr/42dSBp”. Leave the Twitterlink in your comment.
* Blog about the contest - add a link to Traveling the Tightrope and the Sponsor GoPicnic
* Add Traveling the Tightrope widget (on the right under the blogroll) to your site OR add Traveling the Tightrope to your blog roll.
*Become a Traveling the Tightrope follower.


One person will be randomly chosen when the contest ends on Friday, 21st at midnight CST. I will contact the winner directly through email or the blog link that you leave when commenting.

Victory is Mine...It's a Great Morning Victory is Mine!

Any West Wing fans out there?

I've been trying for weeks to manage some decent, edible gluten free baking. My husband is one of those strange people who have endless willpower to give stuff up if he needs to (drives me batty!) and I feel bad when he eats the same thing day in and day out for breakfast. This is the third round of biscuits that I have tried and boy do I have to give a shout out to eat at joe's.

They were great biscuits, made up quick and the whole family gobbled them down. I was virtuous and only had one along with my protein shake the voodoo doctors are recommending.

I'm not sure I've mentioned my Voodoo doctors here. I have been struggling to lose weight ever since I was put on steroids a few years ago. Nothing seems to work and I have tried everything from Weight Watchers to South Beach. Atkins didn't go over well since I don't really like cheese that much, and Low GI foods work until the sweet cravings hit. My well respected nutritionists advice was to eat less and less until I was trying to figure out how to manage a workout routine on 1400 calories a day. Fast forward a few months and a friend recommends that I get my base metabolic rate tested to see how many calories I'm burning on an average day. Turns out that magic number is 1730 calories so eating anything less than that and I should be able to lay in bed all day and lose weight...and that's so not happening! I got my metabolism tested at an alternative pharmacy and the lady who tested it for me is a naturopath who for a measly $20 per visit can work with people to develop natural remedies to their problems (and that's right up my ally!).

I came home from a 2 hour consultation, several tests and some great recommendations to tell dear old hubby all about it. I could see the smirk before I even got to the cool test where I put my hand on a silver shaped disc and it analyzed my skin to see what I was nutritionally deficient in. Throw in there that they want me to drink special oxygenated water and I realized I had some convincing to do. It was about that point that he began calling them my Voodoo doctors and like all bad nick names it stuck like Elmer's glue.

On a randomly related note, if you like to read and like funny, witty, somewhat snarky books I'm currently laughing my tail off at Jen Lancaster's Such a Pretty Fat. :)

Get Me Out of Here

A post from Alexander's point of view:

So I haven't been feeling well the last few days since Mom and Dad brought me home. I have tried to let them know by lots of crying and very little sleep and yesterday they finally got the message. I went to visit this really nice lady and she thought I looked a "little off." Thanks a lot lady...I've been through a lot in the last few days...you would look off too!

Well like I said, she was pretty nice but she poked and prodded me and sent me to a really mean lady who stuck my heel to draw blood. Boy was I mad at that. Mom kept crying and saying she was so sorry that I was going through this. The heel stick was over pretty quick but what really made me mad was being put in the carseat to go to the Dr, in the carseat to go get blood work, in the carseat to go home, in the carseat to go back to the hospital, all before lunch!

Apparently I have jaundice and need to go get a tan. Well I don't mind that but this constant room service IV thing sucks. Took them forever to get that in and I screamed and fought it the whole time. Once they finally got it in, weighed me (6lbs 9oz) and got me in my room, I was exhausted and happy to wear thier designer shades and nap in the light. Mom finally got to rest too, now that I was feeling a little better each day.

The first day or two of this was okay, but we are going on three days and I am tired of these crazy nurses waking me up at all hours. Tell them to let me go home and leave my poor heels alone!

oh and here is a video of the hospital that I was in while being treated for my jaundice. It was really neat and had very cool paintings.