Adventures in Gluten-Free Dining

Seth and I were both grumpy last night.  In fact, it went beyond grumpy, straight into fugly.  We didn’t want the food in the house, we were hungry, our noses were running, and we were both tired.  It was a bad combination.

We decided to see if the sushi place down the street was gluten-free.  After all, sushi is just rice, fish, and seaweed.  And rice is on the good list.  I did a little research though, just in case, and it seems as though white rice is sometimes sprayed with a glutenous substance to add something back into it.  I don’t know.  So you have to ask to make sure you’re not getting glutenous rice.

Which I did.  And let me tell you, explaining about gluten while you have a cold to a non-native English speaker is a little more than confusing, for all parties involved.

We exchanged pleasantries, and then started talking about gluten.

“I just want to make sure that there’s no gluten in sushi,” I said.

“Gloopin?” the restaurant-owner asked, looking confused.

“No, gluten.  G-L-U-T-E-N.  It’s the binding agent in flour.  Sushi shouldn’t be a problem, but I just want to make sure that there’s no cross-contamination.  Like, for example, soy sauce has gluten in it, and sometimes white rice has gluten sprayed on it to prevent it from caking, and there’s also gluten in…” I trailed off, trying to think of the word “tempura.”  It must’ve been a combination of low blood sugar and high runny nose, because I couldn’t get the word out.

“You ask at the sushi bar!  You can see everything,” the owner said, and led us to the sushi bar.  He gave us two menus and retreated to the counter.

We perused the menus,  looking for some maki that could accommodate the migraine food allergies.  The owner must have been watching us, because after five minutes, he came over.  “Did you ask?” he said.

“Well…” Seth and I began, but then we talked to the sushi chef.

“I can’t eat anything with gluten,” I said, “That means nothing with flour.  I know sushi doesn’t contain flour, but I just want to make sure there’s no cross-contamination.”

“Flour?”  The sushi chef asked.  He looked baffled.

“Flour?” The owner looked confused too, then said, “Powder! Do you mean powder?”

Seth and I nodded vigorously.   “Flour is a powdery substance, yes,” we said.

“No, you shouldn’t eat the maki,” the owner said.

“The rice is a powder,” the sushi chef added, “it comes in powder.”

“You’ll eat the sashimi, or anything from this healthy menu, right here,” the owner pulled one of the menus out and flipped to the diet menu, “See?  Steamed.  No rice.  Or the sashimi.”

I made an involuntary face at the thought of eating a sliver of raw fish.  “No, thank you, I was really looking forward to this sushi,” I pointed to the maki.

“No, you should eat from the healthy menu, it’s good,” the owner said.  He smiled.  The sushi chef backed away from the counter, happy I think, to let the owner handle the conversation.  “Or sashimi,” the owner said again.

Seth and I had a conversation with our eyes (we’re getting good at conversing this way).  We decided that I wasn’t going to eat from the healthy menu because I REALLY wanted maki.  So we thanked the owner and left.  And then we went home and made gluten-free pancakes.

Maybe next time, we’ll have this conversation with the restaurant people when I’m not so hungry that I want to gnaw my arm off.  It’ll be a good time.

Booger Brain

I have had a cold for the past week.  It’s pretty gross.  I won’t get into details.  Since I’m not up to blogging, here are some fun things for you:

Today’s Daily Kitteh at Shakesville.  This is what my cats do sometimes.

Furoshiki! This is the technique of using cloth to wrap your packages.  It was the original reusable grocery bag, and I’ll be making use of this for my holiday presents from now on.  Just so you know.

A Recipe for Maple Creams by David Lebovitz.  Maple anything, and I’m there.

Super Stacker 2.  A game.  It’s fun.  The first one is better.

That’s it.

Channeling Bob Barker

I hate kittens.  When I worked at the Humane Society, we had a lot.  In July, high kitten season, we received kittens almost every day.  There was that one day where someone dumped a box containing a mother cat and five kittens in our parking lot before we opened, and the mother chewed a hole through the box, and she and her little 4-week old kittens squeezed out so they could get some fresh air.  The kittens scattered when we pulled into the parking lot, but the mother lounged on the pavement looking disinterested.

There was that other time when someone “donated” two kittens barely more than a few days old, and the executive director chastised me for not being able to magically divine how to take care of wee baby cats.  Like I’m supposed to know without being told that they should be swaddled, and regular milk is bad for them, and you need to wipe their bums to get them to urinate.

We turned the Maternity Ward into the kitten ward, because none of our cats were preggers.  At any given point, there were five cages full of kittens, with several more litters fostered out until they were old enough for adoption, and an entire room devoted to kittens ready to be adopted.

Most of the kittens that came to us were dirty.  They were scared babies with no mothers to clean them, and they had been found in someone’s backyard, or under a shed, or in a bag by the side of the road, or in a dumpster.  They had fleas and ticks, and needed help getting clean, and I was the only one the Cat Department thought could be trusted — the others didn’t know how to handle cats, or were too busy with their multiple duties (everyone does multiple duties in an underfunded animal shelter), or were too careless.  And so it fell to me.

I washed kittens.  For a while, it was my only job, washing kittens.  It’s an arduous process, but an urgent one because kittens can die from blood loss if covered in too many fleas and ticks.

First, I cleaned a new cage for the clean kittens to live in.  Sometimes this involved taking out the dirty kittens and piling them in a big carrier, then cleaning their old cage and lining it with new newspaper and towels.

Then I lined up my supplies by the sink in the vet’s office: all natural shampoo, nail clippers, three clean towels, tweezers, flea comb.  Then I retrieved a dirty little kitten, brown with flea dirt, and clipped its nails so it wouldn’t scratch me so much while I was washing it.  If the kitten had mites in its ears, I would wipe those out with a little saline solution and a cotton ball.  (Just for the record, kittens don’t like that.)  Then the kitten would hang out in a carrier, the first time ever in its life it would be alone, while I filled the sink with about an inch of lukewarm water.  I would take the kitten out again and comb it to get rid of loose fleas, inspect it to pull off any ticks I could find, and then I would start the washing process.

Kitten in left hand, I’d squirt of shampoo in my right and shampoo the kitten’s neck while it was still dry.  Then I’d start the warm water running, gently run the kitten under the water and massage shampoo into the kitten’s fur.  The kitten, of course, would be squealing and crying and trying desperately to claw out of my hand, sometimes hissing at me in a horrible way, even though I was helping.  Then I would quickly shampoo the kitten’s head.  I’d rinse off the rest of the kitten as fast as possible, noting how the water in the bottom of the sink was now red with flea dirt and full of dead fleas, and plop my sopping kitten on a towel.  I would soak up as much water as possible with the first towel, and wipe down the kitten’s head with a damp corner.  Then I’d move the kitten to the second towel for a much more thorough drying.

By this time, the kitten would be exhausted and quiet.  I’d wrap it up like a burrito and massage it, and then give it another once over to pull off any fleas hiding between kitten toes.  Then I would put the third towel in the carrier along with the kitten, and deposit the whole bundle in the clean cage, usually with a rubber glove full of warm water to keep the kitten warm because wet kittens catch cold easily.

Back in the vet’s office, I’d rinse out the sink, wipe the dead bugs down the drain, and start again.  I could wash two or three kittens in an hour, and about eight on a good day when someone else was in to show off the animals up for adoption.

You know how when you bake something like a cake, you’re excited and you want to eat it all right away?  And so you get through a few slices and think, “I could eat this all day!”  And then you have a few more, and then the cake just sits there, and you have a few more slices so it doesn’t go to waste.  And by the time you’re done with the cake, you never want to see cake again?  Yeah — me and kittens.  Spay and neuter your pets, please.  Oh, and that cat that comes to your back porch to be fed?  The one that’s not yours?  If you feed it, it’s yours.  Get it fixed.  If you see a cat that you think is homeless, but don’t feed it?  Get it fixed.  Seriously.

Image courtesy of Tgrwoods6. There are more where this picture came from.

Gluten-Free Failures

The first great tragedy of gluten-free living: my bottle of Bayer aspirin.

I called the Bayer customer service office and reached a representative who was nice and all.  Then she told me that Bayer aspirin products do not contain gluten, but they ARE manufactured in a facility that manufactures products that DO contain gluten, so there’s a slight possibility of cross-contamination.

“Okay,” I said to her, “Thank you, that’s all I needed to know.”

“Do you want to receive coupons?” she asked me.

“No…” I said, “I’m all set.”

“Are you sure?  It’s very easy,” she said.

“Well, thanks, but since I’m allergic to gluten, it wouldn’t make sense for me to buy products that are possibly cross-contaminated.  So no, thank you,” I explained.  I don’t know why I felt the need to explain myself.  It must have been some compulsive, Hermione-like trait.  At least I didn’t launch into a description of the Great Gluten Experiment 2009.

“But they’re NOT cross-contaminated,” she said, “I am required to tell you that they are manufactured in a facility that also manufactures products that contain gluten, but the aspirin doesn’t contain gluten, and it’s a very slim chance that they’re cross-contaminated.”

“Yes, but I’m allergic to gluten, and if there’s even a chance that they’re cross-contaminated, I don’t want to take it,” I said, now regretting that I hadn’t just said goodbye and hung up.

“But we’re held to very strict guidelines by the blah blah blah bureau and we follow those standards exactly,” she told me.

“That’s great,” I said, “thank you, but I just don’t want any coupons.  It wouldn’t make sense for me to receive them since I wouldn’t be buying the product.”

“Well, can I have your name and address for our records please?” She sounded a little miffed.

“No, I’d rather not,” I said, “Unless there are any other Bayer products that aren’t manufactured in a facility that processes medicines that contain gluten.”

“No, all Bayer aspirin products are manufactured in that facility,” she replied.

“Okay, thanks.  Bye now,” I went to hang up.

“You have a good day and thank you for calling Bayer Health Care Associates and we hope you appreciate our…” she said, talking faster and faster in an attempt to get it all in before I hung up.  I didn’t wait to hear the rest.

So there you have it: Bayer contains gluten, which means I can’t ease my aching back today.  C’est la vie.  I think I’ll live.

To Eat or Not to Eat?

Our wonderful French-from-France friend Emma brought Seth some wine and chocolates back from France for his birthday.  Don’t they look luscious?  I wanted to tear into the bag first thing: Migraines?  Who gives a crap?  Now give me some French chocolate!

I didn’t eat any.  They’re sitting in the freezer, waiting for me to be migraine-free.  I’m hoping this will be some time in the not-too-distant future, but you never know.  How long do you think chocolates will keep before they go bad?