Adopting an allergy (How my life is now mostly Gluten free)
I do not have Celiacs disease or a gluten allergy but I now make almost all of my food choices based on that reality. My girlfriend was diagnosed with Celiacs 6 years ago and is one of the unfortunate ones with an extreme sensitivity to all gluten. So, she has to entirely avoid all wheat, rye, oats and barley. That is even worse than a lifelong Passover diet. At least then I can still eat Matzo turkey sandwiches. Even though I had actually heard of this rare disease before I met her I did have to take a lot of steps to fully understand what it all meant.
The first thing I did, as I would do with anything new, I did some research. Thanks to google and a number of cooking sites I found out what to look for in the foods I was purchasing and the meals I was making. Did you know that most Soy Sauce contains wheat? What about the use of bread crumbs in hamburger meat? I was shocked to so often look at a product label to see the little contains wheat at the bottom. So, for any prepackaged items that we are going to eat together I have to read the labels thoroughly before purchasing or just eat it all myself.
After boning up on what she could and could not eat I began to practice. I switched from regular pasta to rice pasta, used cornstarch instead of flour to bread chicken and started saving more and more gluten free recipes to my bookmarks. Then, I took stock of the things I already knew how to make and made sure that none of my ingredients had gluten in them. And thankfully my number one primo BBQ sauce was safe, good thing too, because everyone loves it. Now, most gluten free cooking focuses on baking, since I don’t bake I do not have to really worry about that, I leave that to her, but it did mean going out of my way for the Teriyaki sauce that does not contain wheat and a lot more purchases from Whole Foods because they sell the largest selection of gluten free bagels. I am told Kinnikinnick is the best. In the fridge we keep separate condiments so I don’t contaminate the butter or cream cheese. All in all the homefront while not entirely gluten free has become a celiac safe zone.
The same can not be said for many restaurants and so the choices we have for dining out are a bit limited. Still, it’s hard to go wrong with many Asian and Latin American foods where they predominantly use rice or corn. Though I think the best thing is finding a place that caters to the gluten free crowd. We are still searching for great ones in DC but ended up planning an entire weekend in New York City around the gluten free places we could eat. At Friedman’s Deli in Chelsea market they even had a separate fryer dedicated to GF French fries. At Petit café they sold GF sandwiches and French toast; we actually ate there two days in a row. In the local area the only place that sticks out is Wildfire at Tysons corner with their gluten free menu that includes a GF beer. But that does not mean I am not still looking.
It’s amazing how over the last year one person has so completely changed the way I think about food.
