So What Do We Eat?

It amazes us that not many have heard of a 'Gluten-free' diet or the condition called Coeliac (Celiac). Look closely at most baby foods and you will see some words called "Gluten Free". A wise precaution as baby allergies are difficult to spot and therefore dangerous. Continual eating will give you anything from diarrhoea, vomitting, skin eczema, intestinal damage, bone weaking and deformations. Or all the above. Nikki is the product of underdiagnosis over several years. The poor thing! She deserves a ray of sunshine. Severe lack of vitamin D in her youth almost crippled her. Asians aren't usually afflicted. It's thought of as a western disease. Certainly not asians like us who came to marry one another without ever knowing we were both coeliacs. Honeymoon is over for Nikki, she now has to eat what Bobby has been eating for over 25 years! And what is that you ask? May just be easier to list what we can eat instead! We must avoid, Wheat, Barley, Rye and for some people Oats. Obvious stuff we cannot eat Bread (all types), Biscuits, Pizzas, Buns, Bagels, Spaghetti, Pasta, Pies, Cakes, Flans, Tarts and other desserts. Muesli, Weetabix, Shredded Wheat and other breakfast cereals. Not so obvious stuff we also cannot eat Hot Dogs, Beefburgers, Beefburger meats, Sausages, most Soups, Ice Cream Cones, Trifles, Gravy, KFC Chicken, Battered Fish and other meats, Big Macs, MacDonalds Fries, Crisps (most types), Kit-Kat, Twix, Penguin, Club and other wafer and biscuit covered chocolates. Beers and Lagers. Ethnic foods like Samosas, Chapattis, Parathas, Spring Rolls, Nans, Pitta, asian sweets like Jalebi, Gulab Jamun and so forth we also need to avoid and it aint fair! It's taught us some values though. Never to turn your noses up on food. Eat what you are given and be thankful. Never the temptation for gorging, always rationing. Never the need to eat out. Always planning ahead. Always saving. The fortune we saved on restaurant charges! The bad points? We become recluses, hard to cater for and to some a bore because we don't enjoy spending out or follow like sheep and pretend we're enjoying ourselves. Especially when one's priorities is elsewhere. Seems we belong in another age! Is that really a bad thing? Mind you if everybody was like us then the economy would collapse so please don't everybody pull in their reins all at once! Consider this, your average chocolate biscuit or snack. Do you ever save the Mars Bar for special occaisions? Once a blue moon we come across a choc snack and we endeaver to cherish it for as long as possible and look for a suitable celebratory date to eat our prize possesion perilously close to the use by date! Behold a chocolate covered wafer! I shall treasure it and worship it Godlike! To you it's nothing, to the third world it's the high-light of the social calendar. There's nowt on our horizon to celebrate so it will just have to sit taking pride of place in our larder. Glutton for punishment No problem? What if we say that we are also vegetarians? Strike off the following from the dwindling shopping list. Eggs, Meats, Fish, Gelatine. Also strike off Alcohol and you get a zombie existence and possibly (babies aside) all will to live! Admittedly, the veggie diet is not medically enforced or even ethically. Couldn't care less if the cow was slaughtered in front of us. Food is food. Eskimos can't be veggies. Inhabitants near or on water cannot be all veggies. A branch of early humans couldn't become harvesters and gatherers of crops as they have become intolerable to cereals (like us) and have stayed this course for eons. No bearded sandal wearer can change that. Our 'roots' are firmly in the Neanderthal age. Desperation is the reason. 'Holy' men  suggested we stay vegetarians at least for the duration of our prayers. One kind man, after hearing we already are limited in the eating department suggested we avoid meats only on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. So Nikki is a veggie only on those days and Bobby stuck with self imposed total ban. Least until we have a baby! Though Bobby is looking forward to 2005*, our 10th anniversary when he will drink (wine) and eat meat to his hearts content in Canada and Hawaii. Can't wait till he lands! (no mid-air refuelling!) *postponed indefinitely. Our Daily Bread Fat lot of good loaves falling from the sky will do us or them communion wafers. To stop us slitting our wrists we get our daily bread from the doctors via the pharmacy. You see we need to write down a number of things on paper like 6 bread, 3 flours, 5 pasta even an aspirin but that would be stretching (wink) and hand it to our good doctor (embarrassingly) and he gives us the prescription which we hand in to the chemist (more embarrassingly) and wait to pick it up next day or so. Altogether, this routine takes a few days. Not as simple as visiting the local or supermarket. Well you can buy staple stuff like Gluten Free bread from a health shop if you can afford £4.00 a loaf! The size of this bread is so tiny about half the normal bread in size and quantity. Literrally worth it's weight in gold. Taste wise... nevermind. Not edible until toasted. So there you have it, rationing on a miniscule scale. Sharing  Nikki's ration card otherwise Bobby will have to pay again. The indignity of it all.