GF Food Allergy Fest Ticket Giveaway!

I can't believe how stealthily time is creeping toward the Gluten Free Fest in San Diego. With only 3 1/2 weeks leftI think it's about time I book a hotel room and GIVE AWAY SOME TICKETS! Don't you? So here's the deal.

I have 2 full weekend tickets to Living Without Magazine's Gluten-Free Food Allergy Fest.
To enter, all you have to do is comment here or on my Facebook page. I will draw 2 winners at random on Sunday, April 13th, and announce the winners here and on FB. Winners will have one week to message me with their full names if it's not in their comment, and winners' tickets will be waiting for them at will call at the event.

Also check out:
My FB Page
Fest's FB Page
There's a list of speakers and classes on their FB page that you might want to check out.
Comment to win, cause I want to see you there!!!

Holy Project #3

Back from Phoenix, and right back in the kitchen!

I talked to so many great people at the expo, and the experience was awesome! Thank you all. There was one thing I heard quite frequently though, that got me thinking.

Many individuals seemed to be looking for low carb, diabetic friendly, GF foods. I've read that diabetes is commonly associated with Celiac Disease, so this shouldn't have come as a surprise. Coincidentally, I had just began a low carb diet myself. Between a need to undo some of the damage to my waistline after baking constantly, everyday, to finish the first Holy Grail, and having just read Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, low carb seemed like the thing to be. So far the diet has been good to me, and true to form, I'd already started experimenting with recipes. So I made a decision.

I'm already working on The Holy Grail of Gluten Free Holidays, so why not pile on a little more work, take a break from the sugar, and jump into writing a low carb book too? Sounds like a plan to me. I've got crepe wraps in the works at about 5 net carbs each, some great sauces and meat recipes, a lovely low carb cheesecake recipe and tonight, I baked up a marvelous failure. These brownies are definitely not perfect yet, but I still like them.

At least working on this project won't necessitate larger pants.

Five Years a Celiac

Today is the 5 year anniversary of my life as a diagnosed Celiac. It’s also my birthday. It’s also MLK day, and like him, I have a dream, but it’s more about taste equality, and lack of a fear of crumbs, than basic human rights, so I must concede that he earned the day far more than I did. But as I said, it’s my birthday, so perhaps you’ll indulge my slightly less altruistic reminiscence?

Five years ago today, I had a lot of lasts: my last taste of normal pasta, my last, soft nibble of my favorite herbed bread from a local, Alaskan restaurant, my last bite of gluten filled cake, my last night of not worrying whether going to a restaurant was too much like playing Russian roulette. Of course I did end up terribly ill that night. Knowing we were testing for Celiac, I loaded up. I went on one last gluten binge, and I paid dearly for it. I was so sick I didn’t even want the cake by the time it came out. I bloated so acutely that I couldn’t even button my stretchy pants to leave the restaurant with dignity. I was only saved from complete humiliation by a very long shirt. 

Fast forward nearly 5 years to last Friday night. As part of a sort of early celebration we stopped off for dinner at Chili’s while we were out. All of you seasoned Celiacs probably can hear the death knoll already can’t you? Go out on a Friday night? When it’s so busy and kitchens are messiest? Yeah. A smart move it was not. When there was a wait to get in I should have taken it as a sign and turned right around. But did I??? Nope. I was starving. And I had talked with one of the managers of this location before and they had served my well since, though admittedly never at such a busy hour. So in I went, ordered the same dish I always do after confirming it was still on the GF list, requested that kitchen managers be alerted, etc. And just like 5 years before, I found my self in utter agony, desperately unbuttoning previously comfy pants upon which I had assumed the buttons were merely decorative because I had never needed to use them before.

That night was the worst reaction I have ever had in my life. I ended up in the ER before the next morning, having nearly fainted a couple of times from severe dehydration. It felt like a perfect storm of glutening meets horrendous food poisoning, though my trooper of a hubby ate the last half of my meal to be sure and didn’t so much as get gassy, so maybe gluten meets virus? Either that or they supercharge their gluten at Chili's. At any rate, 2-3 days later, I’m not yet tolerating solid foods. They're too painful. There likely won't be cake this year thanks to that, even one of my good, GF ones. (And I had soooo been craving a rum cake! I’m seriously pouting over here.) Instead of cake this year, I just get to dream.

The cake I'm dreaming of today.

Maybe my dream is about human rights, after all. I think it’s a pretty basic human right to expect to be able to eat without fearing for your immediate health, or life, as with anaphylactic reactions. So I’m dreaming of a world where restaurants only publish GF menus when they really have the knowledge, training, space and equipment to actually provide GF foods, whether they're busy or not. I’d vastly prefer 1 or 2 safe options to 15, any one of which might be the next to poison me (related rant here). I’m dreaming of a world safer than 20 ppm for stuff that’s labeled GF. I’m dreaming of better research into cross-reactive foods. I’m dreaming of future birthdays, when I’ll actually get to eat and enjoy the cake.

So maybe it’s not as lofty as MLK’s dream, but it’s mine. 

The Really Empty Carb, or Why I Hate Rice Flour

Just in case you are brand spanking new to the world of gluten free foods, I'm going to tell you something that the rest of us discovered in the first 10 minutes of reading labels/recipes; it's basically all made of rice. White rice flour, brown rice flour, sweet rice flour, brown rice syrup, glutinous rice flour, rice starch, there are seemingly endless permutations of rice, but it's all still mainly rice. The problem is that nutritionally and texturally, not to mention satisfaction and flavor wise, rice in baked goods is the king of suck.

Nutrition has so many pretensions to importance these days that we'd better jump in there first, lest we be accused of only attending to pleasure. Compared to wheat flour, brown rice flour has more carbs, less fiber, more sugar, minimal protein, and far less of most nutrients and minerals, yielding more, emptier carbs per cup than the stuff most fashionably GF people are trying to avoid. This is exactly why the GF diet is NOT synonymous with a low carb diet. Far, far from it. If rice flour substitutes are used, baked goods are even carb-ier, less nutrient dense, and generally offer nutritional nada apart from their lack of gluten, which really, from one angle, is just another thing they don't have apart from carbs. Rice flour epitomizes the empty carb.

Unlike white sugar, rice flour can't even redeem itself aesthetically. Sugar at least tastes good. Rice flour tastes like... Nothing. It has no flavor, unless you happen to keep it around too long, at which point it will taste stale. Before you get excited about the possibility of it taking flavor well, like tofu is supposed to do, try to remember how much of the flavor of a slice of bread comes from the grain itself. This lack of flavor is not an asset, it's a void we seek, and generally fail, to fill. GF store bought breads so often taste like nothing but the excessive amount of yeast in them, even when supplemented with "natural flavor" according to the label.

The last, most obvious deficiency of most commercial GF offerings is texture. Anyone who's had the misfortune to open up a package of Glutino's bread can tell you that GF generally means crumbly, dry, either a sandy or gummy mouthfeel, and stuff that's almost edible when warm, but stiff enough to chip a tooth on once cool. Every one of these characteristics is a direct result of the use of rice flour. Imagine for a moment the texture of cold, plain rice: hard, sticky, dry outside, too chewy inside. This is what they are making bread from. Small wonder that it's nearly all texturally revolting.

Add it all up and you've got baked goods with all the health hazards of white sugar or starch, that have horrid textures, and at best taste like an abundance of yeast, all thanks to our pal, rice flour. You may be asking; if it's so bad, then why do so many companies use it to create their GF offerings? Easy, it's CHEAP. Rice flour's only redeeming quality is of course, the one quality that businesses find most appealing. Figures, huh? But it's not good enough for me, either to eat or to cook with.

For anyone out there who's wondered why I never, ever use rice flour in any of my recipes, now you know. Demand more. Skip the rice.

Food-sanity; Are You Losing It?

All people who are exclusively gluten free in the long term eventually begin to suffer from a very specific set of memory problems. This is a bold claim, I know. But I also know that it is something that as a community we seem determined to throw a sheet over and pretend we can't see it. It's well past time that we all admit to, and finally begin to cope with, this degeneration of vital memory.

If you have been exclusively gluten free for 18 months or more and eaten more than 5-6 typical gluten free breads or baked goods, you are undoubtedly already suffering from some degree of Textural Transience.

Transience, according to Harvard Health Publications, "is the tendency to forget facts or events over time." Textural Transience is a specifically targeted form of transience where all memories of what specific foods should feel like are ultimately obliterated. The most notable food memories attacked are those of breads, cakes, and pizza crusts, which most of us could no longer describe with any accuracy. Textural Transience results from the combined effects of the gluten free diet, and the normal passage of time, on the human memory. All humans experience some degree of memory transience. It is a normal and even beneficial function of the human brain where by unused memories are dumped to make room for new, more relevant experiences. It is only under the influence of exclusive adherence to the GF diet that this normal function turns pernicious.

When we abstain from those evil, gluten laden breads we once loved, the memories of the way they felt, the nuances of texture and flavor which made them so comforting, are no longer being reinforced, which alone can weaken the memories. If gluten free substitutes for that bread are then consumed, we begin to amass those experiences as the newer and more relevant information in our memories. Each consumption of a gluten free substitute furthers the power of memory to favor the relevant, there by specifically targeting and gradually replacing our memories of what real bread ever was. It takes surprisingly few of these gluten free encounters for us to begin to loose our hold on food-reality. In my experience by the 6th new GF experience, there is some weakening of our memories of gluten. By the time we are a year in, we are almost definitely suffering on some level from not only Textural Transience, but often from Flavor Transience as well. Luckily, most of us prove slightly more resilient against the effects of Flavor Transience, since ideas of whether or not things taste pleasing are still generally reinforceable even on the gluten free diet. But over time and with repeated exposure to lousy baked goods, the new GF experiences will target, weaken, and eventually destroy flavor memories as well.

Even further into long term GF diet adherence, we begin to fall prey to an even more insidious threat, that of Suggestibility of Delectation. The vulnerability of human memory to suggestion has been well studied from many different angles. When we are struggling to recall a memory that made only a fleeting impression on us, or that has been weakened as through the effects of Textural Transience, memories of things we have heard or read that relate to what we are struggling to remember can step in to assert themselves as fact in our minds, as if they were actually our own memories or perceptions. Once there is sufficient cumulative damage wreaked upon or memory by Textural and Flavor Transience, we become highly susceptible to the suggestions offered by product advertising and reviews.

Imagine that you have read reviews of a new GF bread online, stating that it's "just like the real thing." You decide to try the bread. As you bite into the bread and begin to chew, you search your memory for what "the real thing" was like. If you are already suffering from Textural Transience, your memories of this will be fuzzy, tinged with doubt, or altogether missing. You will try to think harder, imagining that the memory is just a little rusty, rather than failing, but with nothing else to offer you, your memory will instead throw at you a combination of the newer more relevant experiences (what the GF bread you've had recently has been like) and what you've heard about this product (glowing reviews) and if it is better than at least one other GF bread you've had, you will conclude that, yes indeed, it is like the real thing! Your faulty memory will have not only dulled you perception and ability to compare foods, but it will have deluded you into even ENJOYING what is often an utterly substandard, texturally revolting, aftertaste hiding, doorstop of a loaf of bread.

My fellow Celiacs, join with me in finally admitting that we are losing our food-sanity. If we weren't we would not be seeing glowing reviews and genuine enthusiasm for things like Schar's white bread or shortbread cookies. I've tried both of these recently and through the eyes of someone constantly evaluating her own recipes, I can tell you in no uncertain terms, they are NOT good. Neither has any flavor beyond a slightly stale, dusty flavor to the cookies and that of yeast in the bread, and they both have appalling textures. The bread, touted in a review on amazon as "by far, the best gluten free bread," is brittle and dry, unless toasted, at which point it also becomes hard. The cookies, "just like butter cookies that I used to enjoy,"  according to an Interested Customer, are actually crunchy, uncomfortably crunchy, and prominently feature the unmistakable sandy texture of rice flour. They're like eating a beach, but without the salt. Yet they have enthusiastic fans! In fact, at least one of you out there reading this will balk incredulously at my comments because you are one of them. Case in point. Your memory has been compromised.

When I was first diagnosed, I saw the warning signs in the obviously quacks product reviews, the worst ones always coming from the those on the diet the longest. Accordingly, I tried to shield myself. I remained skeptical. I consciously tasted and critiqued every new food. I baked my own recipes to reverse some of the overwhelming exposure to lousy foods. But I am now nearly 5 years into my gluten free life having intentionally lapsed only once, and no matter how I struggle, my food memories have wasted as well. I do not know what anything tastes like anymore. I no longer have an intimate understanding of the way toast reacts to buttering, or the precise balance of moisture in a good loaf. And I also realize this could easily transform into the complacency with unfortunate food that I so abhorred in others when I was newly diagnosed.

But I will fight it! We all should. I will fight by requiring feedback from gluten eaters with accurate memories before publishing recipes so that I will not propagate the nasty side of the GF diet. I will do all I can to produce a ray of hope to those of us with our memories of amazing cupcakes lingering only as the merest shadow at the back of our minds. You should do your part by being more critical of what they try to feed us. Demand more. "Really good for gluten free," is not praise, it is a red flag. It tells us that to look upon this food item favorably, we have to used a rigged scale. Beware, and remind yourself that all food, GF and otherwise, is still food. No matter what your medical conditions require you to omit, you should still only admit what is really good, both the truly nourishing and the truly pleasant and satisfying to the palate. Typical GF rice flour concoctions are neither of these.

Don't go 'round the bend! Fight for your food-sanity!