We had some friends over for a low-key dinner last night. When we planned the dinner, one of the women coming over volunteered to bring dessert. I said, okay, you don't have to, but if you do, make sure it's gluten-free. She said she had a lemon torte recipe and I thought it sounded suspicious, but I let it go. If she ended up bringing something suspect, Biker Boy wouldn't eat it and he'd eat ice cream when everyone left.
So, the night before the dinner, I get an email about how she's making apple crisp and she found a recipe that called for no wheat, just oats. And I had to send an email back about how most oats aren't gluten-free because of contamination from fields and machinery. And so apple crisp was off the list. At this point, I could tell our friend was getting frustrated. I told her that she should make the apple crisp and Biker Boy would happily eat ice cream. Seriously. Happily. The man loves his ice cream.
She shows up with lots of goodies from a local bakery and some homemade sauce for Biker Boy's ice cream. And deep frustration on her face. "How do you do it?" is written all over her face.
It's not so bad. Dessert is actually pretty easy. Most of the better quality ice creams have safe flavors. There are lots of pretty good boxed cookies and making chocolate chip cookies isn't too hard. Gluten-free brownies are pretty simple. And, to be honest, if all else fails, the Wedge has some eclairs the boy loves and some marjolaine cake he enjoys.
Dinner isn't bad, either. Meat, potatoes and rice, and vegetables. Unless you're part of a family where the bread bowl is passed at every meal, most of your dinners are probably gluten-free, too. Breakfast is fine. Eggs are fine. There are some okay gluten-free cereals out there. Fruit is safe. Yogurt is safe most of the time.
But lunch. Lunch is a killer. There is no good replacement for bread. There are replacements, of course. But no good ones. A good replacement would be one that I, a glutenvore, would eat. I would eat the brownies, the cereals, and the ice cream. But I will not eat Biker Boy's bread. It is disgusting. Even the bread he says "tastes just like real bread" bears a striking resemblance to cardboard. He eats it and doesn't complain, but it's so hard to vary our lunch routine of sandwiches and salads. He eats SoyGen or Kind bars, occasionally we have cheese and crackers, but what are our options? There are no soups out there that don't cost a ton. We do corn tortillas once in a while, but we really just end up replicating our sandwich crap.
And I didn't mean for this post to end up about eating. But it's so vital to our daily lives.
And it's the one area in our relationship where I feel like I am a huge failure. I have mentioned before that I am not much of a cook. I can cook, I guess. I mean, I can follow a recipe. I'm not incompetent and I can read. But I don't like to cook and I'm not creative in the kitchen and I only recently realized that poultry spice exists as a seasoning. Biker Boy has never said anything because he's an adult and he can feed himself, but I really wish I could take some of the pressure off of him by preparing something safe for him once in a while that is surprising and tasty. My solution to being hungry has always been to drink a big glass of water and convince my stomach that it's full. But Biker Boy has to eat. And it's frustrating. I can't just throw a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at him.
But, whatever. It's not a life-threatening problem.
Good luck LBI. You're doing great and we're thinking of you.
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