
It's been almost eighteen months since I was diagnosed with
celiac disease.
I am finally starting to get comfortable with eating. I never get sick anymore and I have pretty good handle on eating both at home and in
the wild.
Today I was craving biscuits. I don't want biscuits
often, usually only a few times a year. My lack of biscuit interest is
strange considering I had biscuits all the time when I was a kid. My
Grandma Stumpy used to make them for breakfast everyday. Whatever
wasn't scarfed down, she wrapped in foil (along with the leftover
sausage or bacon) and sat it on the kitchen table for snacks. If you
got hungry before lunchtime, you went to the kitchen and had a room
temperature biscuit with a piece of sausage.
Looking back, the
idea of biscuits with room temperature pork products seems like a flirt
with the food poisoning fairy, but I never got sick. Hell, until
recently, I could eat any damn thing and not blink an eye. Sea slugs?
Bring it. Chittlins? Oh yeah, baby. Back in the day, my intestinal
fortitude was the stuff of legends.
These days, not so much.
But
man, sometimes you just want a biscuit, and today was my day for
biscuit lust. Since I don't quite have a handle on gluten free baking
yet (don't even ask, you don't want to make me cry again, do you?), I
went down to Whole Foods to see I what I could find. Whole Foods has
been a lifesaver since The Diagnosis™, and I figured if I was going to
find a gluten free biscuit in this 'burb, Whole Foods would be the
place.
I flounced myself right over to the frozen foods section
and immediately spied a package of gluten free cream biscuits. The
label proudly proclaimed that it was "produced in a dedicated gluten
free facility." A phrase that is music to a g-f girl's ears. I flipped
the package over and was immediately dubious. The second ingredient was
rice flour. Uh oh, I thought, what good could possibly come of this?
But I was biscuit-jonesing something fierce. And when a junkie needs a
fix, standards get lax. The ingredient list was downright biscuit
blasphemy, but I was hurting.
I hurt again when the bastards
rang up $3.99. Yeah, $3.99 for 6 effing biscuits. I'm fairly certain
the string of obscenities that tumbled out of my mouth scarred the
little gothy cashier girl for life.
But whatever. Biscuits were achieved.
I came home, popped three in the oven, and immediately gathered my biscuit
accouterments: honey, butter, crucifix (you can't be too safe these
days). The timer went "Ding" and out came three nicely browned
biscuits. I poked them a couple of times to make sure they were dead
and then proceeded to slather them up right and proper. Then came the
moment of truth... I took a bite.
I'll be damned if the things
weren't kinda good. The texture was questionable, think slightly spongy
instead of flaky, but the taste was pretty good. Now, a biscuit
connoisseur likely disagree and would probably pull out a shank and cut
you if you served one up without fair warning, but for me, they passed
muster.
Biscuit mischief managed.