Cravings

'Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like' - Mark Twain

With all due respect, bugger off Mark Twain.

I have had a contraceptive implant for eight years (not the same one, it’s been replaced a few times).  This has the dual benefits of a) stopping me from accidentally getting pregnant, and b) sort of regulating my periods.

I say ‘sort of’, because basically what it does is stops them from being reasonably regular and fairly predictable monthly occurrences.  Instead, imagine my insides are playing Russian Roulette, drawing blanks for months on end, followed by three weeks of complete unpleasantness, at an entirely unpredictable (but generally hugely inconvenient) time.  If I’m going on holiday, I can guarantee that’s when the ‘fun’ starts.

Other than that, the only clue that we’re entering the ‘danger zone’ is my least favourite thing about being an intolerant vegetarian...

Cravings.

Cravings are the body’s way of telling you it needs something.  For me, that something is carbs.  All the carbs.  Bread, pasta, pizza, chips, more bread, more pasta, all the pizza...  The cravings generally start about ten days before the main event, and last the duration.  We’re currently a month in, and it’s been hard. 

Not being able to eat gluten or dairy, it turns out, makes period cravings a million times worse.  Once upon a time, a craving was a minor irritation that was easily fixed with a bar of chocolate, a bag of crisps, or a stick of garlic bread. 

No more.

No matter how much fruit or how many nuts I eat, my body still isn’t content.  I’ve written before about bread, and how annoyingly, ridiculously expensive gluten free bread is.  It’s also like eating sawdust, and just doesn’t scratch that itch in the same way as a whole stick of garlic bread would. 

I feel like one of those wind-up toys you have as a kid; the ones that you wind up and let go, so it runs across the table and then falls onto the floor, landing on its back with its little legs waggling in the air.  Except I’ve not been let go yet, so I’m just full of tension and waiting for the energy to kick in.  It’s stressful.

I’m also on this stupid diet, because of an illness I had towards the end of last year, so I’m supposed to exercise, keep my weight down, and eat healthily.  Needless to say, the scales have been relegated to the back of the bedroom wardrobe until further notice.  That’s just an extra pressure I don’t need right now...

So I broke today.  For breakfast, I had a bag of crisps and two gluten free chocolate chip cookies.  For lunch, another cookie followed by a large portion of McDonald’s fries.  Dinner was a family-size bag of Cool Original Doritos, which are neither gluten free nor dairy free, washed down with a large glass of merlot.  I know I will regret this in an hour or so, but right now, for the first time in about a month, I don’t want to punch something. 

Recommendations for craving-busting, gluten free dairy free snacks on a postcard please!

Bread

"Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts." - James Beard

I have no idea who James Beard is, but he is so right.  Bread probably is the best food ever created.  It's just so versatile - what other food can be eaten at every meal and as a snack in between? There's white bread, brown bread, wholemeal bread, seeded bread, tiger bread, french bread, pitta bread, eggy bread, garlic bread, bread and butter pudding, sandwiches, tortilla wraps, crumpets, pizza... 

(As a complete aside, I've got the Elements Song stuck in my head - perhaps there's a parody somewhere in this...)

But seriously, is there anything better than thickly sliced white bread, toasted, dripping in melted butter, and slathered in marmite?!  I think not.

So imagine my absolute horror when I discovered my gluten intolerance.  

Gluten free bread is painfully expensive.  While a loaf of Sainsburys Basics white bread (not the nicest, but perfect for a fried egg sandwich or beans on toast), costs 40p for roughly 22 slices (less than 2p per slice), the cheapest loaf of gluten free bread I've found is £2.  For 14 slices.  I am NOT spending 14p per slice for something half the size of a normal slice of bread with the consistency of sawdust.  

That's the other thing.  Gluten free bread is gross.  

Before I go any further, there is something you need to know about me. I am terrified of baking.  I watch The Great British Bake Off in the same way most people would watch a gruesome gore-filled horror film - never alone, always from behind a cushion.  It's just... so... STRESSFUL! 

Bear this in mind as I tell you what I'm about to tell you. This week, in an attempt to face my fears head on, and to avoid having to spend half my salary on sawdust-bread, I decided to make my own. Obviously, I started simple, with a packet mix containing all the ingredients and specific instructions.  How hard could it be? Foolproof?

HA!

Step 1 - Put packet mix contents in a bowl. Easy. [I'll gloss over the fact I sprayed flour everywhere when I opened the packet.]

Step 2 - Add yeast.  Again, easy. I even managed to get all of the yeast in the bowl.

Step 3 - Add 1 tbsp oil.  This is the point at which it started to get a bit challenging.  I have four different types of 'tablespoon', each of which is a slightly different size.  Which size tablespoon does the recipe call for?  And does it matter that I accidentally missed the spoon and poured oil straight into the bowl?  Or that I don't have vegetable oil so I used olive oil instead?  This is too stressful.  Open bottle of wine.

Step 4 - Add 300 mls tepid water.  WHAT IS 'TEPID'?! How do I know if the water is too hot? Or too cold?  Does it matter?  Why does my measuring jug not show 300 mls? Does it matter if I guessed that bit?  What if there's too much? Or not enough?  Ugh.  I need a break.  Drink more wine.

Step 5 - Mix with the mixer for 5 minutes.  FIVE minutes.  That's a really long time.  And really boring.  But I didn't give up, and I counted to 300 elephants.  Wine helped. 

Step 6 - Cover with oiled clingfilm.  Oiling clingfilm is really hard.  Clingfilm has one purpose in life, and that is not to lie on a flat surface while I try to spread it with olive oil. Particularly after a glass of wine. I ended up just pouring oil onto the clingfilm and swearing quite a bit.

Step 7 - Leave in a warm place to double in size.  I live in a top floor tenement flat on a windy street corner in Edinburgh; there is only one warm place... My boyfriend had the decency not to ask why there was a loaf tin on the floor under the bathroom radiator, but I saw the combined look of amusement/horror on his face. He probably remembers my last attempt at baking - a chocolate brownie which was so disasterous I took to my bed for 3 days and refused to go in the kitchen until the gloopy mess was cleaned off the counter/walls/floor. 

I started making the bread at 1pm on Saturday.  At 1.30pm, I checked on it, and it hadn't moved at all.  At 2.15pm, it still hadn't gone anywhere, and most of the oil had dripped off the clingfilm to form greasy puddles in the bottom of the tin.  Cue bread-induced panic.  How long is it supposed to take for bread to double in size?!  Why isn't it doing anything?!  What have I done wrong?!  After half an hour of glaring at the loaf tin, I decided to switch off the pre-heating oven, step away from the bread, and go into town.  At lunch time on Sunday, I remembered the bread.  I'll be honest - I'm not entirely sure whether or not it had risen at all, but surely it shouldn't take a whole 24 hours for bread to double in size?!

Step 8 - Bake in a preheated oven for 25 minutes or until golden brown... 

 

The results:

Gluten Free Bread - Attempt One

Looks ok, right?  It's the right colour, it's all in one piece, and it actually came out of the loaf tin (probably thanks to all that oil). It also smelled A-MAZING.  I wish I could blog the smell of bread.  NOM.

I was so excited to try my own bread, but I waited patiently until it had cooled down.  It flattened as it cooled, to about 2 inches deep, which was a bit disappointing, but still, I cut myself a slice...

Imagine playdoh that's been left out of the tub slightly too long and has gone crusty on the outside.  That is exactly what my bread looked like.  It was basically raw.  Everywhere, except the deceptively golden brown crust. 

So, people who know stuff about baking - where did I go wrong??

(Ps. Obviously, I still ate it, and it tasted yummy. And it definitely wasn't like eating sawdust...)