Gluten-Free Lemon Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes

These gluten-free lemon blueberry buttermilk pancakes are light, delicious and a breeze to whip up with Pamela’s Buttermilk Pancake Mix! Top them with a dollop of lemon curd, maple syrup and a dusting of powdered sugar for a sweet breakfast!

Bring on Breakfast

Can we all agree that breakfast is the most delicious meal of the day? Whether you’re a fan of sweet or savory, the options are endless. Personally, I could eat breakfast for every meal, and weekly brinners (breakfast for dinner) happen often in the Clean Eats kitchen.

I look forward to the weekends when we are all home to enjoy a big breakfast together around the kitchen table. We all crave it after a long week of busy schedules. Cooking and creating with my kids is therapy for my soul and they love it as much as I do.

Pancake Saturdays have become a tradition around here and we are always finding delicious new ways to dress them up!

Mom hack: getting your kids in the kitchen to cook with you increases their interest and likeliness to try new foods. Give it a try next time you’re preparing a meal. It’s still amazing to me how quickly foods they help prepare themselves disappear like magic! Even with an egg shell or two…

Growing up I spent my summers with my grandparents at their home on Chebeague Island in Maine. When we weren’t pulling up lobster traps or digging for clams, we were picking fresh berries off their blueberry bushes. We would pick a bucket before heading to the beach every morning and enjoy them the next day. This is where my love for blueberry pancakes was rooted. Nothing quite beats Grams’ warm fresh blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup on a crisp summer morning.

These lemon blueberry buttermilk pancakes are quickly making their way into first place! I mean, just look at that stack! Layers upon layers of fluffy Pamela’s sprouted and whole grain buttermilk pancakes infused with fresh lemon, vanilla and packed full of plump fresh blueberries. They’re stacked high with layers of lemon curd smeared in between each pancake, and topped with real maple syrup and a sprinkle of powdered sugar. This is how we wake up our taste buds on the weekends.

Fortunately, we have a pantry full of Pamela’s Pancake Mixes to keep our breakfast gluten-free and delicious. Because a life without pancakes isn’t a life at all. Agreed? You can stock up by heading to Amazon.com. This recipe is one of our family favorites. Yes, they eat gluten-free with me on most occasions, with pancakes this delicious why wouldn’t they?!

Gluten-Free Family

I get asked a lot of questions on social media about my gluten-free journey and how I incorporate my lifestyle into feeding my family. The truth is, I don’t have to. No, they aren’t gluten-free, but I refuse to cook two separate meals so they eat what I eat 99% of the time.

The majority of my diet and what I feed my family is gluten-free naturally. Fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, cheese and eggs are all naturally gluten-free. These foods are the basis of our meals. When it comes to grains and cereal we stick to quinoa, brown rice and oats, all of which are also naturally gluten-free. The times I do serve gluten with meals, pasta and bread for example, I just skip it. Unless it’s totally worth it, then I indulge and pay for it later.

I’ll be honest, in the beginning I was worried. It all seemed so overwhelming… how was I supposed to feed myself AND my family gluten-free. All I could think about was everything I could no longer eat. It all seemed so daunting. But I quickly learned that a gluten-free lifestyle isn’t one of deprivation, you just have to be smart. It’s been a long road but I feel like we have finally figured out how to navigate the GF world as a family.

Tips on eating gluten-free

• Learn to read food labels.
• Use gluten free substitutions for your favorite ingredients. Yes you can still enjoy breads, crackers, pasta and pancakes!!
• Get baking. Learning to make your favorite baked goods can be fun and a great way to fill the void if you’re missing sweets.
• Plan ahead when going out or socializing. Find options on the menu in advance or pack your own meal if necessary.

My Gluten-Free Journey

My gluten-free journey began almost two decades ago after the birth of my son. I can remember feeling exhausted, groggy, depressed and constantly sick to my stomach during the weeks following his birth. My doctor had chalked it up to postpartum depression and sent me home with a handful of medications to treat my symptoms.

As the next couple of weeks at home unfolded, I continued to feel more and more awful. My immune system was in the gutter and I was catching any bug that blew into the neighborhood. I was suffering and nobody could tell my why. It was discouraging and I was tired.

Looking for answers

Before I knew it, I found myself in the ER slouched in a waiting room chair in fetal position, fevering and shaking. My body was in shock. I was diagnosed with mastitis without a single ounce of breast pain earlier that week. My symptoms were escalating quickly, fever, nausea and abdominal pain. By this point I looked six months pregnant and we knew something was seriously wrong. We weren’t leaving the hospital without answers.

Well, we got them. Shortly after arriving they took me upstairs for scans and x-rays. Turns out I wasn’t suffering from postpartum depression after all and I definitely did not have mastitis. I had an impacted colon and was on the verge of a serious infection due to waste leaking into my abdomen. I remember feeling so helpless in this moment. So incredibly let down by my doctor and nurses that I had been reaching out to for weeks.

So many emotions

It was scary and I was angry. Angry at my OBGYN who brushed me off while a storm was brewing inside me. Angry that the ER surgeon had just recommended an emergency transverse colostomy. Hello, I was 21 years old. No.

I can still see the look on my mother’s face when the doctor said the words “transverse colostomy.” It’s one a child (even at 21) never forgets. She looked him straight in the eyes and told him “Not only no, but hell no. She can heal this. We will heal this.”

We self-discharged the next day, against the advice of every nurse and doctor who had seen me. I knew without question we were doing the right thing that day. The thought of staying in the hospital gave me a pit in my stomach I can’t put into words, and a life altering surgery couldn’t be my only option. I was scared but I had hope.

Hope in healing

After leaving the hospital and researching online for 24 hours straight, we drove straight to a holistic doctor in the basement of Good Earth for colon hydrotherapy. I’ll skip the details (Google it) but after 10 sessions, I finally started to feel some relief. I had energy, color in my skin and hope again.

In those next two weeks I had cut gluten, dairy and all processed food out of my diet in effort to heal my gut. I was juicing greens by the gallon. Slowly but surely, I was healing. The peristalsis I was told in the ER would never return was working, all on its own. It felt like a miracle, I could picture my body regenerating from the inside out, like a black and white movie that slowly starts to have color.

Food is medicine

In the following weeks, I slowly started to reintroduce the foods I had taken out to see if I had a negative reaction (basically I did whole30 before it existed). Sure enough gluten caused the most gastrointestinal discomfort and side effects. I tested negative for celiac disease but was extremely sensitive to gluten. Per the advice of a new GI doctor, I chose that day to consume a diet low in gluten and my body has never been more grateful.

Listen to your body, it knows exactly what it needs. There are plenty of elimination diets out there and they get a lot of slack from nutritionists and health professionals. If something you’re eating is making you sick, stop. Then reintroduce it and if it still causes symptoms make a personal choice to eliminate it. You only have one body to live in, make it count.

A gluten free lifestyle is a choice for me. I choose to feel good and when I eat gluten, I don’t. Simple, really.

Luckily, we can still enjoy fluffy blueberry lemon buttermilk pancakes gluten-free, thanks to Pamela’s!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Pamela’s Products. All opinions expressed are my own.