Happy Gluten-Free-versary To Me

One year.

One year without (knowingly) having gluten.

And I expect those vegan-like superpowers (Scott Pilgrim!) to kick in any day now.  Aaaaaaany day now.

Last year was the last time I had homemade no-knead bread and cheese ravioli as my "last meal".

In a year, I have not ONCE eaten anything from a McDonald's, Burger King, Culvers, Taco Bell, White Castle, Panera Bread, Subway, KFC, Popeye's Chicken.  No gyros (the meat involves breadcrumbs).  No fast food fries (except Five Guys) since they are usually cooked in the same oil as wheat products.  For the first time in my life I've had to send food back to the kitchen uneaten because there was bread or pasta in there somewhere.  And as much as I tried to deny my problems were "just wheat" and not gluten, I've also figured out the problem IS gluten and I can only drink totally gluten-free beers.  No paczki were had by me this year.

For some people, yes, it is fad.  But no one does it 24-7 on a whim.  Trust me.

I still have to ask my mother in law to cook the stuffing outside the turkey this year.  I would guess for awhile still, I will dread a lot of parties and gatherings (outside the family) that have to do with food, because it means I have to bring my own (usually).  I'll continue to bow out of some work events and gatherings because there just won't be a single thing I can eat there.  I will continue to live in mortal fear of the shared kitchen area at work on mornings where someone brings in bagels (seriously... engineers are NOT a tidy lot and the breadcrumbs get EVERYWHERE).

But I have learned other things.  Good things.

I can now (thanks to a rice cooker) cook rice and make an awesome risotto.  I can make a gluten-free pie crust.  In home cooking, I can sub for most gluten-ingredients and stay happy.

It has very much been a love/hate year with food.  I'm trying to lean more back towards love.  And it will continue to be difficult, but hopefully, I'll come around.

Little Miss Cross-Contamination Detector (And when "gluten-free" ain't so gluten-free)

It's a picture of me!  Little Miss Cross-Contamination Detector!  Complete with a typical hive breakout after I have ingested gluten!

Probably the most frustraiting thing about being gluten-free for medical reasons is having to find out, the hard way, when things are not really gluten-free.

In the past few weeks I've had allergic reactions (and as you can see by the picture, this means a fun breakout of hives all over) to canned beans, pine nuts, rice, and "gluten-free" soup.  All things that should be fine, but were not.

Cross-contamination.

It doesn't take much to impact someone who is sensative to those items.  We've all heard stories on the news about some people's reactions to peanut allergies that sadly, result in death.  It's not typical for celiacs or adult-onset wheat allergy folks like myself to have a reaction that drastic, but once you start saying the word "allergy" some people can get really scared about serving you anything.  Before our last trip to Vegas I was researching food options and I contacted one place that was on our bucket list for Vegas, Hot 'N' Juicy Crawfish.  I just wanted to know if they had any soy sauce or wheat in their seasoning and I gave a list of usual things that might cause a problem.  The email response I got?  "Maybe you better not eat here."

Thankfully I found the Las Vegas celiac group and someone there confirmed that really, the place was fine for anyone with problems with wheat.  And we did eat there, and I had no problems afterwards.

But a couple of weeks ago I met a friend for lunch and I ordered two things off their "gluten-free" menu - soup and a salad.  And when I ordered I did also mention I had a wheat allergy and asked if they could ask the kitchen staff to be careful.  I got my salad and started picking it apart, and promptly found a piece of pasta in the salad (they place has small tube pasta in some of their salads).  I brought it back to the servers, they apoligized, and then they brought me a fresh salad.  But I still ended up getting sick, and since then I've not been able to get a response from them if they use a dedicated pot for their "gluten-free" soup - I suspect they do not, and that was enough cross-contamination to have me in misery for a couple of days.

I understand the risks in eating out.  There are places that are usually fine - a bunless burger from Five Guys when you ask them to please put on new gloves before handling your burger, salads from Wendy's (all their croutons are in packages), my local Jimmy Johns will make me a sandwich on a clean surface and take all meats/cheeses from the bottom of the stack of meats so they aren't covered with crumbs.  I can eat at our local taco place if I get a tostada (whenever I go they are also usually heating bread for tortas on their flat-top grill which means even corn tortillas are out, and their toastadas are fried offsite by the tortilla makers in oil used only for tortilla chips and toastadas) and one of the meat options that is also not heated up on the grilltop.

Cross-contamination can also come early in the process... in the processing of raw ingredients.  That canister of cornmeal you have in the cabinet?  Guess what, it's not gluten-free.  They also process wheat flour, and it is enough to contaminate the cornmeal. I've pretty much given up on dried lentils since the ones I find always, ALWAYS, also have a grain of wheat in the bag.  One time I didn't look before I added them to a chili, and then a wheat grain bobbed to the surface.  I had to throw out 10 pounds of chili.

And a lot of places now will have a "No Gluten Ingredients Used" disclaimer on their product.  Which is NOT the same as gluten-free.  You can use the cornmeal from the example above - cornmeal on its own does not contain gluten - but if it is already cross-contaminated, you're going to have problems.  And I've come to learn that tricky statement usually always means it really does contain enough trace gluten to cause problems.

All that said... gluten-free is still not something to be totally scared of.  I do not maintain a wheat-free kitchen, or household.  I will cook and serve regular pasta to my husband, I keep fluffy white wheat bread on hand so he can have sandwiches and toast (I did have to give up the toaster to his wheat toast and if I want toast, it's broiler city for me), he'll eat fast food sandwiches.  If I have a sauce for the pasta, I'll put some aside so my hubby can serve himself from that dish (he's a smoosher of pasta sauce into his pasta and he always forgets and uses the spoon he's using to serve himself and then flops it right back into the container without thinking).  I try to keep a side of the sink clean so if he's had bread or pasta he can put his dishes right in there and they will be scrubbed before they go into the dishwasher.  If wheat bread was used in any form, the counters get wiped down when I am cleaning the kitchen.  There is no "X second rule" in our house - if it touches the ground, it goes in the garbage.  And I haven't had a problem in MONTHS from anything within my house (well, that wasn't a contaminated ingredient).

It's not that hard to at least make a good-effort to do gluten-free when you're not in a gluten-free environment.  It just takes some work.

Why Foodies Should Care About Wheat/Gluten Food Labeling.

http://www.1in133.org/

Wheat and Gluten are hot topics when it comes to food.  Yeah, it is a fad.  But for some of us, it is more serious.

I avoid some of the gluten-free events at the local Whole Paycheck simply because I'm not even-tempered enough to not have stabby thoughts overhearing conversations of people who are gluten-free as a fad, people who can fall off the wagon without a lot of ill effects.

You're making it harder for the world to take those of us who CAN NOT have wheat or gluten a lot harder.

In the gluten-free world, there was recently a kerfuffle over an idiot cook who posted on his Facebook page that he served regular pasta to people and told them it was "gluten-free".  And yes, for people who do it as a fad, they may not notice.  Do that to me?  I'd be sick for days.

Wheat/gluten allergies and celiac tend to fall somewhere between the extremes of peanut allergies and general food intolerance.  Most of us are not going to die if we accidentially have some exposure to wheat, but there is a reason we avoid the stuff.  I don't need to feel like I have hundreds of tiny mosquito bites on my hands (one thing that happens to me after I have wheat).  It does not kill me, but it is damned uncomfortable.

I've been doing this since September of last year.  And although I read labels and do my best... I have a reaction to something almost every week.  Flour is not always clearly labeled on food.  If the people making a product are lax with their vendors, they might be getting spices that are "stretched" with flour.  I have huge problems with candies that don't contain wheat but are also processed on the same equipment as candies with wheat ingredients.  I have two stainless steel pots that I can no longer use for myself since they have pretty much only been used to cook pasta for the past 15 years.

I would really, really like the FDA to step up and set some guidelines for gluten-free labeling.  It's not hard to figure out if something is gluten-free.  If you, as a producer, know all the sources and you know how your product is produced, it's not hard to determine if it is gluten-free or not.  If it is?  Great.  If it's not?  I really would rather know something is NOT safe even if it means I can no longer eat it.

Trader Joes used to be a favorite store of mine.  Not so much anymore.  To the fad gluten-free people or those who do not totally understand, it looks like they have a lot of gluten-free products because they stick a "no gluten ingredients" label on every product that they can.  Well, good, you didn't use wheat flour.  But did anyone make sure there were no grains of wheat in the lentils used to make this?  (Wheat grains in dried lentils happen)  Was this soup cooked in a pot that is also used to cook a soup with wheat noodles?  Are the sources of cornmeal and oats for this gluten-free?  (Those are two things notorious for getting contaminated during processing)  "No gluten ingredients" does not always mean gluten-free.  And labeling like that is NOT helping.

I just want food to be labeled as clearly as for other allergens.  And you should want it to.  Unless you're cooking totally from scratch, there are things in your food that they are not telling you about.  And it should make you mad, too.