Living With Fat Posts

I’m back from a visit to my mother’s house in Texas where, despite her 20+ year career as a nurse and her friendship with a woman who’s had Celiac disease for over 30 years, I still got glutenated.

In all fairness, it wasn’t for a lack of effort on my mother’s part.

Those who have to live without eating gluten learn quickly that dining out is a luxury we just can’t afford. It’s not a matter of money; it’s a matter of physically needing to avoid gluten, even the smallest trace amounts that can, through inattentive kitchen practices, lead to several days of misery. At home, that’s not a big problem for me: I love to cook and my kitchen has been wholly cleansed of gluten in all of its forms.

So when I arrived at my mother’s house the first thing I did was take her to the grocery store. Yes, even H.E.B.’s in Austin offer plenty of gluten-free alternatives: they stock a wider variety of gluten-free flours than my hometown’s store does, and their fresh produce is to die for compared to what we get at the commissary. Seventy-five dollars poorer, we headed toward my mother’s house where I planned to spend five days cooking our meals just so I could avoid ingesting gluten.

And that’s when my oldest brother, the one whom I’m so fond of, called to invite us out to eat.

Oh, the Thai restaurant where we dined had gluten-free options listed on their menus. They even offered Tamaris sauce, a wheat-free (and lower sodium) version of shoyu… “soy sauce” for those of you unfamiliar with Asiatic cuisine. But halfway through my utterly yummy dish of pad se ew (a name which has since become ironic), I started feeling the symptoms that indicate gluten contamination.

My stomach rumbled. My abdomen ached. My forehead began to sweat even as every joint in my body lit up with pain that felt like someone was jabbing ice picks into my sockets. I grew mentally confused. My hands shook. Every inch of my body itched intensely, and suddenly I felt a nearly uncontrollable urge to lay down on the floor of the restaurant and nap.

But in my family — an imminently Southern-schooled clan — one does not admit to such things.

So I sat there.

Suffering.

As it happens, this dinner occurred the night before my mother wanted me to attend her church so she could introduce me to all of her friends. A church which, I might add, features 2+ hours main services followed by a doughnut-and-coffee-oriented 2+ hour Sunday school.

That so didn’t happen for me, much to my mother’s dissatisfaction. Having stayed in the bathroom, miserable, until darned near 4 a.m. I just wasn’t capable of attending the 9 a.m. service. Pity.

It took the next entire day for most of the gluten to work its way out of my system. And that night my older brother came up with yet another restaurant recommendation.

“Oh hell no,” I told him. “You don’t seem to understand: eating out hurts me.”

That’s when I realized that my brother, whom I adore, couldn’t possibly understand what’s going on with my Celiac disease. See, he keeps thinking his “low carb diet” is much the same thing: you avoid grains and you’ll lose weight. That’s why, as he sat there munching one day on tortilla chips and another day scarfing down Schlotzky’s (because he had a great coupon), he thought of a gluten-free diet as, well, a diet: something one can enjoy cheating on.

On my last night in Texas my brother invited me over to his house for dinner. On the menu? Sandwiches. Having already been glutenated repeatedly on my visit there — and with a cab coming to take me to the airport at 3:50 a.m. — I knew I couldn’t survive another night of being exposed to gluten, even if he promised not to put the meat he’d sliced for me on one of the freshly-baked rolls he’d just set on the same counter where he was carving the meat.

Next time I visit my family — which is going to be sometime in mid-October — I know two things will have happened: (1) I will have worked off 10 lbs. if only to tease my brother about how “cheating” on his diet has derailed his own weight loss plans; and (2) I’m going to be staying at one of the Laughlin hotels where I can not only order gluten-free foods sent directly to my room but I’ll also be able to drink all the martinis I want without listening to my mother complain.

Ah, family. Ain’t they grand?

I remember, back when I was a kid, sitting in front of the television and watching June Cleaver tip the grocery delivery boy as he removed items from bulging brown paper bags and set them on her kitchen table.

The guy looked quite a bit like our grocery delivery boy, one of my older brother’s classmates who was working to afford the gas for his spiffy GTO. I had quite the crush on him, although thinking back to his pimply face, chicken-like neck and greasy hair it’s entirely possible that I was simply fond of the food be brought to our house once a week.

It was a ritual of my mother’s to serve “dab a dinners” on Tuesday nights, dinners designed to use up every bite of leftovers accumulated in the previous week. I loved those meals; they were very much like having a Golden Buffet in our house. Afterward, while the kids did the dishes, Mom would comb through the cupboards and ice box as she made up her grocery list which she’d call in first thing on Wednesday mornings. Late the next afternoon, the grocery boy would arrive with our groceries which, although he didn’t unpack, he carried into the house while Mom hunted around for a dollar to give him. (Back then, with a dollar buying a gallon of gas, that was considered a generous tip.)

Come to think of it, groceries weren’t the only things regularly delivered back then. The dry cleaners used to pick up and drop off my father’s suits and business shirts. Another company delivered big cardboard tubs of ice cream every two weeks. Our neighbors ordered milk straight from a dairy rather than the grocery store — they said it tasted better — and they had it delivered. Even the butcher shop (which was separate from the grocery store at that time) would send over orders, as did a few local stores if you bought enough merchandise. I remember once the mechanic’s brought my dad’s car to the house after fixing a tire that had blown out on the highway, but then again they had to: we only had the one car.

That, perhaps, was ultimately the reason for all those delivery services: one-car families were the norm, as were stay-at-home wives. If the woman of the house wanted to run errands she had to take her husband to work and pick him up that evening. It was a such hassle for both of them that stores quickly realized the surest route to making money was by eliminating such hassles, so they offered delivery services. Most were free, although some did charge a nominal amount — a dollar or two at the most, and not the $10+ fee grocery stores with delivery services tack on today.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about those delivery services quite a bit. Between sitting in line to drop off or pick up my son from school and the hours I spend trying to earn a living working at home, I’d love to be able to get groceries delivered for a reasonable price. Or dry-cleaning. Or even a meal that consisted of something — anything — other than pizza. But in our small town, that’s just not possible, not even with the grocery store.

Which, really, makes the capitalist in me sit up and take note. Oh, I’m not interested in starting a delivery company myself. Of all the small business opportunities I can think of, that one’s a bit too labor intensive for me. But it sure seems like some enterprising college kids could make some serious cash if they wanted.

I know I’d use them, at any rate, particularly on busy days like today when I’m actually craving a salad but just don’t have time to go to the store to buy the ingredients.

Food eaten:

Number of people nearly killed due to PMS: 4

Most of my friends are already married, so I have little experience with the type of “Bridezilla” that’s now in fashion. Oh, sure, I know most brides try to lose weight before their wedding day. I vaguely recall doing that for my own wedding, although back then I had only 10 lbs. to shed. (Oh, those were the days.)

But brides who tell their bridesmaids they need boob jobs? That takes some massive chutzpah, if you ask me. Kudos to the woman who declined that, even if the bride found a doctor willing to do four bridesmaids for the price of two.

Call me old fashioned if you will, but I don’t think I’d want to know the kind of woman who considered chemical peels and botox to be thoughtful bridesmaid gifts. Seems to me the only one she’s really thinking about is herself. A couple of years down the road when none of those women are talking to her she’ll have only herself to blame.

I’m down in Texas visiting my mother, and it feels like I haven’t stopped eating since the moment we stepped off the plane yesterday. Southern food is my weakness: fried okra, fried catfish, fried… anything… all topped with jalapenos, poblanos, gravy or all three.

Yesterday, I overdid it on the peppers: scrambled eggs with jalapenos and tomatoes for breakfast; a chile rellano and Spanish rice for lunch. By the time dinner rolled around I wasn’t in the least bit interested in food. In fact, I went to bed a bit early (we’d had to catch a 6 a.m. flight, after all, so I was exhausted) and wound up having those crazy post-spicy food dreams.

Today I’ve decided that even though I’m on vacation I shouldn’t let it completely blow my diet. So I’ve grabbed one of the hotel’s promotional pens and a little pad of paper so I can keep track of calories I’m consuming. In theory, this should help fend off overindulgence. In reality, I suck at math, so I won’t be surprised if I get home to find I’ve gained two or three pounds.

On the bright side: it’s smoking hot here. The temps reached 105 F yesterday, although today they’re expected to be a comparatively chilly 99 F. So if I do manage to get home without gaining any weight, it’s probably due to the water weight loss with all the sweating I’m doing.

Well, I did not miraculously lose 30+ pounds this week. No, I didn’t really think it would happen but, hey, it would’ve been nice to have lost at least one pound, but that didn’t happen, either. Which is frustrating, to be honest, because I’ve been pretty darned good at eating right.

In fact the only thing in my household that seems to be lighter is my wallet. Since I’d received a Starbuck’s gift card for my birthday, I decided to head there around lunch time. In our town, Starbuck’s is really just a kiosk inside a grocery store, and not surprisingly my stomach got to rumbling while I stood waiting for my double-shot non-fat Venti latte. So — and here’s where I was proud of myself — I headed over to the salad bar with my low-cal Starbuck’s treat in hand.

Five minutes later I walked out $7 poorer. Seven dollars! And, no, that wasn’t for the latte: I’d paid for that with the gift card. That little plastic box holding my salad cost seven freaking dollars! I could’ve gone to a restaurant and had someone else put my salad together for me at that price.

Figuring I’d save more money by making salads at home I asked my husband to stop at the commissary on his way home to pick up salad-making stuff. Ordinarily, it’s far less expensive to shop there than at a civilian grocery store. But when he came home with a mere bag of fixings (mixed greens, carrots, celery, black olives, chickpeas, green peas, grape tomatoes and chopped turkey) the bill came to $14.75.

Holy crap! At that price I could buy two weeks’ worth of side salads — or 14 Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers — from Wendy’s. So, really, as if it wasn’t already hard for us chubby folks to make healthy food choices, the expense of it’s now making it even more difficult. Which kind of makes me wonder if the makers of appetite suppressants like hoodia are making a fortune these days as people seek ways to keep their grocery costs down. I know I’m finding that tempting, at least.

Speaking of which: here are web-savvy ways to help keep your grocery costs down. Not that using online coupons or ordering in bulk is all that revolutionary, mind you. My favorite web-based way to save money at the grocery store? Order pizza online.