Can I Speak to Someone in Charge? by Emily Clarkson

Author:Emily Clarkson [Clarkson, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Do you know how many people have asked me if I’m actually allergic? The most common question waiters used to ask of me was, ‘Please can we give you the bill because we need to close the restaurant now?’ But as it turns out, it is without a doubt the predictably irritating ‘Are you actually allergic or do you just not like it?’ question. A couple of months ago I got asked this at a restaurant after we had firmly established there was nothing on the menu I could eat, as if the waitress was suddenly expecting me to say, ‘Is there really nothing? Oh well, I guess for the sake of dinner I could break the rules. Ah, fuck it, I’ll have the cheesiest pizza you can find, thanks.’

I can’t do this because I AM ACTUALLY ALLERGIC and instead I had to eat steamed broccoli and boiled rice. I blame this on the ‘fad lifestylers’ who have made gluten-free eating seem like a choice when in reality there are lots of people for which it’s a necessity; they owe us so much, and no one takes us seriously anymore.

The fear

There is always the fear that a chef is going to whack a bit of milk into the recipe just to make the thin posh girl fat (this may not describe you but thanks to the aforementioned fad lifestylers that is the stereotype). Either that or they’re going to jizz in your sorbet because you’re so difficult (I don’t think they actually do this, by the way but, I have to say, if I owned a café in southwest London I’d be more than a bit tempted). The threat is always there.

They will say all of this and more, a lot more. And it will wear thin. Older people don’t understand it because it simply didn’t exist in their day. It doesn’t mean we’re ‘precious’ or ‘making it up’ – it means they fucked up gluten for us with pesticides and things, so don’t for a minute let them give you crap about it. It’s a legitimate illness and it is not in your head. It will get you down and make you feel crazy but don’t accept the eye-rolls or the ‘why don’t you just try it?’ from people who don’t understand. You’ve got enough on your plate (sadly, often not literally) and you don’t need that shit in your life. There are things you do need a lot of in your life, however, and that is alternatives. There are probably more out there than you first thought, although chances are you won’t have a flipping clue where to start looking. So just in case you are starving right now and don’t know what to do, here’s a list of some of my favourite gluten-free and cows’ milk-free foods that I pretty much survive on:

• Buckwheat flour

• Buckwheat pasta

• GF oatcakes (great ’cos they are sold EVERYWHERE)

• GF sourdough bread

• Snack a Jacks

• Meridian nut butters ( nomnomnom )

•

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