Walk Without Flinching

So. How are you then? Me, I've been on an extended pout and am quite ready to see the back of summer, if not 2010 in its entirety. You know those times in your life when people you otherwise sort of enjoy say things like "God doesn't give you what you can't handle" or "Even the darkest clouds have a silver lining" and you kind of want to punch them except you don't because your sainted charm school instructor might well rise from the dead and haunt you, thereby resulting in even less sleep then you've recently enjoyed? You know those times? That.

The less said the better.

In between pouting and the occasional dainty tear poised ever-so-fetchingly at the corner of my right eye, I've spent a good amount of time this summer trying to feed my family in ways that won't kill them. Oh, yes, that's right. You haven't heard. I say "not kill them" instead of "not kill him" because we now have in hand the Girl's allergy assessment and blah blah blah, it turns out she's nearly as unfeedable as her father albeit in a slightly different way.

Because nothing thrills me as much as solving a problem in a way that involves as many trips to the library as possible, my recent list of check-outs reads like someone with a very troubled constitution, indeed. With allergy-free and celiac-aware publications hitting the shelves at what seems to me to be a rapid pace - perhaps it is less so to people with more experience in these matters than I - there is plenty from which to choose for guidance. One would think that there would be no trick at all to ridding oneself of troubling foodstuffs. At home, anyway. Let's not talk about restaurants for a spell, as we're not really speaking at the moment.

Vegan and vegetarian cookbooks are near useless for their reliance on wheat and soy products. Gluten-free resources often feature bean flours and nightshades heavily, both of which are very strictly limited for us. I found one book I adored, only to discover that it called in nearly every recipe for an ingredient that is priced upwards of $27 a pound. Then there are the recipes that sound wonderful but turn out to take not unlike library paste (which, now that I think on it, probably has a wheat binder and therefore cannot be eaten by at least two people with whom I live).

Interestingly, among the cookbooks most useful in retooling my kitchen and dining table weren't intended specifically for special diets at all. Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals, in particular, was helpful for reminding me that simple is better and there are few - if any - of my family's problem ingredients in fresh food, humbly prepared. Likewise, Everyday Food: Fresh Flavor Fast: 250 Easy, Delicious Recipes for Any Time of Day, helped me retain the notion that a decent, healthy meal prepared and served sometime this century (even when I've had a bad day at work and tonight is riding night and...) is not necessarily an impossible mission. No need for special or shockingly expensive ingredients, no need for deprivation, and no need for substitutions when a bit of redirection is possible and even desirable.

Hey, is that a silver lining I see?



P.S. If you're looking for a bit of inspiration for simple, seasonal meals, I recommend these for clear and concise directions and a refreshing lack of jargony references to specialty products:

By Any Other Name

While a great many ugly realities may be laid squarely at the feet of economic globalization there is one positive for which I am of late unrelentingly grateful. My workplace, populated as it is by an extraordinary collection of émigrés to the U.S., has provided me a number of escape routes for dealing with Brainiac’s allergy situation and his attendant sudden inability to eat darn near anything. When my colleagues and I are not breaking into spontaneous choruses of We Are the World after staff meetings, we’re sharing lunch and recipes. It’s not at all unusual these days for a man born in China to show up in the cafeteria with homemade pierogie or, say, for me to bring extras of my latest batch of pho to pass around. Of course, in the way of multiculti knowledge share, we each add our own special touch to whatever dish is on offer. I regularly scandalize my Indian-born colleagues with my insistence on preparing chana masala in a slow cooker and those pierogie are more often accompanied by a bit of lime pickle rather than fried onions and sour cream.


I’m not making as much pho these days what with the whole beef-free thing going on and all. There have been frustratingly large numbers of other dishes that are also no longer on the family menu and I confess that it’s been getting me a bit down. (Someday I will tell you about the tears – copious – that resulted from the salad I now call the Chickpeas of Death.) In sharing my misery, loving company as it does, with co-workers the other day I realized that I already had access to all the knowledge I needed for dealing with the challenge of feeding my husband in this, our new normal. Knowing that most cultures do not eat the volumes of beef, pork and wheat to which we’d become accustomed, I merely had to make the leap from the abstract to the personal. So I did what anyone in that situation would do…I dug my spoon into a friend’s wheat-free, soy-free, and meat-free lunch, declared it delicious, and demanded the recipe.

Which is how I came to be buying a large sack of sabudana - known to me as tapioca – at my favorite Indian grocery. The dish shared with me at lunch that day turned out to be 100% allergen-free (at least for Braniac – given the presence of peanuts your mileage will seriously vary on this point and may actually come to a screeching halt) and amazingly delicious for someone whose only exposure to tapioca was via puddings from a long-ago childhood. As with the aforementioned peirogie and chana masala, I expected that I would not follow the directions precisely but would likely filter them through my own culinary baggage/heritage. Even executed in my own Western-style kitchen, I expected deliciousness and just the thing for feeding to a man who is tiring of borders, culinarily-speaking.


This is not my sabudana*. This is what my sabudana was supposed to resemble - little individual grains of chewy, nutty, spicy goodness. What actually appeared in my pan to was translucent, gelatinous, quivery, alien, and not generally good looking. We all agreed the taste was excellent but...no one could bring themselves to eat all that much of it. I texted news of the failure to the friend who gave me the recipe in the first place and she diagnosed too much water, too much oil and too-coarsely ground peanuts. So, put us down as work to be done.

In the meantime, I'll be in the conference room, working on my very best Cyndi Lauper impression.

* (This is not my picture and I don't know from where it came originally. If it's yours, let me know and I'll take it down or give credit, whichever you prefer.)

The Way to His Heart

Over the years of my parenting I’ve been asked from time to time how it came to pass that my children will sit at a dinner table and discuss their feelings on the kale vs. chard debate or with what trinket did I bribe the Boy to loudly, and in ear shot of his football team, remind me to buy extra beets at the farm market. I’m always pleased and proud to be asked because it was always one of my goals to raise my little humans into big humans who have broad palates, the ability to conduct at least rudimentary cooking operations, and an appreciation for what has cringingly become known as “real food”. I like that, more or less, this is exactly what they’re becoming. Sure, there’s a bit of strangeness going on in what we have come to refer to as The Cheese Rules. And the Girl’s assertion that she is a “half part [sic] vegetarian” who likes cheeseburgers, bacon, shrimp, and pork lo mein but that's it is, I admit, I bit odd. She’s only six and we forgive her a few eccentricities.

I cling to success in this area largely because many of my other parenting goals (see also: screen time, cheerful tidiness, and WebKinz purchases) have gone unrealized. Even as I pat myself on the back, though, I know the truth is that I have been lucky. My family is food-secure, I’ve always had a (more or less) well-appointed kitchen at hand, my children were born and remained allergy-free, and we adhere to no religion-based dietary mandates. It’s not that hard with such advantages in place to raise kids who appreciate a broad menu. You might say it’s been a piece of organic, whole-wheat, fair trade, ever-so-slow, artisanal, shade-grown cake.


For those who are at this very moment reaching for kebab skewers and their little Marsha voodoo dolls, try to contain your glee when I share that the glorious run of household food simplicity has come to a screeching halt. A wheat-free, dairy-free, beef-free, soy-free, legume-free, pork- and tomato-free halt more specifically. And not because of the kids. It’s my all grown-up and heretofore presumed to be food allergy deficient husband who has thrown a wrench into the kitchen works.

Although the verdict is that these allergies are "probably" not fatal, it's not a risk I am willing to take. Provisioning and cooking for my loved ones is among my primary pleasures and I'd really, you know, rather not kill them. I’m learning new techniques, new ingredients (Teff? those Ethiopians are on to something!), and new recipes while he adapts to a future that will be somewhat lower than expected in burgers, Scotch, and salsa. A number of my easy weeknight standby dinners – chana masala or stir-fry, for example - are, quite literally, off the table. There will not be as many canned tomato products this year, but darn skippy we're upping the applesauce. Meanwhile I'm taking another looksee through Fancy Pantry for as yet untried sauces and condiments to liven up our revised roster of available foodstuffs.

Things just got a bit more interesting. If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen working out a decent chocolate chip cookie recipe.