Sweet 16 Party

First the numbers: 18 girls, 2 celiacs and 1 dairy intolerance!

Throwing a party these days is very different than the parties my parents threw for me. On Friday night I had my daughter's sweet 16 party at one of our favorite BBQ restaurants. I was a little bit relieved that none of her friends are vegetarians as this was not the menu for vegetarians.  I knew this would be a hungry bunch of high school athletes all coming from either soccer, field hockey, tennis, volleyball and swim practices or games.

Two of my daughter’s friends are celiacs and I have known that fact about each girl long before either became friends with my daughter. Many years ago I had received a phone call from each girl's mother with the question, "do you think I should test my daughter for celiac disease?" In both cases my advice was simple; this test might be the answer to what is making her sick, why not test for it?

I went in to the restaurant a week before the party and found out the ingredients of the things we had chosen and made sure that we had enough entrées and sides that would work for the gluten intolerant gals. The dairy allergy was covered too, although not as easily as gluten intolerance.

For the desserts, I ordered a gorgeous cake, two bowls of vanilla ice cream and a dish of baked apples...all bases covered there too!

Restaurant management and chefs have come a long way, not one person batted an eyelash when I launched into the number of food issues I needed to work around at this dinner party.

With knowledge of the food issues ahead of time and pre-planning with the restaurant manager, the girls had a wonderful evening.  They sat in the restaurant loft and I sat downstairs listening to the ebullient chatter and loud laughter that spilled over the balcony.  Best part about it was a happy teenager, but the doggy bag of gluten-free goodies that I had for lunch on Saturday was also pretty sweet!
Kendall Egan

Ode to Beets

The beet is one of my favorite vegetables.  The purplish-burgundy color is the most magnificent, naturally occurring hue of pink on this earth.  The funny thing is the unanimity of my family’s opinion of beets, they find them absolutely skeevy.  “I hate the smell of them.”  “They taste like dirt.” “Ewww, beets and goat cheese, what could be more disgusting?”

Right now they are also plentiful at my farmer’s market and I tend to buy them every week.  I like to roast them at a really high heat until a knife slips through it like a knife through butter.  I like all of my root vegetables roasted on high heat because it’s quick to cook them and it really concentrates the flavors.  I read somewhere that roasting at a high temperature does good things to the sugars in root vegetables.

The skin peels off effortlessly after the beets cool and the side effect of that effort is very ghoulish looking fingers!  I don’t know who to credit for this salad but I make a really tangy Dijon Mustard vinaigrette and toss that onto cubed roasted beets.  Thinly sliced red onion and cubed Granny Smith apples are the final two ingredients added to the salad.

It’s better on day two, after the apples and onions have sucked up all the color of the beets and the flavors of the vinaigrette. 

This is my favorite time of year, when vegetables are so abundant that you just have to eat them with every meal.  I’m going to be focusing on my favorite ways to enjoy the gluten-free bounty of the fall!

Kendall Egan

We're On Pinterest + The Back-To-School Pin It To Win It Contest

Need a little gluten-free PINspiration in the kitchen? Good news: Gluten-Free Living is now on Pinterest.com, the popular online bulletin board. Follow our boards to stay up-to-date with our favorite recipes and gluten-free news, plus helpful and fun information for living a happy, healthy gluten-free life. You can even re-pin your favorite links for quick reference. All you have to do is find us at www.pinterest.com/gflivingmag and click the "Follow" button. 

Pin It to Win It Back-to-School Contest
It's back-to-school season again and it's time to think about how you'll help your gluten-free child enjoy a healthy, varied lunch. There are many gluten-free options for your child's lunchbox or your own if you're brown-bagging it, but the same old sandwich and plain fruit can get boring quickly. Why not get inspired to pack a fun, tasty and creative lunch every day by pinning lunchbox ideas to a board on Pinterest? Do it and you could win big in our Pin It to Win It Back-To-School Lunchbox contest.

Create a Pinterest board and fill it with your favorite tasty and creative gluten-free lunchbox ideas. Then, head over to our Facebook page and share a link to your board for others to see until September 24, 2012. Our staff will judge each board and choose a favorite, and that Pinner will win a free one-year subscription to Gluten-Free Living and will be our featured Pinner on our blog and in our newsletters. Here's how to enter:

1. Follow Gluten Free Living on Pinterest at www.pinterest.com/gflivingmag
2. Create a Pinterest board with your favorite gluten-free lunchbox ideas.
3. Post a link to your board on our Facebook wall for a chance to win!

Pancake Snafu

Like many other families, we were traveling over the Labor Day weekend and we were visiting a place where we spend at least three or four weekends per year.  I think breakfast is the hardest meal of the day for a celiac, so when you find a place that serves great food and gluten-free pancakes, you tend to return.

There are those days when, after twenty minutes with nobody coming by your table to take a drink order, that you know it’s not going to be smooth sailing.   I have no intention of outing our location or the restaurant because our server just had a really bad morning.

I only lasted one week waiting tables in college, so I took a deep zen breath as I chased a bus boy down for coffee, and then again thirty minutes later for refills.  And then again to ask someone to take our order, and then to flag down someone to check on our order after forty minutes, and then to remind the server that we had been sitting for an hour with no food….

Our server got “slammed.”  She had a table of 16 in the back of the restaurant and then a bunch of other tables throughout the restaurant.  Our order was totally muffed and that is what freaked me out.

I ordered gluten-free pancakes with blueberries and bananas and whipped cream…they came with strawberries and blueberries, but at that point who cares.   My husband, son and celiac son ordered the same (disgusting) peanut butter, chocolate and banana concoction, but two were regular and one was gluten free.

Mine was differentiated by the berries and whipped cream, but the other three came out and they were all on the same style of plates and they all looked exactly the same.    

“Are you 100% sure this is the gluten-free breakfast?  Other slip ups I can tolerate but this I cannot.”  I was locked eye ball to eye ball with our flustered server and she said she was absolutely, unequivocally sure that this was the gluten-free peanut butter, chocolate and banana pancakes…

What do you do next?  It is just one of those situations where all you can do is HOPE that even if everything else had gone wrong with the meal that you can trust them to get the gluten-free breakfast to the gluten-free customer.  

I was very, very nervous.  This is the part of celiac disease that is challenging.  You try so hard to live a normal life and make sure what you are eating is safe…but when the food preparation is out of your hands, you have to rely on hope and trust. 

We made it to our river cruise and to our football game that day, everyone was fine…and stuffed…from breakfast.   She did the right thing, apologized for everything and refused to let us pay for anything.  I felt really bad for her and left her a good tip because she was so upset, we were not the only table that had a sub par morning!

I’ll go back, it’s a quirky spot with great food and they really understand the importance of gluten-free safety.  Now if they can figure out how to better coordinate their servers with the floor plan, they will have even more satisfied customers.

Kendall Egan

A Celiac’s Wingman

My celiac was at a water park in Connecticut with his buddies from camp a couple of weeks ago.  As teenagers, they are allowed to go at their own pace on the rides and break for lunch at the concession stand whenever they feel like it.

These concession stands typically offer up the bunless burger and questionable French fry option for a person with a gluten intolerance, but my celiac decided on some sort of fruit and yogurt smoothie for lunch.

He proceeds to tell me about the conversation he had when he got back to the table with all of his friends.

Wingman: “Why didn’t you get the gluten-free cookie?”

Celiac:  “What gluten-free cookie?”

Wingman:  “The cookies right on the counter, right next to the cash register that say in really huge letters “GLUTEN-FREE.”

Now you have to use your imagination to conjure up the man/boy voices and teenage intonation on this dialogue.  But, the short version of the long story, is that my celiac went back up to the concession stand counter to check out the cookies and right where his buddy described was a display of packaged gluten-free cookies.

He was so focused on going through the menu up on the board to figure out what he could and couldn’t eat that he didn’t even see the gluten-free option right under his nose.   His friends have known about his dietary restrictions for so long and they understand it to the extent that their 13 year old teenage brains allow and they are actually incredibly helpful to my son.

The moral of the story is that it is never too early to develop your dietary wingmen.

Kendall Egan

Fancy Foods & Gluten Free

A month ago I attended the Fancy Foods show in Washington DC.  Going from New York to DC should be a breeze, but sometimes it takes two airports, two different security lines, two different flights, three taxi cabs and six hours to make the journey.  I earned my evening cocktail.

I had already done the prep work and knew which vendors were showcasing gluten-free food and who I wanted to visit.   This type of assignment is right up my alley, walking the show, chatting to people about food and tasting all sorts of incredible products coming to market.

A couple of things I noticed are newsworthy trends!  The first trend is bold flavor and the second trend I am calling “mother’s little helper.”  Both ideas actually work in tandem because global flavors from Mexico to India to Thailand are packaged in a variety of user friendly simmer sauces and spice blends.  This is a huge development for working parents everywhere.

It used to be if you rushed in from work and faced hungry kids, there were always chicken nuggets or hot dogs or mac n’ cheese that you could prepare in fifteen minutes.  But, that quickie dinner is lacking flavor and nutrition and doesn’t teach your child to become an adventurous eater.

With these simmer sauces, one night it’s a tandori chicken meal and the next night it’s a beef in a red curry sauce.   Even the chopping, slicing and dicing of vegetables for the simmer sauce has been replaced by flash frozen prepared vegetable that either require a quick toss in a pan or a steam in the microwave.   All the resident mom or dad chef has to do is sauté some protein and vegetables, open a handy-dandy pouch or jar, and “simmer.”  Side dishes of frozen rice or potatoes are easy to find and take only a few minutes in the oven or microwave. 

Couple that dish with a salad.  These days it is easy to find bags of triple washed lettuce, already clean and chopped up in the bag, just asking for a splash of oil and vinegar.  In an instant, there are two offering of vegetables at one meal that took you a few minutes to prepare.   

It has never been easier to globalize one’s taste buds in thirty minutes or less!

Here is what I liked even more about many of the products I saw at the Fancy Foods show, so many of them were certified gluten free.  Many of them were organic and all natural, but the gluten free aspect of the product was a featured part of the marketing of that product.  It seems to me that if a product is naturally gluten free, or if the creator has specifically sought to make the product gluten free, then certification of that product is natural step.  Gluten free is no longer an afterthought, it is a conscientious business decision. 

Another great advancement for those of us who prepare meals for someone with celiac disease or gluten intolerance!

Kendall Egan

Special Diet Backlash?

I knew this day was coming.  Special diet backlash has reared its head. 

New York Times Sunday Style’s section had an article entitled, “The Picky Eater Who Came to Dinner.”  Gluten-free, in my opinion, was portrayed in that article as the worst offender in terms of requesting Paleo, dairy free, sugar free, low fat, vegan or whatever!  For some reason, folks that ask for gluten-free meals were really slammed as “picky eaters.”     

I recall interviewing a chef for the magazine and I asked if professional chefs were getting a little tired of special food requests.  It’s not the server’s or the chef’s job to make judgments on who really needs a gluten-free meal, but what happens when a patron goes through the hoops of making sure his meal is gluten free…because he is trying on the diet…and then the server sees him noshing from the bread basket?  Perhaps that is worthy of an eye-roll from the server, but hopefully it doesn’t send the chef into anger mode for the next person requesting a gluten-free meal.

What happens as more and more people try on the diet because it’s the latest craze to lower inflammation, or to speed recovery, or those folks requesting gluten-free meals who still mistakenly think it’s a weight loss diet?  What happens to those of us who are celiac?  Did anyone in this article stop and think that more and more people are being diagnosed with a gluten intolerance and thus there will be more requests for gluten-free options?  When I see quotes in the New York Times article from anonymous readers from a Portland reader forum expressing opinions like, “You probably don’t have celiac disease anyway.  Self diagnosis on WebMD doesn’t count.”  Dude, really?  Since when did anonymous opinions from some reader forum become quotation worthy in the eyes of the New York Times writers?

Or another quote from the article from Chef Josh Ozersky, the founder of Meatopia, who says “like a lot of chefs, I’m convinced that these diets are not always the results of the compromised immune systems of American diners, but their growing infantilism and narcissism.”  And this is coming from a guy whose event is all about meat consumption, like he's got an expert opinion on compromised immunity?

Uh-oh.  All of the work that has gone into restaurant awareness!  What if people start rolling their eyes when I ask if something is prepared with flour?  Or if I could have the turkey burger with no bun?

Another line in the article says, “Today’s restricted eaters are prone to identity-driven pronouncements along the lines of ‘I’m gluten free.’”  I have used that identifier in restaurants before because I don’t really like to identify myself as diseased, is that really a problem for chefs?   

Read the article for yourself, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/fashion/rsvp-ps-no-gluten-fat-or-soy-please.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

I have never once gone to a dinner party and made demands.  I have always graciously worked with my server and chef at a restaurant.  Last week at a business meeting, I did not call up the company executives and demand gluten-free options for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I brought some stuff and worked around the rest. 

Hey, everyone out there, please don’t blow this for people who really and truly need to be choosy, not picky, about what they eat for serious and medically diagnosed reasons.  And to those people who expressed what I consider unintelligent opinions, try walking a mile in my shoes.  

Kendall Egan