Christmas a year later

Last year in this blog I talked about how hard Christmas was. Nothing much to eat at potlucks that could be considered "safe", and food plus booze being the main attraction.

So I thought I'd look at what happened in THIS Christmas. Things have changed a lot in one year!

I was at another potluck this year. However, this year, there was another family that brought GFCF food. Not just GFCF, but also really GOOD food: yummy and healthy. The vegan/raw food movement has done good things for gluten free cuisine, in ways I never expected. Like a mousse made from raw cashews, cocoa, and agave. This succeeds on many levels: it's healthy, but also it's easy to prepare and it doesn't come across as "weird". I was also amazed that "fermented foods" have gone mainstream, and pretty much everyone was into the idea of "real kraut".

A bigger change was in my own family. My sister is now gluten free, but still does dairy. Grandma though, has pretty much accepted the idea that we are not going to eat her food unless it's GF, and is ok with it. Esp. since Betty Crocker is now on board! Once she saw "Gluten Free Bisquick" ... Grandma's attitude changed. She made a big batch of Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookies. Thing is, everyone disappeared those cookies quickly. I couldn't eat them, because Grandma still used butter ("They just wouldn't be cookies without butter!"), but they were happily consumed by everyone else. No one really cared that they were "gluten free" as long as they looked like "freshly baked chocolate chip cookies".

I brought some New Grist beer, and that was consumed also.  Which led to an interesting discussion of "what is gluten anyway?". It seems there is a lot of confusion on that point, like, maybe "yeast" is what causes "gluten". After spending a decade of researching details about food preparation and chemistry, it seems obvious to me, but this brought home to me just how different are people's understanding of the issues.

In terms of general cuisine, there is a big shift too. The big foods now are Thai and Indian. Loads of nice spices! Mind you, they are mostly eating the prepacked stuff from Trader Joe's. They aren't bad at all, in an MRE kind of way. I object in terms of price: you get very little for your money, and don't include good vegies, or rice, which you'd need to supply. But they are quick, and feed one person a good GFCF meal. A huge improvement over the Jack in the Box meals that they used to live off of.

Another shift: alcohol. There were many bottles of various ethanol substances. But very few were consumed. In the past we'd probably have finished off 10 bottles of wine. This year, one.

No one gave me any lectures about "my weird lifestyle". A few people even appreciated tips on how to do it. What was "weird" is now close to "mainstream". Somehow I've managed to move to the center, without actually moving at all.

"Society" usually reminds me of a flock of birds, where the birds are honking or chirping to let everyone else in the flock knows where they are, and everyone flies in formation. Sometimes though, the entire flock wheels in unison, using some invisible instant choreography. That is how I felt this Christmas: that the flock has wheeled. It might not be sure still where it is going, but it's absolutely not in the old direction.