Guest Post: It’s the Little Itty Bitty Things

This should be the last guest post, because the project I was doing for my friends is finally done. So, please put up with my husband’s strange brand of humor for one more week. 

~Audrey

“It’s the little things / the itty bitty things…”
-It’s the little things (that piss me off)

Robert Earl Keen

“For want of a nail”

-Nursery Rhyme

Forgive me a bit of indulgence with two quotes at the beginning of this post. I just finished up a Monday at work, and lately Mondays at work have meant doing my job.

That might not sound like a big deal to some of you. But for the last several months, Mondays where we work have meant doing someone else’s job. Specifically, I’ve been doing my wife’s job, answering people’s questions about this and that as best as my years out-of-date knowledge will allow.

What has she been doing? She’s been doing someone else’s job too. It’s part of an all-hands-on-deck experiment that we’ve been doing to try to smooth out service levels on our busiest days. It was pretty rough, but we all pitched in and got the job done. And it’s over now. So on Mondays I get to do my job.

I’m sure after 2 non-sequitur quotes and more than 150 words about work, you’re wondering what all this has to do with gluten. The answer is nothing. And everything. Or at least a little, itty bit of a thing.

You see, to keep us going on these rough Mondays, Aud and I developed our own little ritual. Normally our lunches consist of yogurt and rabbit food, the kinds of lunches that you can scarf down in a few bites and that make you think you’re being punished for something, even though you’re doing it to yourself.

But on Mondays, we get a treat. We get a container of hummus and some veggies I chopped the night before, and we sit down for half an our and just luxuriate a bit in whirled chickpeas and carrots or celery. We’re always careful to pick a hummus that’s certified gluten-free, and I chop the veggies in our own kitchen.

Since we moved to our new house though, something has been slipping through the cracks. She’s been coming home on Mondays feeling that unpleasantness in her gut that’s a sure sign that she got glutened somewhere, and by Tuesday morning I’m having to convince her to stay home and recover. She hated having to call in, and I hated the feeling that somewhere in the process I was letting her down.

So I started taking a hard look at everything that’s changed since we moved here. You’ve already heard about the new house, and how the house-hunting process took its toll on our diet for a bit. Now that we’re settled in though, we’ve mostly gotten our schedules and mealtimes back in order. The new place is a bit further from work, so the commute takes a bit longer, which has pushed meals a bit later. But how would that allow gluten to sneak in? We’re buying the same groceries, we’re doing the same prep. Sure, the kitchen has changed, but I’m pretty sure we’ve cleaned all the leftover gluten out of it by now.

I was thinking of all of this one Sunday night a few weeks back as I got out of the shower. I’ve always showered at night so I can sleep in an extra 15 minutes in the morning, plus it keeps us from fighting over hot water. I was grumbling to myself about having to go chop veggies for the next morning, because washing the veggies so soon after my shower means that my hand lotion gets all tacky and oily and just plain icky-feeling. But one of the things that changed with our new location is that we don’t have a grocery store right up the hill from us anymore, which means longer shopping trips, which means later dinners, which means later showers, so I’ve been doing lunch prep at night after she goes to bed…

That train of thought managed to complete itself right before I hit the pump on the lotion bottle. I brought the bottle downstairs with me and did some Googling, which yielded the nugget of information that the lotion company refused to certify that their products were gluten-free. They didn’t actually use any gluten-containing ingredients in the lotion, but they also wouldn’t outright say that their facility was gluten-free.

I put the bottle down unopened, and went to the kitchen, where I washed my hands as carefully as any surgeon ever scrubbed before walking into the O.R. After that I prepped lunches for the week, including chopping our veggies for Monday hummus.

The next morning I didn’t say anything. We went about our day, doing other people’s jobs. We sat down for our lunchtime luxury as normal.

And that was it. That night when we got home, she felt fine. The next week after work on Monday, she felt fine too. It’s been five weeks now since she got a Monday glutening, the same five weeks since I’ve been making sure my hand lotion didn’t go anywhere near our food.

I finally had to admit to my little secret when she came home today from buying our weekly groceries. Apparently my lotion was on sale, so she picked me up a couple bottles. I had planned to just quietly switch brands to something that was certified, and I probably still will after dropping these off at Goodwill.

I’m also not going to tell you what brand it is, because a) I can’t be 100% sure that the lotion was to blame, and b) the company that makes it was completely honest about their product; I just never had a reason to look into it before. If we hadn’t moved where we did, I might still not know. It would’ve just been one of life’s little frustrating mysteries, the occasional Where’s Waldo of our life, except that Waldo is quietly poisoning my wife. Just one of those little things.

One of those itty, bitty things…

Guest Post: Eat Sunscreen

OK people, once again my lovely, generous, talented wife has dug herself a hole with all the people she’s promised to help at once, so I’m picking up the slack and doing a blog post for her. I’M BACK, BABY!

…

*crickets*

…

(I knew I shouldn’t have written “Wait 30 seconds for applause to die down.”)

*Ahem* And here we go!

Ladies and Gentlemen: Eat Sunscreen

By a show of hands, who remembers the late 90’s song “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen)”? *OK, now put your hands down. I can’t see you.

I’ve been thinking about that song a lot lately, especially the lyric “Understand that friends come and go, but a precious few you should hold onto.” That’s been going through my head every time this winter that I’ve cooked what could charitably be called “comfort food.” Why would I be thinking about Baz Luhrmann and Rozella while cooking? Because the next words of the song are “Work hard…”

For nearly a decade and a half since I learned to cook (don’t do the math!), there have been few dishes that have been quite as quick, easy, tasty, and just gosh-darned comforting as a meal that we just know by the simplistic sobriquet “chicken and rice.” That name encompasses fully half of the ingredients (not counting basic spices) of this dish, which takes all of 30 minutes to cook, serve and eat. There are few things as hearty, warming and filling on a cold winter’s eve that get me out of the kitchen in time to actually enjoy the meal with Audrey and whoever else we might have over.

I’m not going to waste your time sharing the recipe; that’s not the kind of blog this is (the recipe for The Perfect Roux(tm) notwithstanding). Besides, if you really want it, you can find it on the back of the Minute Rice box like I did. Yeah, that’s right. I’m not too proud to admit it. I’ve tweaked the recipe a bit over the years, added and subtracted things as the mood strikes. But we’ve always wound up going back to the original when we’re in a pinch and we just need food that tastes and feels good.

Or at least we did, until Audrey’s diagnosis. Suddenly we started reading cans (or running them through an app, or reading company websites, or etc. etc.), and we found out that most Cream of Chicken soups (yes, you now have 3 of the 4 ingredients, go nuts) are thickened with good old wheat gluten.

We went nearly a year without our go-to winter comfort food before Then one day I looked in the crisper drawer of our refrigerator at some fortuitously abandoned carrots, celery and onion (Quick! Who can tell me what those ingredients are called in cooking? Answer at the end of the blog.)** and thought aloud “Well, how hard can it be?” A quick internet search and a flurry of chopping, sauteing and simmering later, and I was staring down at a beautiful homemade cream of chicken soup…

…OK, I’m lying. It wasn’t quick. It wasn’t quick at all. I stood over that stove at the end of a long day at work, wondering what possessed me to even attempt this. I measured flour mixes and figured out what would thicken my soup without making it grainy (and didn’t entirely succeed, at least that time). I simmered, thickened, whisked out lumps, added cream and simmered some more. But at the end of all of that…I had one of my four ingredients. And no meal yet.

I seriously considered telling Audrey that I had made cream of chicken soup for dinner that night. I really did. But that wasn’t what I wanted for dinner. I wanted comfort food. And so I chopped and cooked more veggies, shredded chicken, cooked rice (because after all of this, I’m gonna just use Minute Rice?), simmered some more, dipped in a spoon and…

Heaven. Comfort. Bliss. I glopped it into bowls and brought it out to the living room where Aud was too engrossed in another project for another friend in need to notice what I was handing her. She put down her crocheting and eyed the bowl suspiciously before she tentatively dipped her spoon in.

And that’s when I saw it. The look on her face. Heaven. Comfort. Bliss. Pure, unadulterated joy at getting back something that she had just assumed she would never have again. And a long day at work and a long evening over the stove just melted away. It was all worth it for just that moment of comfort.

Since then I’ve dug out several more comfort food recipes that we’d written off and figured out how to make them GF. I’ve also figured out shortcuts so that I’m not spending hours at something that used to just take minutes, but the truth is that these recipes are going to take more work than they used to. But it’s worth the work. Because recipes come and go, but a precious few you should hold onto.

“Work hard…”

* Fun fact: One of Audrey’s first jobs was at the radio station that made that song popular (right around the same time too-don’t do the math)

**The quiz answer is “mirepoix”

Guest Column: The New Normal

Salutations everyone, and welcome to the (I’m sure) long-awaited guest column from hubby! Audrey is taking a well-deserved nap, or vacation, or video-gaming binge, or…something. I don’t know. Honestly, I wrote this a while ago and just kept it in the wings in case she ever needed a week off.

Does paranoia annoy ya?

Please be aware that this post includes a lot of alternative facts. I found that the alternative facts support my argument a lot better than the real facts. You have been warned.

I might have mentioned before that I got diagnosed with Celiac’s about one year after the best South Park Season that ever happened. The first episode of that season was about gluten making your dick fly off. I decided to get tested because, well, I have never had a dick so I must have been born with Celiac Disease. I mean that makes sense, right? And it has to be true because I saw it on TV.

Anyway, that episode made one really amazing point, because being gluten free was healthier for everyone, than everyone in the town had to be gluten free. This seems like s perfect solution. If everyone was gluten free, then none of us actual glutards out there would have to worry about anything. We could eat anything at the grocery store. We could go to every restaurant and there would be no problems!

As it stands, every time I leave the house right now I have that paranoia in the back of my head. Every time my husband doesn’t kiss me on the lips I think he snuck out to McDonald’s behind my back (and totally didn’t apologize for it.) I’m worried that everywhere I look, there are hidden gluten crumbs that are waiting to poison me. Every door knob I touch is spread with gluten. Gluten gets in the air if someone is eating a sandwich near me. Every person that comes to my house or by my desk is out to get me. I have suspected that people that don’t like me are poisoning me with gluten.
I mean that’s what people do right?

And I know from looking at like everything on the internet gluten free people are universally hated. It out there on the internet, you can find it everywhere. And if it’s on the internet it totally has to be true. Or you can ask anyone who works in a restaurant that if someone mentions that they are gluten free, they totally roll their eyes and don’t take it seriously. We all know this because it happened to us. And then they just roll your food in gluten, straight up gluten not just flour, because everyone knows that there’s no such thing as a need to eat gluten free. It’s just something that trendy people make up to feel special. They so don’t even know about the dick thing. I mean not everyone watched South Park,but I think they mentioned it in Wheat Belly too, and that’s written down so it has to be doubly true.

So, yeah, that is all of the reasons that I think we should all be gluten free. Because it would just be easier on everyone. That way no one needs to worry about their dicks flying off. It’s just healthier for everyone just based on that, not to mention all of the other health benefits. And it makes everything easier on me. And we all know that is what the most important thing here.

Again this post was full of alternative facts, but also alternative opinions. They do not reflect the actual thoughts of the author. Well…most of them do not…but I’ll never tell you which ones are true.

 

You can’t always eat what you want…

Happy New Years everyone!

So, post Christmas was interesting. I got the stomach flu. I honestly never really thought I would ever be excited from the stomach flu, but only having the body aches and need to run to the bathroom for a limited time (and not having all of the rest of the glutened symptoms afterwards) is kind of amazing. I get excited knowing that the flu is a limited time illness, and it’s kind of sad.

Anyway, after the stomach bug I cut my thumb open. Literally, I was sick the Monday and Tuesday after Christmas and on Tuesday night I sliced my thumb open. Below is a recreation of the actual event.

But seriously, I cut about halfway through the tip of my thumb. Kind of makes typing hard. And then the in-laws descended on my house. We got away with eating without incident (in the home) but the one meal outside of our house that we had, I got glutened.

It was a really stupid one. We went to Maggiano’s Little Italy, which pride themselves on doing gluten free (and all allergies) really well. They had a chief come out and speak with me (nice touch) and assure us that there was a separate gluten free part of the kitchen with special gluten free pasta water. They make all of the pasta in house and make sure that there’s no cross contamination. And I get my plate of fresh-made pasta prepared gluten free (and it’s pretty good, still a little grainy but not half bad pasta). And there, in the middle of my plate, is a strand of not gluten free spaghetti. How do I know, because I had penne and when I mentioned that there was spaghetti on my plate, the waitress got this look on her face and said she’s get the chief. But the chief didn’t come back, the manager came back and comped my meal. And got me a new plate of pasta. And gave us $50 in gift cards because they were so embarrassed that is happened. I mean, I was down for the count for 3 days but there was 3 free meals out of it. Doesn’t make up for the intestinal damage, but I would be willing to try again in case this was just a fluke.

So, my stomach has been a little tender as of late. And I’ve been a bit emotional. And I totally hit the post holiday funk. And I can’t really type or crochet or video game until this last week (Pokemon Go doesn’t count because it only uses one hand.) So, I haven’t been writing or really doing much of anything.  Until this last weekend.

I subscribe to the Gluten Free on a Shoestring newsletter. I really like their recipes and used several of them over Christmas. A couple of months ago I found one of her cookbooks in our local half priced book store (creatively called Half Prices Books) and bought it. Inside I found one of my favorite things, molasses break. It’s a quick version of the bread that you get at Outback Steak House, but gluten free. I’d been trying to 2 years to make something close, so I tried it. I modified the recipe a bit to make in my bread machine, and it was perfect. Literally perfect. Light and fluffy and moist. I made for Thanksgiving dinner and it was amazing. I also tried to make Monkey bread for the first time since the diagnosis, and it was also amazing.

This started us down the road of seeking out foods we haven’t had in a while. There was the cider pub in Seattle that had gluten free fish and chips and fried cheese (it was 100% gluten free restaurant). There was the fried rice after New Years (which almost, but didn’t, include part of my thumb). There was our trip to the local Asian market near our new house that included buying of mochi ice cream. And then this weekend we chased the dragon (so to speak.) I made Chinese barbecue pork and the husband made fried chicken.

I’ve tried making barbecue pork before and it was…okay. This time was a million times better. The fried chicken, that was from Gluten Free on a Shoestring. A KFC copy cat recipe was sent in the newsletter last week, and I just wanted it. We had been watching video of kids trying Christmas food was around the world, and in Japan KFC is traditional to have on Christmas Day. I starting having a craving for some fried chicken, and I was obliged last night.

Seriously, I don’t remember fried chicken being soo good. It was crispy and moist and yummy. I think I was 8 all over again eating chicken from a bucket. I just needed some of that overcooked, dry corn on a cob and a biscuit slathered in butter and honey from packets.  Next time we make it, I’ll work on biscuits I think.

We all have these foods that we love, and honestly, not all of them come in easy to find gluten free varieties. Sure, my new molasses bread isn’t the same texture as the one at Outback Steak House. It’s a bit more dense and moist than that one is. Sure my barbecue pork doesn’t have that bright red skin that the ones in the grocery store have (that food coloring BTW.) And sure that fried chicken wasn’t as thickly coated as the KFC, but it was still pretty amazing. And yeah we can’t just go to the store and buy it, but this isn’t a lament of the loss of convenience, but celebrate the resourcefulness of our people.

Celiacs and Gluten Sensitives have been finding a way to get their favorite things for years. It’s been years of struggle to get to this point. We live in an age of regulation of labeling and blends of flours that can create whatever you want. Sure we can’t get the protein structures like gluten baked goods, but we can get close. And we are on the cusp of a cure. As we speak there’s clinical testing on possible cures. This is the best time to need to be gluten free. Sure there’s a lot of room for growth. Sure there can be better testing and education (I mean look at Italy) but we’re in a pretty good place.

So, just because you can’t have EXACTLY what you want, be glad with what you do have. Because everyday we’re just a little bit more comfortable. Everyday some inventive cook out there figures out another way to make something gluten free. And we know how to do things that most normal people never think about. We know the careful alchemy of mixing whole grains and starches to create just the right surface tension for fluffy bread. We know how to do things that people just didn’t need to do anymore, that people forgot because the industrialized food machine has been doing it for them. We are the people who can’t be lazy, can’t decide that there’s just no energy to make something and I’ll just go out. Where most people start on their cooking, with boxed and frozen foods, that’s where we get lazy. We are the Celitariat, doing all of these things because the gluten free life has chosen us. We have our hustle on just to put food on the table and not be sick afterwards. That is what the gluten free life really is.

 

So, as the title of this post says, you can’t always eat what you want…but if you try really hard you can get pretty close.

What did you think I was going to Rolling Stones here…?

 

You have a whole new reason to dread the holidays

If you hadn’t noticed, Christmas is coming. I know it’s a total surprise. With Christmas there are family gatherings. I don’t know about you, but I’m already getting the regular holiday meal questions. It feels a little like a Doge meme.

We’re doing both the hosting and the visiting this year. With a new house, everyone is curious about it, so people want to come over. At the same time Christmas is finally on a weekend, meaning I can honestly get time off from my job to visit family over the holiday. With this comes the all of the normal pitfalls of not eating in your own home. To say I’m a little stressed, is an understatement.

Part of being a Celiac is the need to control your environment, and when you go to someone else’s house there is no control. You have no idea what the last 5 things cut on the cutting board were. Or if someone used that butter to make toast that morning. And the difference between going to a restaurant and to your family or friend’s house is the potential to offend. You can give a server a big tip when you put them through their paces, but bringing your own food to Christmas dinner and someone might be upset for the year to come. Personally, if you have to deal with the cooking for a family as large as my extended family, it’s better to not have to deal with all of the individual dietary restrictions, and we have a lot. To compound it with my needs to control every spoon transfer and keeping wheat away from every article. I’m just cooking something for myself to make it less stressful on you.

Then you add to it the family members that just want to help…oh the possibility to offend someone is VERY HIGH! Is this going to keep me from going, heck no, I want to see my family. Am I going to go to the bathroom and wash my hands all day long…you bet. I’ll also keep an eye on my cups and drinks and wipe off my plates and pretty much anything else that I can do to keep from getting sick over the weekend.

The weekend of New Years, we’re hosting Christmas for my husband’s family at out house. They have one big tradition for Christmas, and that’s Christmas cookies, gluteny gluteny Christmas cookies. We bring gluten into the house sometimes, but those are controlled moments and my husband does all of the clean up. These Christmas cookies get left out all weekend, because my husband’s family likes to graze. That means grab a cookie and eat and move around the house and touch things. So, another weekend, I will need to just make sure that I wash my hands a lot and clean the house really well afterwards.

And you better believe I’m going to be making all of the GF cookies to eat that weekend and they’re getting stored in the fridge.

Not having navigated through this before (last year was a Christmas at home and a trip to my Celia-Sissy and brother-in-law’s house)  I have no idea what lessons I’m going to learn going out to visit our family members. My mom is…excited…(I think) to try and accommodate me. Or maybe it’s more of the making sure her baby is not being left out. Still, it’s a couple of weekends of experimenting. The husband keeps reminding me that all of the questions are good, because she’s trying to understand and make sure that I’ll be safe. I know she’ll do a good job, it’s just a learning experience. She has to learn a whole new allergy (of sorts) and something that she hasn’t had to do before.

You know, all of this sounded so much less experimental and scary months ago when we made the plans. As it’s approaching, I’m startling to look at the details of what it’s going to entail, and I think I need more planning. Can we push Christmas back a couple of weeks like to maybe next year? I think I’ll be ready by then.

 

F*&k You Food Network (and a plea to change)

This weekend my mother texted me to tell me that Rachel Ray’s show made gluten free thanksgiving stuffing out of cheerios…I honestly don’t know how I feel about that. Part of me is going, well that is just the Glutocracy thinking their being inclusive to us in the Celitariate…well it might be. It’s not hard to make gluten free bread into croutons, or dry it out. I mean half of GF bread is nearly dry enough to be crouton anyway. And the stuff that is really moist will never make croutons, just don’t try. But then again, I suppose I should be happy that gluten free food is getting some showtime on food TV.

I am very glad that we have a TiVo, or a DVR at all, because it lets me skip over food commercials. Although, all weekend, my Cruchyroll account was playing the same Subway ad over and over and over again. Sometimes 5 times in a single 30 minute show. And you can’t skip those ads. It was enough to make a girl want to pay for the service just to make it stop. There’s only so many times you can see a Thanksgiving turkey sandwhich before you REALLY want a sub. And you can’t have a sub. Sometimes, it just makes me mad, like eating a chocolate bar in front of someone on a diet. I know you can’t always get the food you want, but damn it sometimes it would be nice to know you can have something!

I feel the same way about Food Network, like giving it a big middle finger. To watch Food Network is to be taunted with all of the food that you really really really really really want and not being able to have a single bite. Sure you can do the complex calculations needed to make the same gluteny gluten recipe gluten free, and we all have done it, but that doesn’t really address one of my main issues with Food Network and Food TV in general. No one addresses substitutions or allergies. Chiefs think about it, they have do in a restaurant, but the average home cook or food blogger only has to think about substitutions once or twice a year. So, people with allergies or food limitations, have to thing about how to make correct the recipe.

I think about this around this time of the year. Food Network does this emergency call in live special where viewers are allowed to ask their Thanksgiving cooking questions. It’s all part of their special 3 months of holiday programming. I’m fine with that. 3 years ago, all I thought of asking was about how to make a Cranberry Sauce without orange juice (my one really random food allergy). I figured that one out on my own (really good Cranberry pepper jelly), but I still feel like food TV is missing something. There’s shows on how to cook healthy. There’s shows on barbecue and and entire show about sandwiches. There’s shows of food science and cooking competitions, but no one cooks for the allergies.

Honestly, I don’t think there needs to be a whole allergy cooking show. I just want a month or maybe just a week. Just one gluten free week, maybe in May. There’s a whole level of education that could happen around what it means to be gluten free. How to keep a gluten free kitchen. Different gluten free grains and how to cook them. Heck, give Alton Brown a one hour Gluten Free Baking Special (please give Alton Brown a one hour gluten free baking special because it would be amazing!) Just give it some coverage.

May is Celiac Awareness month, and it would bring so much attention to the issues if we could get the Celitariat to band together, maybe start (dare I say it) a movement. It’s not hard. Below I have included a letter that you can copy and paste and paste into a word document. You can customize it however you like, or just use it whole cloth. That’s the first part. Not take it and go here. Submit a “question” to Food Network asking them why they don’t celebrate Celiac Awareness Month.

With that done, there is phase 2, and that is harassing enlisting the Food Network talent to join in. So go to their Twitter, Facebook, and personal website and spread the world. Share this post with them on facebook and twitter. Choose a dozen or so and spread the word. I mean it’s a good old fashioned letter writing campaign, and just with these new fangled social networking thing .

But the third and final part is the most important. We can’t really start a movement with the 15 people who read this (I’m totally realistic that we’re not reaching a lot of people here.) So, for this to get anywhere, we need you to share this post. Share it with your friends and family. Share it with your gluten free support group (and yes those exist) or your family members who have Celiac. We need all of them to take this up too. Mention this in a gluten free forum or on another gluten free blog. Tweet it. Reddit it (I’m not sure how Reddit works, but am going to say it works like that.) If you have a blog, re-blog it. Just share the letter and encourage people to participate.

And if you want to get really involved, go here and sign the petition that I put up on Change.org to see if we can make this happen.

So, here’s what you can do:

1. Go to Food Network and post the following letter asking for a some gluten free programming in May for Celiac Awareness Month
2. Go to some of the Food Network Talent’s Websites (below the letter), and see if they will also lobby for gluten free programming in May for Celiac Awareness Month.
3. Go to Change.org and sing the petition asking for gluten free programming in May for Celiac Awareness Month
4. Ask your friends and family to also do steps 1-4 of this process in hopes of getting gluten free programming in May of Celiac Awareness Month.

And if we can all do these 4 simple steps, we might be able to get the word out about Celian and Non-celiac Gluten Sensativity. Hopefully we can dispell some of the myths around the gluten free diet and maybe (once and for all) get across the difference between those that choose the gluten free life and those whom the gluten free life choose.

Dear Food Network,

Over the years you have provided a lot of top quality food programming and created a community around people who love food. You have millions of loyal viewers who come to you for advise and education when it comes to cookery. You hare raised a lot of awareness in regards to feeding the hungry and offer advice and assistance for people all over the nation. There is a very important issue that we would like to bring to your attention in hopes that you might give some focus to it in the future.

1 in every 33 people suffers from Celiac Disease and need to follow a gluten free diet for medical reasons. Often times, friends and family do not know of understand how to support the special diet that people with Celiac need. Because a maximum amount of gluten containing materiel as small 3 crumbs of bread can make someone with celiac disease sick, it’s often difficult to cook for someone with the disease, meaning that people with celiacs will often choose to eat at home of only a few restaurants that they can eat at.

There is an opportunity to educate the public not only about celiac disease but gluten free cooking together. There are a plethora of alternative grains that can be explored from amaranth to quinoa along with the gluten free flour mixes and gluten free beers. This can expand the repertoire of the best home cooks.

Gluten free cooking is more than just substituting gluten free flour into recipes. There is a balance of careful alchemy to create the balance of starch and protein of wheat flours, and different mixes have application that they are best used for. Anyone that has ever tried to make gluten free food for their gluten free friends can tell you that there is more to baking or cooking gluten free than just buying some Bob’s Red Mill gluten free flout and substituting it in a regular recipe. The best way to address that is through education, and the best place for food education is Food Network.

We hope that you would consider  celebrating Celiac Awareness Month by having some of your host feature gluten free content, hosting a gluten free cooking week, or inviting some gluten free food bloggers as guests on their shows. There is so much good that it can do for the gluten free food world, and those of us who have Celiac Disease or Non Celiac Gluten Sensitivity

Thank you for your time.

Food Network Stars (and how to contact them:

Ina Garten: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Bobby Flay: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Giada DeLaurentes: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Guy Fieri: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Ree Drummond: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Trisha Yearwood: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Valerie Bertinelli: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Sunny Anderson: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Aarti Sequeira:    Facebook   Twitter

Geffory Zakerian: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Alton Brown: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Ted Allen: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Jeff Mauro: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Marcella Valladolid: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Katie Lee: Website    Facebook   Twitter

Tyler Florence: Webstie   Twitter

Don’t be a food Sherpa.

No this isn’t a comment on the Presidential Election. I have my thoughts on that, but I’ll keep those to myself. It was my last few weeks, so I apologize for not blogging during that time. Halloween night, we found ourselves sitting in a hotel room with our cats not certain where we were going to be living for the next week. We had gotten a message from the people who were buying our house saying that they were going to need another couple of days before we could close the sale. We were supposed to be closing on the sale of our house the next day. So, that was fun. After a week of stress, we only moved into our new house one day late because we have an amazing Real Estate team. The next Monday we were finishing all of the moving.

If you’re familiar with Maslow Hierarchy of Needs, there’s some very basic things you need to feel fulfilled. I was missing things on the lower rungs of the pyramid. We had shelter, but not really a home. We weren’t getting sleepy or a place to belong. But the husband and I had each other and our cats and a U-Haul full of everything that we owned. We were really worried about everything disappearing from the U-Haul or what would happen if U-Haul told us they needed the truck back. We were worried that out house would fall through and I wouldn’t have a place to live. We were worried about work and having to take more time off so we could move. It was literally the worst.

It was an interesting week in the hotel. We went to an extended stay because there’s only so much Chipotle and Red Robin a person can eat, plus they would let us keep the cats with us. It had a fridge and a small kitchen, so we could cook. We had to pack a lot of our food in the U-Haul, but I made sure that we had enough to eat and cook. We also had to bring all of our frozen food and refrigerator foods with us in a couple of coolers and stick them in the room’s fridge, because there’s no way I’m buying fresh hoisin sauce. That’s stuff if expensive.

So, I was a Food Sherpa, out of necessity not out of choice. Still I over packed the dry good too, but not by much. I’m still trying to figure out the balance there. In in this instance, I needed to plan  for as many meals as I could. I had quick lunches and dinners that we could make with 2 burners, a pot, and a frying pan. I also brought along our electric kettle, a handful of seasoning, and a few other kitchen odds and ends. It made a really not fun situation feel a little bit like home.

My first journey as a celiac was a trip to my sister’s house with a to visit our grandparents. It’s about a 4 hour drive (in traffic) from Seattle to her house south of Salem, OR. She had been chatting with me all week about what she might need to do, and how to prep for my stay. I brought along a bunch of food, because from her house we had a 2 hours to the grandparents and back. I wanted to make sure I had road snacks and lunch stuff.

I kind of over packed. Well I really over packed. I brought along bars and crackers and laughing cow cheese (which I just happened to have around the house), dried fruit, pop corn, more pop corn, and more pop corn (a girl has to be prepared.) Honestly, I ate crackers and cheese, a bar, and a lot of pop corn (have I mentioned before that I like popcorn?) I brought back almost as much food as I left with. Usually, when I do the road tripping, it’s a bad of chips and something to drink. There is always that thought of, if I really need something I can stop. I have gone to conventions with coolers full of food for 3-4 days of being away from home for 3 people. I brought about half of that for just me.

I will tell you this, when you go on a trip, have a meal plan. I know it’s one more thing to think about when you packing, but that meal plan will save you. Know what you’re going to have for breakfasts. Know what you’re going to need to pick up there (there’s no way I’m ever taking yogurt on a plane.) And keep it simple. If you can get away with one breakfast item for all of the days, do it. When you travel, space is important, even if your driving, so make sure you make the most of it. Honestly, I don’t think I’m ever going to choose to have a box of GF cookies over an extra pair of jeans.

Popcorn would be another story, but that can go in the carry on. You need something to munch on the plane.

Getting that that holiday season is coming up, and that is the time that everyone goes a visiting, think about this. What can’t get where I’m going? What do I need to get there? What meals are the most important to eat on my own? Make a list your meals and what you’re going to need to prep them. Then get just the basics. Think about it like Blue Apron but you do it yourself, and for travel. Once you have your meal plan, go with it. Just take it and run with it. That’s the best thing that you could do for yourself.

Thanksgiving in next week, that means baking. I suspect that I will have 2 double blog posts next week. One about baking bread in my new oven (it shows up on Monday I’m so excited) and one about those two cornerstones of holiday prep  Food Network and Pinterest. Stayed tuned. Also, I’m actually going to be traveling next month for Christmas down to my native Portland (I know such a schlep), so I’ll make sure to describe holidays with my family to you in excruciating detail.

I have one more shout out. I just found out that my father’s older brother Larry, just was diagnosed with Celiac. He’s in his late 50’s and having to start out on our journey. I hope him all of the best while he starts down this wonderful adventure of being gluten free! Welcome to the Celiatariat, Larry! You’re in good company!

When you find a server who “knows”, tip them well. They will be your best friend.

We are neck deep in the process of buying a new house. When I say neck deep, we’ve been looking at Real Estate for about 4 months now, and our house closes on November 1st. Really, we’re looking at moving. Of course, we’re moving pretty quickly with this whole moving thing, because we still haven’t 100% bought a place yet. We’re just under contract. Yup, that’s how we do this moving thing.

This whole process has made us do a lot of eating out. We’ve been going to open houses every weekend for months. We’ve been going to look at house after work. And since there’s very food quick fix gluten free meals, we’re had to find food out and about.That can be a tall order for a Celiac, because of all of the things that we mentioned in the blog before. I’ve been eating a lot of Chipotle and Red Robin, because they’re good at the gluten free thing.

We have taken to carrying around cash to tip anyone who does gluten fr
ee really well. When I ask for them to change their gloves and instead they offer to make my food in the back, away from all of the gluten foods, you bet I’m going to toss a couple of dollars into the tip jar. Places like Chipotle, this is just their normal standard procedures. But if you walk into a Panera and get that offer, I’ll give them a couple of bucks. I still tip at the Chipotle, because they do well and should be rewarded to doing well.

Of course, I have been known to tip up to 50% if aserver says the magic words “Oh I totally understand, I have [insert family member or friend] who eats gluten free.” It instill this sense of security and a camaraderie with the server. They understand what I’m going through! They can take care of me! I trust them! Yup, I will pay good money for this. It’s the same sense you get when you walk into a gluten free bakery, you have a guide who can point you through a menu or advocate for you with the kitchen. As a celiac, you going to put a lot of effort out there. You’ll make calls to restaurants to make sure they can accommodate you. You’ll give your pre-prepared speech every time you order. Just that moment when you realize that you have someone who is really on your side, really willing to help you out and go to bat for you (even if it’s just for one meal) you gotta reward that person.

I’ve had a couple of these great interactions. The first time I tried our local taco place (plus tequila bar) I had a server who had a family member that had celiac. He pointed me to menu items that I could eat, and even gave me a suggestion of what to have on that menu (grilled halibut tacos with mango salsa and chimichurri and grilled asparagus on the side). This was my first real experience with the “I know” servers, and I thought I would never have it happen again. But I’ve had people say that they eat gluten free, and made sure the kitchen was extra careful. I had people go to the bar to check what alcohol they had, and said “I see my mom drink this and she is gluten free.” I even had one person who came by saying that she had chills because kitchen had accidentally pit an onion ring on my place and she was worried that I was going to “die” from it.

That’s not all of my experiences, but some of the most note worthy. I have had a lot of great interactions by just being blunt and asking for help. There are some restaurants where they just met my expectations of taking care of me. But then there were these amazing superhero servers who went above and beyond. I think they they should be called out as the amazing human being that they are. We’ve all had someone in customer service who go out of their way to help. The best of them will just tell you that they’re “just doing their job.” It doesn’t mean that you are any less appreciative of their help. Unlike a lot of other customer service jobs, you can reward the servers for their work by leaving a bigger tip, and you probably should.

Gluten free does not mean science free

I know that I make political jokes on this blog but there’s something in this election that scares me, and that is Donald Trump. I’m not discussing his deplorable behavior or past statement of actions towards women. I am not even discussing the religious fervor that his supporters that have towards his hate speak. No, the thing that worries me the most is his stance on governmental regulation. He’s a business man first and foremost. He has made a lot of money understanding regulatory rules and looking for interesting ways to make a profit within them. This means that he doesn’t have a great love for any regulation that is going to hinder business people from making money. If you look at his economic plan that came out about a month ago, you can see this. He uses inflammatory language towards almost every regulatory agency that the US has.

What most of you might not know is that there was an edit within that document. It was up for just about an hour, but people caught screen shots of it. The line item called the FDA the “Food Police” and too aim at the inspections of food facilities and “farm and food production hygiene.” So as a human being that eats food, I take offense to leniency in our food hygiene regulation (especially with the rise of e-coli and listeria breakouts in the past few years.) As a Celiac, this thought makes she shiver with horror.

If you would like to read more about it here’s a set of articles that I found that all corroborate this:

Trump’s FDA plan should raise concerns for Americans who eat food

But Donald Trump Was Right – Heinz Ketchup Is Why We Can Kill FDA Food Regulations

Trump Wants Everyone to Eat Unregulated Food. Or Maybe Not.

Trump targets “the FDA Food Police,” calls for elimination of food-safety regulations in new tax plan

We’ve discussed before some of the Gluten Free Renaissance that we’re having right now is because of the FDA and their regulation. Rules like the Gluten Free regulation would be under the chopping block. It requires extra testing and inspections of facilities, and considering that (in some instances) gluten free food starts at the farm, the regulation of hygiene benefits the gluten free community too. Anything that rescinds these regulations (which are only a few years old) is something that should scare you.

Yes, Trump took it out of his economic policy, but anyone who has been paying attention to this election knows that what is in Turmp’s head usually doesn’t leave. It just lays dormant until he things someone isn’t really paying attention, then he tries to slip it past those not really paying attention. Honestly, just the thought of Trump being in charge of our regulatory measures was enough scare me away from voting for him, this small glimpse in his plans for the FDA, I’m really seriously glad that people have been scared away from him for a plethora of other reasons. The fact that he isn’t really paying attention to the science behind those regulations, well that scares me the most.

But, as we showed in this post not a lot of people pay attention to the science behind their food. The fact that someone could write a book with pseudoscience like Wheat Belly, make millions of dollars, and influence so many people that eating gluten free is better for them just shows how gullible people are. I might be going really far out on a limb here, and I might offend a few people, but I feel like it needs to be said. THIS IS EVIDENT IN THE ORGANIC FOOD AND NON-GMO MOVEMENTS THE MOST!

I am going to admit, I eat organic food. I find it easier to read the labels of organic food companies. If regular food labels were as easy to read, I would probably never pick up organic food. There is no evidence that growing food organically is any better or worse for you. You can point towards articles and circumstantial evidence, but the stories just don’t match the studies. They don’t. In fact, organic food is less efficient (meaning that it’s actually hurting farmers to grow food organically.) So, why do people feel like organic food is better for them? Well according to Web MD, it is believed that organic food have more nutrients, vitamins, and antioxidants. There is also the belief that carry less harmful pesticides. There have also been studies that state organic food might have more natural toxins in them, which are the plants own pesticides. So the fewer harmful pesticides might be a wash with more natural toxins in the plants. But there doesn’t appear to be any definitive studies stating that organic food is better. In fact the Organic Trade Association has stated that the FDA’s original studies when they started regulating organic foods were not accurate because there wasn’t a good control in them. The OTA has also spent more than $100,000 in 2016 to lobby for Organic Food Regulations, and according to Wikipedia that have spent upwards to $300,000 to lobby. I can’t find exact numbers on how much the OTA makes in a year, but I suspect any organization that can spend that much to lobby makes a lot more than that.

The OTA is also getting into the non-GMO lobbying business. Non-GMO is literally he most anti-science because it is against the manipulation of the genetics of seeds. Usually GMO is just increasing the yield of the crops, it make then grow in hostile environments, you know like areas where there’s not a lot of water. When we were kids, this was called ending world hunger. Now it’s called GMO, which is a new buzzy bad word associated with big pharma trying to turn our tomatoes into mutants. I’m still not sure how creating food that will feed the hungry in Africa is bad. Or create food that is resistant to certain infections or rots (which means it works better under organic conditions.) Of course, the Non-GMO Project (literally the top one that comes up when you google Non-GMO) has made about $400,000 between 2014 and 2015.

Both the Organic and the Non-GMO lobbies make and spend thousands of dollars on non-scientific labeling regulations being added to labels. There is a much simpler and easier solution to all of these groups, and for it we shall look at France and Italy. France and Italy, places know for the quality of their food, has strict rules and regulation on what can be put in their food, and even stricter food labeling guidelines. Heck, even Canada has better food labeling guidelines than America. Canada! That’s like your kid sister getting into Harvard when you only got into East State. If, instead, we tried to get plain speak put back in our food labeling, we could probably get a lot further that trying to push agendas of pseudo-scientific theories about that is healthier. It would also give people like food babe a lot less to discuss on her blog. Of course, there would be a lot less for me to write about on my blog too. I think I would be super happy with that.  Because with truth in labeling, we can all make better decisions about what we eat.