Today I spent a large chunk of my day running around and doing errands and other fun stuff I've been able to put off under the guise of class and work. Ahem. I really needed to go grocery shopping. So, lists in hand, off I go (several times, in several different directions) to get what we are going to need for the next couple of days. Provided I have my lists, shopping is wonderfully relaxing and allows me to get in some thinking. This is usually prefaced by a lot of mind wandering, but some interesting things on occasion come from it, and where my mind went this morning was the Pillage and Plunder Salvage Company.
First question: where the hell did I get that name?! I have been thinking about what on earth to title this for a very long time. I had been toying with Chelle Friendly as that is what most of what I can eat gets dubbed, but not only have I found another woman who uses that format, and her stuff is cool (I'll come back to that later!), but it never really resonated. Then, one night while talking to my not-sister down south of the border, she tossed that at me in a completely different context, and something just clicked.
When you get down to it, changing over to a gluten and dairy free diet is scary. Suddenly, or not as the case may be, you are told that food is going to hurt you. Terms and vocabulary you've never heard, and in some cases can't pronounce, are suddenly the Enemy, speaking a language you have to decipher and somehow out-smart. I remember when I learned that if it has "caramel colour" on the ingredients list, that means there is gluten in there somewhere, I was stunned! Seriously? Caramel Colour??? Alright... Things you didn't even really like are now out of reach and suddenly appealing, simply because you want what you can't have. Gah...
It's also not exactly cheap to switch everything over to alternative, gluten free and dairy free products either. The flour mix that I choose to use requires 4 different flours and xantham gum; the flours (if not bought in bulk) are about $4-$5 each and the xantham gum ranges from $12-$15 depending on which brand you use! (The upside of xantham gum is that it's more like a one time expense that lasts a Very long time as you don't use much. I usually have to buy some once a year, and I do a lot of baking!!!) There are 2 people in this house; I am not trying to feed a family of 4 or 5 or 6! I think that we all know that specialty items are expensive, but occasionally buying a high ticket item because you are making a fancy dinner isn't the same as forking over $7 for a loaf of premade bread.
This is about where you want to give up, if that's even an option (and I know a few people who have gone that route), or, like me, you get kinda pissed off. I don't like being told that I can't do something (and I can hear my mother trying not to choke from here) and it's actually a good way to get me motivated to try. Mostly so I can prove you wrong, which my piano teacher figured out and used quite successfully for many years so that I would pass my exams. But pissed off because I couldn't bake a cake just made me want to do it more, so I got a couple of cookbooks and started over. Literally, started allllllll over. I had to learn everything again! Nothing worked the way I remembered it. The icing on the first cake I made was pretty darn good, but that was about it. The rest of the cake, well.... the jerk from work wasn't actually wrong. It did resemble a brick in both texture and structural integrity. The first batch of pancakes that I made based on my old recipe were where I noticed that the gluten free flour absorbs more liquid than regular flour does, and fortunately I was the only one subjected to those. I think it was after maybe 2 or 3 months of playing around (different flours, different milk substitutes, even different fat sources) that I brought a batch of blueberry lemon muffins in to work and they were snatched up and gone before I got one. If you think about it, that actually speaks very highly of my coworkers, that they would be willing to taste test for me still. Mind you, they all do seem to enjoy horror movies and roller coasters, so maybe it had more to do with living on the edge, but that is neither here nor there.
So, in a way, relearning how to cook without gluten or dairy really requires you to pirate from everywhere, everything and constantly. I will Always be looking for better ways to do things, new recipes to try, new cookbooks (much to my husbands chagrin!) to test and new products that I can introduce into my repertoire. I get to discard things that don't work, or that I don't like, because if I keep looking, there are so many more things out there to replace them! I probably would not have chosen this for myself, but since I'm on this boat, I might as well get it to go where I want, and have fun while I'm at it!
No comments:
Post a Comment