Living gluten-free, the pitfalls...

So, on a messageboard I'm on, someone asked about gluten-free pastry flour...because they were making cookies. Now actually, I've found that if you are adapting something, its easier if the original recipe calls for pastry flour... because the author does not want to encourage gluten.

But back to the messageboard. The person was making cookies for a church event...and wanted to make them for a friend who had recently been diagnosed as a celiac. I posted that this was a wonderful thing, and it is the kind of thing that I would appreciate muchly. I got attacked.

Usually, at church things (or most events, for that matter) I have to be very careful. There is hidden gluten in most things. I know about meatballs, and Father's casserole. I only take the cheese if I can get to it first, and if it is sufficiently far away from the crackers. I can't just 'eat the filling', because sometimes the filling has flour too...

I was reading a recipe the other day, for roast potatoes, and the author had glutened them! If I was eating at someone's house, then ugh. I'm lucky in that I have a reaction to gluten, almost immediately, but I'm unlucky too because some of my reaction is a brain fog... I just end up in this *duuuuuuhhhhh* haze, where I can't think. I can have a gluten reaction to a piece of candy, to makeup, to hair products....

I just have to be hyper-vigilant. And read every single label. Every single time.

I'm so glad that restaurants are creating gluten-free menus. I am grateful whenever anyone makes something gluten-free.... because I just feel so much better living gluten-free...