hummingbird heartbeat

I’ve been eating gluten free since November 2010, when I found out that I had a gluten intolerance. Thank goodness I don’t have coeliac disease, but I still have to follow a fully gluten free diet. 

And I think the gluten depravation has finally made me crazy. I literally dream about eating bread that’s light and soft and fluffy. I’d give anything to eat toast with Vegemite. Or bite into a rich buttery croissant. I’m salivating just at the thought!

I now shop in one aisle of the supermarket. Labelled ‘health food’ in Coles. It’s stupid and petty of me, but every time I see that sign hanging above the aisle I get a little flash of annoyance. It’s silly I know. And technically it is the health food aisle, and just one section of it is gluten free food. But for some reason it still irks me. I’m not just choosing to eat this over-priced, foul tasting, cardboard food because I’m on some kind of health kick…I’m stuck eating it for the rest of my life! They could at least add Gluten Free to the sign, just to placate me of course.

Confined to one aisle in the supermarket….except when venturing into the fruit & veg or the meat section. As I’m walking through the supermarket I often imagine what it would look like if all the foods that I can no longer eat were piled on top of each other, out in a huge carpark or something. It’d be 90% of the supermarket, the 12 or 13 other aisles I’m now a stranger to.

I’m always overcome with an image of a towering mountain, as tall as a house, of the most amazing foods…huge fresh loaves of bread and croissants cascading down boxes of Shapes and Tim Tams and flavoured chips while light creamy pastry and decadent cakes float on top of a river of lollies and doughnuts.

Meanwhile off to the side would be a teeny tiny stack of rice crisps and all manner of strange gluten free snacks claiming to be delicious or full of flavour or soft or sweet or light and fluffy or moist…but sadly they never live up to their name. 

So off I go to dream a bit more about being able to walk into bakery and eat every type of bread or pastry in sight. Although I wonder how fat I’d get if I could suddenly eat gluten again…. 

I told you I’ve gone crazy.