Food on the Go in The Netherlands

 

I just spent a couple of days in The Netherlands to see a couple of friends and didn’t find the food too difficult. One of the problems is that a lot of their meals are bread based, but I did get a couple of good meals in Italian restaurants without trouble, as the owners were real Italians and knew about celiachia. One thing that I did find was that in a chain called Albert Heijn, which always seemed to have a selection of very good salads, that were marked gluten free.

Gordon Ramsay in The Times

 

There are some interesting recipes in The Times today courtesy of Gordon Ramsay. A bit too challenging for me, but of the three recipes there’s no gluten except in a soy sauce, which of course can be changed.

It must be gluten-free day as there are a couple of nice ones in the East Anglian too!

A Silly Thought

 

I was driving into Cambridge and I passed a van advertising Cambridge’s first lap dancing club.

I just had a thought. I wonder if they serve gluten-free food?

Travels With My Celia(c)

 

I've put up some notes that will form my book called "Travels With My Celia(c)" on the Internet. If anybody wants to have a look, feel free.

View the Book as a PDF File

London - 15th to 17th February, 2008

 

I'm putting a lot of my experiences of travel together in a book called "Travels with my Celia(c)". It's an awful pun I know.

The aim is to write something that is personal, light-hearted and hopefully gives a bit of information to coeliacs who might want to go somewhere different.

View the chapter on London!

El Piano

 

I had this e-mail from a restaurant called El Piano in York and Grandada.

Sounds interesting.

We have enjoyed your web-site in the context of Gluten-free-ness. Thanks for making it interesting and accessible.

Thought you would be pleased to hear that El Piano is 10 years old this year and we have celebrated by going from a more than 80% gluten-free menu to 100%, as well as nut-free (have always been) and totally free of animal products too!

Come and see us sometime, either in York or in Granada...the food is delicious...(well we would say that wouldn't we?)

Best,

EL PIANO
www.el-piano.com

York UK - Co. Reg. No. 03210744
15/17 Grape Lane
YO1 7HU
Tel: +44 1904 610676

Granada ES - NIE X2048335R
c/ Gran Capitan
18002 GRANADA
Tel: +34 646 018 110

Gluten Free Sausage Pie

 

Henry and some of his friends are coming down at the weekend, whilst I'm up in London.

Celia would have always cooked them something so I did the same this morning. Henry may have lost his mother, but he shouldn't lose the things she would do.

So I've cooked a variant of her sausage pie for everybody.

I took ten Musks gluten-free sausages and cooked them in the oven and then cut them into pieces which I put into the bottom of a large flat dish.

I also fried one onion and two peppers in a small amount of olive oil, which I then mixed with the sausages and a tin and a half of baked beans. Some gluten-free soy sauce was then added for flavour.


The whole thing was then covered by mashed potato.


Before heating it just add some grated cheese to the top.

I Thought it was Getting Better

 

I thought that hotels and restaurants were getting better in their treatment of those with allergies like me.

That is until I read this e-mail :-

We went to a wedding last weekend, and stayed at the Stirling Highland Hotel (where the wedding was held).

We told the chef that Lala was coeliac and asked if there was a gluten free menu option. No.
We asked the wedding organiser for a copy of the menu options and were sent a copy of the menu, and asked if we could have the beef and vegetables and we would bring our own gravy to be microwaved. No.
Chef said that he would provide the beef option as a coeliac option, including gravy. This didn't arrive - just a bit of beef and some veggies that had some sort of coating on them. Being 5 years old and faced with something she had never seen before, she wouldn't eat it, so we gave her some chips that we were assured were safe.

The starter was carrot and potato soup, but I think that the Chef used a wheat thickener, (either that or the chips weren't safe) because she was sick as anything over the following few days. When she got up on the Sunday, she was itching, and her face was an absolute mess.

We won't be eating there again.

I certainly won't be going to the Highland Hotel in Stirling.

Cart and Horses - Kings Worthy

 

This is just a typical country pub, just outside Winchester. I had a very good meal there last night, where they cooked me new potatoes instead of chips etc.

But two of the staff have relatives or close friends who are coeliac or gluten intolerant. So it does show that knowledge and training gets good gluten-free meals. And probably good meals full stop.

Coeliac Sportsman

 

Hayley Turner now admits to being a coeliac. She’s a very good jockey. Note, that I did not use the word lady.

A Gluten-Free Dinner Party

 

Celia and I always had a dinner party at Christmas. Roderick had pointed this out at her celebration and I thought why not in a rash moment.

So on Friday night, seven of us sat down to dinner that I'd cooked myself.

Now, is that a first for someone of sixty?

Super Natural at Sainsburys

 

I was in Sainsburys this morning and they had a special offer on these. They are chilled meals for one and it seems that about half are labelled “Suitable for Coeliacs” and not just gluten-free.

I had a chicken and rice one tonight. OK.

India Knight in the Sunday Times

 

She is promoting her new interesting diet in The Sunday Times today.

I’ve just read it and most of what she has done looks interesting and is gluten-free. There is one recipe for Indian Scrambled eggs, that looks good to me. She also has a recipe for quiche that doesn’t use traditional or gluten-free flour.

Baked Eggs with Tomato

 

This is a recipe that Celia found many years ago and we’ve served up at dinner parties for years. As we always had a dinner party sometime around Christmas, I thought I’d try and carry on the tradition and the recipe did me proud.

2 cups cooked or canned tomatoes
½ cup finely chopped onion
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour (gluten free works)
1 teaspoon sugar
6 or 12 eggs
¾ cup grated cheese

Butter 6 ramekins or small baking dishes well. Combine the tomatoes, onion, salt and pepper, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Add the butter and flour, which have been kneaded together, and stir until the mixture is thickened. Add the sugar and taste the mixture for seasoning. Spoon the sauce into the ramekins or dishes. Break a large egg into each dish. Sprinkle lightly with cheese and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until the white is set.

Sorry about the cups etc. but this recipe came from James Beard’s American Cookery.

If you get it right, which is not too difficult, they come up like little domes and look seriously impressive.

Gluten-Free Cookery School

 

Thanks to everyone who responded to the death of Celia.

It’s funny but I’m happier now that I’m by myself. I suspect that it’s because I can do what I want and eat what I want and need. My middle son went out and bought some ready-made cottage pies for supper yesterday and he didn’t bother to read the label. So I went out for an Indian in Cambridge.

Seriously, though my cooking skills are pretty limited, although I’m not bad with a frying pan for one.

Does anybody know of a gluten-free cooking school, preferably somewhere nice and warm, that would welcome a sixty-year-old widower with the lack of knowledge outside of the very basic?

Kangaroo Meat

 

Kangaroos are gluten free, but they jump about a bit on your plate. They are yumm though!

Cough Remedies

 

According to my pharmacist friend, honey, lemon and whisky is just as good. That’s gluten-free.

There’s been a story recently that has said that honey is better than the main ingredient of cough mixture.

Jay Rayner

 

Jay Rayner is an ill-informed food columnist on the Guardian.

So I wrote this letter to the Editor.

I've given up buying the paper.

Jay Rayner’s blog on food intolerances is a disgrace and about as unscientifically correct as you can get.

I’m a sixty year old coeliac who was diagnosed a few years ago, and my life has been totally changed as a result. No more chronic dandruff, bad skin, gallstones, joint pains, migraines, mild depression, excessive tiredness, the runs and wind.

Did I make that all up? Was it a fad?

Studies show that one in a hundred of the UK population are coeliacs. If more were properly diagnosed and went on a gluten-free diet, many more people would be able to take a full part in society. They would also not be such a drain on the NHS, with problems like depression and arthritis, which can appear because of gluten in the diet.

Your paper, should be promoting good health care, not allowing columnists to use it as a mouthpiece for their quack science.

This was one of the best replies to his article.

I think the weasley squirming of Mr Rayner has come a little too late. I had eplilepsy in my teens but thankfully I haven't had a seizure for about 14 years. The point of bringing that up is: do you think I imagined it or that I was possessed by the devil? They were brutal seizures and they happened. So has Coeliac Disease.

I was diagnosed about two months ago and had to leave my full-time job (in journalism) and ended up being a total wreck in terms of physical health. Mentally, I'm as chipper as ever but it's dim-witted, demented and ill-educated tosspots like you that cause the prejudice that some colieacs suffer when they go to bars, restaurants and the like. You are extremely dangerous.

Perhaps you have climbed down but ill-educated cowards usually back track when they realise they have been rumbled. You are one.

Waitrose and Mobility Scooters

 

This was brought up by someone on the UK-Coeliac Yahoo list. I’m sorry but I can’t remember who.

However, Waitrose in Bury St. Edmunds have one and allow anybody to use it responsibly.

So don’t complain, point this out.

Loch Fyne - Ipswich

 

I ate there last night and they knew what I needed. Not bad too, but anything would have been good, as Ipswich won 3-1. They are also doing a survey on what customers want, so I told them.

Afterwards, I went to a party at a friend’s. She knows I’m a coeliac, but there was nothing I could eat except raw vegetables. Lucky I’d had the good meal at Loch Fyne.