My daughter’s class is having a Taste of New York celebration as part of their studying the different areas of Manhattan. I was running around today buying stuff to prepare some gluten free soul food when I discovered there were five different boroughs with different foods. I even picked up some Kansas City Ribs and Blue Smoke that are gluten free. On the bright side, I am so happy my daughter’s school has limited events revolving around food. My daughter, Z, said she didn’t want to go because the whole point was to go around and try different food. I sort of agreed with her–what a bummer to have to bring your own to a tasting.
It is the second time I have felt really sad about how hard it is to be gluten free. The first time I felt overwhelmed I was at Lego Land. They assured me over the phone they had gluten free pasta and could accommodate our allergies. When we got to Lego Land it was overcooked corn pasta and completely inedible. At the time, my son couldn’t have corn either. Since then, I have brought food for my kids everywhere. It just makes it so much easier to not depend on others to get it right than to worry about how to fix it when it goes wrong. It is funny, the overcooked inedible pasta at Lego Land wasn’t by itself sad, it was more the realization of a lifetime of having to worry about something everyone else doesn’t have to think about.
As soon as I got sad about the Taste of New York celebration, my daughter perked up and said she wanted to go and she had a great idea for peach lemon squares. I think her reservation about going to the Taste of New York was that she felt alone. When she saw my unhappiness, she realized she wasn’t alone. And that made it better.
But I just finished making some of our favorite lemon squares, a peach cobbler and agave lemon muffins (for my son’s picnic tomorrow.) I got a little less depressed about bringing our own food when I saw how yummy everything looked.
Tamara w/ 4 gf/cf kids - I know what you mean, I love what this diet has done for our health, but there are still difficult times. I think the thing I miss the most is the ability to be spontaneous, or just being able to enjoy an event without all the prep work beforehand.
An invite from a friend to head to the zoo turns into a mad dash to make bread, cut up fruit, make cookies etc. As prepared as I try to be, I never seem to be able to keep a "stash" for trips such as this.
And schools…ugh, we have not had much luck here. Everything seems to revolve around sweet, junky treats. I could go on forever on that one!