"Beer is good but I have found if I drink too much it makes my belly round."
The drawing on the side there has been scanned directly from the sketchbook designated to the non neglective usage of my left hand. I am typically a right winger, unless we are talking about politics or ice-hockey, however, I have been making art with the south paw, that up there is an example.
The drawing/poem was done when, still in my line of vision, a condensation-forming bottle of frothy bodega bought beer stood as a still life.
As many of us know the consumption of this liquid tends to formulate itself in an ever present bulge above, and sometimes protruding over, the cleverly designed belt buckled waist line. Okay, so maybe it’s just me that has a collection of clasps that keep my drawers from drooping. (side bar, thanks to Kate H.C. for the new one from Texas.)
But anyhoo, there’s a little bit of ironicism in regards to revisiting this piece that was done awhiles back, taking into consideration the time at which it was drawn.
Back then, it was a bit of wit in words in regards to the beer belly syndrome.
Little did I know, the bulge I attributed to the beer I was drinking was actually a more complex reaction do to the ingredients of what made brew and many other foods I had been consuming.
Wheat and barley, to be precise.
...My nemesis.
Upon consumption my body attacks itself, seeing the contents as a toxin.
I have spent days after eating things with these constituents with pain and perilous poos.
There is no paper that says it, but a thing called Celiacs is what I have to blame for the last year of my life spent with too many days in bed with discomfort and an accumulation as thick as Pigpen’s dust clouding my head.
A blood test proved inconclusive, because there is no pink for positive, or blue for a no go procedure to either confirm or deny.
I opted out of the expensive endoscopic biopsy that had been scheduled, and realized that when I ate wheat or gluten, I felt bad, and when I didn’t, I felt better.
“Doctor it hurts when I do this,” as the patient pokes his eye, is what came in to mind, and the follow up is, “stop doing that”.
A prognosis without the papering of uninsured advice, and an old timey comedic classic. Works for me.
Which brings me to earlier tonight, more specifically dinnertime. Used to be, I was hungry, I would eat ...problem solved.
Thaw a frozen pizza, zap up some easy mac.
Done and dunner.
This wasn’t every night, mind you. But seriously some days it’s not just cause it’s easy to “run for the border.” Fact of the matter, sometimes that stuff just plain tastes good.
However, such an indulgence these days would leave me with a swollen, throbbing gut, and a body that lacked the ability to absorb the nutrients of the next day where carrot juice and a quinoa avocado salad was on the menu for lunch and blackened chicken with a pineapple, plum, peach, and papaya salsa served over spring greens was shared at dinnertime.
You may have noticed on the super market shelves these days, products protesting to be “gluten free.”
That means that the contents of the food does not contain wheat, rye, barley or oats(oats can be okay digestively, but are very often cross contaminated by wheat flours used in products made on the same production line.)
More and more, people are being diagnosed as gluten intolerant, 1 in 100, if I remember correctly from what I read, but it is a relatively “new” trend in diagnostics, so much so that if spelled incorrectly, Microsoft Word will try to tell you your trying to spell the name of this years NBA’s championship green jerseyed team. If you really, really can’t spell.
I just finished a book called Gluten Free Girl, an educational and inspirational read. It’s funny how things are easier to understand when you know more about something because someone else knows more than you, and you take it all in. And, I think I can agree with the characters from Joe G.I, maybe Scarlet (cause she was hot) on this one, that “knowing is half the battle.” And a fraction of the other portion was found in the meal that was prepared for me tonight in our gluten free kitchen. Fried chicken with a rice flour batter, drizzled with spicy gravy from a recipe that was gluten free, that also soaked the frozen (sans wheat) cornbread muffins that were complimented with a brown rice medley and steamed and seasoned broccoli goodness.
The drawing/poem was done when, still in my line of vision, a condensation-forming bottle of frothy bodega bought beer stood as a still life.
As many of us know the consumption of this liquid tends to formulate itself in an ever present bulge above, and sometimes protruding over, the cleverly designed belt buckled waist line. Okay, so maybe it’s just me that has a collection of clasps that keep my drawers from drooping. (side bar, thanks to Kate H.C. for the new one from Texas.)
But anyhoo, there’s a little bit of ironicism in regards to revisiting this piece that was done awhiles back, taking into consideration the time at which it was drawn.
Back then, it was a bit of wit in words in regards to the beer belly syndrome.
Little did I know, the bulge I attributed to the beer I was drinking was actually a more complex reaction do to the ingredients of what made brew and many other foods I had been consuming.
Wheat and barley, to be precise.
...My nemesis.
Upon consumption my body attacks itself, seeing the contents as a toxin.
I have spent days after eating things with these constituents with pain and perilous poos.
There is no paper that says it, but a thing called Celiacs is what I have to blame for the last year of my life spent with too many days in bed with discomfort and an accumulation as thick as Pigpen’s dust clouding my head.
A blood test proved inconclusive, because there is no pink for positive, or blue for a no go procedure to either confirm or deny.
I opted out of the expensive endoscopic biopsy that had been scheduled, and realized that when I ate wheat or gluten, I felt bad, and when I didn’t, I felt better.
“Doctor it hurts when I do this,” as the patient pokes his eye, is what came in to mind, and the follow up is, “stop doing that”.
A prognosis without the papering of uninsured advice, and an old timey comedic classic. Works for me.
Which brings me to earlier tonight, more specifically dinnertime. Used to be, I was hungry, I would eat ...problem solved.
Thaw a frozen pizza, zap up some easy mac.
Done and dunner.
This wasn’t every night, mind you. But seriously some days it’s not just cause it’s easy to “run for the border.” Fact of the matter, sometimes that stuff just plain tastes good.
However, such an indulgence these days would leave me with a swollen, throbbing gut, and a body that lacked the ability to absorb the nutrients of the next day where carrot juice and a quinoa avocado salad was on the menu for lunch and blackened chicken with a pineapple, plum, peach, and papaya salsa served over spring greens was shared at dinnertime.
You may have noticed on the super market shelves these days, products protesting to be “gluten free.”
That means that the contents of the food does not contain wheat, rye, barley or oats(oats can be okay digestively, but are very often cross contaminated by wheat flours used in products made on the same production line.)
More and more, people are being diagnosed as gluten intolerant, 1 in 100, if I remember correctly from what I read, but it is a relatively “new” trend in diagnostics, so much so that if spelled incorrectly, Microsoft Word will try to tell you your trying to spell the name of this years NBA’s championship green jerseyed team. If you really, really can’t spell.
I just finished a book called Gluten Free Girl, an educational and inspirational read. It’s funny how things are easier to understand when you know more about something because someone else knows more than you, and you take it all in. And, I think I can agree with the characters from Joe G.I, maybe Scarlet (cause she was hot) on this one, that “knowing is half the battle.” And a fraction of the other portion was found in the meal that was prepared for me tonight in our gluten free kitchen. Fried chicken with a rice flour batter, drizzled with spicy gravy from a recipe that was gluten free, that also soaked the frozen (sans wheat) cornbread muffins that were complimented with a brown rice medley and steamed and seasoned broccoli goodness.
