A few conclusions after a few weeks of living gluten-free:
1. The hardest things for me to give up were beer and soy sauce (or anything with soy sauce in it).
2. People can appear to be sensitive and aware of the importance of being gluten-free and still be completely clueless. And you still have to let it all go by and not get all worked up about it. Otherwise you'll drive yourself crazy.
3. A corollary: You must always be willing to send something back at a restaurant, or have alternatives on hand at group events. Best idea: call ahead if you need to know whether you have any options, so you can plan accordingly.
4. Garbanzo bean flour smells terrible in wet batter. As bad as wet dog.
5. It's really important to have snacks around that you can eat. There's nothing worse than looking around your kitchen and through your pantry and feeling that all this stuff is off limits.
6. You must always do the due diligence by reading every label, and by knowing what to avoid.
7. We are so lucky to be doing this now, when we can bike to a store two miles away that has all the new flours and substances we are experimenting with.
8. Some people on the internet who are gluten-free seem to enjoy making you use as many different kinds of flour as possible (you know who you are!).
9. It takes a fair amount of baking to figure out what your personal preferences are.
10. I no longer cut in half or two-thirds the amount of leavening a recipe for gluten-free baked goods call for, to adjust for high altitude. I use all the yeast and all the baking powder called for.
11. I expected to find lots of bread recipes using baking powder and baking soda, but instead find that lots of recipes for breads use yeast. Yum!
-rk
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
My inner epidemiologist
A friend of my relatives' wrote to me recently and talked about discovering she was allergic to gluten, and said that doctors had been telling her for so many years that if she would just fix the way she was thinking, her gut problems would disappear. I wrote back and said that is exactly what I have been learning about in reverse: I have heard if you heal your gut, your brain can work the way it is meant to. (Which reveals my own presupposition that there is some kind of bodily intelligence, a seeking out of equilibrium, if we can tap into it.)
Learning that there are neurons in the gut has set off many chains of ideas for me. It feels like things are falling into place about disease and the people I know and what so many of them are suffering from. Some of what I learned came from a book called Dangerous Grains, and an interesting film I screened last fall discussed the possible connections between diet, GI, and developmental issues, such as autism and sensory integration disorder. I have been fascinated by this idea and have been doing some research. I mentioned my "inner epidemiologist" to the friend in a reply and I have been thinking about studying this seriously ever since. It fits with some of the research I have done on pharmacological drugs and their effects. I do wonder whether we are pounding the heck out of our heads and bodies with these chemical sledgehammers when we may need to be concentrating on healing our guts instead.
Meanwhile, I'm curious about what I could do now to improve things for kids at school. One of our kid's greatest frustrations, aside from not being able to have the same treats everyone else has on birthdays, is no longer getting to have hot lunches at school. I spoke with the person in charge of our district's lunch program, and she said, "I don't see gluten-free anywhere on the horizon." All the school lunches are loaded with gluten, and the rest have cheese. I was hoping that the nachos might have been a good choice, but even the cheese sauce contains "modified food starch," a substance far too indeterminate to be classified as gluten-free. But what if, like the new "harvest bar," stocked with all the usual suspects (the cut-up fruits and veggies and iceberg lettuce salad you usually find in the lunches anyway), you had a gluten-free stand that had a selection of protein-rich, whole-grain muffins and energy bars? What if someone came in now and then and made buckwheat crepes at lunch and filled them with steamed asparagus or sliced almonds and fruit? I have long been disgusted at all the white-flour laden snacks I see at school -- the ones the teachers and parents often pick up on their way to school. The donuts, the cookies, the cupcakes. White flour and transfats galore. Ick. I wonder whether a series of talks on "Food and Mood," would appeal at all to teachers, other school personnel, and parents. It would be so interesting to gather some experts and allow them to field questions about the current research on diet and behavior.
I see kids who have allergies or behavioral issues and wonder sometimes, what if you stopped eating white wheat flour? Or gluten? Or dairy? How would you behave if your guts were not continuously* being injured by a large proportion of the food you ate every day?
*Incidentally, I love the mnemonic for how to remember the difference between continuous and continual: continuous means one uninterrupted sequence (the word ends in ous, get it?). Continual is the one that is ongoing yet intermittent.
-rk
Learning that there are neurons in the gut has set off many chains of ideas for me. It feels like things are falling into place about disease and the people I know and what so many of them are suffering from. Some of what I learned came from a book called Dangerous Grains, and an interesting film I screened last fall discussed the possible connections between diet, GI, and developmental issues, such as autism and sensory integration disorder. I have been fascinated by this idea and have been doing some research. I mentioned my "inner epidemiologist" to the friend in a reply and I have been thinking about studying this seriously ever since. It fits with some of the research I have done on pharmacological drugs and their effects. I do wonder whether we are pounding the heck out of our heads and bodies with these chemical sledgehammers when we may need to be concentrating on healing our guts instead.
Meanwhile, I'm curious about what I could do now to improve things for kids at school. One of our kid's greatest frustrations, aside from not being able to have the same treats everyone else has on birthdays, is no longer getting to have hot lunches at school. I spoke with the person in charge of our district's lunch program, and she said, "I don't see gluten-free anywhere on the horizon." All the school lunches are loaded with gluten, and the rest have cheese. I was hoping that the nachos might have been a good choice, but even the cheese sauce contains "modified food starch," a substance far too indeterminate to be classified as gluten-free. But what if, like the new "harvest bar," stocked with all the usual suspects (the cut-up fruits and veggies and iceberg lettuce salad you usually find in the lunches anyway), you had a gluten-free stand that had a selection of protein-rich, whole-grain muffins and energy bars? What if someone came in now and then and made buckwheat crepes at lunch and filled them with steamed asparagus or sliced almonds and fruit? I have long been disgusted at all the white-flour laden snacks I see at school -- the ones the teachers and parents often pick up on their way to school. The donuts, the cookies, the cupcakes. White flour and transfats galore. Ick. I wonder whether a series of talks on "Food and Mood," would appeal at all to teachers, other school personnel, and parents. It would be so interesting to gather some experts and allow them to field questions about the current research on diet and behavior.
I see kids who have allergies or behavioral issues and wonder sometimes, what if you stopped eating white wheat flour? Or gluten? Or dairy? How would you behave if your guts were not continuously* being injured by a large proportion of the food you ate every day?
*Incidentally, I love the mnemonic for how to remember the difference between continuous and continual: continuous means one uninterrupted sequence (the word ends in ous, get it?). Continual is the one that is ongoing yet intermittent.
-rk
Monday, March 10, 2008
Panisse!
Panisse rocks. I'm going to go make a fresh batch in a minute, but it is the thing that is making the switch to gluten-free baking easier, oddly enough. It is a great way to get used to the nutty flavor of garbanzo bean flour, which is a major ingredient in some of the gluten-free flour blends I'm using.
A few weeks ago, our local paper ran a recipe from a local restaurateur for panisse. Everyone's heard of Alice Waters' Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, but few know that panisse is a dish made from chickpea (or garbanzo) flour.
4 cups water
1-1/2 cups chickpea flour
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
6 tablespoons olive oil
Boil water, and with a long-handled whisk blend in the chickpea flour. Add the salt and cook on medium-low heat, stirring often so the mixture doesn't burn (do watch your hands and face -- I keep the mixture covered and use a silicone oven mitt to stir this to keep from getting burned by any spatters). Cook about 4-5 minutes until the mixture is thick (like polenta or oatmeal). Stir in three tablespoons of the olive oil. Pour and spread the cooked mixture into an square pan (8- or 9-inch), oiled with one tablespoon of the olive oil, and put a sheet of plastic wrap on the surface so a skin does not form. Refrigerate for a minimum of four hours or overnight. Cut into cubes and toss with the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil. Fry on the stovetop or bake at 400 degrees F. for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally to brown and crisp the panisse cubes evenly.
I haven't gotten as far as making a sauce for dipping the panisse cubes, but I will; so far I've just enjoyed them as a side dish with a main and vegetable. They are so delicious -- and they feel so much better for us than french fries!
-rk
A few weeks ago, our local paper ran a recipe from a local restaurateur for panisse. Everyone's heard of Alice Waters' Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, but few know that panisse is a dish made from chickpea (or garbanzo) flour.
4 cups water
1-1/2 cups chickpea flour
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
6 tablespoons olive oil
Boil water, and with a long-handled whisk blend in the chickpea flour. Add the salt and cook on medium-low heat, stirring often so the mixture doesn't burn (do watch your hands and face -- I keep the mixture covered and use a silicone oven mitt to stir this to keep from getting burned by any spatters). Cook about 4-5 minutes until the mixture is thick (like polenta or oatmeal). Stir in three tablespoons of the olive oil. Pour and spread the cooked mixture into an square pan (8- or 9-inch), oiled with one tablespoon of the olive oil, and put a sheet of plastic wrap on the surface so a skin does not form. Refrigerate for a minimum of four hours or overnight. Cut into cubes and toss with the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil. Fry on the stovetop or bake at 400 degrees F. for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally to brown and crisp the panisse cubes evenly.
I haven't gotten as far as making a sauce for dipping the panisse cubes, but I will; so far I've just enjoyed them as a side dish with a main and vegetable. They are so delicious -- and they feel so much better for us than french fries!
-rk
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