Life without gluten is starting to be a pain in my side!! I recently went out to lunch with a couple of coworkers for a farewell celebration since one of them was leaving our company. We went out for sushi which I assumed would be farely easy to eat on my gluten free diet….well like most of the time…I was wrong. I couldn’t have any of the sauces or dressings except for the gluten free soy sauce, had to have special rice and could only order a few things that were not marinated. I was already feeling frustrated about my meal choices when one of the women in the group started asking me questions about my diet and nutrition. As I was explaining how I preferred not to load up on supplements and was therefore eating foods that would give me the same vitamins…she just looked at me and said “you are weird.” A little embarrassed I asked why I was weird and she replied “why wouldn’t you just take a pill and not go through the hassle and just eat whatever you want?” As she finished talking she shoved in a deep fried tempura role into her mouth and followed it with a swig of sake and I thought …spoken like a true junk food queen. It is just sad that people who try to be healthy, avoid harmful chemicals, processed foods and practice things like yoga and acupuncture are considered weird. When did it become weird to take care of yourself and supplement your body with things that it may be running low on? When did popping pills to cure you ailments become the accepted method of healing our bodies instead of resting, eating properly and fighting things off with proper vitamins? I just get so annoyed with people like this woman at my recent lunch, open your eyes. By eating a deep friend sushi roll, you are taking what could be a very nutritious snack and turning it into nothing but something that will ultimately be stored as sugar/fat in your body. If it makes me weird that I prefer to not eat trans fat and don’t eat gluten then I guess I am….just call me the gluten free freak :0) After this lunch I really wanted to give sushi another try since it is one of my favorite meals so a few days later I treated my mom to a lunch at our favorite sushi place. This was our first time to eat at this place since going on a strict gluten free diet but again I assumed we would be able to eat most of what was on the menu. We walked in and sat down at the sushi bar and the waitress brought over a seafood salad. As we started to stick in our chopsticks and go to town on the salad I asked the waitress if there was gluten in it expecting her to say that it was fine. She didn’t though, she immediately took the bowls away and said she would return with a salad without the sauce. My mom and I just looked at each other, then at our empty chopsticks we just started to laugh. It turns out that not only could we not have the seafood salad sauce but we also couldn’t have the ginger house dressing which by the way we were told we could eat during the last visit!! We were still able to eat a lot on the menu but it is funny how little people really know about gluten. In the past two months, I have gone to over a handful of restaurants and have been told that something is gluten free only to return a few weeks later and be told that it isn’t gluten free. I think that the gluten allergic/intolerance is getting to be pretty common and that restaurants should start informing their servers on gluten. I am not saying they need to be able to list all the items in the restaurant that has it (even though that would be nice), I am saying just knowing what it is and that food can’t be cross contaminated. Knowledge is power right??? I have to say I have noticed a lot of restaurants are chiming in to the gluten free lifestyle. I have eaten off the Outback, The Keg and Rialto Café gluten free menu in the past couple of weeks. All choices looked very yummy and my selections were so good you couldn’t even tell they were gluten free.
I was recently walking around downtown Denver on my way to a baseball game when a guy carrying a large box asked if I wanted to try a nutrition bar. Now usually I wouldn’t accept food from a strange person on the street but as I started to hesitate he said the words “they are gluten free” and then he had my interest. I grabbed two of them and kept walking. The bars were made my Bora Bora and were Native Acai Walnut bars and the slogan on the front says “the feel great superfood.” Not bad for good I accepted from a stranger on the street. My husband wasn’t happy with me for not only accepting food from the man but then eating it. I have to admit not a very smart move usually but this guy was just promoting his product and I needed a snack. Here is their website http://www.boraborafoods.com/homepage.aspx. I also recently tried Enjoy Life Cinnamon Crunch Granola from a sample I got at vitamin cottage. This was also very tasty and would be great with some gluten free oatmeal. It is allergy friendly and contains no wheat, dairy, peanuts, treat nuts, egg, soy, fish or shellfish. It is also made in a dedicated bakery and contains flaxseed among other healthy ingredients. The sample had a coupon on the back so I plan on buying some for my oatmeal mornings next time I go to the store. Here is the site for Enjoy Life, they have all kinds of allergy friendly products this is just the only one I have tried so far http://www.enjoylifefoods.com/. They even have a cookbook you can get from their site.
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