Celiac by Marriage

Hiatus

2010-12-12T14:14:00.000-08:00

Due to a recent move to St Andrews, Scotland, I am putting this blog on a short hiatus to concentrate for a while on a new blog, From Salem to St Andrews. While it won't be as well-written as the other American transplant blog, From Fergie to Fife, folks at home have requested a record of our highland misadventures.

I will return to Celiac by Marriage eventually. In the meantime, I appreciate your patience and attention.

Cheers!

Guilt, capitulation and a weekend with wheat

2010-11-17T18:59:00.001-08:00

I visited my parents in Arizona again this weekend, this time without JFG. It was an interesting opportunity to experience non-celiacs eating wheat without guilt, and if I learned anything it was that my fright or flight response to wheat products has become instinctual and reflexive.

My mother always keeps baked goods next to the refrigerator, and when she expects a full house (like this weekend) to say that she overstocks is like saying that Stalin held a grudge. Literally, piles of bread, cookies, cake and pie teeter crazily in big gluteny heaps on the counter. She's even purchased a special shelf so that she can build a two-floor townhouse of sugar, flour and chocolate to feed her family.

Don't get me wrong. While she tends to overcook the sugar cookies I love her pumpkin bread, scones and Texas sheet cake -- all of which were in attendance this weekend.

But I spent the entire weekend like a sleeper who is afraid she'll miss an early-morning interview, drowsing but waking up suddenly every fifteen seconds. I was truly slightly terrified to see all of that wheat, undifferentiated and exposed to air. I almost stopped people from using one knife on all breads. I almost scrubbed down counters when someone cut bread on the granite itself (without a specific gluten cutting board). I almost read the nutrition label on everything we bought. I almost refused to share plates of crackers and cheese.

It was lovely to eat wheat without constant analysis and suspicion. But it taught me two things:

1. It's not a bad thing to think deeply about your food. Without that kind of reflection, you swallow meals without appreciation for the time and effort that went into creating them, and without considering whether or not you actually need the nutrition. Result: 2.5 lbs.

2. The guilt is overwhelming. When JFG picked me up at the airport, I felt like I needed to confess. He laughed but had to be disappointed, especially since he'd DVRed Glee and saved it so we could watch together. Can you sweat gluten in your sleep?

Fear not the albino asparagus

2010-11-02T19:25:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, a supervisor took me to the Havana Cafe in Phoenix, AZ where I ordered a salad containing white asparagus. I'd never really thought about colorless vegetables before, but the asparagus reminded me of the children's book series Bunnicula, where a vampire bunny drains carrots and cucumbers of color and terrifies the household. Anyway, I assume that Havana Cafe is not a lair for blood-sucking pets and yet the asparagus terrified me nonetheless.

So this weekend, when my parents took JFG and me on a return trip to the Havana Cafe, I carefully avoided anything with white asparagus in the dish title. However, we were very pleasantly surprised to learn that Havana Cafe has an extensive gluten-free menu (this is the second Cuban restaurant we've encountered with a gluten-free menu . . . if anyone understands the connection please let me know!) which ranges from salads to paella.

JFG ordered a terrific ceviche, sauteed chorizo and an arroz con pollo with plantains, chicken and chorizo that we had to polish off the next day.

He rounded the whole meal off with "Mango, Mango, Mango" -- mango ice cream, mango sauce and mango itself. It looked like an orange traffic light but he and my dad adored it.

I must warn you -- despite its attempt to define itself as "Phoenix's premier destination for Latin cuisine" (an ambitious claim in a city dominated by thousands of Mexican and South American restaurants) it's a hole-in-the-wall in a Phoenix strip mall with fake trees painted on the walls and a tiny, moody bar in a corner.

But in addition to a great gluten-free menu and excellent empanadas, the Spanish torte and ensaladas are divine and the server was sincere and compassionate.

They serve a Latin gluten-free Thanksgiving -- and you can get it to go if you feel freaked out by the weird plastic sheet over the door. Go. I don't think there's any albino asparagus involved.

It's the end

2010-10-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

The end of the bread, that is.

Crusty bread is the holy grail, North Pole, the comfortable 4-inch heel, the low-calorie cheesecake (that doesn't taste like cottage cheese), the Design Within Reach that really is within reach of the gluten-free food world. I don't know if Shackleton or Hillary welcomed other explorers into their quests, but I certainly can't be . . . well . . . that picky. First, I don't have the patience. Second, I don't have million-dollar backers.

So I was glad to hear that a local company was taking a stab at the quandary of crusty gluten-free bread. The company's still nameless, but Lacy Gillham and Jan Taborsky gave JFG a loaf to try.

I'll be honest. That loaf, while a little less crumbly and stiff than most gluten-free bread and with slightly more taste, didn't really represent much of a break-through for the celiac world.

Then one Sunday afternoon, while we were napping, a second loaf came flying through Murray's doggy door and landed on the kitchen floor. An unconventional method of delivery, yes. But you know what? It was fairly crusty. It had a taste of its own, and it held together for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was a little spongy, as bread should be and, while it still wasn't "tearable," I was able to feed JFG bread and Nutella for the first time in several years.

I would love to tell you what the bread is called and where to get it. I can't -- although from their promotional materials it looks like we can expect to see them at Salem Saturday Market sometime soon. I can post a couple of photos, left (as you can see, we've reached the end of the bread), and give you an email address: lacyandjan@gmail.com. I'm not suggesting that evolution of gluten-free bread should stop -- this version is still pretty dense and, um, durable. But I can certainly respect and recommend a very worthy fellow traveler.

Utter failure

2010-10-04T16:31:00.000-07:00

I admit it. After a fairly good run of focaccia and some decent raspberry brownies, I got a little ahead of myself and decided to try pita.

When JFG and I were first married, I learned how to make pita. I can't remember precisely why, but it seems like we made pita every week for months and months at a time. In fact, it's one of only two recipes I have completely memorized.

Last night, I tried to make Moosewood Cookbook (circa 1992) pita using Gluten-Free Creations Basic Flour Mix.

First of all, the dough didn't rise. Always a bad sign, especially when I'm using brand new yeast.

Second, it was as tough as old chewing gum -- the kind of dough that wears your arms out to roll. I actually abandoned rolling after a couple of goes and simply beat the dough to death with the palm of my hand.

Finally, it didn't puff up. Now, I can be flexible. I have often made un-puffy pitas by accident and simply announced that were having flatbread instead. Flatbread or pitas -- they're both really just sauce and meat vehicles anyway, hmmm?

But these were really flat. They had the consistency of dried-out, cracked old leather on the outside and were underbaked on the inside. JFG ate them anyway, bless him, but I think that's just because it was the only way to get the lamb and cucumber-dill sauce to his mouth.

Fear not! I have identified a new recipe and shall try again soon.

Not because it is easy, but because it is hard

2010-09-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

Bread fascinates me. Not only did the ability to produce bread play a role in separating successful from unsucessful cultures (see Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed), bread -- or lack thereof -- has incited populous riots and measured the competency of governments. No wonder I believe that my ability to produce the humble substance somewhat also indicates my qualifications as food provisioner.

Believe me, after a few tries at bread made with grains other than wheat, I can see why producing wheat made or broke societies. Non-wheat bread requires at least air-tight packaging, access to several types of flours at once, and cold storage to stabilize the prepared bread. Difficult now, impossible 5,000 years ago.

Unable to consign myself to failure, however, I've continued my search for decent gluten-free bread. This week, I tried Gluten-Free Pantry's French Bread & Pizza. I basically followed the "oven method" instructions on the back of the box, using milk and vegetable oil. But I added about about a tablespoon and a half of crushed rosemary and about two tablespoons of garlic.

I spread the dough in a pie plate to make focaccia (instead of proper french bread or pizza crust), left it to rise for 40 minutes in a warm oven, and based it for 45 minutes. In the end, I had steamy, fairly crusty bread that sounded hollow when tapped.

In fairness, it maintained many of the qualities of other types of gluten-free bread. It was more crumbly than chewy, impossible to tear and it dried out fairly quickly, although it tasted great and, if consumed in the first 24 hours, would have made good sandwich bread. Next time, I'll add more rosemary, garlic and possibly some parmesan cheese -- like most gluten-free foods, the taste has to come from the added ingredients and not from the bread itself. But I'll give it points for ease and a slightly softer texture than other products.

Cracking the German (chocolate) code

2010-08-31T13:57:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, my aunt who doesn't really cook bought me a cookbook for Christmas. I love cookbooks. I have dozens, most of which I use for only one or two fantastic recipes -- but I love the sheer clutter and weight they bring to my kitchen. And the more dilapidated the better, as it suggests that I am such a good and prolific cook that I cannot be bothered with cleanliness.

Back to the book, Betty Crocker's Ultimate Cake Mix Cook Book. The premise is that it's possible to make a cake mix (good heavens) into a dessert that appears to require actual skill. Having it on my shelves is almost as humiliating as setting out a coffee table book of pornography.

But you cannot beat the German Chocolate Bars. Not only are they terrific, they're easy, successful every time, store well and almost never stick to the pan. They're my go-to dessert in a pinch, and only require chocolate cake mix, German chocolate frosting, chocolate chips, butter and milk.

Naturally, JFG loves them. But until Betty Crocker starting producing gluten-free mixes, it was impossible to get the algorithm right. It still takes some fiddling, as the gluten-free chocolate cake mix only makes an 8x8 inch (thick) or 9x9 inch (thin) cake. So, use the recipe at the link but make the following substitutions:

-- Use half a cup of butter instead of 2/3
-- Use 1/8 of a cup of milk
-- Use 3/4 of the container of coconut pecan frosting (and only use Betty Crocker frosting -- it's gluten-free)

And to spread the cake batter, do it with very wet hands. Keep a close eye on the pan in the oven and remove it as soon as the top is dry to the touch. Also note that, like most other gluten-free desserts, this needs to stay in the fridge.

But make sure you keep this our secret. I'd rather people think that the bars are some mysterious form of alchemy that only I know.

Not quite egg-foo-young, but not far from it

2010-08-24T16:03:00.000-07:00

Say what you will about Disneyland Chinese food, but you have to appreciate P.F. Chang's ubiquitous and reliable gluten-free menu. Eugene, Portland, Sacramento -- when in doubt and exhausted by the gluten negotiation we usually experience in other restaurant, P.F. Changs provides unimaginative and geographically non-specific but safe gluten-free food. And the serving staff is almost always reasonably knowledgeable about food preparation precautions, to the point of bringing a separate plate of sauces for the celiac at the table.

I must especially praise the flourless chocolate dome (or, as our most recent waiter termed it, the "big ball of chocolate"). Dense, deep and covered with berries, it was delicious. Yes, it was just about the only gluten-free dessert option, but it was really the only one we needed!

Adventurous? No. Sophisticated? Only to people who buy faux-aged Chinese statues at Pier One Imports. Comfortable? You bet.

Chewing on disappointment just like it was chewy, chewy bread

2010-08-19T16:11:00.001-07:00

Strangely, I'm disappointed. But I shouldn't be surprised.

The Great Harvest Bread Company near my office sent an email out on Monday announcing that it was now serving gluten-free white bread and gluten-free cheddar and garlic bread. I was thrilled. To date they've only made gluten-free versions of their really seedy breads like Dakota, which JFG will not eat. As a result, my family's one option for really good gluten-free bread vanished like, well, the loaf of Great Harvest Bread we donated to the women's softball team last year.

But white bread? And -- even better -- cheddar garlic bread? Now, I thought, we're in business. I had visions of sandwiches. And bread with salads. And toast. How beautiful.

Today, I returned to the email to find out the baking schedule for these luxuries, and happened to scroll to the bottom of the page. That's where I saw it.

"Please note that we are a whole wheat bakery, therefore; this product is not recommended for customers with the serious autoimmune disorder, Celiac Disease, as it may contain trace amounts of whole wheat flour."

I shouldn't be surprised. But I am. And disappointed -- this announcement, if it is true and justified, should be on all nutritional information, not at the end of an occasional email. Shame, Great Harvest.

Gone fishin'

2010-08-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

No, seriously, I would never go fishing. Why would I get up voluntarily at 4:00 a.m. to stand in rubber pants in a frozen lake, being eaten by mosquitoes, for the opportunity to injure and abandon fish when I can go to my local grocery store and buy Starfish Gluten Free Crispy Battered Cod?

JFG likes fish and chips, and while we can get great gluten-free versions at the Hawthorn Fish House in Portland (yum -- almost everything on the menu is gluten-free) it's a pain to have to drive 60 miles for fairly simple food.

And then a colleague told me about Starfish products -- namely the cod, although it comes in two other fish, like haddock as well -- which are stocked by my local grocery store. I finally talked JFG into frozen fish last night, namely by letting us run out of every other food except cereal and then discouraging his attempts to go out.

Admittedly my expectations were low. However, the fish was pretty good! We baked it for 13 minutes in the oven as recommended on the packaging, and then JFG ate it with about a cup of tarter sauce for garnish. You won't shut your eyes and imagine you're eating fish out of newspaper in the middle of a road at midnight in London, mind you, but I think we'd eat it again. And it would be great for fish tacos. If ONE of us ate fish tacos.

And so, three rice flours. Hawthorn's does better, but minus the sixty miles Starfish works in a pinch.

If music be the food of love, leave off the rye chorus, would you?

2010-08-04T20:22:00.000-07:00

Google "food" and "Shakespeare" and you get a lot of references to eggs, beer and bread. But, since my goal here is to talk about gluten-free options in Ashland, Oregon, where JFG and I attended the 75th annual Shakespeare Festival, let's use a more appropriate literary reference -- one that's actually from one of this season's productions.

"Do you think because you are virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Twelfth Night: act 2, scene 3

In fact, there shall be both cakes and ale in Ashland for celiac patients, even though many options do not surface in Google searches.

First, our lovely B & B, managed by a delightful Irish couple. Every morning, Mrs. Bayberry Inn explained to JFG what was for breakfast for everyone else and outlined what she had prepared for him. We had a little confusion -- "No, there's no flour in that, but there is a little milk" -- but in the end JFG had the best kind of breakfast for him -- fruit, bacon, sausage, eggs. In truth, he had a better breakfast than the gluten-tolerant among us, as Mr. and Mrs. Bayberry Inn were partial to eggy quiche-like dishes with no crust and no taste. Even the 15-year-old boy also staying there, clearly capable of consuming large pizzas between eye blinks, insisted to Mrs. BI that he never really ate much for breakfast. But the banana bread was fantastic.

Second, the Peerless Restaurant and Bar. We mentioned when we made reservations that we needed gluten-free food. When we arrived, the maitre d' confirmed with us that the server knew about JFG's dietary needs. She did -- and sat with us reviewing every item on the menu, clarifying the ways each item could be cooked safely. We had antipasta (JFG was basically on his own -- olives pervaded), lamb, sweet potatoes and yams, seasonal vegetables and duck confit. For dessert, Grand Marnier souffle (the "cake"). Not my favorite, but JFG loved it.

Third, and possibly best, Agave, a Mexican restaurant where all but two dishes on the entire menu were gluten-free. They served the best chips we've ever had (although not gratis), fantastic tilapia ceviche, beautiful tamales and, my favorite, fish tacos. No, we did not eat all that at one sitting. Yes, I gained three pounds in three days.

I won't mention the sushi place, because a) the service wasn't very good, b) the edamame was lukewarm and c) it doesn't take a genius to make sushi gluten-free. It just takes a run to the grocery store for wheat-free soy sauce and about $2.50. I will mention Zoey's Cafe and Natural Ice Cream, because even without cones JFG is an ice cream fiend. Can't comment on the cafe food (heavily, heavily glutenized) but try the Oregon Trail ice cream.

Oh, the ale. Okay, I misled you a bit. There was no ale -- at least, no gluten-free ale. What there was was a tall, cold pint of draft Strongbow cider, which we'd take over ale any day of the week. I should note that not all cider is gluten-free, so do your research.

In sum, here is my assessment. We -- and, indeed, Ashland -- are virtuous. And yet, cakes and ale can always be located, my friends.

Not as hard as it looks

2010-08-01T19:53:00.000-07:00

I just received my new, glossy ULTA advertisement . . . er, I mean my semi-annual makeover edition of InStyle. Among the myriad "articles" (indeed, the stories in the magazine are "articles" in the same way all of the Cadillacs in the FX show Damages are just modes of transportation) is a column suggesting ways to jumpstart your diet, based on approaches celebrities like Gwenyth Paltrow have used.

Naturally, most of the diets recommended require a lot of free time and access to complex food products -- raw "cleansing" soups, juices delivered by specialty companies, coconut water -- albeit apparently with successful if not sustainable outcomes.

All of that is to talk to you about Oprah's diet, which allows all foods as long as they're vegan and without sugar, alcohol, caffeine -- and gluten! In previous posts I've challenges the myth that gluten-free diets cause weight loss, but must admit that if you took out all of the other fun food ingredients it would probably work.

It's the one and only quote from the magazine's guinea pig that bothers me. "I read labels zealously and even bought gluten-free bread. But who cares? In just five days my stomach pooch deflated." YOU BOUGHT GLUTEN-FREE BREAD? Good for you. Wow. How did you survive? It must have been a struggle, since Safeway, Roth's, Target and Whole Foods all carry many, many varieties of gluten-free bread. Thousands of people -- even fat, ugly people wearing last year's lipstick -- each day figure this out. I'm glad that with the support of a multi-million dollar media conglomeration backing you, you managed this outrageous task.

A Thai-Turkish friend once clued me on that calling Gauguin's Polynesian paintings "exotic" effectively othered the non-white people he featured. Truthfully, by suggesting that gluten-free foods are part of strange and elite diets, that they require special resources and perform some kind of figure-fixing magic, actually others the millions of celiac patients in this country. Isn't it bad enough that celiacs have to question every item on menus, refuse birthday cake at office parties and wear buttons directing, "Please don't feed me unless you ask my mommy first"? Do skinny wealthy white women really have to pretend that this disease is harder than it actually is?

And, by the way, I'll believe that, ". . . in just five days my stomach pooch deflated" when my skinny jeans fit again.

We interrupt this famine to bring you intestinal peace

2010-07-14T10:39:00.001-07:00

As some of you know, I'm a world war II history buff. However, until I read one of Bette Hagman's books, I had no idea how centrally WWII -- and the post-war European food crises -- figured into the diagnosis of celiac disease.

As paraphrased on http://www.celiac.com/:

"Another important marker in the history of celiac disease were the findings by Dutch pediatrician, Dr. Willem Karel Dicke. In 1953 Dr. Dicke wrote his doctoral thesis for the University of Utrecht based on his observations that the ingestion of wheat proteins specifically, and not carbohydrates in general, were the cause of celiac disease. He was able to exemplify his findings based on bread shortages in the Netherlands during World War II. During the bread shortages, he found that the health of children with celiac improved tremendously. However, when the allied planes began dropping bread to the Netherlands, the same children quickly deteriorated."

A miracle, really -- first, that anyone was paying attention to the stomachs of small Dutch children while Europe was in chaos and denial; second, that someone realized that the problem was wheat protein and not one of the myriad other food storage problems that existed at the time.

Dank je!

Ten things to be happy about

2010-07-12T14:39:00.001-07:00

Inspired by my godson, recently diagnosed with celiac disease, and my family, who has been incredibly supportive of JFG, and a recent posting on my favorite blog (Postcards from the Edge), here is a list of ten things to be happy about regarding this pesky condition:

10. Gluten-Free Pantry Pie Crust -- any company that allows you to make gluten-free pie crust without crazy flour purchases should be on this list.

9. Zydeco (in Bend, OR), PF Chang's, Kwan's, Andina, and all of the other restaurants with separate and generous gluten-free menus.

8. Bette Hagman and those of her generation who made food safe for future celiac sufferers before it was sexy. Or even normal.

7. Chex mix.

6. Betty Crocker's gluten-free yellow and chocolate cake and brownie mixes, available not in the special gluten-free section of the grocery store but right in the baking aisle.

5. Gluten-Free Girl and Mag's Sentence, and every other blogger who realizes that celiac disease, once properly treated, is funny.

4. Family members willing -- and even eager -- to make entire Thanksgiving dinners gluten-free.

3. Physicians who can identify celiac disease quickly and relatively painlessly.

2. My husband's health.

1. Your family's health.

Thanks to everyone for giving us so much to be happy about. I am grateful.

A gluten-free Camelot -- still a fantasy

2010-05-18T20:18:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post I lauded King Arthur Flour for finally introducing gluten-free products. My enthusiasm has been slightly dampened with the arrival of the first catalog highlighting their new product line. Let me tell you why.

I think of King Arthur Flour as the Frederick's of Hollywood of flour. They provide fairly vanilla forms of flour -- although at crazy prices -- but also carry flours and related products you don't recognize, don't know how to use and fear, a little. A brief journey through the recent catalog uncovers Italian-style flour (Italians have special flour?), dried buttermilk powder, cake enhancer, french lames (you use them to score bread because, as you know, a knife is useless in those critical situations) and some kind of liquid that you add to cookies to make them taste like cookies. See? Just like adding garter belts as complicated as suspension bridges to already undressed people makes them sexier.

In other words, King Arthur Flour, already credible in the exotic baking products racket, should carry gluten-free products. I was very excited when the catalog arrived today.

And I'm disappointed. Oh, sure -- the catalog lists all of the standard flours and mixes, from tapioca starch to chocolate cake mix. That's the problem! In terms of standard gluten-free products, Bob's Red Mill has that market wrapped up. I don't need a vendor for standard stuff. I expect a company that sells lilac sugar pearls (you use them to decorate cupcakes, in case that wasn't self-evident in the description) to move beyond gluten-free pancake mix.

KAF deepened my disappointment on page 6. And 7. And 8. In the two-page gluten-free spread, there's a recipe for white sandwich bread (the very food used to illustrate ubiquity). There's a sweet column by the product development manager, and a promise that everyone -- gluten-free diet or no -- will enjoy the products. But when you turn the page, it's as if the gluten-free section never existed. The very next recipe in the catalog calls for hi-gluten flours, in fact, and none of the other recipes or columns suggest ways to substitute gluten-free flour in your baking.

Pages 4 and 5. The gluten-free ghetto. Nice try, King Arthur. I expect more, and I think you're missing a market -- gluten-free bakers (especially those that have already demonstrated their willingness to purchase expensive baking supplies) are childishly excited to be able to use conventional baking recipes. They're willing to experiment and try new products. And yet there's nothing in your catalog I can't find at the local health food store. Why pay $6.50 (that's minimum, by the way) in shipping for the same supplies?

My final assessment? I appreciate the effort, KAF, but I need a better reason to weed through the elephant-face underwear and fuzzy handcuffs when I can shop at Target for less money and in broad daylight.

Happy Celiac Awareness month!

2010-05-13T11:57:00.001-07:00

Apparently Celiac Awareness month had to fight it out with Sandwich month, or Toenail Awareness month, or Grass Seed month, or something along those lines. However, it is now official. Hug your local celiac patient (gently).

And to celebrate, here's a wonderful recipe for a flourless cake from the Oregonian, passed to me by a compassionate colleague. It's the kind of cake that is so dense that, if you bake it in a round pan, it's a cake. Bake it in a square pan, it's brownies. Either way, fantastic with gluten-free ice cream. And it doesn't require any crazy ingredients. I had everything at home already.

I would have included a picture, but it barely made it out of the springform pan before it was consumed. Yum.

The Magic Card

2010-05-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

We recently took a vacation in Istanbul. And despite the stunning mosques, the ancient town wall, the beautiful minarets, and deafening call to prayer (which seemed to initiate very little prayer and woke us up at 5:30 am) the most spell-binding thing we saw happened at dinner each night, when JFG would hand the waiter a small piece of paper, after which the waiter would produce gluten-free food.

It wasn't money he was handing over -- it was a document we began to refer to as the Magic Card. It was a print-out from Celiac Travel, a blog that provides information on safe traveling for people with celiac disease, and explained in detail (and in Turkish!) what foods JFG could and could not eat. Even better, the card was emphatic -- perhaps slightly hyperbolicly -- about the implications if safe food was not served.

At each restaurant, the waiter would carefully read the card, nod his head slowly, and lean over JFG to scan the menu. He'd point to items, turn to JFG, and say, "This? Not for you. This? Not for you. This? For you." Every single restaurant, every single time. Occasionally the waiter would take the card to the chef and come out with recommendations. But perhaps the most amazing moment was when we handed a card to a restaurant owner who said, "Oh! You're the second person today to come in with this card! Other lady -- we fix her vegetables and meat and rice, she love it." And JFG did too. And he made it seven days in Turkey without once, to our knowledge, being glutenized. We certainly don't have that track record in the U.S.

Celiac Travel makes these cards available for free on its website in 49 different languages, including Estonian, Urdu and Basque. You can buy similar laminated cards from Triumph Dining, but in limited languages. If you're traveling, especially to some where exotic, printing cards from Celiac Travel gets the job done.

1,000-year-old Chinese chef breaks the gluten-free world open wide

2010-04-26T19:37:00.000-07:00

Kwan's of Salem is very unassuming. From the outside, it looks like a run-down version of Disneyland's interpretation of a Chinese temple, like one that would be located in Yuma, AZ. On the inside, it looks like the kind of generic Asian restaurant Lucy and Desi would have gone to, where Lucy would have loudly mangled dishes' names and spoken in exaggerated fake Chinese to the server. Lucy and Desi when they lived in 1950s Hollywood, not Lucy and Desi in New York. Got the picture? Lots of Chinese jade souvenirs, plastic swords, faded red- and gold- lacquered tables, servers in cheap tuxes, etc.

But we were desperate for vegetables and rice, and had developed a deep suspicion of past go-tos. We pulled out the iPhones, searched the GlutenFreed app, and found one option, Kwans. Kwans opened in Salem, OR 33 years ago after the chef came to America sponsored by Gerry Frank's family.

We called. After a year of this life, we can tell the safety of the food by the tone of voice on the phone.

Kwan himself answered. When JFG asked about GF food, Kwan assured us that his staff understood both wheat allergies and celiac disease (the mere comprehension of the difference is a positive sign!), and that they had more the forty dishes they could prepare safely.

When we arrived, Kwan met us at the door. He led us to the table, handed us menus, explained at length his culinary philosophy (we couldn't really understand it but he seemed very sincere). JFG explained what he'd like to order and Kwan made it immediately, making sure we understood the changes in the dish that would be required to make the food GF. He also asked about every other possible food issue -- water purity, eggs, yeast, meat, shellfish, dairy. Not sure this was necessary but it certainly was thorough.

Here's how you know your restaurant understands celiac disease (see right). The check is itemized by the ingredients the food does not contain, and he was even more conservative then we might have been in our own kitchen.

So here's my review. The food was fairly conventional Chinese, the kind you'd get at a restaurant that also serves french fries and hamburgers for the kiddos. But the vegetables were fresh -- he even substituted green beans for peas in one dish because he'd just gotten the beans that morning -- and most importantly, JFG could eat anything on the menu including the ginger-chocolate ice cream sundae. We showed Kwan the app we used on the phone to find him, and while I'm sure that he can survive another 33 years without the celiacs of mid-Oregon, I hope others use it too.

Old school Chinese cooked by a restaurateur who really cares that it's safe. Tell him you read about him on a blog -- it will blow his mind. Be prepared to have him sit down at your booth to see it on your iPhone.

King Arthur Flour introduces gluten-free mixes!

2010-03-03T10:41:00.001-08:00

As you know, I feel like a failed housewife when I use mixes -- like I might as well stop vaccuuming and grocery shopping and just smoke long cigarettes and pet the dog all day.

But when I contemplate gluten-free baking recipes, which frequently call for several kinds of flour and strange chemical substances I cave to a few tried-and-true mixes.

Finally, King Arthur Flour (definitely the go-to company for advanced bakers, the kind of place that understands the need for -- and sells -- 14 kinds of salt) has released new gluten-free baking mixes. They've also greatly enhanced their gluten-free website, with new recipes, advice and information about cooking for folks with allergies.

Interestingly, as a side note, they advocate baking gluten-free food in a separate oven from glutenized food. Sigh. Thank goodness I have two ovens.

Anyway, thanks, King Arthur Flour. I'll post "Celiac-by-Marriage approved" recipes as I try 'em!

And the gold medal for gluten-free dining goes to . . .

2010-02-22T16:41:00.000-08:00

. . . Andina Restaurant on Glisan in Portland. Two friends recommended it as a gluten-free friendly establishment, and I must say that the experience went WELL beyond the server's ability to understand what it means to provide GF food. In order of astonishingness:

1. The server was able to find the GF menu right away (seriously, sometimes they have to go print it off from the corporate website).

2. A second server noticed JFG's shirt ("Save the wheat -- Eat gluten-free!") and brought over a second gluten-free menu, just in case the first server had not. The second server also assured us that his mom had celiac disease and that the restaurant was very knowledgeable about how to keep food safe. He actually stopped by again a couple of times to make sure everything was okay.

3. After we ordered from the fantastic, tapas-heavy menu, the server brought bread with several dipping sauces, and then brought GF fried yucca and sauce in a separate dish for JFG. I ended up mostly eating friend yucca, which is a lot like really robust french fries. Yum. Whose going to eat bread with purple stuff on it when you have huge french fries?

4. The food we ordered was delicious -- roasted asparagus, bay scallops in parmesan, cheeses with quince paste, potato with fresh corn salsa and a chocolate meringue mousse -- and the servers were so thorough and so knowledgeable that we didn't even wonder about cross contamination. JFG also had squash soup with pork belly, but I agreed to stay married to him nonetheless. You have to make exceptions for the sick and fragile.

5. The price was actually pretty reasonable for tapas, especially with fantastic service.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "Wow -- I can hear their arteries slamming shut!" In our defense, to not order everything on the menu would have been like going to Paris and shopping at H&M. I love H&M like I love eating healthy, but I'm not insane. Plus we didn't eat dinner.

So, thanks very much David and the rest of the fantastic staff at Andina. It's such a great experience to be able to order from an adequate menu, feel safe that the food is being prepared correctly and not have to reluctantly cross another restaurant off our list when we discover, four hours later, that the food was indeed glutenized.

Shhhh . . . this is a special moment for me. It's the first time I've given five rice flours to anything.

How to upgrade gluten-free bread

2010-02-17T20:41:00.000-08:00

Almond-flax gluten free bread is better heated up with peanut butter and Nutella. Just an observation.

There's a first time for everything, including pot roast

2010-02-15T18:52:00.001-08:00

I tried my first baklava at 22, and my first pie at 23. I started making meringues at 28.

With flour, sugar and butter I have no fear. But this weekend was my very first time making a large chunk of meat. In fact, it was really my first time buying a huge chunk of meat -- or really anything with the word "shoulder" or "loin" in the title. For some reason, meat is intimidating.

But this weekend I was thumbing through Living Gluten-Free for Dummies searching for the correct amount of xanthum gum per cup of gluten-free flour for cookies and found a recipe for pulled pork. We just happen to have some gluten-free rolls from Gluten-Free Creations, and on a whim I thought I'd give it a try.

Yum -- and simple. The only problem was that my crock pot is too cheap to have a timer and my kitchen timer refuses to recognize lengths of time greater than 60 minutes, which required a great amount of concentration for five hours to remember how long the meat had been in.

Pulled pork:

2 lbs pork roast

1 cup chicken broth

1 large onion (the recipe calls for two, but one is enough even for serious onion lovers)

4 jalapeno peppers, sliced

6 cloves garlic

2 tsp each coriander, cumin, oregano

salt and pepper to taste

Place the meat in the slow cooker. Add everything else (you know how much I love that!). Cook for four to five hours and then pull apart with two forks. I added a little of Annie's Naturals Organic Raspberry Mustard, and JFG added some GF BBQ sauce.

We also made apple turnovers from the Culinary Institute of America's gluten-free cookbook. The Culinary Institute of America would have denied ownership of the recipe if they saw how the turnovers turned out (see before and after pictures below) but they tasted great. JFG ate them all. In one night.

The CIA cookbook provides a recipe for pie crust, for which I cannot vouch. I am a committed fan of Pamela's Gluten-Free pie crust mix, and happen to have some frozen. It worked great although, as always, it had to be rolled out between sheets of parchment paper and handled very carefully. For five turnovers about the size of your palm, I used the equivalent of a pie-crust-and-a-half worth of dough. I also cut the recipe in half, since we didn't really need five pounds of apple turnovers.

Apple turnovers:

1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup gluten-free flour mixture (I used a mixture of sorghum flour, white rice flour and tapioca starch)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2-1/2 cups tart apples (I used Braeburn), diced into teenty-tiny pieces
1/2 cup pastry cream (recipe below)
1 egg for egg wash

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Roll out pie dough. Using a bowl with a diameter of about four inches, cut out five circles of dough and place on baking sheet covered with parchment paper (actually use parchment paper -- brown sugar and apple juice turns into cement)

3. Combine apples, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon. Add pastry cream.

4. Divide the filling among the dough circles. Each will take about 1/3 cup. If you have filling left over, spoon it into a ramekin and bake it with the turnovers -- it's great to eat with a fork.

5. Brush egg wash on the outer edge of each dough circle. Fold the circles in half and seal the edges. Brush egg wash on the top side of the turnovers.

6. Vent each turnover with a knife or fork.

7. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes. Cool and eat!

Pastry cream:

1-1/2 eggs (use the other half an egg for the egg wash above)
1 cup milk, divided
1/4 cup sugar, divided
2-1/5 tbs cornstarch
1-1/2 tbs butter
1/4 tsp vanilla

1. Whisk together egg, 1/4 cup milk, 1/8 cup sugar, and cornstarch in a bowl. Set aside.

2. Combine remaining milk and remaining sugar in a saucepan and bring to boil over moderate heat.

3. Add about 1/4 of the milk mixture to the egg mixture and whisk to combine.

4. Add the egg-milk mixture to the remaining simmering milk mixture in the saucepan on the stove all at once; continue whisking until it comes to a boil and begins to thicken; remove from heat.

5. Stir in the butter and vanilla.

6. Spoon pastry cream into a wide shallow dish and allow to cool completely.

Good cookies, and good news

2010-02-12T18:27:00.000-08:00

First, the good news. According to Living Gluten-Free for Dummies, there's actually a tax deduction for people with celiac disease! Apparently, you can deduct the difference between the cost of gluten-free versions of food and the cost of the regular, glutenized version of the food. The example in the book is a loaf of bread -- a gluten-free loaf is around $5.00, the glutenized loaf is around $2.00, the difference is $3.00.

I've commented before that celiac disease is a wealthy person's disease, but this tax deduction underlines it. As it turns out, you can only take advantage of this tax deduction if your gluten-free products absorb 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. Wow. And, in addition that you need a note from your doctor. Consult your tax advisor, and look into buying bulk.

Now, good cookies! This is a recipe I've made for JFG for years, but have recently started adapting it for gluten-free flour. Be very careful if you make these; we've plowed through twenty cookies in two days.

1/2 cup butter

1/4 cup white sugar

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup gluten-free flour (I use a blend of tapioca starch, sorghum flour and white rice flour)

1/4 cup xanthum gum (if you're making these with gluten flour, skip the gum)

3/4 cup gluten-free oats (I use Bob's Red Mill)

1/4 cup coconut

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups butterscotch chips

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine flour, oats, baking soda, xanthum gum and salt (always add the gum to dry ingredients; it gets gooey when added to wet ingredients). Combine wet and dry mixtures, add butterscotch chips and coconut.

3. Drop by tablespoons on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 9-11 minutes.

One warning. In my oven, for some reason, the cookies don't flatten out properly. I have to spray a spatula with cooking spray and flatten them after about three minutes in the oven. Yes, it is cheating. No, I don't care. If Julia Childs can mush an omelet back together, I can surreptitiously flatten some cookies and credit gravity.

I don't know that these deserve any rice flours, since I had to adapt them myself. But they're pretty darn good cookies, and double as nutritional supplements for JFG in an emergency.

Celiac haiku

2010-02-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

One very small grain

Turns guts into waterslides

Pancakes, I miss you

It breaks your heart

2010-02-07T15:48:00.000-08:00

JFG is on a diet. I don't just mean the diet he's been on for the past year -- the one that keeps his insides from turning to mush -- but a lose-weight-before-the-racing-season-starts diet. Remember when Kate Moss got into trouble by repeating the old anorexic saw, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels?" JFG's declared instead that nothing tastes as good as fast -- on the bike -- feels.

He's been on diets before, but never has he been so systematic about it. The fine people at Livestrong have created an app that lets you do what used to require paper, a pencil and a book -- you can track your food intake each day, and the app automatically calculates your protein, sugar, carbs and so forth. This is not an app for people with an artistic or interpretive approach to weight control; this is for people with rigid food sensibilities who are not afraid to overthink their food. The funny thing is, of course, that Lance Armstrong, the philandering yet noble icon behind Livestrong, eats 10,000 calories on the mornings of the Tour de France. He probably pays someone to track it, though.

In other words, "There's an app -- and paid help -- for that."

Like many men, JFG has never really paid much attention to nutritional labels, and therefore to calories, before. So he's constantly making discoveries I made in the 7th grade (which, of course, is the age when most women started their first diet). We have several conversations each day that go like this:

"Oh my god!"

"What?? What's wrong? Are you okay?"

"Did you know that cheese has 110 calories per ounce?"

"Well, yes, honey. Cheese isn't a diet food."

"Why did you let me eat it?"

And to that I really don't have an answer, except that he's older than a toddler and I assume that he's grown-up enough to make his own culinary decisions. Plus, I can't even conceive how someone could get to 33 and not know that cheese is the diet equivalent of the Titanic --luxurious but tragically doomed.

Anyway, as a result of this culinary adventure he's been on, we've eliminated still further categories of food from his diet. Even though I can now produce them gluten-free, he's cut out pie, cookies, cake, chips and salsa (man cannot live on bread alone, but JFG has done his damnedest to give it a shot with only chips and salsa), brownies and cobbler.

And this time of year, that leaves candy hearts, which have very few calories per handful. He loves candy hearts and always has. We scanned the nutritional information last year and declared them gluten-free (heck, they're basically sugar and corn starch and about fifteen kinds of dye). This year, though, so that he could enter them in his app, we read the nutritional information again very carefully. And in the same small text that kamikazied so, so many other foods, there were the fateful words: Made in a facility that also processes wheat.

It really breaks your heart.

Croutons part II -- they're still around!

2010-02-04T13:18:00.001-08:00

Yep, still eating the croutons, although now by handfuls to avoid contaminating the counters or utensils. Nutritional value? Fear not! There are small dried green specs on the croutons, which I choose to believe are some kind of vegetable.

And so it came to pass . . .

2010-02-03T19:18:00.000-08:00

I always liked that phrase in old fairy tales, "And so it came to pass . . ." It suggests timelessness, inevitability, destiny. A sense of history repeating itself as it always does; somehow, as a child this made an unknown world less scary. Precisely what a fairy tale is meant to do.

And, in the same inevitable way, it came to pass that JFG was glutenized in Texas. It wasn't an ugly stepsister or a bridge-bound troll. It was probably a gluten-free chicken breast prepared on a grill that also cooked chicken-fried steak. It wouldn't be so frustrating if serving staff didn't always insist that all precautions were taken to keep his food safe.

In an effort to heal traumatized organs, we ate Saturday at Cafe Yumm in Eugene. Cafe Yumm advertises as an allergy-friendly restaurant, although they do not have a specialized gluten-free menu.

Unlike other restaurants, they don't need to seem one. Their food is based on the concept of rice bowls, covered with meat, tofu, vegetables and sauce -- very plain and incremental, and therefore very easy to control. JFG had a rice bowl with beans, avocado, salsa, sour cream and olives (thereby ensuring that he could eat without sharing). He also ordered a chicken skewer, since we're trying to ensure he gets sufficient protein; unfortunately, the chicken was covered with teriyaki sauce, probably containing soy sauce and therefore gluten. The server very pleasantly took the chicken back to the kitchen, replaced it with a gluten-free tofu skewer and refunded the difference in cost in cash. Without being asked.

Excellent experience, good food (although a little pricey for simple ingredients and the opportunity to stand in line for food). Three rice flours for peace of mind.

Starbucks (sort of) redeems itself

2010-01-31T18:40:00.000-08:00

I spend a lot of time at Starbucks. When I have to wait in line, I ogle the display cases with coffee cakes, bagels, scones and pastries, all beautiful and glowing. And, of course, full of gluten.

About six months ago, Starbucks -- which, according to its website, supports healthy eating -- introduced a gluten-free pastry, a lemony-berry-cake-thing. It came carefully wrapped in plastic to avoid cross contamination. It wasn't cooked fresh at the store, but it was moist and gooey and very good. And safe. It wasn't quite the chocolate old-fashioned JFG adores at Starbucks but certainly a good replacement.

And then it was gone. Poof. Experiment over and apparently failed.

Starbucks continues to feature a few fruit/nut bars and chocolate bars that are gluten-free, but nothing replaces gluten-free baked goods. And when you google "gluten" on the Starbucks website, a list of coffees comes up. Duh.

The other day, however, I went into Starbucks and was standing in line for my coffee (I firmly believe, by the way, that there should be a "plain coffee" line and a "crazy, not really ordering coffee but actually ordering a coffee-flavored milkshake" line for those of us willing to drink caffeinated beverages like grown-ups). I noticed a small brochure sitting next to a basket of interesting-looking chips. I picked it up.

As it turns out, Starbucks has started to prominently carry a line of gluten-free chips from a company called Food Should Taste Good. The chips come in a range of flavors, from olive to lime to potato & chive to chocolate, and are clearly marked "gluten-free." Excellent, especially since -- if you start with the yellow corn tortilla chips, move to the buffalo chips with a side of 'the works' chips and finish with the chocolate chips -- you have a complete meal.

A friend whose family has gluten issues correctly commented that, "chips are easy. Anyone can do gluten-free chips. Baked goods are the problem," and she's right. I choose, however, to see the chips as a peace offering as well as a good business decision for Starbucks.

After all, the number of celiacs in our population continues to increase, at least theoretically because we're stuffing ourselves with food made from highly-processed flour. Staring glassily at the squishy, crumbly, chocolaty pastries in the Starbucks display case, I realize that Starbucks itself is poisoning the American population with sugar and flour disguised as breakfast. They just want to make sure they don't lose the demographic they create.

Pret-a-carne asada

2010-01-27T12:01:00.000-08:00

You are what you eat. You eat what you wear. You wear what you eat?

Celiac disease can really take over your life. JFG, like many men in their early 30s, uses his body as a billboard. By organizing his t-shirt collection chronologically, it's possible to map the evolution of his education, political philosophies, music tastes, marital status and sense of humor. And now, you can also trace the evolution of his diet! So I give you -- gluten fashion. Try to ignore the fact that the mannequin has boobs.

No, he never went to Wharton. Nor did Wharton pay him to wear this shirt. I think it was conference swag.

A little bit tougher now. Or grainier. Who knew we'd rely so much on Iowa's key export?

Can you say intergalactic planetary? Yes, folks, I got these from his closet. LAST NIGHT.

And dealing with disease has made JFG a kinder, gentler person. By all means, save the wheat.

F--- "save" the wheat. Confront the wheat! Blame it for your problems!

If you're interested and believe in dealing with your issues through by displaying through the art of t-shirt propaganda, be sure to visit CafePress where they have a huge variety of celiac- and gluten-related products (search on "celiac" or "gluten"). By far the saddest is a child's t-shirt that says, much like a sign at a zoo, "Please don't feed me anything without asking my mommy." How sad classroom birthday parties must be for this child.

Oh, croutons, croutons, how I've missed thee . . .

2010-01-26T21:27:00.000-08:00

That's right. I admit it. I brought croutons into the house while JFG was away. No, not GF croutons. Not croutons made out of sorghum flour and guar gum. Not even croutons made of that mysterious product, "defatted soy flour."

Nope, these are croutons made from WHEAT flour, fried no doubt in contaminated fat. Yum.

I feel like a recovered heroin addict sneaking drugs into the house for just ONE hit with the intention of tossing the stuff afterward.

Not to worry, however. My husband's health means more to me than hero -- I mean, flour. Croutons are safely contained on the non-gluten-free shelf in my pantry.

Have chewy brownies, will travel into the heart of darkness (e.g. Texas)

2010-01-25T11:58:00.000-08:00

JFG had to fly to San Antonio this week. In general, I am not a fan of Texas. I stick out there, and the abundance of confederate flags scares me. But I understand from friends that San Antonio, next to possibly Austin, is the least heart-of-darknessy part of Texas. Hopefully my liberal and tolerant husband will be returned eventually.

As you know, flying poses particular threats to celiacs. Fast food, unreliable in any context, abounds, and the servers at the few restaurants in airports are clearly hired for their skill in moving customers in and out as quickly as possible. This atmosphere does not lend itself to long discussions about gluten intolerance and culinary options. So, as usual, I packed JFG off to the airport with a bag of food, much like I imagine Little Red Ridinghood's mom would have done if she had really loved her daughter.

This time, I included brownies made from (shutter, horror) a mix. Hey -- sometimes I have the patience for 14 flours in one pot, sometimes I don't. I've got things to do.

This mix was from Gluten-Free Creations, a GF store in Phoenix (see previous posts for more info). I added a bag of GF chocolate chips because more chocolate never hurt anybody. The brownies turned out great. Be warned, though -- I had to cook them for 15 minutes longer and at 50 degrees higher temperature than the package warned. After an evening in the fridge to toughen them up for travel, they were perfect. For $4.99, quite a bargain.

P.S. In fairness to readers from Texas, I have known a number of lovely people, including my sister, who have lived there. I just assume they survive by living underground in tunnels.

Celibacy by marriage?

2010-01-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

Why does everybody think the name of this blog is Celibacy by Marriage? I will admit that there were some nights in the early days of undiagnosed celiac disease when JFG almost had to sleep on the couch, when sleeping next to him was virtually a case of biological warfare (those of you married to celiacs will understand whereof I speak), but other than complaining about food porn I have never mentioned anything about celibacy.

Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Get your own blog. :-)

Gluten-free AND vegetarian dinner for seven? Bring it on.

2010-01-17T18:16:00.000-08:00

We threw a dinner party last night for five friends. I love dinner parties (as opposed to standing-around cocktail parties) because people tend to sit and relax, and there's always something to do . . . appetizers, then dinner, then dessert, then clean-up. I like gatherings with purpose and flow.

Dinner parties present quite a challenge. What's enough food? What's too much food? How long do you really want to stare at the leftovers in the fridge? And this time, one additional challenge -- a vegetarian. Since JFG's go-to GF food is charred meat, we had to think outside the BBQ. Here's what we made, from a variety of GF recipe sources.

Broiled figs and brie, courtesy of Gluten-Free Girl's wonderful blog. We couldn't find fresh figs, only discovering after four stops that figs aren't readily available in Oregon until March. So, we re-hydrated some white figs, which worked perfectly. If we did figs and cheese again, I would probably make sure the cheese was room temperature before we started. Regardless, yum. Excellent appetizer, especially with wine.

Sweet potato hash, courtesy of the Big Book of Vegetarian. I apparently look vegetarian, because semi-close relatives are constantly buying me vegetarian cookbooks. To be fair, I was vegetarian for a couple of years -- more than a decade ago! -- but got sick of salads. Anyway, a couple of years ago when my mom made sweet potato french fries, JFG got hooked on the things. And, as I've mentioned before, I'm a BIG fan of foods that are all cooked at once in one big pot. Sweet potato hash from the Big Book fit all criteria and is charmingly low-brow. Recipe below.

We tried to make Bob's Red Mill cornbread (the only Bob's Red Mill pre-packaged mix I like), but I discovered too late that our milk had gone bad quite a long time ago. Ugh. In a pinch, I turned to Gluten-Free Baking with the Culinary Institute of America, a book that has not steered me wrong regarding gluten-free baking, and tried the focaccia recipe (honestly, without much hope). I didn't have the time or wherewithal to create the flour mixes, a combination of white rice flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, brown rice flour, guar gum, albumen, soy flour (defatted, however that is possible), and whey powder, that the recipe calls for. Instead, I tried "Basic Baking Flour Mix 3" from Gluten-Free Creations, a GF baking company in Phoenix, AZ. The package suggested that I should "Use cup for cup in [my] recipes" and claimed that "[the store] use[s] this mix in [their] bakery for pizza, baguettes [and] focaccia." It contains white rice flour, tapioca starch, arrowroot, xanthan gum and gelatin. What the heck! Can't be worse than rotten-milk cornbread, I thought.

It worked. The focaccia, featuring a combination of rosemary, oregano, basil and salt, was lovely. It rose, contained pockets of air, and held together beautifully. In fact, it would make excellent sandwich bread. Recipe below.

Friends brought the perfect kind of salad -- spinach, apples, walnuts, blue cheese and maple-flavored vinaigrette -- and we finished with with a blackberry pie, made with driveway blackberries we froze back in August.

I must close, however, with a review of the wine. A friend brought a bottle of Riunite, almost legendary for its appallingness. It foamed when we poured it, and then bubbled, I imagine quite like cyanide must. It was like wine made from Hawaiian Punch. Fortunately, we had excellent back-up wine.

Sweet Potato Hash
1 tbs canola oil
2 medium onions
1 small bell pepper
1 large sweet potato
2 cloves garlic
1.5 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chili powder
.5 tsp salt
3/4 cup vegetable broth
3/4 cup corn kernels
1 15oz can black beans
black pepper

In a large skillet, warm the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions and chopped bell pepper and stir until brown, about 4 minutes. Add chopped sweet potato and cook, stirring often, until beginning to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, cumin, chili powder and salt and cook, stirring for 30 seconds. Add the broth and cook until almost absorbed, about 5 minutes. Stir in the corn and black beans and cook, stirring occasionally, until heated through. Season with pepper and serve hot.

Focaccia
1.25 tsp yeast
.5 tsp dried rosemary
.5 tsp dried basil
.5 tsp dried oregano
.5 tsp salt
2.5 cups Gluten-Free Creations' Basic Baking Flour Mix #3
1.25 cups water (it actually called for sparkling water; I'm not enough of a foodie to have that on-hand)
.3 cup olive oil
.25 cup white vinegar (I used tarragon vinegar; apparently I'm enough of a foodie to have that on-hand)
1.75 tbs coarse salt
1 egg

Blend dry ingredients and herbs in bowl. Add wet ingredients and mix with a paddle for 5 minutes on medium.
Place dough in one 9-inch pan brushed with olive oil and salt. Cover and allow to raise in warm area for 30 to 40 minutes.
Bake in preheated oven (385 degrees) for 30 to 35 minutes. After fifteen minutes, brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with salt.
Remove from pan and place on cooling rack. Serve with oil and balsamic vinegar, if desired.

Local and gluten-free

2010-01-15T13:36:00.000-08:00

In the past six months, I have been really excited to see gluten-free food booths appear at local farmer's and Saturday markets. We saw the first one at the Salem Farmer's Market (Saturdays during the spring, summer and fall), followed by one at the McMinnville Farmer's Market (Thursday afternoons from May through October) and finally one at the McMinnville Market in the Granary District (Saturdays 9-3).

Surprisingly, these booths seem to be run by three separate businesses. All three provide some traditional baked goods, with an emphasis on cookies and small pies. The gluten-free booth at the Salem Farmer's Market frequently sells trail mix and some non-gluten-free products. The GF booth at the McMinnville Farmer's Market makes some lovely quickbreads and yeast breads.

Katie's GF Home Baking LLC at the McMinnville Saturday Market (I know the name of the business because a colleague's wife kindly picked up the brochure for me) also sells baked goods, selection very limited, to Harvest Fresh in downtown McMinnville. But her stock at the Saturday Market is excellent, dominately largely by sweets. When I visited her booth at the Saturday Market before the holidays, she commented to me that she would make a million dollars if she could only figure out a way to make a GF artisan loaf of bread.

Alas, such a feat is currently out of her extensive range. What she can do, though, is make a mean chocolate-caramel shortbread cookie. Shortbread is one of those foods that, due to a simple list of ingredients, relies on ingredient quality and richness for taste. I would think that the weirdness of GF flour would compromise the cookie -- but no! Katie's shortbread is tasty on its own but especially rich with caramel and chocolate. It doesn't crumble or sag, occasional properties of GF cookies. I was even able to cut a teeny-tiny piece off for me with a knife before I turned it over to JFG.

Based on her shortbread cookie, I'm sure Katie's other products are excellent. And I hold my breath for the day she makes that GF artisan loaf. Four rice flours for one fantastic cookie. You can place orders at katiesgfhomebaking@verizon.net.

Am I one of the "frozen meal lunch" ladies?

2010-01-14T12:09:00.000-08:00

I have worked at a number of offices that smelled like the Lean Cuisine factory every day from 12:00-1:00. I used to pride myself on bringing fresh and original food.

Lately, though, JFG and I have been eating frozen lunches alot lately for a couple of reasons. 1) gluten-free food goes bad faster than glutenized food unless it's frozen, and 2) neither of us have time to cook for the future (as in, for lunch the next day).

Amy's Kitchen has been a godsend. According to the box, after Amy's daughter was born in 1987, Amy and her husband started looking for easy organic meals. When they couldn't find them, they created a company that specialized in organic, vegetarian frozen food. They also happen to have a line of gluten-free frozen meals, primarily Mexican and Indian food. Fairly low in calorie and reasonably high in protein, these have become our lunch-time way of life.

Today I'm eating an enchilada with Spanish rice and beans. It contains zucchini, unfortunately, but if I eat fast and swallow fairly whole, I can forget that minor short-coming. JFG likes the "bowls" (Santa Fe Bowl, enchilada bowl, etc.). They have more calories but are pretty satisfying, along with his daily yogurt and banana. Amy's gets four rice flours for simplicity and tastiness.

Celiac saves the day

2010-01-11T19:15:00.000-08:00

Many of my posts have decried the amount of fat and calories available . . . nay, unavoidable! . . . in a gluten -free diet.

In fact, my mom recently found a way to bread and fry oysters without using panko or bread crumbs (both, of course, off the gluten-free menu). I daresay this would work for calamari, shrimp, or any other kind of light meat you might choose to fry. The secret was Arrowhead Mills Gluten-Free All Purpose Baking Mix, made from brown rice flour. JFG loved it, as did my celiac-free parents. I was so excited that I turned the box around to see if the company provided additional recipes. They did (joy)! For biscuits and banana bread (yay)! Both recipes involve soy yogurt and rice drink. Screeching halt. Sorry, folks -- I really only have the bandwidth for one set of food issues at a time.

I digress. Here's how celiac disease saved the day.

On Saturday, JFG and I met some friends at Adam's Rib in downtown Salem, a rib place that smells absolutely divine inside, all smoked meat and fried potatoes. Two of JFG's colleagues and one of their friends had committed to taking on the Goliath, a food feat that required consumption of a three-pound burger with fixins and a pound of fries. As it turns out, they had invited JFG to join them in greased suicide. Fortunately, not only could you never make a gluten-free hamburger bun this size that would hold together, but the fries were prepared in grease also used for hush puppies (fried flour and cornmeal).

I was going to download some photos of the entire disgusting contest -- served on serving trays the size of a bicycle wheel -- but when I plug my phone in to transfer the image files, the phone seems to think it's charging. Perhaps it cannot bare to relive the event. Suffice to say, no one finished the meal and everyone had the wisdom the stop eating when defeat was inevitable.

Food won. Also, I think Jesse won. That platter contained enough food to instantly condemn at least a couple of arteries in your average 34 year old.

Oh, give me a home . . . where gluten-free is the norm . . .

2010-01-11T15:15:00.000-08:00

Several weeks before Christmas, my parents took JFG and me to a veritable gluten-free wonderland in Phoenix. Gluten-Free Creations, located on Thomas Rd., bills itself as "your gourmet made-from-scratch" bakery specializing in gluten- and wheat-free baked goods, held an open-house where, for a set fee, we could sample almost all of their baked goods.

Here's what's amazing about Gluten-Free Creations. Their sale space is a brick hut, in a not-great-part-of-town, behind another business (I think it's a used car lot, or a tire store, or something along those lines). It's tiny, with a small staff, a small kitchen, and several teeny refrigerators. And yet, for this tasting, they managed to make almost a dozen kinds of cookies and bars, meatballs, sandwiches, pigs-in-a-blanket, cakes, pies and other holiday treats. At the end of the tasting, they sent us home with four packages of delicious cookies. I was completely stuffed and didn't even try everything.

For those of you with celiac disease or a wheat allergy, you know what a blessing it is to be able to eat everything on the table, with no fear. We, along with the other families at the event, were like grateful pilgrims experiencing a minor miracle. Maybe not like the healing of the lame, but perhaps like a crying statue.

JFG may have different preferences, but I recommend:

M&M cookies

mint chocolate chip cookies

brownies

chocolate donuts (yes, really!)

pumpkin bread

sandwich bread

hamburger buns (these made bacon blue-cheese hamburgers possible for JFG again -- not sure that's a good thing; they taste better toasted)

seven-layer bars

pecan oatmeal cranberry bars

But I would try anything they they made, honestly. I'm anxious to sample the angelfood cake mix, and have several bread mixes I haven't even cracked open yet! The website does not list all of their products, so if you're in Phoenix I really recommend driving ALL THE WAY downtown to check them out. They also provide food (mostly bread and pizza crust) to dozens of restaurants in town, as well as gift certificates.

You'll need the gift certificates, by the way. Although their products are almost as good and in some cases as good as glutenized equivalents, this is still a boutique grocery store. The food carries a hefty price tag -- buy only if you really intend to eat . . . or wait for another tasting event. Definitely worth it. Thanks, Mom!

You say Bombay curry salad, I say have you never taken post-colonial theory?

2010-01-05T20:12:00.000-08:00

First, an apology. I just saw my last few posts in Google Reader and am appalled at my personal use of exclamation points in titles. As someone who almost literally had exclamation points (all hyperbole, really) beaten out of me in late undergrad/early grad school years, I feel shamed for having exposed you to that. Resolution #1 for 2010: no exclamation points, at least in titles.

And now, back to the serious purpose of this blog -- to review and rate celiac-safe foods and recipes. And what a great time to do it, right after our first holiday season with the disease.

First, again, my recent experience affirms the fact that celiac disease does not lead to automatic weight loss. JFG and I continue to fight pounds carefully acquired during Thanksgiving, following a week of stuffing and pumpkin pie. Christmas followed, with more stuffing, pie, cheesecake, tamales, cheese and cookies -- all gluten-free. Fear not -- fat is still available to you, my fellow celiacs-by-marriage.

Second, I am equally sure that it does take a little creativity and trial and error. In a later post I'll talk about the gluten-free tasting we experienced at Gluten-Free Creations in Phoenix. Today, I'd like to share a recipe from the back of a quinoa pasta box (after all, shouldn't the producers know best what to do with their product?).

I've reviewed gluten-free pasta before. By far, the best we've tried so far is Ancient Harvest Quinoa Supergrain (Super Grain? Can't really tell by the label -- it's all in capital letters) Gluten-Free Elbow Pasta. It's a robust pasta, holds up well in boiling water, and tastes great. All of these traits make it a wonderful gluten-free pasta for pasta salads, sometimes a challenge with rice pastas because the noodles frequently turn to mush.

On the back of the current pasta box is a recipe for Bombay Curry Salad. I am sad to report that the company seems undisturbed by their use of a colonial geographic label. This title is made even more ironic by the lengthy history of the quinoa grain that appears next to the recipe, highlighting its ancient Mayan roots.

'Nuf said. I shall instead use the post-colonial city name since I understand irony.

Mumbai curry salad
1 package supergrain gluten-free pasta
2 tbs butter or oil
1/2 cup sour cream (we used fat-free)
1/2 cup mayonnaise (fat-free)
2 tbs olive oil
2 tsp vinegar
1 tsp salt
2 cloves garlic (what the heck, throw in three)
1 green pepper
1/2 cup celery (make the pieces big enough to pick out)
3 scallions
1/4 cup parsley
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 walnuts

It actually also called for pimentos, but I can't add those to anything without feeling like I should be vaccuuming in high heels and an apron.

Cook the pasta. Drain it, mix in the butter or oil and let it cool. While it cools, combine all ingredients (maybe my favorite three words), sour cream through walnuts. Mix into pasta and chill. Serves four.

It's a dish clearly nostalgic of the way America imagined Indian food in the 1950s. It wishes for a simpler time when white/brown dichotomies were clearer. But it's a really good pasta salad.

Michael Westen, boned duck and porn

2010-01-04T19:23:00.001-08:00

I was watching the New Year's Eve Burn Notice marathon the other day, and it made me think of porn.

Now, normally, regardless of how attractive the exiled spy-nice-guy lead character is, dram-coms on the USA network don't usually make me think of porn. But I'm not talking about human porn -- I'm talking about food porn. Gratuitously drippy, candlelit, steamy tight shots of cakes, roasts, donuts, ice cream, french fries, etc. -- that's the porn of which I speak.

Burn Notice made me think about food porn because of the explicit lack of food usually involved in the plot. In fact, the lead character rarely eats more than yogurt (and those of you familiar with the show know that Gabrielle Anwar, who plays Fionna Glenanne, can't possibly eat anything more than cabbage and filtered water at every meal). At worst, Sam, the fat buddy, has a beer every now and then. But one episode ends with Michael and Fionna eating (ha!) at a restaurant and featured the same steamy, candlelit shots of food highlighted frequently in other shows, and that got me thinking.

Two recent films, Julie and Julia and It's Complicated, make my point precisely. Neither film contains any very explicit sexual scenes (although I must note that It's Complicated contains WAY too much footage of a wildly overweight and very furry Alec Baldwin); however, in both films, sexual relationships are insinuated through food. Meryl Streep, at the height of a nice date with Steve Martin, bakes chocolate croissants, which they eat slowly with entwined arms. Pre-sex, she and Alec Baldwin relive the early days of their relationship by eating croque monsieur (as near as I can tell, drippy fried cheese sandwiches), and then, post-sex, order room service. At best, food is stimulous.

In Julie and Julia, as if the analogy need be any clearer, Julia Childs refers to some very warm type of pasta or dumpling as . . . well . . . it's not really appropriate to repeat. And Julie often begs out of sex with her husband by asserting that she needs to cook something, as if food and sex are really interchangeable.

In exactly the way that throwing pots is not really about throwing pots in Ghost, with food porn the emphasis is not really on the food. And the reason that I mention this here is that these sensuous food-but-not-REALLY-food scenes almost always feature something made with wheat flour and dripping with butter.

It's no wonder that America's children, under assault from abstinence-only programs and pelted with food porn, fatten up!

Fortunately, that just means that those of us who are wheat-free can replace food porn with . . . ! (kidding, Mom).

The joys of being a derivative

2009-12-22T23:02:00.000-08:00

I'm about to turn 35, and I've discovered that I am a derivative.

Well, that's not entirely true. I am a derivative, but I didn't just discover it.

I've always been a little bothered by the fact that I have almost no skills that, if the world became some kind of Mel Gibson apocalyptic nightmare, would be of any use. I could . . . organize everyone. I could . . . write nice letters to the avenging armies. I could . . . coordinate lovely events where everyone starved to death. You get the picture.

This fear was further codified by the book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (hypnotizing book; scared me so much I had to read it all in one sitting). In World War Z, Brooks "documents" an oral history of the world post-zombie takeover. The premise is that some kind of epidemic has swept the world that kills most and turns 10% into flesh-eating people herds. Brooks imagines the horror from the perspective of people who have survived it.

In one chapter, he observes that the catastrophe has reversed traditional social hierarchies. Educated people, those who earn their livings by thinking and/or administrating, are "F class" -- they're useless. Skilled workers, those trained in blue collar occupations -- plumbers, loggers, carpenters, electricians, cooks, janitors, sanitary engineers, soldiers -- can actually physically rebuild the world, and so have greater value. In World War Z, the best you can do with F class workers is teach them to dig ditches. Seriously. And the successful characters in the book, those who have survived due to wits and sheer physical strength, have doubts about F class workers' ability to dig ditches properly.

Anyway, I think it goes without saying that a Director of Annual Fund would be an F class worker.

As Ron White says, I told you that to tell you this. We rented Julia and Julia on Friday. Lovely film. Meryl Streep transforms a woman who has been mocked, satirized and somewhat forgotten into a charming, witty tower of creativity and love. Amy Adams was also very good, albeit with fewer character challenges.

In the film (and the book, I gather) Julie cooks her way through The Art of Mastering French Cooking, writes a blog and becomes famous.

Is that what I am doing here? That is, is that what I am hoping to do here? And if so, is there value in continuing this process? Ah, the search for life's purpose.

And deep philosophical questions. Is any idea ever really new?

Then I thought, hey -- if I need something really innovative (still derivative but slightly less conventional) I could always cook my way through the 1615 culinary classic, Gervase Markham's The English Housewife. Do not mistake this for Desperate Housewives, although were this my real life I might be slightly desperate. It's an impressive but somewhat dubious list of tasks and skills required of a late-Renaissance or early-modern English housewife. The good news? A reason to cook a carb-heavy diet. The bad news? I would be required to "pot" butter (whatever that means) and scrape marrow from bones.

Hey! Now there's a skill that would be useful in the post-apocalypse.

Around the world . . . liszt, tepung, plúr, moka be damned!

2009-12-15T16:56:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking of writing a series of books about gluten-free travel. In my brief survey of the competitive landscape, I can only locate one unfun-looking person who has been doing gluten-free tours for years -- who I wouldn't go around the bloack with unless she was my grandmother. There are also a number of websites listing celiac-friendly restaurants other countries, but they're a little disappointing.

Here's my thinking. One in every 133 people in the U.S. has celiac disease. The only manageable way to have this disease is to have enough money to spend $12 on a pound of flour (or to eat nothing but berries for the rest of your life). Since there are clearly enough people spend $12 on Bob's Red Mill flour to keep that company in business, there might be enough people who would also spend $12 on a book about safe travel.

There are also books like Let's Eat Out! and the Essential Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide that provide explanation cards for servers and chefs in different languages. But I imagine a poor, starving JFG with his sad little card crawling from restaurant to restaurant in another country, searching for someone who can feed him.

Not really; after about fifteen minutes of hunger he'd be on the next plane.

From a few short trips in the last year, I know that there is a lot more to gluten-free travel than simply finding restuarants, it seems that guidance is needed. I guess the question is, how much of the American public will pay for guidance?

Considering the number of people who have purchased the Sarah Palin book, 700,000. Hmmm. I'm obviously looking for a different demographic. I'm pretty sure that Palin believes neither in people who want to travel to other countries, nor in people with elitist diseases.

Celiac on the road

2009-12-12T16:10:00.000-08:00

We're in Phoenix this weekend to celebrate my dad's 63 birthday. My folks have really turned into the wind regarding JFG's condition -- before we arrived, they went down to a new allergy-aware grocery store in Phoenix and bought chips, crackers, donuts, hamburger buns and chocolate chip cookies, all gluten-free. JFG had another bacon blue-cheese burger last night for dinner, and a gluten-free pumpkin pie. We also had lunch today at True Foods, a restaurant in the Biltmore shopping center that advertises itself as gluten-friendly.

While True Foods was not as gluten-friendly as, say, P.F. Chang's, the menus did contain about ten clearly-marked gluten-free recipes including crudites with tzasiki sauce, tabbouleh made of quinoa, several salads, curry and rice noodles and several dishes involving squash (content edited due to my hatred of squash). Jesse was able to have both an appetizer and an entree, no questions asked.

Tomorrow we're going to a gluten-free open house at the grocery store mentioned above, with tastings and everything. Should be very interesting. Although we've met so many people who have relatives or friends with celiac disease, we've never attended a gathering based around the disease. How many celiacs must be present to make a support group?

What day is it?

2009-12-09T10:51:00.001-08:00

That's right -- it's another day when, despite the lack of frightening ingredients listed on the back of the plastic bag, yet another brand of tortilla chips has made JFG sick. When is the FDA going to get it together and list any gluten included in packaged foods? Using human beings as involuntary litmus tests is, at the very least, cruel and unsanitary.

I have advocated for a "damn the torpedoes, full speed (albeit with some forethought) ahead" approach to celiac disease. I hate the idea of an incurious approach to food. However, this approach is complicated somewhat by the inability to trust nutritional panels on food. So, for the moment, Santitos is our sole choice for tortilla chips.

On the upside, kudos to Wild Pear Restaurant in Salem. We attended a wedding on Saturday evening catered by Wild Pear. Despite the fact that we did not warn the hosts ahead of time about JFG's condition, the serving staff were extremely prompt in identifying the foods that were safe and directing us away from foods that might contain gluten. JFG managed to eat a balanced meal -- meat and vegetables, at least -- and was only excluded from the cake (not too surprising at a wedding).

Three rice flours for Wild Pear!

Brown sugar -- round II

2009-12-05T10:46:00.001-08:00

Now that I've thrown out all of my brown sugar and repented for the sin of secretly poisoning my husband, I cannot find another single source on gluten-free diets that lists brown sugar as forbidden or even suspect. In fact, even the Celiac Disease Center at the University of Chicago lists brown sugar and invert sugar, the secret potential culprit, as safe, gluten-free additives.

Trying to establish a comprehensive and stable list of gluten-free foods as about as difficult as identifying set criteria for witchcraft. Witches are poor people! No, they're rich people! They're always women! No, they might be men . . . or dogs . . . or goats! Witches can't recite the Lord's Prayer! No, the devil ensures that witches can recite the Lord's Prayer perfectly! Witches drown! No, they float!

Sigh. No wonder celiacs frequently convert to raw foods diets. No one has ever accused a carrot of containing additives made of anything other than carrot.

On the other hand, celiac does help establish a stable list of people who really care about you. Last night, we went to a birthday party at a friend's house. Our friend went to enormous trouble, for his birthday dinner, to make gluten-free brisket and sausages -- two foods almost always on the suspect list. And since JFG can't share the cobbler or chocolate cream pie, they made gluten-free butterscotch pudding for him, which was lovely. We could have easily brought our own food, but instead could feel confident that someone else was watching out for JFG's digestive track. Thanks, guys.

The case of the vanishing protein

2009-12-02T15:51:00.000-08:00

I'm not all that good at mysteries. JFG usually guesses the secret villain on 24 much faster than I can (although I've learned that the most benign or patriotic character usually harbors the psychotic plot to blow up the world using toothpaste bombs). I wasn't even very good at Encyclopedia Brown or Nancy Drew mysteries.

Here's another mystery I failed to solve without my mother's help. For about a year before the diagnosis, JFG was exhausted. Too exhausted to ride his bike, too exhausted to do tasks around the house, too exhausted to stay up after 8:00 p.m. He'd start checking his watch shortly after dinner to determine how much longer he had to stay awake to be considered an adult.

Soon after the diagnosis, when we'd cleared gluten out of his diet, the exhaustion faded away! He could stay up later, he started riding his bike again . . . problem solved, or so we thought.

In the past couple of months, he's started to fall asleep in my lap around 8:30 p.m. again. He's checking his watch by 9:15 p.m., and if he's not in bed by 9:30 it's usually because he's fallen asleep on the couch. Even if he's getting stray traces of gluten, it can't be enough to throw his whole digestive system off again.

What to do, what to do? Is it too much work? Getting up too early? Does he have the flu? Is he just getting old?

So I was explaining this to my mother over Thanksgiving. My mother is a genius at problem-solving, much better than I will ever be (although my skills are improving). It's amazing how much you continue to need your mom at 35.

The first words out of her mouth: "Is he getting enough protein? Young men need a lot of protein."

Wheels spinning. We've never eaten a lot of meat or eggs at home, but before the diagnosis, he used to go out to lunch a lot with co-workers and eat pork or beef sandwiches or burritos. He also used to exercise a lot more, which meant that he ate many, many protein bars. Since the diagnosis, and since restaurants have become more challenging, he takes frozen lunches to work -- lunches that happen to be vegetarian and sometimes vegan. And protein bars almost always contain gluten, so now he eats fruit bars.

Ah-ha! How did she know?

You don't want to know about JFG's nutritional status, so I'll cut to the moral of the story. Cutting gluten out of your diet frequently, and accidentally, means that you're cutting other critical nutritional elements out as well. While you're making sure that you don't take in gluten, be sure that you are taking in as much protein, fiber, potassium and vitamins as you need to stay healthy.

When brown sugar bites you in the ***

2009-11-30T16:32:00.000-08:00

So many things to report from our first gluten-free Thanksgiving. We had a lovely meal, and managed to overeat as usual despite the range of new food options. Successes include a lovely stuffing made of cornbread, apples and bacon (recipe in last post; double the bacon and toast the bread first), a wonderful southwest-style quiche from the Culinary Institute of America's gluten-free cookbook with a crust from Glutino Pantry, and a green bean dish made with butter, spices and dijon mustard (instead of green-bean casserole, which calls for glutenized French's onions).

Disappointments include having to throw out all of my brown sugar. As it turns out, many brands of brown sugar include invert sugar as one of the ingredients. Invert sugar can contain gluten. Other brands just list "brown sugar" as the only ingredient. I'm going to have to research which brands of brown sugar are reliably safe and stick to those. The really bad news? JFG had just consumed a pear pie that contained about three pounds of questionable brown sugar. $%$!.

Mom also brought some wonderful gluten-free chocolate donuts from a gluten-free store in Phoenix, mentioned in previous posts, along with several kinds of hamburger buns! Yummy!

So in all, a successful feast. But we forgot to watch the Macy's parade.

Alternative recipe for stuffing

2009-11-19T13:51:00.000-08:00

My mother makes stuffing with white bread. My mother-in-law makes it with a mixture of white bread and stuffing mix. JFG used to refuse to let me experiment with stuffing recipes -- once I made stuffing with dried cranberries that was great, and I had to eat it all by myself. This Thanksgiving, our first with celiac, all bets are off. Jesse won't even consider some of the gluten-free white bread alternatives, like rice flour or flax or tapioca flour breads, but he really likes Bob's Red Mill cornbread mix. It actually tastes like glutenized cornbread (which is amazing because I think the rest of Bob's Red Mill mixes taste like garbanzo beans, even the brownies. That's a nasty shock, let me tell you).

So, we're going to make cornbread-bacon stuffing. It seems to me that, since the average American eats 3,000 calories at Thanksgiving dinner, an extra six ounces of pork fat won't kill you any faster.

Here are some of the recipes I'm considering:

Herb and Bacon Cornbread Stuffing

Apple and Bacon Cornbread Stuffing (using gluten-free cornbread, of course)

Cornbread and Proscuitto Stuffing

I thought about a Rachel Ray recipe, but her face on the website just makes me slightly nauseous, like staring into fun-house lights.

For pie, we'll just make regular pie with a gluten-free crust (I like Pamela's Gluten-Free pie crust mix, although you need to add a little extra sugar) but for the courageous, gluten-free girl's pie crust is pretty good. Just cut the amount of apple cider vinegar you use to keep it from tasting really apple-y.

I'd also like to try two recipes I saw in Cooking Light (a magazine that is not always celiac-friendly):

Pumpkin Flan

Vanilla Bourbon Pumpkin Tart

But JFG wants pumpkin pie and, even for a pie-lover like him, three pies might be too much.

Marco Polo is not the only option, people!

2009-11-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

I've opined about restaurants that don't take the gluten-free needs of their patrons seriously. But I'm equally annoyed by people who suggest that the only safe dining choice for someone with celiac disease is a restuarant that advertises a gluten-free menu. It suggests that gluten-free food is special, magical food that can only be prepared by the annointed ones.

In Salem, the only restuarant that advertises a gluten-free menu is Marco Polo. Marco Polo serves a weird, kind of continental menu, a combination of traditional American meals and Chinese food. The atmosphere to me feels like a revamped 1950s hotel-food restaurant, and it's kind of expensive. I know devotees; after one meal we are unlikely to go back.

Here's what Marco Polo has done very well. They've identified items on their menu that are naturally gluten-free -- rice dishes, for example -- and then marketed those dishes. If you examine their "gluten-free" menu you'll discover that most dishes already appear on the "non-gluten-free" menu. Genius.

However, there are other options in Salem if you know where to look. Here are the ones we've found:

La Perla -- we've checked the packaging on the corn tortillas. No flour, so if you just order chips and tacos you're safe.

La Margarita Company Restaurant -- ditto, plus the tamales are safe too.

India Palace -- naan and samosas are out, unfortunately, but the papdam is made of lentil flour and the tandoor, jalfrezies, curries and masalas are all okay.

Ventis -- the yellow curry is gluten-free. We checked the box. Ask them to prepare on a clean grill.

Thai Beer -- the curries and peanut sauce have regular soy sauce in them, so they're out. But you can ask the server to have any stir-fries made with gluten-free soy sauce. We particularly like the mango chicken and the cashew chicken. Bring gluten-free peanut sauce for the salad rolls.

Thai Lotus (actually in Keizer) -- the curries and stir-fries have regular soy sauce in them, but the peanut sauce is safe because they make it themselves. Try the pra ram with tofu or chicken.

Momiji's -- Surprisingly, not every sushi restaurant has gluten-free soy sauce. One place actually tried to tell us it was hard to find, even though they sell it at Roth's. Momiji's on Commercial is always extremely helpful about gluten-free soy sauce, and the sushi's pretty good.

Take that, overly-expensive and kind-of-depressing Marco Polo!

Swine flu? Chicken noodle soup!

2009-11-03T16:20:00.001-08:00

Many years ago when I read Shape Magazine (a magazine that actually makes me feel worse about myself than Vogue or Glamour), I found two recipes that I've kept and made enough times that the paper on which the recipes are printed is kind of gross. No bother -- both are "heat up the pot and start tossing stuff in" kind of recipes, haphazard collections of food heated and then garlicked to death.

One, a chicken chili, we've made many times since the diagnosis. It's blessedly easy, looks complicated enough for guests, and keeps for days.

The other is chicken noodle soup. Considering my mixed success with rice noodles, I lacked faith in how the noodles would behave while being boiled with chicken broth for ten or fifteen minutes at a time. I assumed they would dissolve.

Not so! Here's the trick. Cook everything else (broth, onion, carrots, cilantro, thyme, corn, chicken). Turn the pot up to boiling and toss in the noodles (once again, I'd steer clear of De Boles). Boil for two minutes. Try to keep your husband from interfering with your plan by turning the heat up or down, trying to take the pot off the burner, re-setting the timer, etc.

Turn the heat off but leave the pot on the burner for twenty minutes. Eureka! Perfect chicken noodle soup. You're now swine-flu proof without Zycam (ick) or E-mergency (yuck). Now, if only you can avoid fans of either, who are worse than drug pushers.

Please -- don't break bread together!

2009-10-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

We're starting to think about Thanksgiving, our first major holiday without gluten. Thanksgiving is tricky in our family -- actually trickier than Christmas, because we have a more rigid set of foods that we eat on Thanksgiving, without which Thanksgiving seems, well, less complete. Underdone. These include, for my side of the family:

Green bean cassarole with French fried onions

Cranberry salad (which, also traditionally, everyone but my dad refuses to eat)

Mashed potatoes

Turkey, of course

Stuffing -- which, depending on the year and the current wisdom of the FDA may or may not be cooked inside the turkey

Ambrosia, an interloper food added to the table when JFG joined the family

Some of these foods pose no problem -- turkey, cranberry salad, mashed potatoes -- but this doesn't really solve the gluten problem since JFG refuses to eat the cranberry salad and the mashed potatoes anyway. Turkey is okay as long as we don't stuff it with bread stuffing.

Green bean cassarole, now that's another story. The whole point is the French's onions, mon cher.

Brownies!

2009-10-23T10:33:00.001-07:00

Just baked lovely chocolate/cream-cheese brownies from the gluten-free cookbook published by the Culinary Institute of America. Squishy, baked all the way through, what else could you ask for?

Cooking like Julia

2009-10-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

I just finished Julia Child's autobiography. First of all, she was a strange-looking woman. Secondly, she hints that her husband was frequently mistaken for gay -- something that always makes me wonder how much "mistake" there really was in the perception, especially since he seems to have married a woman who looks an awful lot like a man. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you -- it just makes me a little sad for Julia.

Finally, and perhaps most odiously, she makes me jealous enough to have fits. I actually loved reading the book but the descriptions of charming, teeny markets in French towns and apartments that overlook the port of Marseilles eventually caused my fingers to shake. How does an American girl from a conservative family from Hoboken (it's not really Hoboken, but you know what I mean, a Hoboken-like town) who doesn't speak anything but English, can't cook, and has what seem to be only average administrative skills end up living in Paris and writing a book on French cooking?

War, por supuesto. Too bad we can't arrange legend-provoking, courage-instilling, non-lethal wars that require mid-30's women with administrative skills to fly jauntily off to foreign shores whenever we need them.

That said, I don't have the patience to cook half of the things she describes. I'm endlessly fascinated by coq au vin, but the notion of an old rooster is off-putting. Anything that requires you to stuff intestines with your bare hands is a no-go. And the recipe that calls for the cook slicing open live lobsters with a knife (she insists they die immediately, thank god) is totally out of the question. So perhaps I'm not cut out for the life of a charmingly awkward pseudo French chef. Could I just have the apartment, then?

Airport food

2009-10-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

MSN.com posted an article yesterday from the Eat This, Not That franchise about the best and worst airport food -- donuts, pretzels, ice cream, coffee drinks. Not only would I not eat anything from the "worst" column . . . most of the foods in the "best" column were fat-laden, starchy and generally not worth the calories either. As a regular flier, I'm continually disappointed with the unappetizing "healthy" foods available at airports, which include under-ripe bananas, mealy apples, limp salads (when did we decide salad meats must be cut in rectangular tubes?), and luke-warm yogurt.

With celiac disease, options are even poorer. While I can get by with a low-fat muffin from Starbucks, JFG is often stuck with said mealy apple or saggy salad. Even the nuts -- probably the best wolf-in-sheep's-clothing, bad-food-masquerading-as-good-food food product available -- frequently contain gluten (for what purpose? 'Tis a mystery).

As a result, for long trips, the only solution is to pack JFG a bag of portable gluten-free snacks. I sometimes include fruit, but have discovered that apples or pears or bananas, having been banged around during check-in and security, get bruised and disgusting. As an alternative, here's what I pack:

Home-made gluten-free cookies, usually with peanut butter as an ingredient for protein
Rice chips (god bless rice chips), which come in small bags
Gluten-free energy or breakfast bars -- JFG likes the apple ones made by Glutino, although I think they kind of taste like garbanzo beans
Chex Mix -- this is a relatively new discovery, but since General Mills now makes three kinds of Chex cereal without gluten I can toss together some butter, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, and a little sugar with rice or corn Chex and some cashews and make a pretty mean and portable snack (god, also bless General Mills)
Crackers; JFG likes Mary's Gone Crackers in original or black pepper flavor, I like herb and sesame flavors which don't leave large pieces of black pepper in your teeth to alarmingly discover later

Thoughtfully, manufacturers of gluten-free foods usually package their products in human-size (as opposed to King-Kong-sized) boxes and bags, so all of the food described above fits into a plastic grocery bag. And while there are no actual vegetables or fruits included, there is enough of a variety that JFG can usually make it to his destination.

Airports! -- specifically, airports that include the word "international" in their title! -- travelers have food allergies. Airport food is extremely poorly labeled, leaving travelers to choose between starvation or poisen. Get it together.

Great Harvest's great leap forward

2009-09-22T16:35:00.000-07:00

Last night, I bought my first loaf of gluten-free Great Harvest bread from the Great Harvest in McMinnville. I shouldn't be so pleased about something I merely consume -- not produce -- but the fact that the local Great Harvest has started carrying gluten-free bread on Mondays heralds two things:

1. The return of the Great Harvest bread run, which also means a free slice of whatever they just baked, and
2. Greater understanding and acceptance of celiac disease by the larger commercial market.

I have to admit that the gluten-free bread (this week, a version of their Dakota Bread, which I love) is not indistinguishable from glutenized bread. Nor, honestly, would it make good sandwiches. However, it is completely edible, does not weigh fourteen pounds, and slices without squishing down into un-spray-butterable chunks. The best part is that Great Harvest has an email list of people interested in gluten-free products and produces a different gluten-free bread every Monday.

Three rice flours for the very public effort, Great Harvest.

My excitement about this new frontier belies an area of concern, though. Outside of FDA lobbying groups, are we forced to spread the gluten-free doctrine only through consumerism? I suppose that the truth is that celiac impacts our lives only as we purchase food -- not through any great disenfranchisement or social injustice -- so solutions must be consumer-related as well. But I feel slightly uncomfortable when I am excited about being allowed to purchase safe food at crazy prices.

Flour and peer pressure

2009-09-08T12:38:00.000-07:00

I've conquered most of the concrete challenges involved in being married to someone with celiac. I know how to be suspicious of labels. I know how to avoid the secret gluten-laden foods like maple syrup, beer, vinegar, soy sauce -- foods that frequently make their silent way into other foods.

And I know when a server in a restaurant isn't quite sure that the food does not contain any wheat products. Where I failed this weekend is that I did not have the courage to leave a restaurant when I realized that the server could not guarantee the food's safety. I realize that, not only do I have a responsibility to keep JFG safe, I have a responsibility to educate others about celiac disease -- especially restaurants -- so that future food is safer (or at least better understood). In the interest of finding somewhere that everyone wanted to eat, however, I allowed myself to be cajoled into staying in the Lincoln City restaurant Kyllos. JFG was sick for two days.

So, for Kyllos, no rice flours. And none for me, either, until I learn to stand up to peer pressure from middle-aged waitresses.

Goodies

2009-09-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

I'd like to state publicly that I do not understand peoples' dedication to Pfeffernüsse as a Christmas food. Even Wikipedia describes the cookie as a small, hard, round biscuit. With pepper! Cookies with pepper! Oh, yes -- sometimes it's black pepper, sometimes it's white pepper, but either way it's a nasty surprise when you're biting into something that looks sweet and is introduced as dessert.

I've observed that many cultures retain food traditions that were clearly invented in lean times. That's the only explanation for foods like Pfeffernüsse and ammonia cookies, which my best friend's family makes religiously every Christmas. Why else would you put cleaning fluid in dessert? I can see her Scandinavian ancestors starving in some small, snow-bound village, having eaten the dog and the bark off the trees, with nothing but a bucket of window-cleaner between them. Someone says, "Well, we have to eat something!" and thus ammonia cookies were born. Obviously, in a similar snow-bound German village, food supplies low, someone said, "Well, how else are we going to make cookies? Toss in the pepper -- it's all we have left!"

That is all an introduction to my favorite gluten-free cookie recipe, which would be great in starvation times. It only has three ingredients -- one cup of sugar, one cup of peanut butter, one egg. You combine the ingredients, roll one-inch balls and flatten them with the bottom of a glass, and cook at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. If you like peanut butter or need food that provides sugar and protein quickly, these are great. I also sometimes add chocolate chips.

Graham crackers achieve reprieve

2009-08-31T13:40:00.000-07:00

All right, so JFG not as big of a fan of the graham crackers as I was. However, in an effort to redeem the vast sums I dropped on the box, I made them into a graham cracker crust. It is lovely, especially since I accidentally added too much sugar to the mix. It's crunchy, caramelly, and crumbles just like graham crackers should. No more saggy cheesecake!

Medieval in the kitchen (or, where are my s'mores?)

2009-08-28T14:05:00.001-07:00

I like cooking medieval food. I mean, taking recipes from medieval and Renaissance "cookbooks," such as they were, and trying to make them in my kitchen. Much like hearing Beethoven played on a 300-year-old harpsichord or touching the walls of the Sainte-Chapelle, it's one of the only ways to actually experience the past. With food, or music, or buildings, you can somehow defy the laws of matter and cohabit with ancestors.

However, cooking from these recipes can be quite a process -- not only translating the recipes, which frequently give directions like, "Take enough flour to make a coffin and mold it into a pot" -- but because many of the ingredients called for in the recipes are not easily available today: rosewater, for example, or sandalwood or marrow. So you have to make the rosewater before you can make the food that the rosewater goes into. Too many steps.

I've discovered similar problems with gluten-free recipes. The best example is pies that require graham-cracker crusts. The whole point of graham-cracker crusts is that they take very little work: you pulverize graham crackers, add butter and sugar, and mush into the bottom and sides of a pie plate. Simple, right? No cutting in the butter, no chilling for hours. But if you have to first make the graham crackers, and then crush them, etc., all of the simplicity has fled the scene. I can't get over the injustice inherent in making a food just for the purpose of destroying it.

The result of this moral conundrum is that JFG has not had any pies with graham cracker crusts. Yes, I could make him crust-less cheese cake, but what's the point? That would be a very sad, saggy little cheese cake, naked -- almost like a head when you take off the toupee.

Eureka! The absence of graham cracker crusts shall cease! Kinnkinnick Foods, which also makes some awesome gluten-free pizza crusts, just introduced S'moreables Gluten Free Graham Style Crackers ™. They look slightly different from glutenized graham crackers, smaller and a little thicker, but they taste darned close to the real thing. I haven't run them by the JFG board of professional food-tasters, but I'm hopeful that they can both be used in crusts (as the picture on the back of the box suggests) and be squished up in a bowl of milk.

Naturally, they're more expensive than Faberge eggs. Even so, S'moreables Gluten Free Graham Style Crackers ™ get three rice flours for returning yet another food to our diet.

Celiac myths

2009-08-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

Myth #1: Eliminating wheat from your diet will cause you to lose weight.

Fact: Only for the weak-willed does wheat elimination result in weight loss. The way I see it, with the celiac diagnosis you have three options.

Option A: denial. Continue to eat wheat. Yes, you will lose weight, because every bite you eat will run through your system like a river. Downside? Severe gastro-intestinal distress, exhaustion, dehydration, possible additional conditions like diabetes and cancer.

Option B: defeat. Cut wheat out of your diet, and give up donuts, cake, cookies, bread, pizza, and pasta. Feel sorry for yourself and moan about how restricted your diet is. Become impossible as a dinner guest. Downside? Isn't it evident? You have celiac disease but choose to live like you have leprosy.

Option C: prevail! Practically before JFG's diagnosis was official, I went through my cupboards and refrigerator and threw out anything glutenized -- contaminated or even suspect. Salad dressing, cereal, pasta, oatmeal, syrup, everything. We had a few days of moping.

But I've discovered that a little kitchen ingenuity, and some networking with the gluten-free community, results in being able to make or buy gluten-free versions of almost every kind of sweet and carb-loaded treat JFG loved. But it requires trial and error, and then you must eat the trials, of course. As moral support for your celiac-laden loved one, bien sûr.

And gluten-free food manufacturers often add extra sugar and fat to their foods to compensate for the wheat-ee taste. So gluten-free versions of cookies, for example, have 20% or 30% more calories than the glutenized versions.

Option C, the only real option for people with backbones, is the option we chose. And rather than losing weight, we've had to take care not to gain it. Case in point. Last night, my mother called to tell me that she found a gluten-free bakery in Phoenix, Gluten-Free Creations Bakery. Apparently, colleagues without celiac go there for donuts, cupcakes, muffins and bread. And she was so excited that she read me the menu! How can you lose weight with that kind of provocation?

Unfair.

Would you rather . . .

2009-08-24T19:29:00.000-07:00

When I was in college, we used to drink beer and play a game one might call, "Would you rather?" Since I've discovered local versions of this game almost everywhere I've lived, I don't think we invented it. The object of the game is to make fellow players choose to sleep with one of two physically or morally repulsive people that everyone knows -- usually fat, hairy professors or other students who don't appear to shower or brush their teeth. Each player has to choose and then everyone laughs uproariously at each answer (or makes gagging noises). Then, if you're playing with experts, once someone decides upon one of their two options you up the stakes by forcing them to choose between lots of sex with the preferable partner or 15 minute sex with the less preferable one. Experienced players with a large pool of disgusting options to mix and match can play for a very long time.

Of course, initiating this game during a party of 34-year-old parents and friends will cause that record-scratching sound tv shows use to indicate that someone has made a huge vocal or sartorial faux pas. However, we now play a different game, also called, "Would you rather." This one hints at other types of bodily functions, because to play you must choose between lactose intolerance (no milk, cheese, ice cream) or celiac disease. I've never played the advanced version ("Okay, what if you were just a little lactose intolerant but WAY celiacked out?") but on the amateur level I've noticed a trend. Men tend to prefer celiac disease; women prefer lactose intolerance.

Here's my theory, on the male answer anyway. It's organized around the wild roving band of hoochies fantasy. Men, having organized their entire bachelor diet on cereal, don't want to give up that last, tenuous connection to sexual freedom or compromise their memories of wild and swinging days with soy milk. Women can't stand the thought of giving up bread or pasta, and since they drink a lot less milk, are willing to compromise -- but I haven't figured out why that is. Chemical? Maybe estrogen is made partially from wheat flour.

By the way, I hate plastic baking spoons. They melt.

Let them eat pie

2009-08-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

One challenge of celiac disease is that it complicates most "go-to" food, security food, comfort food. Think about it -- bread, pancakes, cookies, cake, pie -- these are the foods we turn to when life gets difficult or complex. And these foods are still possible for celiacs but they require planning and usually access to a health food store.

For JFG, it's pie. But you have to understand the symbology of pie. There are some foods that make a career in the kitchen. For Julia, souffle. For Emeril, gumbo (or something with crawfish). For men, dead meat cooked to char on the grill. But for most women, cooking reputations are made and broken on pie. And not just the pie -- because, let's face it. The innards of most pies are a form of pudding or fruit with sugar. Republicans can manage that.

No, girls separate from women based on the crust. I remember conversations where other women try (probably out of charitable intention or bonding instinct) to share their crust recipes. Why not just tell me I have hooker shoes on, or hairdresser fingernails, or age-inappropriate hair? Is it really necessary to suggest that I can't make crust?

To be fair, these shared recipes usually have heritage, and come from one of three sources -- The Joy of Cooking, Betty Crocker, or Good Housekeeping. As did mine, a 1968 recipe from my mother's Betty Crocker. It was good, but I broke tradition after a few years of cooking and transitioned to a recipe from Amanda Hesser's Cooking for Mr. Latte: a Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes. In general, it's a book that leans too heavily on creme fraische and haricorts verts. However, awesome pie crust recipe. Part of the secret? Skip the butter. Use butter-flavored crisco.

But no matter how peerless your recipe, wheatless flour is strange enough that simply dumping it into a gluten-requiring recipe creates non-functional playdough. And since JFG's comfort food is pie, it's the first gluten-free backing recipe I tried. First, I tried a mix by the gluten-free messiah, Bob's Red Mill. Like most of their mixes, it tasted like garbonzo beans. I'm not making falafel. I had to eat half a bag of rice chips to forget the flavor. No rice flour -- not edible.

Next, a recipe from gluten-free girl, whom I adore. Her book helped Jesse think through the emotional fallout of the diagnosis, and I appreciate that. Her crust recipe was completely competent, although the taste is a bit over-powering and I had to re-roll it three times because it kept falling apart in my hands. Two rice flours.

Finally, my desperate-to-be-helpful-mum gave me a mix from Gluten-Free Pantry. It's hard to be a woman who makes pie crust from a box, and it was probably harder for my mom to suggest that I was a woman who needs a box. We tried not to look at each other as she handed it to me. However, this mix is great. It holds together better than most gluten-free crusts (which tend to be soft and sticky) as long as you use parchment paper to roll it out. And it tastes good, especially if you add more than the two tablespoons sugar suggested. It bakes evenly and although it's not flaky, JFG will actually eat it (as opposed to eating around it). Four rice flours. Good work, Gluten-Free Pantry.

If I wanted rice, I would have made stir-fry

2009-08-20T21:36:00.001-07:00

There are days when you get home from work, peel your six-inch heels off your swollen feet, and try to think of ways to use the fourteen open bags of frozen vegetables in your freezer. But it's hot, so pasta salad sounds good -- and includes the word salad. Check "healthy eating" off today's to-dos.

Ha! Slightly more difficult with celiac. Fortunately, there are a number of brands of rice and corn pasta, and some of them even taste sort of like pasta (instead of like, well, rice and corn). Some of them even cook like pasta.

Not tonight's. Tonight, we made de Boles spiral pasta. Why? Well, to go with my open, half-used bags of frozen vegetables, I have a series of open, half-used boxes of pasta. I grabbed one that we purchased during early days of celiac, when anything that looked familiar felt good.

Rice pasta's tricky. The instructions say to simmer for five to seven minutes, and I already know from experience that an additional second in the pot causes most rice pastas to disintegrate into pieces of starch that look a little like rice and a little like maggots. But I am a woman worth her salt in the kitchen, so I actually set the timer. Grabbed it at exactly seven minutes.

It disintegrated anyway. Now I remember why we buy other brands. Pieces were so small that I actually thought about calling it rice salad by the time I stirred it gently into vegetables and dressing (balsamic vinegar -- don't trust commercially-produced salad dressings unless they're Newman's, say, "gluten-free" and cost three times as much as gluten-full dressing).

So, de Boles: one bag of rice flour for effort.

The value of complaints

2009-08-20T09:01:00.000-07:00

Last night, my husband and I went to the volunteer "training" for Hood to Coast. The line was very, very long (see photo). When we were done with the actual training, which took about three minutes, we went to find some food.

As others with celiac disease know, deciding to eat at a restaurant can be quite a process. Without celiac, there are basically two decision points:

1. What do you feel like eating?

2. What is reasonably near-by?

Sometimes there's a third, 3. Where are we likely to get in without a wait?, but that's pretty much it. With celiac, there are different points.

1. What do you feel like eating that you can still eat?

2. What restaurants are near-by that we know have gluten-free items on the menu?

3. Which of them have you had negative experiences at -- either because the server/manager was unfamiliar with celiac or gluten, or because they pretended to be knowledgeable but glutenized you anyway?

Last night in Beaverton, we worked through this decision matrix and ended up with two options -- Baha Fresh, which JFG was pretty sure had gluten-free food -- and Chevy's. We love Chevy's, but have had very, very mixed experiences at the two in Portland. First, while they have a gluten-free menu, there is a company policy that servers cannot leave the menu at the table. Instead, you must tell the server what you feel like eating, and she or he tells you if that food is okay. Second, the last time we were there, the server had no idea what celiac or gluten were, and the manager could not find the relevant menu at all. It's a little scary when you can't see the nutritional information in print but must instead rely on what a (relatively disorganized-looking) weekend manager says.

Baha Fresh in Beaverton near the Jo-Ann Fabrics and Borders did not have a gluten-free menu, and the staff behind the counter was of no help whatsoever. We left.

Our other option was Chevy's. Despite a rather problematic experience last visit, we love Chevy's, partly for the salsa and partly for the nostalgia -- we ate there all the time while dating.

Here's what's amazing. We got the same server (the manager). She remembered us, and remembered that we needed gluten-free food. She double-checked the order to be sure she got the gluten-free part correct. Thanks, Megan, for very good service.

For Megan's efforts, Chevy's receives four rice flours out of five. Baha Fresh, of course, gets none.

Is it dusty in here? No, that's just gluten

2009-08-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

I read in Elizabeth Hasselhoff's book that celiacs should not even be in the kitchen when you're cooking food with flour -- the flour gets into the air and can be breathed in. Because I haven't yet identified the line that separates reasonable gluten awareness and glutenphobia, I was skeptical about how much gluten could possibly get in the air while I was cooking. After all, it's not like I take cups of flour and dance around the kitchen -- I get the flour (sedately, I might add) out of the pantry, pour it carefully into the measuring cup, tip the cup into the mixing bowl, roll up the bag and put the flour back into the pantry.

I became a believer in aerated gluten last night. I was baking glutenized banana bread for my office around 6:30 or 7:00 p.m., and the setting sun was shining through my kitchen window and onto the mixing bowl. I poured the flour into the mixing bowl and turned on the mixer. To my surprise, particles of flour immediately took flight, floating around in the air with the gusts of the air conditioning. And not just a few particles -- lots and lots of flour, enough to make the counter dusty.

That's it. No more cooking with flour when my husband's around.

Gluten-free living -- or, a world full of dangerous particles

2009-08-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

Gluten-free living is not for the faint of heart. And while my husband has to take most of the burden -- painful stomach cramps, uncomfortable procedures, restricted eating -- I've become almost as protective of his stomach as he has. It's been a strange journey, and the way I look at food, and at food-related activities and paraphernalia, has shifted slightly. For example:

My cookbooks. I have a delightful array of cookbooks, ranging from the basics (Joy of Cooking) to the bizarre (Death Warmed Over: Funeral Food, Rituals, and Customs from Around the World). I love my cookbooks; in fact, when we travel, I'm more likely to buy a cookbook as a souvenir than almost anything else. They are history, they are culture, they are safe and cozy. Some, I think, I don't ever intend to cook from -- I just like having them around. Post-celiac, however, I look at them like I might look at old currency (the lire, for instance). Interesting anthropologically, but basically useless. And how long do you display interesting but obsolete currency? Not very. It almost always ends up in the sock drawer.
My wooden spoons. My mother cooks with wooden spoons. Her mother cooked with wooden spoons. In an age of silicone baking molds and titanium pots, wooden spoons connect me to my baking heritage. Post-celiac(PC), they are the enemy. Like old towels and sink sponges, they can soak up gluten and contaminate otherwise gluten-free food. I can't bear to part with them, but they force me to choose between my husband's health and nostalgia. He wins, and they have been permanently consigned to a drawer.

Pronunciation

2009-03-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

I wonder why it is that we pronounce Afghanistan with "a" like "apple," but Pakistan with "a" like "awful."

Seeing clearly

2009-03-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

I got contacts last week -- well, contact. I only need one, thank goodness. Aside from nearly giving myself a black eye trying to get it in and out, I'm pretty happy with it. But it begs the question, when did I become so completely consumed with looking younger? And is it weird that the reason I got contact was that I wanted eye-liner to show? That's bizarre.

This month in Elle Magazine, there's a feature highlighting the VERY young assistants, speech-writers and deputies to Barak and Michelle Obama. These are women my age literally at the right hand of the President and First Lady. What am I doing? My dad once said that he thought that I had more promise than anyone in the family. That's saying a lot, I think. And yet, here I am minimally able to handle a low-level position at a barely-ranked college.

I couldn't stand to read the article, even though they were talking about clothes, but I read one small paragraph in which one of the women was noted for her ability to juggle three Blackberries at once. I don't want to even have one Blackberry to juggle. Is that the difference? Instead of spending my time worrying about not being successful enough by 34, I know the right thing to do is to come to terms with being the person that I actually am. It's such a struggle to have two people in my body -- one that wants to be wildly successful and one that is too lazy and fond of quiet nights and being with my husband and family and dog. But person A will always be disappointed in person B, and person B will always feel like she's letting talent go to waste in a way that is non-retrievable.

How successful is enough? Why these existential questions? What DO people say on their deathbed, if they don't say, "I should have spent more time at the office?"

Reward (or, What Goes Around)

2009-02-23T21:48:00.000-08:00

Well, the universe has rewarded me with two very good phonathon nights. That's something.

Bad week

2009-02-22T18:23:00.000-08:00

In my life, I've had days or weeks where verything seems to be wrong. These days feel like I've fallen down a black hole and am in danger of simply continuing to fall. I feel like I'm being swallowed up, and that perhaps I'll just need to learn to live at the bottom. At these moments, frequently something (or someone) happens to turn things around. I sure hope that that thing or person turns up soon.

There's something wrong with Murray. He's not using his back legs correctly -- for example, he won't jump up on the couch or bed any more and he slips on the hardwood floors. We took him to the vet who thought that the problem was that he had gas in his stomach. He's not running around like he usually does. I'm terrified that he's losing control of his back legs.

My very first mailing at work went out completely wrong, to the point that we're going to have to mail out a retraction.

This is really minor, but we're going to have to have a gluten-free household.

I don't really have an answer or solution, but I really hope that something good happens soon. I hurt.

Yawning

2009-01-29T20:16:00.000-08:00

Do you ever feel like you can't yawn hard enough to express the level of sleepiness that you are? I think my basic problem is that I am an ambitious person in a lazy body.

Facebook

2009-01-28T19:24:00.001-08:00

Facebook (and other social networking sites) are promoted on the base of lovely virtues -- maintaining friendship, meeting new people, finding new interests, professional networking. Facebook's real virtues are FAR more interesting and beneficial than these, however. Here's how Facebook should advertise:

1. Watch your friends' faces spread! Especially after you haven't seen them for ten years. Then, compare them to your own face OR only upload photoshopped pictures of yourself.

2. Gawk at your friends' ugly children. Feel relieved that you didn't have your own.

3. Wonder if your friends actually have jobs, considering the vast number of postings and photos with which they populate their profiles. Rejoice that you are far superior. And busier. And better employed.

4. Waste time at work, particularly if you can make the argument that you have a responsibility to make social and professional connections as part of your job.

5. Waste more time at work inventing fascinating and suggestive things to enter as your status. Take breaks from actual work to record the fact that you're actually working.

6. Learn more about yourself by taking quizzes about your favorite activities, how much you resemble your astrological sign's profile, your favorite movies. Change your answers to ensure that you appear clever and mysterious.

7. Wrack your brain trying to remember who these people are who are trying to friend you. Regret friending people you actually dislike.

8. Count your number of friends. Check the number of friends your friends have. If they have more than you, wonder who has chosen not to friend you.

9. Invent alibis to prove that the drunk/stoned/partially-dressed person in the photograph that your friend uploaded is not you. Hope that Facebook has some kind of policy against naked photos.

10. Hate the people who have statuses like, "John just got off the airport in Paris!" "Susie is drinking mai tais in Hong Kong!" "Jennifer is spending her paycheck at Prada!" Pretend that they are faking, and are actually wasting time at work inventing fascinating and suggestive things to enter as their statuses.

Seriously, folks. You need more to do.

Resolutions

2009-01-14T20:32:00.001-08:00

I've put this off long enough. It's time to write about my New Year's resolutions, with the hope that committing them to . . . well, the equivalent of paper . . . that I might stick to some. As follows:

1. Write at least one post to this blog per week.
2. Work out at least four times a week, with some time spent on weights; consider signing up for an athletic class at Linfield.
3. Go out to dinner at least one night of each month with friends.
4. Try out one new technology each month.
5. Eat more fruit and vegetables.
6. Find a drink.
7. Stand up straight.
8. Become less consumed with challenges, problems and criticisms; also, assume less that all problems are my fault.

But here's the question. If I get to December 31, 2009 and I have completed each of these goals, will I be a different person? At what point in time will I feel that I'm accomplished enough to safely get older?

The day I abandon Victoria Beckham

2009-01-04T21:34:00.001-08:00

Okay, not really. I would never abandon Victoria Beckham as my fashion idol. But she now has the hair I had 12 years ago. Done that.

But we just saw Transporter 3, and while the female character was WORTHLESS plot-wise, she had amazing hair. Cut, color, everything. While I wait for VB to catch up, this is the hair I have to have.

Things I learned at my local nail salon

2009-01-03T11:23:00.001-08:00

Things I learned at the local nail salon:

1. Choosing a nail salon where the staff speaks a language that is not your primary language is critical. Not only are you not forced into a conversation you're too tired to have, you don't feel humiliated when the technician shouts to her colleague, "Hey! This woman has Hobbit feet!" However, when she shakes her head and repairs to the supply room for special tools, you get the idea.

2. It's apparently possible to have a tense ass. The hydrolic massage chair, which made a noise like a steam engine every twenty seconds, had a "butt" setting that repeatedly lifted and dropped me about three inches throughout the pedicure. It also squeezed from side to side. Not sure what this accomplished.

3. The massage chair requires unsually good timing and balance if you want to also drink your coffee.

4. It's possible to want your face to look as good as your feet.

Reflections on a year

2008-12-31T18:12:00.000-08:00

Three weeks ago, a surgeon removed my right ovary and fallopian tube in an effort to resolve ongoing pelvic pain that began six months ago when he removed several ovarian cysts from both ovaries.

So, here we are. Slightly older, less one ovary and fallopian tube, facing a year in which I have a lot of vague desires but not much direction.

I'm trying to figure out what it means to only have one ovary at 34. I frequently ask Intro to Gender Studies classes what exactly makes someone a woman, and they usually respond by listing primary or secondary sexual characteristics, including ovaries, breasts, etc. I follow up with the question, what about women who have hysterectomies? Or double mastectomies? Are they no longer women? Students answer no, these are still women. So, what makes a woman? At this point, they're usually stumped, and I admit that this is one of those questions to which I don't have a real answer (much to my students' frustration). And while:

a) I don't think that I've based my personal subjectivity on my gender identity, nor
b) do I think that my gender identity is based on pieces of matter I've never seen -- my ovaries, for example -- or reproductive capacity I don't intend to use, and while
c) I realize that my reproductive capacity hasn't really changed anyway,

I can't shake the feeling that something important, something critical to my sexuality, has been lost. And it's strange that I use the word lost, too. It mis-behaved. Given plenty of opportunity to straighten up and fly right, my ovary continued to maliciously produce hemorrhagic cysts. I didn't lose it, like a puppy or a friend, I conciously approved its removal. And I don't want it back, but I guess that I expect hair to start growing on my chin. Or strange upper-torso muscle development. Or my voice to sink an octave. I have this weird feeling that people look at me and some kind of shine is missing. Reproductive shine? What a weird idea for someone who knows a lot better.

It doesn't help that thirty-four seems somehow much older than 33 -- perhaps because it's only one year away from 35, which is half-way to 40, which is the end of life. Even if I accept that 40-year-olds can be attractive, a fact about which I still feel hesitant, I only have six years left. Six years, and half the original equipment.

Fabulous jobs continued

2008-10-09T13:47:00.000-07:00

Tim Gunn! Did I mention Tim Gunn, whose job it is to be the fairy godmother of the fashion nouveau? What a fantastic job that would be -- to swoop in, dispense benevolent advice and encouragement, and swoop out again?

Fabulous jobs

2008-10-08T16:20:00.001-07:00

Travel and food writer (like the Sterns, who appear weekly on The Splendid Table and whose main vocation seems to be traveling around the US and eating)

French maid to royalty (see maid in Braveheart -- skill sets seem to include hair styling, wardrobe-arranging and gossiping, French language skills a plus)

The person who scouts locations for television shows and films

The guy I saw on the History Channel who researches dragon myths and their relationship to dinosaur fossils

Tour guide for Americans in other, more interesting countries

Diplomat to some country we're not at war with, considering war with, or recovering from war with . . . act quickly, these jobs are rapidly drying up

Professional shopper (ha! I'm already doing this job for free!)

Out-duction Project Officer (I think this means that your job is canceling things; seems like you could phone that in)

Docent of any decent museum, although this requires the existence of another less fun job that pays well

Princesses

2008-10-06T21:31:00.000-07:00

Am I insane? Is wanting to be fabulous an older, sadder version of the desire to wake up at 16 and be a princess? Do I just want to wake up (or get the right job, etc.) as Victoria Beckham?

Routines

2008-10-06T17:49:00.000-07:00

My routines at 30:

Morning: shower and wash hair with whatever shampoo seems to offer the hope of volume; brush teeth; flip hair upside down and blow dry while attempting to keep bangs from standing straight up and avoiding passing out from blood rushing to head; lip liner and lipstick; maybe eyeliner, maybe not. Go. Fifteen minutes.
Evening: clean face with make-up remover wipes; brush teeth; take medicine. Bed. Five minutes.

My routines at 33:

Morning: clean face with microderm abrasion wipes; brush teeth; apply hydroquinone to erase dark skin spots; slather on moisturizer with sunscreen; frost the layer cake with foundation; lip liner, eye liner, mascara; mousse hair and flip upside down to dry but not too much; stand up and avoid passing out from blood rushing away from head; continue to blow-dry on low and straighten with flat brush (okay, this is one of the good skills age has brought); smooth hair with expensive hair-smoothing stuff; perfume; wash hands which now smell like a very clean brothel. Go. Twenty minutes.
Evening: remove make-up with make-up remover; clean face with microderm abrasion wipes; moisturize because I read that failing to moisturize at night means that your skin will sag into folds as you sleep, especially if you sleep on your face; apply hydroquonine and anti-acne medicine; brush teeth; brush teeth again with special enamel-hardening leave-in toothpaste; gag; take medicine; rub anti-cellulite cream on legs; put in nightguard. Wash hands, which now smell like a hospital. Bed. Twenty minutes.

I'm losing twenty-five minutes a day. That's 152 hours a year. And yet, in the scheme of personal obsessions, I'm skipping so much -- hair masks, leave-in conditioners, regular foot-sanding, facial masks, blackhead extractions, exfoliating creams, eye creams, botox, peels, oxygenating facials, eyelash permanents, eyebrow tints, whitening tooth bleaching. But the time those would all take force me to a decision. Do I want to be a well-rounded, accomplished person with skin like indoor-outdoor carpeting and dark eye-circles, or a smooth and shiny person with the intellectual curiosity and skill set of a kitchen sponge?

Ways of coping

2008-10-04T22:41:00.001-07:00

I've tried all variety of methods of coping with my third-life crisis, which I think has been coming on for some time now. I've switched jobs a couple of times. I experiment endlessly with appearance believing, despite an overwhleming number of women's studies graduate degrees that a Louise Brooks' bob will turn me into an inscrutable French icon. I've sputtered at developing skills from languages to sewing clothes. I've made vague lists of the things to which I aspire. I've read books about the people who seem to have fabulous lives, and books about people who've had appalling lives (to make me grateful for my current life). I shop as if fabulous is sold at Nordstroms . . . occasionally to excess (bless my husband for his patience and earning potential). I cry. I envy friends, like my friend Modi who trained at Parsons and then in Paris and now sells her own clothing line in Portland. Or my friend Susie, who works for Nike in Shanghai. And I feel rotten the whole time, because of course my life is fabulous compared to 99.9% of all people who have ever lived. And then I start the cycle over again.

And recently, following the births of friends' children and my neices, I began to want to have a baby. I think that part of my interest in a child came from a sense that motherhood would essentially remove me from the pressure for fabulousness. Being a mother in itself would be fabulous and, conversely, everyone knows mothers can't be fabulous because they are busy being mothers (my own beautiful and fabulous mother excepted, of course). It's contradictory, I know, but either way I'd be safe and could stop worrying about it.

I would still like a baby. But health problems, and a lack of motivation to make myself into a science experiment or expose myself to the wrenching rollercoaster of adoption, make this unlikely. And so here I am, seeking fabulousness. The will is strong, but the leadership weak.

On another note, I am distressed about the significant number of blogs about third-life crises that have one, maybe two entries. And no meaningful advice. I hope that this is because it's a feeling that passes so quickly that one needs only the time span of a couple of posts before recovering completely, but I fear that 1) these people are dead, or more likely 2) that the pathology is so absorbing that they eventually can no longer bring themselves to type.

What I learned while waxing my legs

2008-10-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

Since I have to get older, I decided that I should at the very least take advantage of some of the privileges -- well, not privileges, exactly, but interesting experiences and silly indulgences.

So, instead of shaving (which, gifted as I am with ridiculously-quick growing hair and thin skin, has never worked well) I waxed my own legs. I've had my legs waxed at salons a couple of times before, but it always seems a little condescending to expect someone else to deal with my extraneous hair growth. Yuck. Here's what I learned from tonight's in-house experiment.

1. The reason that people go to salons to wax their legs is not the soft music, aromatic lotions, tiny water features, and high-quality supplies. The reason that people go to salons to wax their legs is that someone else has to deal with the mess. By the end of the evening, my legs were relatively smooth (more on that later), but I had wax on my hands, my shirt, the floor, the counter, the microwave, all of the spreading sticks that came with the kit, my feet, and my dog. Except for the slightly rewarding feeling of having accomplished this myself and the relief of not having to carry on a meaningless conversation with the attendant, I would pay $40 to spare myself the oily shower. And probably a week of cleaning the counter.

2. I am not as flexible as I used to be. You try to spread hot wax on the back of your calf without dripping any on the floor and while paying attention to the direction of hair growth. It is astonishingly complicated. This is a task that should be featured on Cirque du Soleil.

3. Waxing doesn't hurt that much. Any real woman can stand the pain.

4. If you wax your calves and it takes all twenty paper strips, it's okay to skip your thighs. Once you're over 30, your skirts don't show that part of your leg anyway.

5. It's best to do these things while your husband is out of town. He doesn't need to see this -- it involves just enough complexity and equipment that he'll try to surpervise. Or at least provide color commentary.

6. Hair on your legs grows at different rates. I'm not sure if you're supposed to wax, wait a week for the rest of the hair to grow and wax again, but I hate to have to block off another four hours so soon.

By the way, I remembered a couple more fabulous women around my age -- the divine Heidi Klum, of course. And Reese Witherspoon, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. I'm not sure what their existence proves, though. That I'm shirking?

Things I love

2008-10-02T20:16:00.000-07:00

I love . . .

Rescue Beauty nail polish -- it comes in great colors and stays and stays
Zappos -- you can't beat free shipping and the customer service is amazing
Nars lip pencil -- it's sheer and goes well under lipstick
The King Arthur Flour catalog -- great recipes and kitchen stuff you didn't know you needed
My Steve Madden purse -- the leather is beautiful and I love the lock
In Style magazine, both the paper version and the website -- especially the new Deals and Steals section
The petit scones at Starbucks
Diamond-tipped tweezers
Healthy Choice smoked chicken paninis, which are only 310 calories and close enough to real bread
My stylist, Emma, who gives me haircuts that don't come with bad hair days
Burt's Bees Mama Bee belly butter -- probably good for pregnant stomachs but great for feet
Kensie and Kensie Girl for pretty clothes at good prices
Jessica Simpson shoes -- fabulous, shiny platform and 1940's heels at prices that allow me to buy more than one pair a year
Half.com -- super-cheap books you can't find elsewhere
The Orkney Islands
Abba
Anthropologie, although with each year the prices get more and more out of reach
Shabby-chic Parisian apartment style interior design, although until I can afford the apartment I will probably never buy
WWII advertising posters
H & M, the Ikea of clothing stores
My Costco treadmill, believe it or not
Scrabble, mostly because I almost always win
Movies that take place in Europe (current favs include In Bruge and Mama mia)
Tim Gunn, although I hate the Tim-Gunn-like androids on other design reality shows
Great black, pointy-toe knee-high boots
Venice
Tandoori anything
Skinny black jeans from Alloy
My mom's banana bread recipe

Hmmmm. That wasn't as cathartic as I thought.

Terror

2008-10-02T10:30:00.001-07:00

But, my god, what if you reach the age of 75 and realize that you under-shot?

My so-called fabulous life

2008-10-02T07:41:00.000-07:00

My dentist appointment was just canceled. And while that's a relief, it also reminds me of one of the greatest contributing factors to my third-life crisis -- teeth suddenly in need of drastic repair, despite years of flossing and brushing and regular teeth-cleaning. I don't have many recurring nightmares, but the one that I have fairly regularly is of my teeth starting to fall out. In the dream, one starts to wiggle, and gets worse and worse until I have to pull it out. Then the next one starts. And this year (in real life) I started clenching and grinding my teeth so severly while I slept that some have started to feel a little loose. It's as close to living a nightmare as I have ever experienced. So now, I wear a nightguard to sleep, which is like trying to sleep with those flouride trays they use at the dentist's office. It's hard plastic, and I have a difficult time breathing with it in.

Nightguards interfere significantly with the fabulous, sexy, breezy image you want to have of yourself. They are not sexy, nor fabulous, nor even comfortable. And to keep the spit in, you have to make a sucking sound every few minutes. And it forces to you to remember that there is a teeny, tiny war going on in your mouth, wherein your top teeth have to be protected from your bottom teeth.

All of that is to illustrate how far away my current life seems from the one I think I want . . . or need . . . to have. The problem is that I'm scared. And shy. And really underwhelmed with the skills I have. You know that question, "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" My immediate response is, "That's asinine and fantastical. You CAN fail. Pretending you can't is for six-year-olds and oil tycoons." I just finished The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. He explores the meaning of this question in Iceland, where basic necessities like health insurance and shelter are guaranteed by the government. Perhaps there you can safely fail, he argues, and so attempt things not in your immediate repertoire of skills and job experience. But then you have to live in Iceland.

2008-09-30T20:41:00.000-07:00

All of this seems to have been precipitated by my 33rd birthday. Twenty-five didn't bother me, nor did 30 (really). But at 33 -- only seven years, as it is from 40 -- I suddenly feel as though I'm at the beginning of the end.

Part of this is because of a series of superficial health problems this year. Cosmetic tooth problems. The sudden appearance of sun damage on my face. Arm skin that looks a bit like my mom's. The occasional grey hair. The birth of the next generation of my family. And perhaps, a bit, the aging of my parents. Working on a college campus doesn't help either, surrounded by people who do not remember the Challenger explosion and look as though I'm speaking about the sacking of Rome when I mention it. Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall? Sure -- just about the same time that Moses retrieved the tablets. I am no longer the precocious young professional. Instead, I'm the instructor who makes jokes about her age and surprises students by having a Flickr account.

I try very hard to believe that life -- or, at the very least, beauty -- does not end at 33. I eagerly read columnists who argue that women look and feel their best in their 30s. I am deeply relieved at the continuing sexiness of Halle Berry, and Gwenyth Paltrow, and . . . oh, god, I can't think of anyone else over 30 who doesn't seem irretrievably old. However, these arguments are always bookended by ads for eye creams or microderm abrasion products, minimizing their power to reassure. Oh, and Gwenyth Paltrow keeps that figure by exercising an hour and 45 minutes a day.

Add to this basic abilities that atrophy with age. My brain will no longer absorb another language as easily, so the possibility of learning French has probably passed. I have more bone and strength than I will ever have , and since it has avoided me by to date sudden future athletic ability is unlikely. I am probably at maximum technical ability and will, forthwith, be less adept and at the bleeding, cool edge of technology than I am now (or worse, than I was a few years ago).

Therefore, if my body has crossed some kind of age longitude, by extension my life is rushing by. I've lost my ability to achieve success by sheer charm, energy and showing up in clean clothes, so if there are things that I want to have in life I'd better achieve them soon. Hence, the feeling of desperation. If I'm at the height of my powers now and haven't achieved the heretofore mentioned fabulous life I want, is the possibility totally gone? Can I only have the fabulous and slightly tragic life of an older woman? Can I only be preternaturally preserved, as MSN calls Pamela Anderson and Demi Moore, and no longer simply fantastic -- at least, without airbrushing?

I bought skin firming cream, by the way. And home microderm abrasion products. And, for the first time in years, foundation. And a very, very expensive purse.

2008-09-29T19:39:00.000-07:00

The name of this blog is "third-of-a-life crisis." I am 33 years old, and I am not questioning my purpose on earth. In fact, I think that I have a fairly purposeful life -- I have a good job with upwardly-mobile potential at a small college (which I'll refer to as Winfield to avoid having my comments picked up by Google Alerts) where my colleagues largely appreciate me, I chair the board at a local domestic violence agency where people thank me for my work a lot, I have a wonderful, loving husband, good hobbies, generous parents, friends, and a very silly dog.

I am sort of ashamed to admit that I have a problem unique to relatively bright (but not noticeably brilliant) upper middle class white people -- an almost paralyzing fear of the possibility of regret and unfulfilled potential. Not that I know what I want to do or should be doing. I am just scared of not doing the unidentified excited, thrilling, fulfilling things I could have done.

Pathetic, isn't it? But the feeling is almost desperate. I want to have the kind of life that normal people envy. I want to be fabulous and smart and skilled; I want to be daring and brave and talented; I want to be meaningful and valued and irreplaceable. And yet I am completely terrified to try to be any of these things. Conversely, I don't want to smother myself with work. I don't want to be responsible for organizations of any scale. I am compulsively risk adverse. I have one central skill which I exercise involuntarily and at the worst moments -- convincing myself that the little reasons a particular plan for greatness might fail are overwhelming enough to fail to try.

Things I like doing:

Traveling
Reading about European history
Knitting
Looking at the "undressed" column on MSN
Thumbing through fashion magazines trying to figure out what my look is and worrying about whether or not I'm too old
Shopping (por supuesto)
Playing with my dog
Napping

Hmmmm. What do you suppose we call this? It's not a napolean complex . . . I aspire to a napolean complex . . .