I have this friend, her name is Melissa. She is splendid.

Here she is, with us, in Santa Monica. She’s very great. Also, she happens to have Celiac. This means she is, essentially, allergic to all things gluten. When she came to visit, we had to be pretty careful with what we ate, so that we wouldn’t accidentally contaminate her food, or anything we were eating. This meant being careful about utensils, (no wooden spoons, for example, which are porous) being careful with cookware (no cast iron) and generally being careful about what you buy. McCormick spices are good, but Trader Joe’s are not. Some rices are ok, others are not. Ralphs, our local grocery store, has a pretty good line of gluten-free products, whereas some of the TJ’s things that its website says are gluten free are still processed at the same places with wheat, so technically, M couldn’t eat them.

I learned a lot when she was here, including which restaurants lend themselves to gluten-free menus, and which don’t. PF Changs has a great menu, which was nice because everyone loves a little Chinese food. I also learned about identifying foods (label reading) that are gluten free, and how to practice safe kitchen techniques to keep gluten free food to be just that.

This is us, on our way to PF Changs.

Learning more about cooking practices was incredibly interesting, and helped me prepare for Jeff, and his doctor telling him he has high blood pressure. We’re working towards eating less sodium at home, although its been slow going. Jeff loves pizza, which has tons of cheese, which has tons of sodium. In another post, I will be sure to show you the low-sodium chicken parm that I made this week.