Shophouse

Alright, I hate doing this. I really do. I know that most of the currently imaginary reader-base of this blog is scattered around the country or the world. I have a few DC-Specific things I could talk about and I'm tempted to now and again because it's my life. This is my every day, or at least my every breakfast and/or lunch, and this is my blog, and maybe, just maybe, sometimes I want to tell you people what I had for lunch even if I know you probably can't have it. The good news in this case, though, is that maybe, just maybe, someday you'll be able to.

So, we all know about Chipotle. I'll talk about it at some point. It's a great option for us on the go. It's also one of those restaurants I never gave much thought to before having to become Gluten-Free. Well, the owners of Chipotle are trying out another new restaurant here in DC, and it's sort of a treasure trove for we of the unable-to-eat-gluten tribe. Shophouse is located in Dupont Circle, right next to some Salad place that I think people like and the BGR Burger Joint which is a perfectly acceptable burger place if you're cool with not having a bun (and hey, we can talk about that later too!). It's also maybe a three minute walk from Hello Cupcake! (their exclamation point, not mine), which if we're going to go on DC places will be on the docent, because, you know, cupcakes. It's a good twenty minute walk from work for me, but it's totally worth it.

It runs on the same sort of formula as Chipotle. You tell them what you want for the counter-service. You start with a base of rice/noodles/etc. Add in meat (lamb, chicken, tofu and Meatballs!), a vegetable, a sauce (all too spicy for my blood, but I'm very, very weak), a garnish (beats me), and then toasted rice or garlic or something. For me, it's almost always rice, meatballs, this vaguely sweet and garlicky charred corn, and then a metric ton of the toasted rice. I have no idea what toasted rice is, but it's a little sweet and crunchy and awesome.

Anyway, the point to this, to all of it, is that the place is ENTIRELY gluten free. Entirely. You can get rice-based gluten free meatballs, which is absolutely worth the walk because the texture of them is something I miss. All of this, with a fairly quick moving line, is about $7.50, which is totally reasonable for the amount of food you get and the fact it's all gluten free.

All in all, it's a pretty great, convenient little place. The downside is that there's one in DC, one coming to Bethesda, and apparently, one in Hollywood, so well, I guess it's good if you're a tourist. It also, to me, makes it seem like the first store was enough of a success that they are trying more. There's hope yet for the rest of you.

Snacks (the First)

So you're diagnosed with Celiac or with some sort of terrible sensitivity or just some nagging ache or ailment and the doc says "Hey, let's have you give the gluten-free lifestyle a try." You're suddenly awash in a world without staples. Look, family was having pasta last night. They were having penne. I was having gf penne (made from corn, not so great) and I see my kid eating a piece of bread with butter with his pasta and I wanted it. A lot. It's the simplest food in the world, just a piece of $1.17 a loaf whitebread. It probably wasn't even butter. It was probably Crock or something.

The point is this. I'm not a huge guy by any means but I am a guy who cares about food. Sometimes that means I eat when I am bummed. Snack options are key. My go to snack, if I had a choice of anything? Those Snyder's Honey Mustard and Onion pretzel pieces. I'm not posting a picture. It's too sad. We definitely can't have those anymore. Also, no SunChips, no on most prepackaged Chex Mix, no PRINGLES, because, you know, potato chips totally need gluten, right?

There are choices though. First and foremost? Popcorn. Popcorn is great and you can do a lot of things with it. Personally, I like drenching with butter and salt and taking a year off my life, but there's also Parmesan cheese or making your own caramel corn or whatever. It's totally gluten free, can be as healthy or not healthy as you want and air poppers really aren't that expensive.  It takes maybe two minutes to pop popcorn. I'm lazy but I'm not so lazy that I'll take the hit in quality for the microwave stuff. There are lines and there are limits. Still, let's say you want something interesting that's even easier:

I give you PopCrunch. This stuff is fairly new; it's been out for six months or so. You can quite often find it on sale for a reasonable price. It's not all that bad for you relatively, and it's totally addictive. Oh yeah, Gluten-Free too. I've only had the Brown Sugar Cinnamon which is pretty much what it sounds like and the White and Sharp Cheddar Mix which is sort of like Kettle Corn covered with ridiculous cheese powder. Totally the way to go.

Guess what? We can have Dortios! Sort of. We can definitely have the Nacho Cheese sort. Sort of. Some of the Frito-Lays Products are totally Gluten Free (Here's a list). Some are just made without Gluten ingredients but could still be on the same lines as Sun Chips or what not. Eat at your own risk, but I certainly have never had a problem. I know there are some brands which have Gluten. Google before eating if you want to get fancy with it.

What else? I have to save some things for another one of these, you know. Okay how about:

There are a lot of sweet potato chips out there that we can eat and a lot of them are pretty good and again, relatively healthy for you (especially compared to, let's say, Doritos). The Green Giant ones came out earlier this year. There's a Zesty Cheddar Veggie Chip variety that we CAN'T eat but the Sea Salt Sweet Potato ones are pretty addictive and pretty safe too. I see them on sale all the time. Usually either they or the PopCrunch are on sale so I alternate accordingly.

There are other things and we'll get to them. It's quite possible that you can't have your very favorite snack anymore but you can still munch away your sorrows with a lot of other great options, I promise.

Pizza

I've mentioned it before, but the second most frustrating thing about being gluten-free is the lack of immediate availability of food on the run. Do you remember easy options? You know. Easy lunch options, easy dinner options, something that will give you good leftovers, will reheat well, can be eaten cold for breakfast, can be accentuated with a bazillion toppings, even tiny fish which is insane on paper, let me tell you. I guess that's all one option, but it's the best food on the run in the entire world: pizza.

It's also totally and absolutely cut off from us, or at least one aspect of it is. The American Local Pizza place is an amazing thing. I spent a year in England, London to be exact and these places just didn't exist. These are places where you can get pizza by the slice or by the pie, subs/cheesesteaks, chicken fingers/wings, gyros or italian food depending on the denomination. Inexpensive, quick, versatile and usually leaps and bounds better than your chain pizza places (Dominos, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, etc). Almost anywhere I've been in the States has a plethora of them in a small area so you can pick and choose and find the best one. Near us we had one which had this Macaroni Pie which I will actually not even describe to you people, because it would be cruel as most people reading this, myself included, can't have it. Just take my word for it. It was awesome.

Pizza is also one of the most inexpensive dinner options in the world. Those little Totino's party pizzas? They're like a buck, $1.50 each. Sure, they're not great, but you put some Doritos on them and hope for the best and for the price you can't beat that (Did you know we can have most Doritos? We totally can. Not the pizzas anymore, but definitely the Doritos). That's totally cut off to us. Oh sure, we can get a quick little pizza you can get in an oven; it'll be gluten free too! It'll just have a really terrible crust and be something more like eight dollars for a pizza that's even smaller than one of the Totino's sub-two-dollar pies.

But wait, we have more options! There's Domino's. Domino's have Gluten-Free pizzas. I saw it on TV. I read it on the internet. It's true. Alright, look, so I am not the sort of guy who cares a ton about contamination if it doesn't mess me up and I don't think I'm getting hit by it every meal. I'm not someone who is a snob in most ways, and I know that we can't be choosers all the time, or even most of the time. I am not eating Domino's Gluten-Free Pizza. I'm not. It's not happening. I could be desperate and it still wouldn't happen. I don't want to eat Domino's regular pizza. I'd be happy to talk to you about the cultural wonder that is the Noid (and the 7-Up Spot, even though I don't want to drink 7-Up either. Does 7-Up even still exist? Apparently it's owned by Dr. Pepper Snapple group. I had no idea that the same company just focused on Dr. Pepper and Snapple. That's a kind of weird synergy. Ah, anyway.). Yes, I would talk about the noid. No i am not eating Domino's Gluten-Free Pizza. A) That just can't be good for you and B) that just can't be good.

So no party pizzas and no quick delivery pizza. What's left for us? Well we could make our own. It's not hard to buy the materials to make your own dough or even a pre-made pizza crust at the usual suspects for specialty stores, but come on. If you were up for that sort of thing, you wouldn't be here. Granted, it's tempting. it really is. I get tempted by it sometimes, because, you know, pizza.

Thankfully, we have at least one national chain that does a pretty good job with things.

I never liked Uno's as a kid. They do Chicago Deep Dish, all inverted with the cheese mixed in with the sauce and it was not my thing. That is totally irrelevant though. They also do thin slice and more than that, they do gluten-free thin slice. It's just cheese or pepperoni and only one size but they have a pretty great double-deal, at least at my local branch where you can get two for $14 or so which more than feeds my family with some small amount of leftovers for later. The pizza itself is pretty good. The crust is flakier than you'd like but it's not bad at all and it's never triggered me in any way. It's also much, much better when you have it in the restaurant than but the double deals don't apply then. The manager usually comes out to deliver it personally when you order, which is always a nice touch. Unfortunately, for us, the closest one is twenty minutes away and right at the mall, so it's always pretty busy. Still, it's nice to have an option, as I'm sure you all know.

BONUS: They have Udi's buns now too, so if you have an Uno's near you, that's another burger option. I'll do a full write up on various burger places at some point though.

Other Local Places

And that's kind of it for the family dining choices. Bertucci's has a pretty big gluten-free menu but it's totally sans pizza (and anything else you'd actually want for the most part). What's left then is local chains and with this I can only be so much help.

For instance, in DC (and weirdly enough in NC too) we have Fuel which provides a GF pizza that's more expensive than Uno's but also somewhat better and far more open toppings-wise. There are a few other choices like Ella's Wood Fired Pizza which is by the Portrait Gallery and has 10 inch GF pizzas (for two dollars more, of course). District of Pi is right around there too. I always wanted to try the Comet Ping Pong pizza place too but I never quite had the opportunity, and then there's the Open City Coffeehouse and Dinner by the Zoo. So there are options. I'm in a city during the day which makes it a little easier, though all of these places are pretty spread out and Fuel is the only reasonable lunch option for me. 

My choices at home are a bit harder, but there are some other ones, usually a little more high end. What I would suggest is that you google "GF pizza" and your town. You might be surprised what you come up with. 

And hey, if anyone HAS had a good experience with the Domino's pizza, chime in. I might not believe you but I will at least listen. 

Bell & Evans Chicken Tenders

So if you're anything like me, there's nothing you miss more than breakfast. After that, though, there's nothing you miss more than bar food. Totally unhealthy, fried beyond belief, probably a few dollars more expensive than it should be with more than a few extra calories to boot. Call them appetizers or "the reason why one would eat at Fridays," but they're a simple staple and so, so easy to take for granted.

Case in point: Chicken Fingers. They're the heart and soul of every kid's meal at every restaurant in the country. We're reared on them. They're the safe choice, dippable finger food, breaded, fried, of dubious raising and meat color. So far as comfort food goes, there's not much more comfortable than this. I swear it was just about the only thing I ate from the age of five to fifteen and even the few years before I was diagnosed, I enjoyed lunch on Monday since I knew that the L.A. Cafe under Farragut West station had chicken fingers by the pound that day as part of the buffet.

Now, then it's possible to make your own gluten-free chicken fingers and occasionally I've been tempted. Occasionally. You can get breadcrumbs or make your own. We all know that gf bread is crumbly enough after all. It'd be a matter of mayonnaise and baking in the oven and some other things, but let's be serious here: chicken fingers aren't high cuisine. They're the opposite. Quick, disposable, comfort food. Making them sort of defeats the purpose.

I was pretty happy when I found of the existence of pre-packaged frozen gf chicken fingers. There are a few different option's. Ian's is one brand, though they're generally in nugget form. There are others. The cream of the crop, as it were, is Bell and Evans' Chicken Tenders, both in value and in taste. More than that, they're apparently healthier for you than the average. This is one of those strange windfalls of being gluten-free. You almost have to be healthier in your eating, even if you don't want to be. If McDonald's put gf McNuggets on the menu tomorrow, I'd rush and get them, but these, that happen to exist, be somewhat available at least (I've found them both at Mom's Organic Market and at one or two local grocery stores, though not all). There's a search feature on their website, but it's certainly not very inclusive. none of the places I've seen them popped up on my search.

So they're raised without antibiotics and they're air chilled instead of some more conventional taste-killing freezing technique. More practically, they're a great choice for when the rest of the family is getting fast-food or have to eat party pizzas or what not. Thirty minutes in the oven at 375 and they're good to go, and it's just like you're seven again, except for this time, since you're an adult you can not have any side if you don't want to and use four different types of dipping sauces (I'll talk about some of these later), and eat the whole box, because that's what adults can do.

Oatmeal? No, Tasty Hot Cereal

There are varying levels of frustration for the mandatory gluten-free. On that list is the old "Wait, why can't I eat this?" question. Hidden ingredients, contamination, Wheat randomly in soy sauce. You know what i'm talking about. For me, one of the worst of these was oatmeal. My work has a cafeteria. That cafeteria has oatmeal. I can't eat it. It's oatmeal, not branmeal or glutenmeal. That used to be a breakfast choice two days a week and a not unhealthy one at that, and trust me, not unhealthy is generally welcome in my life due to its relative rarity.

Obviously, though, it was simply nothing I could continue to have. The only oats we're allowed are mithril-cut. steel-blade fostered, unicorn horn processed magical oats from the magical oat factory. They're out there, sure, just not in any cafeteria or fast food place, certainly not anywhere near the word "instant," and you know, twice as expensive as the normies' oatmeal. So what are we going to do? Are we going to just give up? No. Are we going to curl up and hide in a corner? Sometimes, but not for too long. Are we going to whine? I just did but it didn't really get us anywhere, so let's move on.

No, we'll find some sort of alternative and make the best of things. Bob's Red Mill has a few options and of those, one is actually pretty good. First off, they have their own brand of gluten-free oatmeal. It's okay. Then there's a brown rice hot cereal. That's okay too. Neither are great and you actually have to put a whole ten+ minutes of effort into making them. I'm not in the business of putting ten+ minutes of effort into making anything that's just okay. This isn't the blog for that.

The Mighty Tasty Hot Cereal, while not entirely being mighty or tasty, is definitely worth the 10+ minutes of effort. It's basically a corn-based oatmeal substitute and I like most corn-based things that aren't pasta. It's more effectively savory than the rice stuff with a much better texture than a lot of oatmeals. It's also pretty versatile. You can lean towards a saltier/butterier (and butterier is a ridiculous word and I'm amazed Chrome's spell checker isn't picking it up) direction or you can go with nuts/raisins/brown sugar, etc. Either works pretty well. I find that following the cooking suggestion (a cup of the stuff on the stovetop in three+ cups of boiling water for ten minutes) gives me about three servings, maybe even four if I mix in some rice chex with each serving. It can be split into separate containers and taken to work and unlike some other breakfast options microwaves well.

There are some things I would not suggest mixing in. I thought chocolate chips would be an interesting idea. It was certainly a messy idea. Marshmallows were kind of a mess too. Knowing me, I probably combined both of them at the same time, which only made things worse. I've sort of blocked out the memory. If you find a trail mix that you trust being able to eat, that's a great mix in. I'm going to say cheese, while temping, is not. The bag/website/advertising material says it's a fairly good dinner side as well, but I don't really see that. If you cook it really dry then maybe you could pretend it's couscous. It's not.

I'd keep it as a breakfast option, but considering how few of those we have, it's a very worthwhile one. It's pretty easy to find. Most of my local supermarkets have it. Certainly places like Whole Foods and Mom's Organic Market will. It's relatively inexpensive. You get a decent number of servings from a package. Making it is quick and easy, which is the only reason it's even on this blog. Clean up is a snap. If you're going to make it on a Sunday morning and eat it then, that's two days more of breakfast you already have worked out for the week. It's not magical unicorn oatmeal and like I said, I wouldn't exactly call it mighty tasty, but it's sure mightier and sure tastier than a lot of other things we have are! That's good enough for me.

Pei Wei

Ah, Pei Wei, one of life's great compromises. The way I see it, when you have to become Gluten-Free, you have two choices. One: You can become more of a snob, and I mean this in the best possible way. Alright, I mean it more in the third or fourth best possible way. You can double-down on your previous standards and work extra hard to find solutions where you still eat the same quality of food at extra cost and time and effort. Or Two: You can start to make compromises for the sake of your sanity. I'll be flat honest: this blog is pretty much entirely about option two and Pei Wei is a great example of this.

I like Italian food. I'm not at all a fan of Olive Garden. I like Chinese. I'm not a fan of P.F. Chang's. I'm not saying my food has to be ethnically genuine or anything like that. There's just something a little too sanitized about these places for me. They're too artificial in presentation and marketing and food. I realize that a lot of the other things I eat probably fall into those categories but something about Olive Garden and P.F. Chang's just makes it all too obvious and I really want nothing to do with them.

Wanted. I really wanted to have nothing to do with them. I am no longer a chooser. I'm more of a... how shall we put it? Ah, a beggar, more of a beggar. I'm not saying there are no Chinese options once you become gluten-free. There are. I'll get to some of them, though even those are pretty well laden with contamination opportunities. It's just that through P.F. Chang's subsidiary "Pei Wei," there are options that are a bit safer, of the sort you can't easily get otherwise, and ultimately pretty darn tasty, or at least tasty enough to pass muster.

Looking at the locations map, I'd say more than half the country has Pei Weis. Granted, some of those western states are pretty big, so I'm not promising anything. Still, for some people in some places, it's going to be a viable option. They have a specific GF menu but to me the highlight is the sweet and sour chicken and/or shrimp. Again, it's nothing exciting. I think sweet and sour chicken is sort of the lowest level of Chinese food you can get probably just under "meat and rice," but when you become gluten-free it almost immediately becomes a novelty.

The food itself is rewardingly gooey from the sauce (though not breaded) and the portions are decent enough for the price. The average person could probably make at least a meal and a half out of it. My sincere suggestion is that once you get the take-away container home, you hold onto it tight and shake violently, getting the sauce all over the rice too. Coincidentally, it also has one of those great coke fountains (my recipe: Raspberry coke + vanilla coke + a shot of strawberry fanta +... I'll stop now while I still have some semblance of credibility left).

They seem to do a fairly good job in preparation. I always order online (and their website has a lot of adaptable options in the ordering if you want to leave something out or get extra something) but when I get there fifteen minutes later, the food's usually done and ready and they offer tiny little San-J gluten free soy sauce packets to go with it, which come in handy for other things.

So, this is what we do post-diagnosis. We learn, we change, we adapt. We eat Asian food made by Starbucks baristas. The trick is doing it with a smile. Or something.

Cereal

Breakfast is the most vexing time of the day for those of a gluten-free necessity. I make estimates, mainly joking, that 80% of what I ate before I was diagnosed with celiac had gluten in it, and that's only mainly joking. For breakfast though, it has to be be accurate. Bagels, English Muffins, Donuts, Pancakes. Oatmeal laden with all sorts of fun contamination. Sure I'd have some eggs now and again or bacon or what have you but I work in a building with a cafeteria in it and it was usually a Mon-Fri cycle of Bagel/Donut/Oatmeal/Muffin/Pancakes for my week. Unlike other parts of the day, there aren't a lot of quick alternatives. My two favorites are making waffles and hot cereal, but we'll get to those. They both involve effort after all, even if it's minimal.

Today, I want to talk about cereal. There are a million cereal choices out there for the average person, crunchberries, little fake cookies/brownies/french toast, those oat squares with the brown sugar and cinnamon, pink hearts, yellow moons, green clovers, etc.

We're exponentially more limited, especially if you're worried about contamination (and with most pre-packaged stuff, I tend to be), but there are more options than I first realized when I was diagnosed, and it lets us sort of make it through the morning when we have to move quick.

Chex

Ah, salvation, thy name is Chex. Versatility and variety, ease of access, and some level of comfort. There is Corn Chex, Rice Chex, Vanilla Chex, Chocolate Chex, Honey Nut Chex, Cinnamon Chex. Obviously, we shouldn't be having Wheat Chex or the Multi-Grain Chex. When it comes to Chex Only Mix, I've had the Peppermint and Brownie versions without any incident, but I don't entirely suggest risking it unless you're feeling froggy. There's the old "made on a line with..." warning in there. The Peppermint kind is seasonal and great, though. Unfortunately, most of the standard prepackaged Chex Mixes are out. We can't eat normal pretzels or something? Who knew?

Now, Chex is not a super exciting breakfast w/milk solution. You can do worse, of course. If you're going to go this route, the chocolate/vanilla/cinnamon options are pretty good. For snacking out of the bag, they're ideal, but avoid those flavored ones because they'll get flavor dust (sugar? I think I'm going to stick with flavor dust) all over your hands. In this case the Honey Nut is ideal since it's a glaze. So far as snacking options go, you can do a lot worse. 

It's the versatility I find useful. As you well know, I'm sure, it's not always taste that's the issue for us. In fact, it's not even USUALLY taste. It's texture. Ice cream is great, and there are a few different sorts of GF ice cream cones you can get, but they're not the easiest thing to come by and they may not be exactly what you want. Putting rice chex on top of ice cream sort of simulates the experience in a quick and easy way. They also add a burst of texture to oatmeal/hot cereal. Moreover, and this is the sort of medium-level stuff that I don't often plan on mentioning, but... get this: my wife uses corn and rice chex in some sort of wacky 2 to 1 ratio in order to make a gf meatloaf that tastes really good and has a near spot on texture. I have no idea how one would do this. I suggest googling gf meatloaf chex, or googling "alchemy" or something.

Anyway, tasty enough, easy enough to find, inexpensive enough (because apparently they expect people who are not us to buy it too?), and versatile. They even have nice little testimonials about how great Chex is to GF people on the back of their box. Awwwr.

Fruity/Cocoa Pebbles

This scratches the "taste of youth/comfort food" itch a bit better. Sugar exploded flakes of rice and/or other things we're allowed to eat. Milk-color-turning goodness. I don't have a ton to say about these but they, more than the Chex, are usually part of an early conversation for the newly-minted gf eater that goes a little like. "Wait, are you serious? I can eat Cocoa Pebbles and Fruity Pebbles?" 

It's not counter-intuitive because of the ingredients. It's counter intuitive because other cereals that we think we should be able to eat (traditional big name ones that look to be just made with corn or rice) we can't, or shouldn't, or are warned against. So this thusly comes out like a strange exception. It's a welcome exception though. They're not as versatile as Chex and they make less adequate finger food, but I'm sure someone clever can find something to do with them (heck, put them on your ice cream. Put everything on your ice cream. I won't tell anyone). 

GF Rice Krispies 

Yes, they exist. No, you can't get them everywhere. Yes, they're a little more expensive. Yes, it's annoying we can't just eat regular Rice Krispies. Sure, they're fun to put into milk and hear the whole snap/crackle/pop thing, but if you're going to get these, it's mainly for making your Rice Krispie Treats (we can't have the prepackaged ones. Malt. The reason is Malt. Malt ruins everything, especially those Malted Milk Balls). I also stole that image from another gf blog which makes me feel somehow shameful.

Gorilla Munch

Okay, so Gorilla Munch is great. It's healthier than other things, or at least it claims to be and I'm not arguing with gorillas. It's got a great sweetness to it. You can fit a bunch in your mouth at once and sort of suck the sweetness out of them (and no laughing; we have to take our food joy however we can). They're good with milk. They're good finger food. They're good to toss in a plastic bag and take with you wherever you go. There are fun gorilla facts on the back of the box. 

More than that, and I kind of hate saying this or feeling like it's important in the least, but I always get the feeling that I'm some how special for eating Gorilla Munch. Most people don't seek it out. Sure, some organic, healthy, Trader Joe shopping people do, but I don't know a ton of them. Gorilla Munch is great, and in my head, it's sort of just for us, one of the secrets of the tribe or whatever. I know, I know. It's a silly feeling, but again, we take what warm, fuzziness we can get, and what's more warm and fuzzy than a gorilla?

There are also other brands by the company like Peanut Butter Panda Somethingorother (Puiffs, I googled it for you. I'm not posting the box but it has a triumphantly happy looking panda on it) and some sort of Lemur related substitute for Smacks and they're good but none of them are Gorilla Munch.

So, those are some of our options. There are others but these are priced pretty reasonably (for cereal. All cereal is way more expensive than it should be these days) and usually pretty easy to find. They're the bandaid stopgags on the gaping wound in our heart where breakfast once resided. We're much better off for having them. I know I am.

Noodles & Company

Breakfast is the worst, but lunch on the go is pretty bad too. It's one thing if you can prepare food in advance (and I will go over some ridiculously simple, sloth-like options at some point). A lot of times, you can't. You also can't have a steak every day and simple sandwich and pizza options are out since there is no Subway/Quiznos/Joe's Local Sandwich Place that is far Better than Subway or Quiznos gluten free buns (most of the time. I know of a few exceptions that I'll eventually mention). So we have to scramble for options.

Noodles and Company is a pretty good option. There are some very local places and chains I'll mention but Noodles is spread out across the country. I'm not saying that you'll definitely have one near you but you might, and if you do, it's worth checking out. I had gone a couple of times before being diagnosed and had never been wildly wowed, but it's a moving scale. It really is. Things that wouldn't have excited us before are suddenly seen in a new light. That desperation of being out and looking for a place to find something that you didn't eat four times in the last two weeks or that doesn't cost a mint can lead to a very specific desperation: it'll make you check out a place that you had previously dismissed.

That was the case here. We have one by the house that I've checked out before, but near Farragut Square here in DC (which is the home to the legions of Food Trucks, always a bit of a frustrating walk by) another had just opened up. I was in the area to check out a pop-up used book store for charity: http://www.turningthepage.org/ which I think is reopening permanently a block away this week. I saw that it had opened up and decided to peek my head in and see if they had any new GF options. Sometimes you just have to stick your head out whether it be to double back onto the internet or just walk in.

Lo and behold, they had just introduced one. There was always the option of rice noodles as a substitution for a lot of their items, and you can add various of their meats without much problem, but they'd just put on the menu a gf-fusili pasta too. Anyone who's been gluten-free for a while knows a thing or two about gf pasta, the "or two" being that it's almost universally terrible, breaks apart, flakes and is ultimately unsatisfying (and a lot worse when you reheat it). I'm sure someone's cracked the code and has come up with some way to prepare it that makes it more tolerable, but this probably isn't the blog for that. I've found some good brands, and will write those up later, but in general, not good.

The gf fusili here, though, IS pretty good. It has a broader, thicker texture than usual. I tend to have it as a replacement for the buttered noodles and I'll add in the steak. It's always a bit of a crapshoot when you tell someone at a counter joint that you're gf. Sometimes it matters, sometimes it's just a headache. Here, my experience has been that it matters. They'll give you a special allergy menu, have a manager ring it in specially and will take care in making it in dedicated cookware. Depending on who the cashier is, you may be charged extra and you may not. I've been told that it the substitution shouldn't be extra, but it really does depend. The prices are pretty reasonable to begin with, though. You can usually get out with the pasta/meat and a drink for around $10, and if you go for a smaller size, it'll be less than that. The drink is worth getting as they have one of those giant robotic coke machines where you can mix dozens of flavors. My gut (both figuratively and literally) tells me that the mixing of the sodas isn't a problem for us, but I've never read anything one way or another about adding rasberry powerade to your coke zero being an issue.

I'm pretty sure there are a lot more adventurous options but I'm not an adventurous guy. I'll doubleback at some point and post a picture (next time I get it), and thus delete this line, but for now, below is their gluten guide. It's not an everyday choice but for once every week or two it's a perfectly viable lunch or dinner option, especially on the go.

Noodles and Company Gluten Guide

Welcome to Gluten-Free Sloth

I have no idea what I'm doing with this blog thing, so please bear with me. Oh, and welcome to Gluten-Free Sloth.

My name is Matt. I'm 31 years old, work in a city (DC), and have a family with two kids, one of which being an infant. I also have Celiac Disease. I'll get into how I was diagnosed in a future post, but it was about a year and a half ago and I've been strictly gluten-free since. There are a lot of great online resources for people who suffer from either gluten-sensitivity or outright Celiac. They're easy to find. None of them really seem to fit my case though.

I was diagnosed very early in the process and completely by accident. Due to that, I'm not very sensitive at all. There are a lot of other people like me out there, those with Celiac of a mostly asymptomatic sort. It has its pros and cons. The pro is, of course, that you have more options and less immediate consequences when you eat something mistakenly or through an act of blatant and shameful weakness. Contamination is not nearly the issue that it might be for others. The con is that sometimes you eat something, even for weeks or months, and have no idea that it's affecting you. Also, over time, as you don't have gluten, your body gets less and less used to it. That's where I am now. Sometimes I do get triggered, but it's a minor thing, an annoyance.

Moreover, I'm a busy person and I'm also one who appreciates comfort food. There are people out there who think food tastes better when you put hard work into it. That's not me. I'm on a budget given my family situation, both when it comes to time and money. I'm also a fairly picky eater. Let me just put it this way: salads are pretty much out.

Basically, I named the blog as accurately as I could. I wanted to go with something like "Gluten-Free for the rest of us" or "Gluten Free Survival Guide" or "Gluten Free Emergency Rations" but they were all taken in some way or another. You get the idea. Thus, the name. The idea is this: I've tried to come up with workarounds, with ways to survive my day without adding massive costs in time, money or effort to my life. I've tried a lot of different products and found both new restaurants and solutions at old ones. I've tried to impact my family as little as possible. I've tried to impact myself as little as possible. That said, I still get that feeling in my stomach sometimes when I realize a lunch plan has fallen through and that I suddenly don't know what I'm going to eat. I think we all feel it now and again. It's that combination of frustration and mild despair. It's not the end of the world but it does affect us. Frankly, it makes me sad. I'm sure it makes some of you sad too.

I want to share what I've learned over the last year and the how and why of my everyday survival. Maybe I'll be able to help people. Maybe I'll just end up less frustrated.

All of that said, here's what this blog will not be:

• A Dieting Blog: Sorry, but I'm pretty sure people who go gluten-free to lose weight should actually be shooting for a carb free diet instead. I'm going to give a lot of replacement carbs and comfort foods and I'm pretty certain that a lot of them are actually worse for you than the originals. I've put on some weight over the last year but a lot of that was because my body was starving itself due to the Celiac. I try not to feel too bad about it, knowing I'm healthier over all. Also, hey, less fast food, right?
• For the Super-Sensitive: I can't stress this enough and please don't hate me for it. I feel like you guys sort of run the conversation online, be it the celiac.com forums or a lot of the other blogs. I understand. I sympathize. I'm sorry that it's so bad for you. This is for everyone else though. I'm not super worried about contamination, because I don't really have to be. My levels are really good with me doing what I'm doing. I use tin-foil in the toaster oven, sure, because my family uses it too, but I don't have a separate, dedicated toaster or silverware, or plates for me. If I ate at a restaurant and got triggered, I'll mention it, and if you are curious about a product that I think is good, that's great, but please, if you're super-sensitive to gluten, take most of what I say with a grain of salt. I'm not.
• A recipe blog. If you want to have a gf pineapple upside-down cake, just like your mom used to make, there are blogs for that. I'm the opposite. I shoot for convenient and quick. I didn't cook before. My wife does certainly and she finds substitutes for me. I have a birthday coming up and she'll probably work out a cake, etc. She's great. I'm not and really, nor do I want to be. Like I said, a lot of the enjoyment of food for me (and I do enjoy food quite a bit) is in the convenience of it. I admire people who have taken the time and effort to make their life as much like it used to be as possible when it comes to their choices. That's not me and that's not this. I'm here to try to help everyone else, or at least gripe to them. 
• A fine dining blog. There's a pretty good one for DC actually, but I haven't been to one of those places. This is going to be a practical guide and that means as many chain options as possible.
• Pretty. I have no idea what I'm doing. Did I mention that at the top? No idea. I'll try to grab pictures from the web or take them myself if it's of a box or restaurant or what not, but I make no promises. 

This is also a blog and I am sort of, kind of slothlike, so we'll see how the posting goes. Off the top of my head I can think of dozens of products and restaurants and solutions that I use every month and I'm always finding more so hopefully I can keep this going for a while. So long as I do I hope it helps at least one of us, be it you or me.