Barry’s Gluten Free Muffins
Barry, the chef in my local pub, the Northgate Arms in Southgate Road, is a coeliac, so he knows his gluten-free well.
As today, it was raining when I got my paper from next door to the pub, I popped in for a drink. They were offering a Brunch Menu, which contained Eggs Royale, which is a poached egg on top of smoked salmon and a muffin.
I decided to have one, whilst I read the paper with a drink.
For me, instead of a muffin, Barry grilled a slice of aubergine, added a slice of a large tomato and some spinach to the top as a delicious substitute.
It Pays To Complain
A couple of months ago, I bought a Genius loaf in Waitrose in Islington Upper Street and it went mouldy almost immediately. I think it might even have been mouldy when I unwrapped it. I did post details here.
The outcome was better than I expected. I complained to both Genius and Waitrose and got a voucher for five pounds from Genius.
And then today, I got another five-pound voucher from Waitrose.
On the bread side though, the last Genius loaf was more or less fresh to the last slice.
So it’s a result in all ways.
Is This How To Educate Teachers About Gluten-Free?
Adam’s Gluten-Free Surprise is a book written about a coeliac child by a teacher.
I hadn’t been diagnosed as a coeliac when I was at school, so it couldn’t have helped me, but it might help all of those gluten-free children, who suffer in an unsympathetic school.
The Only Way is Essex!
I bought some Tiptree Barbecue Sauce today and notice that each is individually stamped.
Tiptree Barbecue Sauce as Finished by Linda
Obviously, Essex has different ways of doing things.
It doesn’t say so, but I think the sauce is gluten free. As it’s not for me, I’m not bothered, but none of the ingredients seem dodgy. This page gives all the ingredients of the various Tiptree sauces.
How The Turks Deal With Pollution
This horrific story is in The Times today, although I’m pointing to a green web site, so evryone can read it.
Turkey may well have nine percent economic growth, but at what cost?
So is it right, that we increase unemployment, because of imports from Turkey?
In my view it isn’t!
C and I once had a holiday in Turkey and in some ways we weren’t impressed. Luckily we could afford to go somewhere better.
As a coeliac, I starved in Turkey, as they just couldn’t get the idea of what gluten-free was! Despite the fact I had an excellent translation.
Two Greedy Italians
Antonio Carluccio has said tonight, that his religion is food. So tonight he and Gennaro Contaldo are exploring Puglia looking at religion and food.
But Gennaro did come up with this glorious recipe. I’ll try it sometime. It’s gluten-free too.
Antonio seems to be rather dismissive of the religion and is much keener on the food. I’ll drink to that! As I sip a gluten-free beer!
Diet and Warfarin
With the scare from Denmark about Marmite, I thought I’d check that my diet was OK? Especially, as I’m on a gluten free diet and take Warfarin.
It can’t be too bad, as I’ve been on the same level of Warfarin for about seven or eight months now and the last test was in the correct range.
I found this informative page in the Grown Up Congenital Heart Patients Association web site.
I liked the section about alcohol.
The interaction between alcohol and warfarin is complex. Alcohol acts as a mild anticoagulant. It also can affect the metabolism of the liver, which s important tor metabolising warfarin. As a rule of rhumb, two to three drinks per day – glasses of wine. beer etc -(typical cardiologist input) are unlikely to affect your warfarin levels. Intermittent binge drinking (typical medical student input) leads to an increase in INR (international ratio, the measurement used to check warfarin levels in the blood) due to warfarin being metabolised more slowly. Chronic heavy alcohol intake (Harley Street cardiologist input just joking!) results in a lower warfarin level because the alcohol increases the metabolism of warfarin.
It’s good to see a bit of humour in sites like this.
But then it says it’s a site for grown ups, by which they mean young people and adults.
Rabbit Awareness Week
To celebrate Rabbit Awareness Week, I ate an excellent rabbit in Arbutus last night.
This restaurant is surely one of the best places to eat gluten-free in the UK. The chef, Anthony Demetre, is I believe a coeliac, so you never have any trouble choosing something to suit your taste.
The restaurant, despite its location in Soho, is not as expensive as some I could name. In fact, because of the way they sell wine in 250 ml. carafes, it often works out to be extremely good value.
A Year On
It is now over a year since I had the stroke in Hong Kong and as you know I’ve now moved to London, just round the corner from where my grandmother was born in the Balls Pond Road. In fact, I drink in the pub, where my great-grandfather might have wetted her head.
So how am I feeling?
Bodily, I have few issues.
My nails used to be firm and hard, but now they are soft and brittle. My toenails are actually worse than my fingers. My nails were always soft before I went gluten-free and I used to bite them badly and my skin too. I’m not biting them now at all.
Q 1. Could it be that as my body is repairing itself from the stroke, it’s using up what I need for healthy nails?
I have an almost cramp-like pain in my left lower leg, which is very like the pain I got, when I trod on a razor shell on the beach in Norfolk in the summer of 2009. It tends to get worse at night.
My left humerus is also painful a lot of the time at the same place where it was broken by a bully at school. I think as the nerves for my arm and hand pass close to the bone, it affects them at times.
I did have pain at the end of my spine, but now that has virtually gone unless I sit on the wrong sort of chair. This again was an old injury, which was very much aggravated by the hospital bed in Hong Kong. I should say that I always sleep face down because of the end of my spine, which curls outwards and I get less cramp in my lower leg, which I’ve always had since a child. I can still feel the cold lino, which I used to put my foot on to cure it.
It’s almost as if my old physical problems have come back!
Q. 2 Does your brain develop new pathways to get round the pain from injuries?
Q.3 When you have a stroke are these pathways knocked out? So if so, it would seem you need to develop them again. One psychologist at Cambridge, who worked with stroke patients thought this could be the case.
Facially, I haven’t too much pain, but my scalp and left hand side are rather tender. My skin actually feels like it did at times before I went on a gluten-free diet before I was diagnosed as a coeliac. One of my main symptoms of coeliac disease was chronic dandruff. It went immediately, I changed to a totally gluten-free diet.
In fact, at some times, I feel like I’ve been glutened. Not seriously, but my motions are rather loose nearly all the time. Full tests at Addenbrooke’s have shown that there is nothing serious there, although I haven’t had another endoscopy to see what my gut is like.
Q.4 Is this connected with any of the drugs I’m taking?
On advice from my previous GP, I do take calcium tablets with added vitamin D, as it was slightly low. But a Dexascan showed everything was fine.
I have just re-read a post on this blog, which was a pain diary, describing how I was trying to control the terrible pain I was having last summer, with codeine and paracetamol. It wasn’t that successful and a few days later or so, I collapsed and ended up in Addenbrooke’s. Nothing was done and I just struggled on. And then a few weeks later, I ended up having a fit like symptom, when I was putting on my coat. I can remember feeling a bolt of pain in my humerus and then I went into oscillation. It’s funny, but I may remember something similar happening, just after I broke the bone, as I walked home from school. Addenbrooke’s put me on Keppra to stop it happening again. It hasn’t.
Q.5 Should I keep taking the Keppra?
I incidentally take it with vitamin B6 to avoid any side effects, but also as I’ve been advised by a Dutch doctor to take B6 anyway, as he feels that coeliacs should take it to reduce the risk of strokes.
Because of the pain and because it felt like someone was pouring awful muck down my throat, I went to see an ENT specialist to see if my sinuses were bad.
He found everything clear, but thought that I was suffering from a serious pollen allergy. Now as a child, I was very sickly and was always off school. In my first year at Grammar School I virtually missed all the second term. Gradually it got better and it really improved when first we went to live on the 11th floor in the Barbican and later when I started flying aircraft for pleasure.
I’ve also had some bad winters and springs before, but not as bad as this one, when for much of the time, I just couldn’t breathe. Although in the last twenty years or so, I’ve lived on top of a hill with a strong westerly wind and my late wife and I could afford to take holidays in the sun in January. Funnily, my cardiologist,said that everybody should take two weeks in the sun every winter. I did try to do this in April by going to Greece and backpacking around the islands, but was irritated by everyone smoking all the time.
I know from travelling around the UK in the last year, that when I get out of the pollen I feel better. For instance, I went to Barnsley in March on a breezy day to see the football and felt a lot better that day. On the other hand, I walked past a tree-shredding machine at Euston a couple of weeks ago and it set me off coughing for half-an-hour.
Q.6 So why should all of this reaction to allergens get so much worse after the stroke?
On the other hand, in 2009, I was travelling to Holland a lot in the spring and suffered worse than I had done for years. I put it down to different pollens at different times. It was almost as if I got used to the English ones and then when I went to Holland, a load of different ones set me off.
Some days it’s so bad that all I can do is lie down indoors and listen to the radio. On the other hand, when I went down the London sewers, it helped my breathing immensely.
So how am I managing otherwise.
I have no problem getting around on buses and trains and of course by walking. I did fall over on a bad pavement in Upper Street in March, but haven’t hardly stumbled since, especially since I was fitted properly for a pair of trainers. I have no problems using the top decks of buses and climbing up and down ladders.
I like cooking and do quite a bit, although, as there are now so many Carluccio’s with a gluten-free menu, I am lazy quite a bit of the time.
I do eat a lot of soft comfort food, like bananas and ginger cake between meals. But my weight is still the same as it was five or six years ago.
My only problem with cooking is that my left hand diesn’t seem to like hot or cold, although the finger movement is now almost back to normal. I notice this most with my typing, where although I type mainly one-handed, I now use the left properly for the shift. Incidentally, I’ve always typed with my right hand, because of my bad left arm.
My eyesight to the left isn’t good, but in the last month or so, I’ve been able to play table tennis again, something that I couldn’t do a year ago. On the other hand, it does seem to be worst, when my eyes are streaming from the allergies.
On a mental state, what more is there to say, other than that I’m here. I made a good fist of a lecture at Liverpool University, so my brain can’t be that awry. Although, I do forget things on a short-term basis. But then I always have to a certain extent. But the long term memory is intact!
Cooking White Long-Grain Rice
I’ve always struggled with this until yesterday, when I tried this method from the BBC.
The method detailed on the page, which also links to some interesting recipes.
Many cooks favour the absorption method for cooking white long-grain rice. For this, measure the rice by volume in a measuring jug – not by weight – allowing about 65ml/2½fl oz per person if you’re cooking the rice as a side dish. Stir in about double the amount of liquid (such as water or stock) and simmer in a covered saucepan for about 15 minutes. Do not try to stir the rice while it is boiling. Remove the pan from the heat and place a clean tea towel under the lid – this will help absorb the steam and keep the grains separate. Set aside for five minutes. Fluff up the rice with a fork before serving.
My only problem was that I didn’t cook enough rice for four.
The Anonymous Widower 