Perspective

Voiceover in the Barilla pasta ad:  "I believe that wheat is a gift from God."
Me to David: "I don't."*


*Although I do like to describe many, many things by quoting Phyllis_Schlafly's opinion of (no kidding) nuclear weapons:  A wonderful gift from a wise and loving God.

Pie!!

I heisted this from my adorable pal, Tommy's*, post on Google Buzz.**

Single Serving Pie in a Jar

I'm going to get some gluten-free pie crust from Whole Foods and make myself some pies.

I'm also going to make several to take to my Dad's so that I can have pie at Thanksgiving and Christmas without either throwing out the crust (sad face) or bringing a gluten-free pie from Whole Foods that looks kind of mashed, as they always do, and that everyone else ignores which makes me feel all ghetto-ized about my food (put upon face).


*I would link to his blog but he last updated it over a year ago. Tommy ... dude ...

*Remember when we used to find things out by talking to each other? Yeah, that's so last century.

I'm a loser, just like Sarah

From Triumph Dining's Essential Gluten-Free Blog's list of Celebrities with Celiac Disease:

Comedienne and author Sarah Vowell, who says she has a “wheat allergy” is obsessed with the magaine “Living Without,” which she says “has the most downbeat name of any magazine since ‘Downbeat.’” She wonders why “the publishers don’t come clean and call it “Loser?” She also admits that the “corny” and “reassuring” magazine makes her feel less alone because her friends have “an underwhleming grasp of the pros and cons of various brands of soy flour.” Her hilarious segment on This American Life about living without wheat* is worth a listen (it starts at about 17:35).

In case, you are wondering, no, I don't subsribe to "Living Without." David offered me a subscription not long after I was diagnosed but, frankly, for me it would be like getting a heapin' helpin' of depression in the mail once a month.

I also liked this bit from the GF Celebrities list. Sarah mentions Governor Swift in her piece.

Jane Swift, the youngest women ever elected to the Massachusetts State Senate who later became the first female Governor of Massachusetts, underwent many medical examinations before being diagnosed with Celiac disease. When she goes to a political function, her staff calls ahead to tell the food servers about gluten-free options. Unfortunately, Swift often finds that people think she’s being difficult.

*Episode #256, which originally aired on 9 January 2004.

On the shopping list

My church, like most churches, has baskets in the narthex* to collect nonperishable food for the hungry. As the food went to Silver Spring HELP, the baskets were informally known as the HELP baskets.

I've been contributing off and on all my life, usually whatever random staple I happened to have on hand as I was leaving for church. And after Mom moved from her apartment to Old People's Prison**, I put all the gluten-containing food from her kitchen in the HELP baskets, which was rather a bonus because Mom had pretty wide tastes in food and she didn't buy store brands too often.

I haven't worried too much about what I was putting in the baskets, but ITE*** food and money are walking a little closer together in everyone's minds. I've mentioned before that gluten-free food often costs more and is harder to find than "regular" food. I'm not talking about gluten-free cupcakes, but a more standard cupboard item: breakfast cereal. I gave up eating breakfast cereal when I couldn't find any that either wasn't sweetened with barley malt (which has gluten) or didn't cost a depressing amount of money.

Chex Cereals (owned by General Mills) has recently taken the barley malt out of Rice Chex and replaced it with molasses. They also work to prevent cross-contamination, making these cereals appropriate for Celiacs. This is good news, but cereal is still - comparatively - an expensive food item and food pantries often mention that it is something that they run out of quickly.

So if you read this blog and if you contribute to your local food pantry, I am asking a favor. Please consider buying a few gluten-free items when considering what to donate.

Some suggestions:

Nature's Path - they're Canadian! They must be nice.

EnviroKidz cereals**** - Thanks to my friend Doug I have a sentimental attachment to the Leapin' Lemurs cereal;

Rice Chex;

Amy's Organic soups - Several soups are gluten-free (and clearly marked so) and a few are even corn-free. (And if there is an allergy more annoying than gluten, it's corn because HFCS is in every damn thing.)



*lobby
** Come on, really, if the door to your room gets shut and someone else has to open it, or else you can't leave your room, isn't that rather prison-like? If you can't go into the courtyard unless someone holds the door open; if your vitamins are confiscated by the staff; if you get out of bed and go to bed on their schedule - doesn't that justify the phrasing?
***ITE = In This Economy. Thanks, David for the initialism.
****Nature's Path owns Envirokidz

Treat of the Week

When Sara and I were kids my Mom instituted something that even then I thought was really smart and admire more as an adult: The Treat of the Week.

We would go to the grocery store with Mom every Saturday and would each be allowed to pick out one treat. One. It could be anything we wanted - and thank goodness we weren't required to share - but it could only be one. One box of sugary cereal? Sure, fine. Two? No. One box of Pop-Tarts filled with chocolate frosting? Sure, fine. Two? No. One entire baked ham? Sure, fine.

Mom didn't put restrictions on what the treat could be,* nor did she parcel it out during the week. We could ration it for the week or eat the whole thing on Saturday when we got home. They were our treats. But once it was gone, it was gone. No more treats until the next Saturday.

Sara and I had a nice sense of empowerment about being allowed to chose our own treats and Mom was the spared an entire grocery store of of us whining for more stuff.

For what was probably several months straight, Sara and I each chose a tube of chocolate chip cookie dough. We'd keep it in the freezer and snack on it, usually making it last until the next week.

Instead of baking the cookies, we'd eat the dough raw**, sometimes cutting off lady-like pieces, sometimes just gnawing on it straight from the tube, which prett' near grossed Mom out of existence but as the rule about not micromanaging our Weekly Treats was hers, she'd just arrange to be out of the kitchen whenever we went looking for a snack. She was probably grateful during that period that she worked a sixty-hour week because if I was awake, I was probably looking around for a snack.***

As an adult I was delighted when Ben and Jerry's introduced Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream and considered it an homage to the Treat of the Week whenever I had some. Then I got that stupid auto-immune disorder and can no longer eat CCCD ice cream.

But thanks to Whole Foods I can at least go back to having random bits of raw cookie dough. Until they realize how much I like it and discontinue carrying it, they have gluten-free cookie dough made by a company called French Meadow that tastes remarkably like anybody else's cookie dough.**** It comes already sliced, which while reducing the level of just-like-when-I-was-a-kid inheirant in consuming raw "food," it does make it more office-friendly.

I buy a couple of boxes, put one in the freezer and one in the fridge, and most days after lunch I wander down to the "coffee mess" and collect one to nibble on back at my desk. Corporate at our company (I work for Corporate) is pretty much a junior UN so no one questions any one's possibly odd-looking food.

It's from Whole Foods and it's gluten-free so it costs enough to enforce a one-per day rationing.

And there are nine per box, so it's more like Treat of the Every Other Week.


* Which is an impressive example of self-control as most of our choices probably made her gag.
** See what I mean?
** This is still true. I am constantly hungry.
**** In the gluten-free world, tasting like the ordinary product is a very good thing.

Cupcakes!

So there's this place not far from David's called Dinner Zen, which is one of those "we'll create a menu and do all the prep, you assemble it and cook it at home" franchises which managed to come up with a promotional gimmick that I swear was created with me in mind.

They now sell cupcakes (or did yesterday anyway) including a very yummy gluten-free chocolate one with chocolate frosting that tastes nearly exactly like the kind of Betty Crocker-style cupcakes that I love and they were willing to throw a little money to the Reston Community Players or the Elden Street Players or one of the local schools with theater programs.

Eat cupcake, give money to local community theater group. Win/win, right?

This is what my British friends would call an "information capture scheme" in that in order to throw a few pence to the local community theater, I had to give Dinner Zen my e-mail address. But if this results in my being able to get really good, rather than fine, chocolate GF cupcakes, I'd let them call me every half hour, so I happily gave them the info they wanted.

I bought two yummy cupcakes (one for me and one for Michael, who has baked loverly cookies for prett' near every DC-area community theater production over the last few years and deserves a treat. Then I nosed around the store for a bit, especially noticing the To-Go freezer near the door and thinking that could come in handy some night. I also was very busy hoping that the cupcakes were here to stay, not some fly-by-night, make me want them then take them away thing. Because that? Would be cruel.

I also moused around a bit on their website and was both encouraged and puzzled by the following from their FAQ:

We have food allergies in our family, can I still come in?

One of the great things about Dinner Zen is that you can customize meals the way you like them. Most people with allergies will have no problem in our store. Please tell us about your allergy concerns and we will help guide you to the best menu choices for your family. If somebody you will be serving food to is allergic to an ingredient, please choose another dish from the menu since we cannot be held responsible for allergic reactions.

I think this translates to "yes, but don't try to eat anything."

But did I mention that the cupcakes are very yummy?

Sarcasm - also free

Let me start this out by saying that British Airways is a great way for Celiacs to travel. On their "manage my reservation" page, one can opt for "medical meals" which include gluten-free ones. If the request is made within 24-hours of flight time there is no guarantee that it will be honored, but they do what they can. My request was made at prett' near the 24-hour mark, but my meal made it on board, for which I am grateful.

Everyone got that? Okay, back to being snarky.

It was meal time and the dinner carts were coming up the aisle. The stewardess asked me if I would like beef or chicken and I told her that, uhm, I was supposed to have a gluten-free meal. I suspect that I was her first ever Celiac passenger because she smiled sweetly at me in a "don't mess with me, this is a long flight" kind of way and said, even more sweetly, that the chicken was free. And would I like some free wine as well?

And, you know, this just didn't seem like the right time to start educating the cabin staff about my RBAD*, so I just accepted the tray that she was trying to hand me.

Then I started trying to hand her back all the things on the tray that I couldn't eat, starting with the roll.

This seemed to cause a penny to drop somewhere, possibly as the cabin staff connected the nuisance in seat 46J with the medical meal in 46J. Oh yeah. So the correct tray was brought to the stewardess who, rather chastened, handed it to me with an apologetic smile. I, of course, was graciousness itself in accepting both my correct meal and the unspoken repentance.

And - for the curious - I had:

Chicken in tomato sauce;
Salad with a lemony olive oil dressing;
A gluten-free dinner roll;
A small bowl of fruit - pineapple, I think? (It's been several days since then.)
A little bag of dried fruit;
Vanilla pudding;
A gluten-free brownie; and
A full split of wine.

Well done, Brit Air!!



*Rather Boring Autoimmune Disorder

How to convince me to go somewhere

5 e-mails:

From Carol in NYC:

Leta,

Would you have any interest in going to Torquay in November? The reason I ask is that Claire and I have been trying to think of someone who would be a really congenial third person in our rental car...and I KNOW you would enjoy it! Meriel is also a possibility, and you'd like her, too.

Just a thought...happy to provide details.

XX,

C

From Claire somewhere in England:

It would be great if you could join us, Leta. UK Qwerts are extremely silly, with a good deal of fooling about. If you can make a friend giggle in the *middle* of their aria with a smart remark, so much the better.

Driving down, it is obligatory to sing along with whatever I chose to put on the CD player - preferably loudly and out of tune, and also to share as much shameless gossip as possible, and if you don't have any, make it up !

Claire
xx

From me to Jackie, our hostess in Torquay

Carol and Claire are doing a very fine job of convincing me to attend Torqwert V, so I'm information-gathering before I give them a solid "yes" or "no" today.

So, uhm, is there room for me? I am willing to share if someone was hoping for a roommate.

And (here's the fun one) I have Celiac Disease, which is an allergy to gluten which is found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt, and a few other grains which makes feeding me a special challenge. I can send over a small box with a loaf of bread and a couple of other things that I can have if that would help. And I spend a lot of time reading labels on food. Fortunately, I am asymptomatic, so it's not that I'd need to be rushed to the hospital if I accidentally eat the wrong thing. And think how much beer you'll save, although I'll make it up in Whisky.

I hope all is well with y'all. It's definitely been too long since we've seen each other.

Love,

Leta

From Jackie in Torquay:

Yes, yes, yes. Of course we have room for you. Please come, especially if you don't mind sharing.

I know all about Celiac Disease as my brother-in-law is a really bad sufferer. Also, running a hotel you do get lots of people with special dietary needs. You don't need to send over a box - we can get gluten free stuff here which I will gladly get in for you.

Book that flight at once.

Love

Jackie and Bob

From me to Carol and Claire:

It looks like I'm in!

I'm am smiling so broadly right now....


Where I'm going: The Torcroft Hotel on the English Riviera
Why I'm going: TorQWERT V

I'm going to surrounded by friends old and new, I'm going to sing a bunch of G&S, I'm going to be able to eat without bringing my own food, and I'm leaving the country again before my passport expires.

It's been kind of a stressful summer but I am really starting to look forward to the Autumn.

Mm, cake!

Beth: Oh, that looks so good, what is it?
Gabe: Limone-mandorle-polenta.
Beth: Mandorle?
Gabe: Almond.
Beth: Mm.
Karen: Instead of white flour, you use polenta.
Beth: Oooh, what a good idea.
Gabe: And six eggs.
Karen: It's very eggy.
Gabe: And a ton of butter.
Beth: Mm, it's delicious.

Dinner with Friends by Donald Margulies


Okay, so the girl with the annoying food allergy is doing a food show. Specifically, I'm doing a show where cast members drink coffee, eat cake, drink wine, eat salad, etc. In general - and I can do this because I'm asymptomatic, which means that I don't get actively sick if I eat something gluten-y - if my character needs to eat something, I eat it. But if there's an easy work-around, why not take it?

I asked Craig, our director, what he was planning to do about the one of the items that I am required to eat - the cake. He thought that he'd probably just ask the Properties Designer (the person in community theater responsible for things that carried, moved, eaten, etc by actors) to get a yellow cake. "Or I could get a gluten-free cake mix and be responsible for the cake."

I am usually happy to be responsible for: learning my lines, learning my blocking, showing up on time, and, um, performing. I am usually very resistant to being responsible for anything external to that. Why? Largely, because I am very lazy.

But I actually do like to cook and rarely get to do it. So the chance to cook and do a show, well, I volunteered to provide some of the food for a food show.

Gotta love the internet. Go to Google and type in lemon almond polenta cake and then just scroll through the returns (go ahead, I'll wait). Something I'd never heard of before I first read Dinner with Friends back in 2004 and something that had no real resonance for me before I went gluten-free (mostly) in 2005 is all over the web. I read lots of recipes, eliminated the ones that called for "flour", focused on ones that looked reasonably simple, and settled on this one from Nibb'lous.

It's a very easy recipe to make. Frankly, the hardest part was translating the measurements from grams to ounces, which wasn't even necessary as my measuring cup has both.

Some thoughts:

- If the recipe calls for softened butter, than the very first thing to do is put the two sticks of butter (the half-pound of butter*) in the bowl you'll be using and leave it on the counter as you create your mise.

- The Whole Foods near my place doesn't carry caster, or superfine, sugar, so I made my own by running regular sugar through the coffee grinder. This idea may also be all over the internet, but I thought of it myself. (When I am not busy being a complete idiot, I occasionally guest as a genius.)

- If the ingredients are listed in metric, then perhaps the oven temp will be as well. The cake takes an impressively long time to bake at half the correct oven temp. (And, thus, we are back to idiot.)

- I made a glaze for the top but instead of lemons I used key limes (donated to the cause by Mattie), sugar, and titch of cornstarch. Tastes lovely. Boils in nothing flat. Do not turn your back on it.

- None of the recipes I found suggest using a parchment round in the bottom of the pan, but good luck getting the cake out in one piece without one.

- With all that butter and all those eggs, this is one really moist cake, which a good thing as far as eating on stage is concerned.

The second time I made the cake, I set the oven to the correct temperature. Worked out much better. Mattie and I tasted attempt #1 and she gave me some good feedback. Laura, Sally, David, and I tasted attempt #2 and the rest went to the theater for my castmates to try.

I figured that Andy, who actually has to eat his piece would be given a primary veto. If he hated it, we'd use yellow cake or something similar. Andrea has to eat some of hers as the lights go down, so she got a secondary veto. Doug has to plate it but doesn't intend to eat it so his opinions matter less. Craig, our director, got to try some because I like it when people eat my cooking.

They liked it!

So now I only need to make another 15 or so of them.....


*It's a seven-inch cake tin. That's an Alabama-level of butter in this cake. With the three eggs and the corn meal it just needs to be deep-fried to be an official Mobile recipe. And maybe served with a side of bacon.

Another good reason

Whenever I go to a restaurant that has a gluten-free menu I make sure to ask for one - even though I have probably already decided what I'm having - because it's not a bad idea to keep the staff aware that they have customers who appreciate and use those menus. It also reminds the wait staff that I'm probably not going to want crutons on my salad.

Having seen this article in the Milwaukee Business Journal, however, I now know that it will also let everyone who needs to know that I'm "in the house."

Built into a Bonefish Grill food register is a button that reads “food
allergies” that alerts the kitchen staff that they’re preparing a meal for a patron with dietary restrictions. All dishes are made from scratch, allowing chefs to eliminate or substitute individual ingredients. Kitchen and wait staff receive in-house training on food allergies.

The Olympian I am rooting for

Amy Yoder Begley. Amy is a middle and long distance runner competing in Beijing this year who has Celiac Disease. She's blogging about the Olympics on her website and for the Fort Wayne* Daily News. Here's a snip from an entry from a few days ago:

The cafeteria seats 5,000. I can't eat there due to my wheat and gluten allergy (Celiac Disease). The village did get a lot of complaints about not having wheat and gluten free foods so they just added some yesterday. However, they do not prep it gluten free, so I still can't eat it. I have to eat at the USOC camp they have set up for us 20 minutes from the Village. I am not complaining though, I prefer safe food over convenience!

She's competing in the 10,000 meter on August 15th. Go, Amy!

*Fort Wayne, Indiana - the proud home of Maj. Frank Burns.

I need to increase my carbon footprint

According to this article on Boston.com, it seems that "German researchers have shown that high CO2 levels in the atmosphere lead to wheat crops with less gluten."

Time to start leaving all the lights on at home and driving across the street for lunch. Other CO2 boosters will be added as I think of them. Pity that I walked to work today.

I recommend following the link just for the "you mean, we might lose....?!?!" list. Welcome to my world, Boston.com

And, by the way, here's a very nice Going Gluten Free article from the Los Angeles Times "Journal Times."

Still not buying the t-shirt though

Alert friend Lori found a piece in the City Paper about the gluten-free options at Nationals Park. My favorite sentence, of course, was this one: People with [Celiac] can’t process gluten and are thus condemned to order many T-shirts celebrating this fact. And, of course, there are links to the Cafe Press's Celiac Couture Collection.

I should note that the Beltway Bar at the Park is also stocked with gluten-free treats in bottles...

And maybe I can stop by the Noah's Pretzels in Gaithersburg on my way to the theater this weekend and try one for myself.

I've been targeted

And like the heroes in all those action movies, I'm saying "Bring. It. On." Because I can take it.

General Mills cereal goes gluten-free

Global food manufacturer General Mills last week said its US Rice Chex cereal will from now on be gluten-free, as part of the firm's plans to target the ever expanding free-from market.

The Silver Lining

Gas prices are up. Food prices are up, especially grain prices. So here - at last - is an article about the benefits of using rice flour* instead of wheat flour to cut calories, fat, sodium, and cost. I have hopes that if wheat prices climbed high enough it will lose its universal ingredient status.

And I'm sure that the "please stop putting high-fructose corn syrup in every damn thing" lobby will be following this with great interest. Of course, if the nation's supply of corn ends up in gas tanks, then there will be less of it in our food.

Go Rice flour! Go Rice bran!


*Yes, I noticed who paid for the study.

Gluten-free Pop-Tarts

Nope, I don't know where you can find them. I have, however, written to the Whole Foods Gluten-Free Bakehouse suggesting that gluten-free toaster pastries would probably sell pretty well. You can, too. Glutenfree.Bakehouse@wholefoods.com

Or you can make them at home. Celiac.com has a recipe here.

A first

I just heard an ad for some kind of Dietz and Watson prepared chicken that used the phrase "gluten-free."

Right there on the radio!

I think that's literally the first time that I've heard, not read, the words "gluten-free" in any media. Next: television! And after that - movie theaters! After that - who knows!

So I went to their website and found this on their FAQ page:

Q: Are Dietz and Watson meats gluten free?

A: Nearly all Dietz & Watson Meats are gluten free except: Rotisserie Style Chicken, Scrapple, Bockwurst, Fat Free Beef Franks, Gourmet Lite Franks, Gourmet Lite Beef Franks, Chicken Cordon Bleu, Chicken Florentine and Chicken Portabella. All the rest of our meats are free of wheat, rye, barley and oat proteins.

Guess whose deli meats I'll be buying the future.

Yup, that's pretty much it.

The next time that Kris is in the DC area, he should come to dinner with Mattie and me. Wildfire (in Tysons) has a darn good gluten-free beer.




Thanks to Gluten-Free NYC for the link.

You go ahead. Really.

So there we were hanging out in the dressing room before Sunday's matinee. Janet (and her young son, John Michael) made us brownies which, like all food near actors or engineers that is not instantly fatal, were going fast. Especially as these brownies were very yummy and not fatal at all.

Poor Erin didn't know about the yummy brownies until after she was starting to change her clothes and so was in no position to go scampering out to grab one. I offered to get one for her as I was completely dressed.

"But I'd feel guilty if you bring me something you can't have."

"Sweetie, don't worry about it. If you go deaf, I'm not going to stop listening to things."

And so I brought her a brownie.

Note to guys: This is another good reason to do community theater. You might find yourself bringing brownies to pretty, semi-clad, young ladies. And having them all appreciative about it. I'm just sayin'.

Hershey's Cherry Cordial Creme Kisses

Because the nutrion facts are readily available on Hershey's website, but the ingredients list isn't.

And the ingredients are (drumroll here):

Milk chocolate (sugar, milk, cocoa butter, chocolate nonfat milk, soy lethicin, Pgpr. emulsifier, vanillin, artificial flavor), sugar, corn syrup, sorbitol, high-frustose corn syrup*, contains 2% or less of: potasssium sorbate (preservative), invertase, artificial flavor, citric acid, artificial color (yellow 6, red 40).

Really - they're much yummier than the above would lead one to believe.


*now that's a surprise, she typed sarcastically