Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Interview With My Best Friend

Today I am with my best friend and she is going to answer some questions about what she thinks about celiac. I'm going to call her BFF. She's in my class, and 8-years-old but she is shorter than me. We met each other when we were both 2-years-old. Her favorite color is green, and her favorite food is soup, not any specific soup.

Me: Are you awesome?
BFF: Yes.

Me: What did you feel like when I heard I had celiac?
BFF: All your food is going to be different when I come to your house except for fruit. But one of the things that wouldn't change is we are still best friends.

Me: Now that you've had some, does the gluten-free food taste different?
BFF: I don't really think it tastes different but your muffins do. But I don't really taste the difference because your mom is a good cook.

Me: Do you feel like I'm different in any way?
BFF: Not really, except for the fact that you have celiac. The food at lunch at school is still the mac and cheese, and you used to have that anyway. And you just changed it a little bit so you can have rice pasta.

Me: Do you still have as much fun as before I had celiac?
BFF: Yes. Nothing will change. except that you have a disease.

BFF: How does it feel to have that disease?
Me: It's easy to ignore. But when I'm thinking about it I kind of feel upset. And not like all of my other friends.

BFF: Huh?
Me: That I'm not like all of my other friends.

BFF: Bye people of the world who like this blog!

Thursday, August 26, 2010

More Gluten-free please

After camp or on a walk if you get hungry why can't there be more gluten-free places? Or at least be signs that say it is or it's not?

For example there's a place in Little Italy, an ice cream place, that we walk by every day after camp on Grand Street. It's not gluten-free, or we don't know because nobody knows when we ask them. It makes me feel like they aren't careful. We used to go there everyday after camp and it made the long walks seem a lot faster. Now that we can't get the ice cream, it's like a long and lonely walk home. Except my mama is a very good buddy.

But closer to our house/apartment is another ice cream place called il laboratorio del gelato and a lot of their ice cream is gluten-free. We know because my mama called them and asked. Thanks to that we still get a nice cold treat after the long walk, just not during it.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Mama Mondays - Vitamins

The Kid had her 6 months celiac serology test two weeks ago. We're not down to zero on the antibodies, but we're heading in the right direction by A LOT.

However, the growth spurt plus some results on her vitamin levels led docs to put her on calcium and iron. Oh what fun it is to find vitamin supplements gluten-free!

But we did. Not everyone has a Whole Foods in their neighborhood, but at ours I picked up their 365 Everyday Value Calcium D Kids Gummy Pectin Swirl (Say that 3 times fast) which is gluten free and dairy free. And at the CVS I found Enfamil Fer-In-Sol. While usually given to infants, both her docs recommended it since she's low on iron but not anemic. (Are we having fun yet?)

As for The Kid and how she likes these new morning "treats?" The iron brings on great dramatic gagging. We follow with the gummy calcium -- she gets 2 -- a candy chaser which seems to cut the "super sweet then okay, but then terrible aftertaste like the worst you've ever had." Awesome.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Gluten Free Across the Country

If you want to go on a trip, it might be hard to find some places that will be gluten-free.
We went across the country this summer and found some really nice places and some that were not that nice to us.
But we want to tell you about the ones we liked the best:

1. Skyland.
We stayed there for only one night. But we ate at the big restaurant and they had gluten-free grits! We also had eggs and bacon and ice cream and much more. And nothing was cooked or fried on the same grill as things with gluten. I also liked that it was so quiet and pretty. Everywhere you looked there was tons of nature. There's also a pony ride.

2. Fayetteville, West Virginia
There's a restaurant called Pies & Pints in Fayetteville, West Virginia and it has gluten free handmade pizza. There is a mini-playground outside and lots of tables and chairs too. You might want to eat inside if it rains but otherwise if it's nice weather it's also a nice place to eat dinner. The pizza was very good. I liked it a lot.

3. Birmingham, Alabama
In Birmingham, Alabama there is a restaurant called Mellow Mushroom that also has gluten-free pizza. Their's was about as good as the one at Pies & Pints except they didn't have an outside place to play. It did have a funny name and also a TV that had a soccer game that was going on, on it....not that I was interested in soccer.

4. New Orleans
The hotel Le Pavillon was one of the best hotels I've ever stayed at. They were very nice and very friendly. There's a ghost story there and they say they have proof of it. They said they took a picture of a ghost out by the clock in the morning. I love that hotel. Not only that they had ghost stories and ghosts living there, but it was also very clean and fancy. We met a friend there named Grace who was a very nice lady and she set out a gluten-free breakfast for the last day we stayed there and she made me my first Shirley Temple.

5. Harry's Roadhouse, Santa Fe
They were really nice and knew a lot about celiac. And they made my dinner in special pots and when I got a root beer float for dessert they let me pour in the root beer by myself. I also got this big piece of paper to color, and I'm not even done with it now. And that was weeks ago.

6. Big Ring Bakery, Flagstaff
We met them and they were at the Farmer's Market and they had a big dog. And they had gluten-free bread and gluten-free chocolate. I thought they were very nice to us. And their things were extremely good.

7. Las Vegas
It was huge. So many lights everywhere and we stayed in this casino/hotel and we got this thing when you put it in your bathtub and it starts smelling very nice and turning the color that it was. It's called a bath bomb. Then when you go and come out from the bath you smell very nice. We stayed in a room bigger than our apartment. I didn't know where to sleep. There is a fancy restaurant and the ceiling was painted blue with clouds and there were fake street lamps and a huge clock in the center of it. The food there was delicious. There was gluten-free spaghetti! With tomato sauce! And I loved it! And there was a lady singing with all these people around her like she was famous. Was she famous? I'm not sure. The restaurant was called Enoteca. It was crazy but it was cool.

8. In-N-Out Burger and Dairy Queen
Dairy Queen was a nice place to stop and get ice cream on a hot day. It's gluten-free and they would also let you bring in your own gluten-free cone. We stopped at a lot of those. At In-N-Out Burger you didn't even have to get out of the car to get some french fries with ketchup or a vanilla or chocolate milk shake. And that was all gluten-free. Because they don't fry their french fries with anything else. And french fries are originally gluten-free.

9. Hansen's Cake
Hansen's Cake has gluten-free cakes. Everytime we go to my grandma and grandpa's house in Los Angeles, if there's any birthday we get a cake from Hansen's Cake. The gluten-free cakes taste like regular cakes -- except they're gluten-free. And I remember eating the regular cakes and they're as good as the regular ones. They're better than the cakes I sometimes get in New York!

There are lots of gluten-free places across the country. And all of this is not all of them. Maybe you'll go on a road trip and drive across the country one day and find even more places that are gluten-free. Thank you.