About Me

Hi! My name is Basil.

I'd start talking gluten-free now, but it wouldn't make very much sense so I'll start at the very beginning:

Three years ago, when I was a freshman in high school, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis and Sjogren's syndrome. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it) I don't have a goiter or super-dry eyes and mouth, but I do get the fatigue, sensitivity to cold, difficulty concentrating, and, when I'm really tired or stressed, dry eyes and skin. Since the symptoms I do have are basically arthritis symptoms, I just say I have arthritis. It's much easier to explain to people.

Anyway, after a year of arthritis pain, my mother (who I will refer to as GF-Mom) read somewhere that a gluten-free diet was beneficial to people with autoimmune disorders. So, my parents and I went gluten-free.

It was hard, at first. I'm a hefty girl of Germanic descent from my dad's side, and I love starches and cheese. Pizza was my favorite food, and it was hard to give up. It didn't help that it was December, and all the Christmas breads and pastries were calling my name.

Slowly and painfully, we went completely gluten-free. And I did notice that I felt a lot better.

Fast-forward 3 years: I'm 16, a sophomore in college, and still gluten-free. There is only one significant setback. I'm in Virginia, and my mom's pantry with its sacks of GF flours is in Connecticut.

The dining hall does have a GF fridge, but it's rarely stocked. At the moment, I think it has half a loaf of stale cheddar-jalepeno bread, which I strongly dislike. Good GF food can get expensive, and even though the parents are willing to fund me as long as it's food, I try not to splurge too much. This leads to some interesting improvisation, and me being a food ninja to look for flours  in sauces and gravies, and even sausages. Apparently some sausages use flour in their fillers. Who knew?

(Actually, one of the things on my to-do list is to talk to the dining hall staff about labeling their food for allergens. We had an incident last year where I asked if a veggie burger was gluten-free, staff said yes. I ate the burger. Fellow GF friend (suspected celiac) asked if the burger had couscous. Staff said yes, apparently unaware that couscous has gluten. Friend and I spent the evening in great pain.)

I've talked about all the things I had to give up, which is kind of negative, so now I'll talk about what I can eat, which is much more important:

I can eat sushi (I LOVE sushi), and a lot of Chinese/Japanese foods, the ones with rice noodles. This is great because there are a lot of instant noodles with rice noodles instead of wheat noodles, and they're much tastier than ramen anyway.

I can eat fruits and veggies! Fruits and vegetables are always good and contain lots of nutrients. Plus, I go to school in Virginia, home of the chicken-fried steak and cheesy grits, and I feel like I've avoided significant weight gain whenever I look at all the gluten-full food on the menu.

I can still eat pizza, too. At home, my mother makes a killer GF crust, and tops it off with Daiya dairy-free cheese. Here, there's a pizza place that sells GF pizza and Udi's just started to make frozen pizzas for much less. I can walk a mile to the grocery store, buy a pizza, walk back, and have it for dinner. That way I don't have to scavenge the dining hall, and I get some exercise in.

Being gluten-free in college does make my life a little harder, but I still have a lot of fun, and I hope this blog will reflect all the joy and laughter, the cooking, the eating, and the learning that I do this year.

~Basil