Looking for Mr. Goodbar

Just after we arrived here I got a message from my doctor in California, confirming what he had suspected - I have celiac disease.  This only affects one percent of the population.  So the way I figure it, I'm in the 99th percentile!

This means I can’t eat any more gluten.  No croissants, no baguettes, no pain au chocolat.   And, oh yes, I’m lactose-intolerate.  So now I am in the country with the world’s best cheese and the world’s best bread and can’t have a bite of either.

I must have been a very bad man in a prior life.

But thank goodness for French wine.

So now Val and I are on a new adventure – how to go gluten-free in France.  I am learning exciting new words!  All the things I can't eat, like blé (wheat), seigle (rye) and orge (barley).  You never know where you will find opportunities to expand your vocabulary.

After we got the news we headed straight to the bio store.  This is an organic food store, but not the old hippies-in-Birkenstocks variety.  No, it’s more like a Whole Foods a la français, with a wide variety of organic snails.

We found the gluten-free section and stocked up on new things to try.  The breads and the crackers turned out to be surprisingly good, though the breakfast cereal tasted like sciure (sawdust).  Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

The tricky part now is tracking down all the gluten that is hiding places you wouldn’t expect it.  Like soy sauce.  And hay fever pills.  And…chocolate?!

Yes, flour is used as filler in chocolate to cut costs.  Who knew?  So now we are on the hunt for gluten-free chocolate.  Happily, the purest chocolate only comes from the very best chocolate makers, so that's what I have to eat.

This could turn out well after all.

KVS