A gluten freedom-fighter's enlistment often involves new experiences and service overseas. These two imperatives customarily go hand in hand, since many cultures (although not those most common in my part of Pennsylvania, I'm afraid) embrace cuisines that are centred upon starches derived from sources other than wheat and its gluten-filled cousins.
Any guerrilla new to the fray thus finds herself quite naturally experimenting with ingredients that might be unfamiliar. In my case, this was doubly true, since such products are usually to be found in local supermarkets' organic/bleeding heart/health food/socialistical aisles that - in my gluten-filled past - I had avoided like the plague. But where else can you find hominy, quinoa, chia seeds, polenta, brown rice, and grits?
And before anybody gets themselves worked into a lather over my classification of grits as ingredients rare and strange, let me point out that north of the Mason-Dixon line, grits are few and far between. I have yet to see any on a local restaurant menu and had never tried one before my drafting into the the gluten-free brigade. Joe Pesci wasn't exaggerating.
Along with new ingredients - and the culinary inspiration provided by their source cultures - are a few tried-and-true favorites without which I could not function in my daily life. Some of these, to my great chagrin, initially proved problematic in the gluten-free arena. Chief among the malefactors was naturally-brewed shoyu - and the angst caused by my discovery that it is made from wheat provided blogging and research fodder for days. In the end I decided that good Japanese soy sauce is, in fact, gluten free - and I defy anybody to convince me otherwise.
Other pantry must-haves such as Lyle's Golden syrup (England) and Peppadews (South Africa) provide additional weaponry in a wheat-free warrior's arsenal by being totally delicious and capable of adding oomph to fare that might otherwise be screaming for a crispy crumb coating or flour-thickened sauce.
It is a great irony, then, that while foreign ingredients can provide variety and spice to a cereal-free diet, foreign travel can be a totally different story - and not one with a particularly happy ending, either. What, after all, is Paris without pains au chocolat or gateaux l'opera? Rome without spaghetti carbonara? Munich without Weissbier? Tokyo without monburan? Edinburgh without deep-fried battered Mars bars? Philadelphia without cheesesteaks?
Heartbreak, that's what.
But then, nobody ever said the gluten-freedom fight would be an easy one.
Exotic [for me, anyway], interesting, or problematic ingredients:
Places of interest: