Tastes Like Straw
A few weeks ago I chatted briefly with another spouse about eating gluten free foods by choice instead of by necessity. Both our spouses follow gluten free diets and to support their dietary choices, both of use choose diets similar to our spouse’s diets.
So, at first impression it seems this spouse deserves a gold star for supporting the partner and understanding the challenges of following an unconventional diet with many possible restrictions.
Then the spouse laments for the days of gluten foods and half jokingly says gluten free foods taste “like straw”. Now, it seems that re-evaluating those gold stars might be a god idea.
Since this is “FOOD for the rest of us” and not “MARRIAGE counseling, guidance, and judgement for the rest of us”, I lets focus on the food.
This spouse is not the only person in the world to consider gluten free foods to be unpleasant. In fact, I have previously blogged about a NYT article where celiacs’ laments for gluten foods such as pasta and breads were followed with praises to the food industry for coming up with increasingly “better” imitation foods as substitutes.
In fact, while making a birthday cake with two layers of genoise brushed with sherry and iced with mocha butter-cream and chocolate icing using regular all purpose flour, I found myself thankful for not having to counter balance any of the garbanzo bean flavor sometimes found in many gluten free flour mixes. I was also glad to focus on the cake and not if the amount of xyntham gum added was sufficient or too much.
So, while I wasn’t saying it tasted like straw, I was viewing it as something inferior to a gluten based product. Then I realized this was probably due to the fact that I was automatically assessing the possible tastes and textures of something made with out gluten against something made using gluten.
Just as substituting beef or chicken with some sort of soy based product, using vitamin pills instead of eating fruits and vegetables, or eating farm raised vs wild or “free range” fish, fowl, or beef leads to all kinds of dietary issues and doesn’t taste all that good; forcing an over processed, chemically stabilized, and artificial-in-nearly-all-aspects-of-its-existence food item to replace is not exactly a good idea.
Instead of looking for substitute food products or items that can be swapped in and out of your eating habits as if they computer parts or brake pads, maybe it is better to consider it time to undertake a food odyssey, searching for new to you foods that are fun to eat and do not conflict with your dietary choices.
After all, just because a meal or a specific dish or food item is made to be gluten free does not mean the food should not be good.
For example, the other weekend I cooked great meal.
The salad included fresh cherry tomatoes, sweetened red onions, basil, sheep’s milk feta, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
For the main course, I roasted beef sirloin with a rosemary, sage, thyme, parsley, Grana Padano cheese and garlic crust. The beef was accompanied by roasted apples, parsnips, sweet potatoes, and turnips, a pan sauce, and rustic mashed potatoes.
For dessert, I used Giffords’ double chocolate ice cream with warmed “Last of the Season” peaches and a ruby reduction.
Although I added toasted bread croutons with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, parsley, and basil to the salad, and the salad would have been equally good without them, the meal was essentially gluten free.
Nothing came out of a box, was almost entirely gluten free and it did not taste like straw. In fact, I was later told the meal was “Kick A** Good.”
