The Inquiry of Onwards and Upwards

A return to weekly replies to pressing culinary queries!

Dear Tamar:

I'm devastated by the recent celiac diagnosis of my 2 year old. I have a 5 yr old and a husband who don't have gluten issues, neither have I. I see family recipes and traditions, joy and carefreeness crumble like a too-dry cookie dough before my eyes.

-Onwards and Upwards

Dear Onwards and Upwards,

Ah, that most insidious emotion: Disappointment. (Is “most insidious” accurate? Is disappointment more cunning than jealousy? Does it move more subtly than regret? I’m not sure. “One of the most insidious emotions” had less bite.)

Disappointment is a doozy. I hate the grip it gets on my gut, the way it seems to twist, serpentine and suffocating, up into my chest, leaving everything queasy. I’m not sure what it’s like for you, but I imagine it does something awful, even if the details diverge.

Another thing I don’t know about you is how much education or help you’ve received in coping with disappointment and its kin—the whole family of negative emotions, with their physical manifestations and tendencies to throw us off balance.

I received none. I was tacitly taught that having and showing feelings of sadness and hurt (and disappointment, jealousy, regret etc.) were signs of weakness, and that weakness was to be avoided. I was in my late thirties when my younger brother—a gentler and more intuitive emotional soul than me—explained to me that he treats emotions like weather, expecting them to come and expecting them to pass.

I was astounded. It sounded novel, brilliant, impossible, wise. Maybe you know this tactic—maybe you know its correlate: that naming, articulating, and sharing the feelings helps them pass more quickly. I still struggle to practice the correlate, but I don’t doubt its effectiveness.

I’m going on about all of this because, in my reading, it—the feeling of disappointment—is the real subject of your letter. The world has never been better adapted to sufferers of Celiac disease. I speak from experience. My husband isn’t allergic to gluten, but it causes him too much distress for him to consume it. Over the course of the last six years, my household has adopted gluten-free versions of anything it made sense to, even for those of us—my son and me—that don’t require them.

Great gluten free pasta—for years a contradiction in terms—is widely available. I recently discovered a new all around favorite, at a grocery store in Italy. Before that, I relied heavily on Le Veneziane. Massimo Zero has lovely spring and flavor. I’m sure there are others I haven’t heard of. At this point, there’s not a shape—from little stars to ditalini to mezze rigatoni to fettucine—that I haven’t found in a good gluten-free version.

Most Chinese restaurants seem to offer a rice-noodle alternative for any wheat-noodle dish. Any rice-based cuisine—like Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, and on—doesn’t require special provisions to accommodate a gluten allergy. I haven’t found a gluten-free bread that I love, but Schar’s makes a passable grilled cheese. My mother makes gluten free pizza dough with Caputo’s gluten-free flour and I find it basically indistinguishable from other good dough.

My family’s favorite cookie—knowledge of which I also owe to my mother, who took my husband’s gluten-intolerance as a personal challenge—is naturally gluten free. My son requested this almond cake for his birthday one year. Every chickpea brownie recipe I’ve followed has been good.

Our most consistent family eating ritual involves my husband making fresh tortillas from Masienda masa harina (which is just nixtamalized cornmeal) and some combination of cheese and beans and sometimes chicken to fill them with. If enough of any of those things are left, the following night is loaded nachos—also lovable, also gluten free. Everyone eats their own thing for breakfast—it’s one of that meal’s (occasionally) lovable quirks—so anyone whose self conception is tied to toast and jam can probably proceed without too much disruption.

Of course, a child with Celiac will mean all sorts of other things: a second toaster or separate trays, different, labeled cutting boards and knives, double- and triple- checking labels, conversations with restaurant staff, a lot of hand washing. This might all be classified under “loss of joy and carefreeness.” Or, it might be classified as the sorts of adjustments and minor inconveniences that are part of the fabric of a good life—ever more so, as years pass and we are fortunate enough to survive them. You are sure to be less carefree because of your 2 year-old’s diagnosis. But you became less carefree when you became a parent, and less carefree again when another child joined your family. This is the nature of love, to care ever more and become ever less free of caring. And then…to let such tender attachments become a source of joy.

Dear cook, you know most of what I’ve offered—save perhaps the crucial link to La fabbrica della pasta. You articulated your disappointment to help speed it along, a menacing cloud on a helpfully strong wind. I took a month off from this column. For all I know, the cloud itself may already be so far in the rearview that it’s barely a memory. But in case it still menaces, please know: I hear you. It stinks. Onwards and upwards.