... Bought a Gluten-Free Cookbook

I never thought that I would be Allergy Girl. And I don't mean that to sound like I'd never thought I'd be a superhero who perhaps shoots pollen from her wrists to induce fatal hay-fever (which would be kind of cool), because who would actually ever think that?! But rather, I never thought that I would be that girl who has to sit in a restaurant or at a friend's dinner table and say "Does this dish contain...?" or "Sorry, but I have an allergy to...". While it of course isn't a tragic, life destroying event to discover that I have developed fructose malabsorption (I mean I still have my freakin' legs so I'm not going to play the "disability" card here) but enjoying food is a huge part of what I do for fun. It's also a huge part of who I am. Being the guest with impeccable manners, who's easy to cook for because "I eat everything" is something I could pride myself on and I believed displayed I was brought up "right". Being able to seamlessly traverse the choreography of fine dining from start to finish without a missed beat was a marker in my mind of a mastery of social etiquette. So now finding myself allergic to an array of seemingly disparate ingredients which includes (but is not limited to) wheat, onions, leeks, apples, pears, honey, dried fruit, artichokes, coconut milk etc. etc. pretty much guarantees that there will always be an element of "fuss" attached to me eating. Anything. Anywhere. The tight choreography that used to happen between me and a waiter now has all the finesse and grace of debutant ball rehearsals in the school gym as I rake through a menu asking for "gluten-free" and "onion free" and then still coming out with "oh no, actually I can't eat that if there's tomato paste in the sauce. Can you tell me what's in the fish instead?"

However, I have two big shiny lights of benevolence guiding me through this introduction to the Allergy Girl club. The first, is a beautiful colleague of mine who I've worked quite closely with over the last 12 months. She coincidentally has the same food allergy. It's dorky, but now that both of us have the same spastic digestive systems I feel like we're in a special club together. Like Tyler and Jack, but with less punching and more conversations about gluten-free baking. We're like FFBFF (fructose-free best friends forever). The second shiny light through my current food allergy baptism is a dietitian called Sue Shepherd. I am a TOTAL allergy spaz groupie for this lady! If I saw her in the street I would take photos on my BlackBerry and beg for an autograph. She's written most of the meaningful documents on the internet I first came across when trying to understand my new position in the restaurant dining caste system and is also the author of the Fructose Malabsorption Food Shopping Guide which is a pocketbook that tells you at a glance what 500 million things you can't eat and exactly what on a supermarket shelf you can eat. She's also authored some cookbooks. One of which I borrowed from my FFBFF before Christmas and used to make a gluten-free lemon slice. It was tasty. It made me happy. It gave me something delicious to share at "Fructose Club" and to share with the people at work who don't have cranky digestive systems.

So today I went to Readings and bought my own copy of Gluten-free Cooking. My superpowers, now that I'm Allergy Girl, will include being the guest who always brings something delicious to share at the table, the girlfriend who cooks amazing weeknight dinners rather than calling Indian take-away, and the diner who's learned some smooth allergy-friendly ordering moves from cooking all of it at home first.

I'd also like to do that "wrists that shoot pollen" thing as well at some point, but have decided it's probably best I start small and work my way up to that one.