Gluten-Free Tortilla Soup

My sister makes the BEST Mexican tortilla soup.  She’s famous for making it after football games and the heat from the spices always warmed you up from the inside out.  Problem is, the ingredients she included in her recipe weren’t available in  my local grocery store.

I really had it in my head that I wanted to make that soup.  So, I headed to Wegman’s to  seek out new ingredients to use.  Instead of Campbell’s Fiesta Cheese soup, I found LaPreferida’s nacho sauce.  It was really thick, but all the reviews I read said that it was very “flavorful,” and they were right.

Next I found Image Harvest Corn Soup in place of Pacific Brand Corn Chowder, which was not listed as gluten-free on their website.  It was perfectly thick, creamy and sweet.

The best part of this soup is that you just put everything in a crock pot and cook on high for 3-4 hours.  I served it with fresh avocado, sour cream and g.f. corn chips.  I’ll be honest with you, it had great heat, but the avocado and sour cream gave it a nice creamy end.

Try it and let me know what you think!

We had our with a nice glass of wine, but a gluten-free Redbridge beer would’ve been excellent with it!

 

 

Minnie’s Tortilla Soup

• 2 split breasts with bone in and skin on (remove chicken from bone and shred when cooked)
• 1/2 box of Image Harvest Corn Soup
• 1/2 can La Preferida Nacho sauce
• 2 cans Ro-tel Original tomatoes
• 1 can Black Beans (drained)
• 1 can Corn (drained)
• 1 box G.F. Chicken Broth (Homemade is best)
• Fresh Chopped Cilantro, Red Peppers and Sour Cream for Garnish

Allergens are like “Onions”

I thought that eliminating gluten from my diet was going to “ZAP” every weird symptom out of my body.  Well, it did on the larger level.  My digestive system calmed down, my circulatory system calmed down, no more migraines.  I really felt like my immune system was getting strong and I was healing from the inside out.

Then one morning I woke up with a stiff neck.  I never really “loved” my feather pillow, and would actually sleep with 2 pillows behind my head, one under my knees and one behind me in case I rolled over.  The stiff neck turned into a sore neck and I started noticing that I couldn’t lay on my sides with our my legs going numb.  Nice.

The search began for the “perfect” pillow.  First was the curved latex pillow from Costco.  GREAT support.  I LOVED it, but I noticed that my face started to break-out after I purchased it.  I couldn’t imagine it was the pillow, since the packaging said “natural latex”.  I was willing to fore-go the blemishes to have a restful nights sleep.  My skin got worse, so I covered my pillow with my husband’s t-shirts, bath towels or anything to separate myself from the latex, but it didn’t’ help.  I even eliminated all laundry detergents that contained any fragrance in case that was contributing to my skin issues.  

After a long period of suffering I disgarded the “natural latex” pillow and moved to a buckwheat hull pillow.  LOVED IT!  It carressed my neck and helped align my whole body.  Problem was, my skin still looked horrible and was getting worse.  I was going crazy!  I still needed the neck support, and buckwheat was truly natural, so I went to Mauree Kai to have the material tested for allergens.  I wanted so badly to keep that pillow, but she informed me that I had an allergy to buckwheat.  UGH!!!  What next????

I found a neck support pillow on line called “The Bone“.  It was used in nursing homes and rehab facilities to support the heads and necks of people who had been incapacitated or injured.  I LOVED it.  It was small, and colorful and filled with fiberfill, so it kept it’s shape nicely.  My skin was looking a little better at this point, but I still looked like I had the skin of a 14 year old teenager.  

I purchased hundreds of dollars of skin care products over the last 2 years, and finally resorted to washing my face with Dove soap and washing my hair everynight with a gluten-free hair product call No Poo.  I followed up with a Salasylic Acid lotion and spot treated with Benzoyl Peroxide creams.  Everyday I woke up with a new blemish.  No kidding…EVERYDAY!  I do LOVE Deva Curl products and continue to use them!

I took the bone, covered it in my husbands mildly detergent washed t-shirts and slept on my back so my face wouldn’t touch my pillow.  I was close to getting clear skin back, but not close enough.

My last resort was the 100% organic cotton pillow.  It was plain, flat and uninteresting looking compared to the curves of the pillows I purchased before.  It was also twice as much money.  Now imagine my husbands reaction when the 5th pillow in 18 months showed up.  We were both pleasantly surprised when my skin got noticably better with the new pillow.  It wasn’t fancy, but it supported my neck perfectly and I noticed I could sleep on my side with no numbness.

Last week I went back to Mauree Kai and told her my whole pillow story.  We decided to use her Bioset/IQS system to test my body for chemical allergies.  The system showed I was allergic to latex (curved pillow), petroleum based products (bone pillow), salysylic acid and hydrogen peroxide (facial washes/acne medicine) and she had previously tested me and found I was allergic to buckwheat.

 

Layer by layer, pillow by pillow, I finally found my answer.  Yesterday I went to Wegman’s grocery store and purchased an organic natural facial wash.  No kidding, I woke up this morning and my face was completely clear.  My husband I were AMAZED!  2 years, 5 pillows and hundreds of dollars of facial products.  I was finally down to the core of my onion for this part of my journey.  I can’t imagine how my body was while eating gluten and fighting all these allergens.  No wonder I was sick all the time, my immune system was so rocked from my foods and skin products, how could it possibly find time to heal.  

It’s amazing to think of how many times I had gone to the dematologist and had gotten perscriptions for products, which I now see I was allergic to.  I had even been turned down  health insurance because, among other pre-existing conditions, I had “acne”.  They determined this diagnosis because of all the skin/acne presciptions I had gotten for my skin over the years. 

My hope is that someday, every MD doctor will have an Bioset IQS in their office to help diagnose people from the inside, instead of trying to diagnose from just the symptoms.