Insult Added to Injury

A few days ago I went for coffee with the Cycling Scientist and we had a good old-fashioned two-hour chin-wag.

This event was notable due to two unrelated factors:

1. The work ethic for which I am justifiably famous generally precludes my taking time off (playing hooky is another way of looking at it) during business hours.
2. I had soy milk in my tall latte.

The first gave rise to a mild taste of guilt that was soon assuaged by the accompanying delicious gossip. The second one, however, has far graver implications for my lifestyle at present - and has me beating my forehead against the keyboard in dismay while threatening wholesale my rather tenuous grip on culinary contentment.

Yes, Campers, the quacks have declared I must now be lactose free.

Taken together with my weekend pasta setback, this latest bolt from the blue is almost too much to bear. I am seriously thinking of emigrating to - oh, I don't know - the South Pole, where there are no doctors to boss me around and interfere with my few remaining reasons to live.

Almost exactly six months to the day since my anti-grain grief got going, I have the basic principles of this gluten-freedom fighting thing pretty much conquered - a bold statement, granted, but one to which I trust these scribblings will attest. I admit freely that one of the great saving graces of all this wheatless brouhaha has been the comfort and succour of dairy goods, luscious gifts from our noble bovine friends. No cake allowed? Fine. I'll eat panna cotta and creme brulee and macarons with buttercream instead. No pasta? I can still enjoy creamy sauces folded into risotto. No bread for my preserves? That's OK: cheese alone makes an excellent foil for chutneys and tangy marmalades.

But now ... well, now it's getting just plain silly. I have decided to stage a mutiny and mount a campaign of passive non-compliance - after all, a girl can only be pushed so far.

Soy milk in my latte? OK, I can just about manage that. Almond milk in my tea? I guess that's not too big a problem.

But breakfast without yogurt? There would be no point in getting out of bed in the morning. Cancellation of my gala Caribbean Cocktail and Cheese-Making Convention and trip to the Cheese Queen's lair next month? I'd rather be dipped in camembert and buried in an anthill. Forced to forswear cream fillings in meringues and gluten-free profiteroles? You might as well take a whirring Cuisinart blade straight to my vitals. These sacrifices are too dear a price to pay in order to [in medical parlance] 'see what happens'.

I'm putting my foot down and drawing a line in the sand. The fates and medicine men can do as they will: I'm damned if I'll go dairy-free.