When people find out I'm on a gluten-free diet, I'm always asked the same question: "What in the world do you eat?" They cannot conceive of a life without bread. The whole culture is based on bread as a part of every meal. As a native Southern U.S.-born person, I can tell you that this is not a part of Southern traditional cooking; however, it is the basis of the fast food industry as well as the cuisine of many ethnic groups immigrating to the Northern U.S. When I lived In Western New York while my father was receiving cancer check-ups, I learned that natives of Buffalo, especially the German and Polish immigrants, ate danishes, cakes, and sweets every day, while in the South, we ate vegetables, starches, and meats, but very little bread, unless it was cornbread.
When I first decided to take my body off of gluten, I made myself a list of all the things I could still eat, and I was amazed. Steak, chicken, bacon, pork chops, shrimp, trout, catfish, crawfish, salmon, talapia, tacos, cheeses, yogurt, chili, eggs, rice, refried beans, pinto beans, black-eyed peas, French fries, creamed potatoes, potato salad, ambrosia, Coca-Cola salad, hamburger patty, tuna stuffed tomatoes . . . . the list was long, and I added to it every day. At that point, I began looking for ways to reinvent meals. The first thing I had to do when I went gluten free was to end, forever, any visits to fast food restaurants. The preservatives, mysterious ingredients, and unhealthy additives are reason enough never to eat most fast food again. Tests on chicken nuggets at various fast-food joints have turned up bizarre ingredients such as pig lips, intestines, and animal hair. I learned to cook when my brother had a heart transplant. We reinvented meals using healthy oils. One thing we discovered is that we could make nearly everything worthwhile in a skillet, and it took less time than a wait for a "fast" meal at a restaurant drive-through.
Cooking is a life skill. You just have to learn it. It's like riding a bike, driving a car, or learning to do the laundry. Without this skill, we are at the mercy of an onslaught of preservatives, dangerous chemicals, and food substitutes.
As a culture, the U.S. is a massive failure at living a healthy and happy lifestyle. Technology has isolated family members from one another. How many times have you waited for a hair cut or in a doctor's waiting room and watched family members involved in separate online activities or texting significant "others" who are somehow receiving attention while family members sit lost in their own worlds in the same room? Cooking at home creates a sense of unity and camaraderie. It builds relationships. Family time is important, and as a country, we in the U.S. have lost this. Teaching children to cook gives them self-esteem. How many men and women would enjoy the self-reliance cooking imparts? In my family, we eat absolutely no meals out. The money we save goes toward karate lessons, summer camps, kitchen tools, and better quality food. Lesson One, then, is stop depending on strangers to give you what your body needs to thrive.
Native American and Latin cultures gave us the tortilla; the French gave us the crepe. Arabian cultures have their own versions of savory pastries filled with chicken and vegetables. For me tortillas transformed my diet. Once I discovered gluten-free soft, full-flavored tortilla shells, I began filling them with everything. Restaurants make fajitas in an iron skillet. Anyone can do it. It takes all of fifteen minutes to make chopped sirloin or chicken fajitas for an entire family. When I have guests, I make potato salad and fruit salad on the side, especially in summer. The combination of hot and cold fills them up. I top it off with iced tea. I usually make the salads in advance.
What are the benefits of cooking gluten-free? Imagine eating a meal and going to bed without acid reflex, bloating, gas, or pain. Imagine, over time, your body returning to a healthy body weight without retaining water or a host of toxic waste and bloating that mimics serious weight gain. Imagine your old clothes tucked back into your closet fitting you again. Imagine living life without constipation or loose bowels, which many people suffer depending on how their bodies react to gluten accumulations. Imagine eliminating pain from inflammation. Imagine knowing the ingredients in your food, being able to control the calories, the taste, and the quality of the food you ate. These are only a few of the benefits.
When I first decided to take my body off of gluten, I made myself a list of all the things I could still eat, and I was amazed. Steak, chicken, bacon, pork chops, shrimp, trout, catfish, crawfish, salmon, talapia, tacos, cheeses, yogurt, chili, eggs, rice, refried beans, pinto beans, black-eyed peas, French fries, creamed potatoes, potato salad, ambrosia, Coca-Cola salad, hamburger patty, tuna stuffed tomatoes . . . . the list was long, and I added to it every day. At that point, I began looking for ways to reinvent meals. The first thing I had to do when I went gluten free was to end, forever, any visits to fast food restaurants. The preservatives, mysterious ingredients, and unhealthy additives are reason enough never to eat most fast food again. Tests on chicken nuggets at various fast-food joints have turned up bizarre ingredients such as pig lips, intestines, and animal hair. I learned to cook when my brother had a heart transplant. We reinvented meals using healthy oils. One thing we discovered is that we could make nearly everything worthwhile in a skillet, and it took less time than a wait for a "fast" meal at a restaurant drive-through.
Cooking is a life skill. You just have to learn it. It's like riding a bike, driving a car, or learning to do the laundry. Without this skill, we are at the mercy of an onslaught of preservatives, dangerous chemicals, and food substitutes.
As a culture, the U.S. is a massive failure at living a healthy and happy lifestyle. Technology has isolated family members from one another. How many times have you waited for a hair cut or in a doctor's waiting room and watched family members involved in separate online activities or texting significant "others" who are somehow receiving attention while family members sit lost in their own worlds in the same room? Cooking at home creates a sense of unity and camaraderie. It builds relationships. Family time is important, and as a country, we in the U.S. have lost this. Teaching children to cook gives them self-esteem. How many men and women would enjoy the self-reliance cooking imparts? In my family, we eat absolutely no meals out. The money we save goes toward karate lessons, summer camps, kitchen tools, and better quality food. Lesson One, then, is stop depending on strangers to give you what your body needs to thrive.
Native American and Latin cultures gave us the tortilla; the French gave us the crepe. Arabian cultures have their own versions of savory pastries filled with chicken and vegetables. For me tortillas transformed my diet. Once I discovered gluten-free soft, full-flavored tortilla shells, I began filling them with everything. Restaurants make fajitas in an iron skillet. Anyone can do it. It takes all of fifteen minutes to make chopped sirloin or chicken fajitas for an entire family. When I have guests, I make potato salad and fruit salad on the side, especially in summer. The combination of hot and cold fills them up. I top it off with iced tea. I usually make the salads in advance.
What are the benefits of cooking gluten-free? Imagine eating a meal and going to bed without acid reflex, bloating, gas, or pain. Imagine, over time, your body returning to a healthy body weight without retaining water or a host of toxic waste and bloating that mimics serious weight gain. Imagine your old clothes tucked back into your closet fitting you again. Imagine living life without constipation or loose bowels, which many people suffer depending on how their bodies react to gluten accumulations. Imagine eliminating pain from inflammation. Imagine knowing the ingredients in your food, being able to control the calories, the taste, and the quality of the food you ate. These are only a few of the benefits.
July 31, 2013
I love the word deadline. I love the sound it makes as it whooshes past. – Douglas
Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
There is a photographer in Iowa, Mark Hirsch, who photographed the same tree
for 365 days. There is something very loving and methodical in such a commitment.
It reminds me of a long marriage or the way a man will go to the same dead-end job every
day to feed his family or the way a woman will keep putting her kids first and do without
every single thing she needs just to watch her kids grow up with what they want. More
than that, watching the report on the photographer, I learned that things
happen that change your perspective. He had a job and they let him go. They
didn’t need any more print publication photographers, thank you very much.
Next, he had an accident. There had been this tree Hirsch had passed on a rural
road nearly every day. It had always been there. One day after the accident,
the man realized he needed that tree. He needed to stop and photograph it.
He needed to capture it.
The Cherokee believed that a camera snatched your soul and stored it in the box. It
must have sure seemed that way to look at that great square chamber with the
fire pluming out and embers burning into the air, and the image appearing under
water like something from another dimension. Poof! Another soul, gone! In the
old days, developing a photo must have seemed like creation itself. There’s
something to that line of thinking, that a photograph captures the essence of
an object, person, or living thing, maybe even catches that thing or person
showing off its true inner self with its guard down, how it really is all the
time. Even when no one is looking.
I used to think of deadlines as arbitrary dates set by a boss or a blind bureaucratic
organization beyond which, if not observed or adhered to, penalties would be
assessed, heads would roll, jobs would be in jeopardy. Steps would be taken.
I now think of deadlines as points in time when something comes down out of another
dimension, snaps a picture, and serves up the truth. For me, it was a neurological illness.
I discovered that everything I ate was either part of the problem or part of the solution.
That had been true long before I got sick, but now it was a matter of getting well or getting
worse, a choice between living and dying.
I have learned bits of nutrition wisdom in the most unlikely places. At my son's Tang Soo Do
class, the master teacher told me about the healing powers of honey: specifically, he said,
honey attacks bacteria. A woman from a Georgia mountain community shocked her
grandson's Vanderbilt physicians when she applied a honey paste to the boy's bedsores.
The bedsores healed, and the doctors discovered that the honey destroyed the bacteria
in the sores.
I'm on a journey to discover the healing properties of food.
I am cooking my way through a year of decadent gluten-free recipes to prove to myself
that it can be done. These recipes will be my own creation or collaborative efforts with
others. I discovered an organic store on the square in my hometown, Pa Bunk's, and I made
my fourth shopping trip to stock my pantry. My first challenge: To make a tortilla with
buckwheat and brown rice flour. I picked up creamed honey comb and cinnamon
which happens to be made very near my rural home in Chapel Hill, Tennessee, and whole, organic
milk. I have this idea of making crepes out of buckwheat and brown rice flour and stuffing them
with various combinations of food, like salmon and mushrooms.
I'm gathering the ingredients and hunting down recipes while my son licks glutinous,
raw brownie mix from bowl and spoon and watches Master Chef with me. There are
chocolate eclairs all over the screen. I start wondering if I'll be able to make cakes, pastries,
pies, even cookies, out of the gluten-free flours. It will be a matter of trial and error, which
I will record here.
July 29, 2013
The Unexamined Meatloaf . . . .
I am contemplating the prospect of frying a meatloaf. I knew this woman who fried
potato salad. I once thought about frying every food I could think of and calling
the cookbook that accompanied the undertaking Fried Life. I still like that idea, and I
don’t think I have considered all the ambiguity given to the world by the concept of Fried
Life. Like I don’t know what that’s like. A friend of mine in Kentucky is sending me the
recipe for Fried Meatloaf. Writing my way out of a dark place will include cooking my way
through a gluten-free series of tasty and decadent dishes. They don’t have to be low-calorie,
just gluten-less. I have to go gluten free because of the inflammation. I don't wanna talk
about sugar yet, and you can't make me.
Whenever the human body combats illness, it puffs up like a King
Cobra ready to strike at an intruder. Well, mine does, anyhow. When I first
realized I would have to go gluten-free, I thought it would be a bit of a
challenge, until a physician explained that there are all kinds of gluten, and
you just have to pick your poison. More than a challenge, it would be a new way
of thinking about food. A total reinvention. The easiest to tolerate is brown
rice gluten, while the worst is actual wheat. The worst of the worst is yeasty,
doughy sweet breads, donuts, and pizza because of the reaction produced when
the ingredients break down. There’s corn gluten, oat gluten, quinoa gluten.
People react to the various strains differently, but there are some reliable
statements we can make about wheat gluten. It creates mucus in the body. If you
have a cold, pneumonia, or upper respiratory infection don’t eat bread, wheat
pasta, donuts, biscuits, pizza, sandwiches, or foods with monosodium glutenate.
Gluten causes severe bloating, even in people who don’t have celiac disease.
Gluten and yeast are the culprits in irritable bowel syndrome, leaky gut
syndrome, and yeast infections. The list of symptoms for gluten intolerance are
the same as most of the symptoms of MS, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinson’s,
Lyme, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and dozens of other illnesses. Gluten causes some
people neurological symptoms. So, while I am seeking productive use of my time,
something that (preferably) won’t kill me or weaken my body further, I will cook
my way through a system of meal preparation that will reduce inflammation and
hopefully reduce the pain and fatigue I have experienced for fourteen
months.
I panicked when I thought about all the food I could no longer eat. I loved
sandwiches; my favorite was a turkey sandwich on honey wheat bread with feta
cheese and red, ripe tomatoes. The first thing I did was to make a list of
everything I could still eat. That list was much longer than I expected. This
was long before I figured out that wheat flour wasn’t the only flour in town. I
could still eat steak, fish, cheese, tomatoes, hamburger (without the bun),
shrimp, nuts, fruit, vegies, refried beans, rice, hummus, black beans, taco
salad, soups . . . . well, you get the picture. I did without bread for the
better part of seven months, and I lost my so-called “fat,” which, as it turned
out, was a combination of water retention and bloating caused by residual yeast
and gluten in my gut.
Once I gave up the average American death diet, I discovered a restaurant and grocery
on the square in my hometown, Pa Bunk’s. They make a great cup of coffee, but what I
really enjoy is going back into the store behind the restaurant. The place has a scuffed,
wood floor and old-fashioned, tall store racks that run deep, cavernous enough for
kids to get lost in, and lighted cold storage units with everything from natural
cacao beans to unpasteurized dairy milk to almond flour. I found entire tubs of
cocoa butter and little cubes of goat cheese. I discovered food. Real food. Even
though I had been cooking many things from scratch, I was still hung up on
white, refined flour, boxed dinners with tons of preservatives, cans filled with
mostly sodium and a few vegetables drowning in brine. Walking down the aisles,
I got ideas just from gleaning the natural ingredients. Each time, I would spend
as much as I dared and plan out my next visit. I bought buckwheat for my
experiments to come (crepes, tortillas) and all natural unpasteurized chocolate milk
from Hatcher’s Dairies for my son. I found unpasteurized natural half and half and vowed
to buy it next visit. I also wanted to try cacao beans in Community Coffee I had back home,
and I wanted to sample an all-natural coffee bean. Next time.
When I figured out that food was an adventure I could share with someone special
(like my eight-year-old foodie), changing my diet became a journey into
uncharted territory, and I decided I would write about it. I decided I would
get up every day and make one new gluten-free thing, even if it was a smoothie.
In fact, I had some leftover coconut vanilla milk and made a coffee smoothie.
2 cups coconut vanilla milk
¼ cup fresh brewed coffee
Coffee or café latte Greek yogurt
This is my first recipe and it is gluten free and guilt free. And it is very good.