You Don't Have to Be a Starving Student

I Love Food.

Or rather...

I Love GOOD Food.

Have you ever heard people talk about going to college and be a starving student. It's just one of those things people say (poor college kid, etc). Well, I have learned something about food and grocery shopping. 

Buying junk food is not cheaper than buying healthy in the long run.

Think about it. If you develop the habits now of eating junk all the time, you're going to have to pay the price of poor health and bad habits in the long run. 

But fear not! This is not a scolding post. Rather this is a tutorial on how I am eating fresh, delicious, home-cooking on a strict budget of time and money.

Welcome to my kitchen. :)

~~~

I got a crock pot for Christmas, and may I just say...that is the best thing to give a college student. The whole premise is that you make delicious food by throwing stuff in a pot and forgetting about it. All you have to do is throw the food in the pot in the morning before classes, it cooks all day, and then you just come home and scarf!

This is my tutorial on making a delicious pot roast!

Here's your grocery list:

~~ A bag of potatoes

~~ A bundle of fresh celery

~~ A bag of baby carrots or 2 or 3 large carrots

~~ An onion or a container of chopped onion

~~ A rump roast

~~ Lawry's Seasoned Salt

Just to quickly touch on the ingredients (some of my tips and tricks). Have you recently looked at the price of a 10 pound bag of potatoes? They are insanely cheap. I mean dirt cheap (pun intended)! And so versatile, you can cook billions of things with potatoes. For things like chopped onion or seasoned salt, it seems like such a rip off to buy a whole container from the seasonings section of the grocery store, but you have a few things to keep in mind. First, how often are you going to use it? They are my go-to seasonings for chicken breasts, hamburger patties, etc. So weigh those things. If you really only need enough for this one recipe, most grocery stores sell these products in little envelopes. It just takes a little searching to find where they are in the store. Now for the roast, I bought a 4 pound rump roast for between 11 and 12 dollars. It seemed really pricey for a college food budget, but there are other things to consider. When I bought mine, I went home and immediately cut the roast into four smaller roasts. Then I put them in plastic bags to store in the freezer. In this recipe coming up, I pulled one roast out and used that. The recipe produced three and a half servings for me. Meaning I had a meal and two meals in leftovers. Meaning that purchase of the roast has yielded 14 meals. Meaning, I'm okay with that purchase.

Next up, the actual recipe! Keep in mind, through this process, you really can't mess it up.

The first thing I did was take my roast from the freezer and put it in the crock pot. No, I did not thaw it, I did not put it in the refrigerator the night before, I literally opened my freezer, grabbed the roast, ripped open the bag, and dropped it in the crock pot.

Next, I washed and chopped one full celery stalk and threw it in the crock pot.

I didn't buy whole carrots, I bought baby carrots. So, I didn't measure out how many carrots I wanted. I just reached in and pulled out a handful of carrots and tossed them in too.

Next, I pulled out two potatoes, washed, peeled, and chopped them and then...you guessed it! Threw them in the crock pot.

Once I threw the potatoes in, I added a quarter cup of water to the mix.

The final step is seasoning. The first thing I sprinkled in was 2 tablespoons of chopped onions. I sprinkled it around all through the veggies. The other seasoning I used was Lawry's Seasoned Salt and just sprinkled that generously over my veggies and roast.

Once the lid is on and the dial is set to low, you pretty much just walk away and forget about it for 10 hours. It's that easy!

Now, just for your information there are a couple little variations you can try that also work well. First, if you choose to thaw the meat before hand, make sure you shave between an hour and an hour and a half off your total cook time. Second, you can also set the dial to cook the meat on high for the first hour of cooking. Also remember that if you're cooking for your entire apartment/guests and you want to cook a bigger pot roast, don't forget to increase the recipe accordingly (half a roast will have twice as much as this recipe calls for, full roast is four times as much, etc).

Once the time is up you have a succulent, moist, fall-apart, melt-in-your-mouth dinner.

Definitely disregard the chips (I had a craving) and also, I totally did not need to use that knife. I was cutting the meat with my fork. 

And you have the most delicious leftover lunch ever!! 

Try it. Critique it. Tweak it. It's so easy, even a monkey could make it. Enjoy!!

My Celiac Story

Celiac Disease.

Whether you've heard of it or not, I guarantee you've heard all about the Gluten-Free diet/Gluten-Free living/The Gluten-Free Fad. But what's the scoop?

First, to set the record straight:

1. Celiac Disease is NOT the same thing as a wheat allergy or gluten intolerance. source

Celiac Disease is a Genetic disease. It's most commonly passed from mothers to sons and is far more serious than an allergy or intolerance. Celiac Disease causes the bodies immune system to attack healthy tissue. 

2. Going Gluten-Free is NOT a healthy option for those with no medical reason. source

Going gluten-free is great for people with Celiac Disease because it's the only real way to "treat" the disease. It's also recommended for people with wheat allergies and gluten intolerance. But the gluten-free fad dieting is actually quite dangerous! Going gluten-free robs the body of valuable vitamins ad nutrients. 

So...

How do you know if you have Celiac Disease? How do you know if you should get checked?

This is MY story. And bare with the gritty details, hopefully I can help someone know something that I wish I would've known. :)

My junior year of High School I started having some issues, health-wise, that raised some red flags. I was suffering some internal bleeding, huge canker sores in my mouth and on my tongue, terrible abdominal pain, and general discomfort. There were lots of things WE thought it could be: anemia, appendicitis, or ulcers. We went to my general practitioner, and he wasn't able to tell us anything. He recommended we go to a Gastrointestinal Physician. We got some recommendations from him and pressed on from there. I will say that day was very discouraging. I don't know if you've ever been turned away from a doctor, but it's not a fun feeling. I appreciated his referring us elsewhere, but it felt like I hadn't made any progress. After calling that clinic we were told there was no room for several months! I was still going home ill and in the dark.

Luckily, having not driven very far home yet, we got a phone call from the GI clinic saying I there was a cancellation, and I could get in that same week!! It was a huge blessing!

My GI specialist was super friendly. **sidenote--am I the only one who feels a little uneasy thinking about what would provoke someone to work in a profession like...this? I know, "someone's gotta do it" and "to each their own." Just a thought** He was very positive until he started saying things like colitis, colon cancer, Crohn's Disease, and many other terrifying conditions that mine could be. I started to feel a little panicky. My mom and I exchanged looks (of course she was keeping her cool) and I just thought, "This would happen to me. Some simple pain and discomfort ends up being something life-threatening." Please don't judge my ignorance, I'm just being 100% honest with all I was thinking. A blood work-up was ordered immediately. 

The results came back a day or two later, and I found out that the levels/white blood count/whatever-the-heck-they-were-looking-at came back and my Doctor was 99.9% sure it was Celiac Disease (which was totally a relief to me, comparatively), but he still seemed a bit questionable. My mom and I asked what his thoughts were, to which he replied, "I am always very hesitant to advise someone to cut gluten out of their diet, completely and indefinitely. It's not an easy decision and doesn't come without it's draw-backs." So he suggested that we let him do an upper endoscopy and colonoscopy. Obviously, that stressed me out too (can you tell I don't like the doctor's office or hospitals??), but I knew it was the only way to be 100% certain PLUS it would allow him to assess the damage and see what I needed to do to heal.

Several doctor's visits, blood work, and two procedures later...it was determined. I had Celiac Disease and probably had had it my entire life. Consider:

--The doc asked me what my favorite foods were. Promptly I responded, "Watermelon, pineapple, apples, oranges, carrots, spinach, and chocolate." To which he responded, "Notice, none of those foods contain Gluten." I was shocked! My body had naturally responded better to Gluten-Free foods even though I didn't decide that was how it is. He predicted that they were my favorite because they didn't make me feel sick afterward.

--A few weeks after this all went down, I came across some journals I kept in my elementary school classes (raise your hand if your teachers made you keep journals too). As I flipped through the pages, I started noticing that at least every other entry contained me referencing how I didn't feel good or how I had a tummy ache. I'm sure my mom and my teachers felt that I was just complaining a lot, but it was a tell-tale sign that I had Celiac.

--My food never felt like it "settled." Before I found out I had Celiac, I felt sick after every meal. Throughout my life (schooling, church activities, etc) I have always been sort of a perfectionist, so I thought I always just carried my stress in my stomach (?). 

I mean, I can't believe I missed this all my life!!

Obviously there's much more to this story: the first few weeks of adapting, trial and error in eating, trying to treat symptoms when I accidentally get Gluten, what are my symptoms when I get it, etc. Rest assured, I will post more as I go along, but I didn't want to Gluten-Free Vomit all over you in one post (though I may already have succeeded in that). Anywho, I welcome questions and comments. Hit me up!! I'd love to answer some of your questions about living Gluten-Free and living with Celiac as I go through the rest of these posts. I'll share some pet peeves, some tips and tricks, and some Life-According-To-Natalie tips, so stay tuned!

*Disclaimer: If you feel like some of these symptoms fit something you're experiencing, don't self-diagnose. You could be experiencing many other illnesses or allergies. It is certainly in your best interest to check with your Doctor specifically.*