I’m A Glutton For Gluten

It happened a few weeks ago. My lovely wife, the Sweet Roast, determined that she had to remove gluten from her diet. I asked her what gluten was and she gave me an answer that, while it made sense, really didn’t answer my question. It was sort of like asking why the sky is blue. The scientific answer would explain it in far more detail than necessary. Basically, gluten is a substance present in cereal grains, especially wheat that is responsible for the elastic texture of dough. It’s also a mixture of two proteins it causes illness in people with celiac disease. While both Sweet Roast and I, the Love Chunk, are Blood Type O, we really shouldn’t be eating a lot of gluten. Or so says a pile of her reference material. So, how do we get rid of it? With an atom splitter and since we don’t have the $220 million it costs for a slightly used NASA-approved model, we (or I should say she) decided to shop for gluten-free products. The atom splitter would have been far easier, or so I thought, until a gluten-free recipe book was discovered. Which leads me to one of my many pet peeves. Why does it cost so much more to eat healthy? Grrr. If it’s something only available at a health food store, expect your debit card and bank account to get a work out. Shopping for all the ingredients you need to create healthy meals so you can lose some weight and lead a healthy life seems to cost just the right amount that the only thing losing weight is your wallet. Anyway, Sweet Roast did a fine job of hunting down the correct ingredients to build a gluten-free apple crisp. It was a work of art. It did such a good job of filling up the better part of a clay baker that I was afraid to taste it. Well, that and the fact that the phrase ‘gluten-free’ sort of gave me the same kind of chills as ‘sugar-free’ or ‘low-fat’ does. Is it going to taste like something other than damp, crumbled cardboard? Well, the apple crisp passed the taste test. The next night, it was even better, buried under heaping mounds of ice cream.