I Couldn’t be a Catholic Priest
This is from this week’s Popbitch.
In August 1994, the Catholic church decreed that you couldn’t be a priest if you were an alcoholic or had coeliac disease (allergic to wheat).
But then I like women too much! And I don’t believe in god.
I have a feeling that the guy who said that is now Pope.
I have discussed this with several devout Catholics and they don’t agree! Wasn’t according to the Bible, Jesus welcoming of all and sundry? Even tax collectors.
The Coeliac Travel Problem
It was a two and a half hour journey of 155 miles home. But at least I had the top down on the Lotus, which is a great way to drive under the stars. Sadly, I didn’t see any meteorites.
I hadn’t eaten since lunch before I left and except for a fruit bar, I didn’t eat anything on the way back. I generally don’t stop in motorway service stations, as it means putting up and taking down the hood. Not that this is a problem, as it is much quicker, than those fancy electric ones you now get on convertibles, but I am just lazy.
But all of the garages on the A14 had shut their shops, so I got home hungry.
So I went to bed after a small whisky and a bag of crisps.
I should have planned better, but it is a real problem to find sensible gluten-free food to eat on the go. Especially as my fridge that plugs into the car has turned itself into just an insulated box!
Bad News for Coeliacs
The report on the price of sugar is bad for coeliacs like me. What will happen is that more food will use wheat glucose instead of sugar, because it’s cheaper. Unfortunately, a lot of coeliacs can’t handle this and it makes them ill.
Interestingly, the EU says that wheat glucose is alright for coeliacs to eat, so products don’t have to say they contain gluten.
Well, here’s one who’s affected by wheat glucose (maltodextrin). I am not alone!
Jamie Oliver’s Fish Pie
I like this recipe as except for the potato saucepan, there isn’t too much washing up and most of the preparation is done in the dish you cook it in. It’s also very gluten-free without any dodgy ingredient at all.
Here’s what Jamie says about it.
This is a fantastically simple fish pie which doesn’t involve poaching the fish or making a tedious white sauce. Loads of good, fragrant veg are added quickly by grating them in. You can use whatever fish you like, making this as luxurious as you want it to be. If you like your fish pie to be creamy, feel free to add a few tablespoons of crème fraîche to the fish.
For four people and a typical deep dish you’ll get in somewhere like Debenhams, you’ll need the following.
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1kg potatoes
- 1 carrot
- 2 sticks of celery
- 150g good Cheddar cheese
- 1 lemon
- ½ a fresh red chilli
- 4 sprigs of fresh flat-leaf parsley
- 300g salmon fillets, skin off and bones removed
- 300g undyed smoked haddock fillets, skin off and bones removed
- 125g king prawns, raw, peeled
- Olive oil
- Optional: a good handful of spinach, chopped
- Optional: a couple of ripe tomatoes, quartered
Note that Waitrose will take the skin of the fish. I suspect other places and of course real fishmongers will too.
This is the method.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas 6 and bring a large pan of salted water to the boil
- Peel the potatoes and cut into 2cm chunks
- Once the water is boiling, add your potatoes and cook for around 12 minutes, until soft (you can stick your knife into them to check)
- Meanwhile, get yourself a deep baking tray or earthenware dish and stand a box grater in it
- Peel the carrot
- Grate the celery, carrot and Cheddar on the coarse side of the grater
- Use the fine side of the grater to grate the zest from the lemon
- Finely grate or chop your chilli
- Finely chop the parsley leaves and stalks and add these to the tray
- Cut the salmon and smoked haddock into bite-size chunks and add to the tray with the prawns
- Squeeze over the juice from the zested lemon (no pips please!), drizzle with olive oil and add a good pinch of salt and pepper
- If you want to add any spinach or tomatoes, do it now
- Mix everything together really well
- By now your potatoes should be cooked, so drain them in a colander and return them to the pan
- Drizzle with a couple of good lugs of olive oil and add a pinch of salt and pepper
- Mash until nice and smooth, then spread evenly over the top of the fish and grated veg
- Place in the preheated oven for around 40 minutes, or until cooked through, crispy and golden on top
Serve piping hot with tomato ketchup, baked beans, steamed veg or a lovely green salad.
I would just point this recipe to Jamie’s site, but I like to print out the recipes as I have a bad memory. And it doesn’t print from his site on my machine.
Female Fertility and Coeliac Disease
BBC Breakfast this morning is carrying a report saying that all women at thirty should have a fertility test. I sent them this e-mail.
I am a coeliac, which means I have low B12 and folate levels unless I’m on a gluten-free diet. In a man this does not matter with regards fertility, but with some women undiagnosed low B12 levels means that they don’t conceive or carry to full term. I know personally of three women diagnosed at coeliacs in their earlier thirties, who cut out gluten and then very easily had the children they wanted.
I doubt they’ll read it out.
But if I trace my family back a couple of generations to where I think I’ve enherited my coeliac gene, I can’t find any woman who has given birth. Was that due to low B12, due to that gene.
Fuel at Brentwood on the M25
As I drove past the Dartford Crossing, it was obvious that I would need to fill up with fuel. No-one in their right mind goes into a motorway service station to buy fuel, although I’ll admit that in some the toilets are clean. Some too have Marks & Spencer, Simply Food outlets and these are worth visiting too.
But at Brentwood, close to the junction is a Total garage on the A1023 that leads into Brentwood.
So I filled up there. It was convenient and cheaper than the fuel on the motorway.
I did make one mistake in that I bought some nuts. But they were KP’s new salt and vinegar variety. They are not gluten-free!
Remembering Sir Bobby at Ipswich
Last night I went to Portman Road to see Ipswich play Real Valladolid. I’d always intended to go, but because of the death of Sir Bobby Robson, I went a little earlier. There’s also the advantage that if you get the timing right you can park for free in places near to the ground. I parked in Berners Street which goes up the old Ipswich Hospital in Anglesey Road. It’s a lovely old building and I wonder how many of the new hospitals we recently built will look so good when they are a hundred years old.
I also went past the pub and the offices where I spent time as I designed and wrote the software system that made my reputation and most of my money in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Queen's Head
Like many other pubs it is now closed. They changed the name to The Victoria, but that didn’t seem to help. I still remember Ron Topple’s pies, which we used to eat every day for lunch. All that gluten! Would my life have been better, if I’d been diagnosed as a coeliac early. Nobby and I spent a lot of time in the bar there discussing software and the finer things of life.
Pearl Assurance House
The offices were actually quite nice and I think I worked there for perhaps about three years before we moved most of the development to the other side of the town.
I was surprised how quiet the town was with just a few people drinking outside cafes in the sun. Even the pub I had a drink in was virtually empty. Sky was playing a news feed about Sir Bobby.
There was a crowd around Sir Bobby’s statue in Portman Road.
Crowds in Portman Road
Stuart White of the BBC was interviewing a very interesting lady, Pat Godbold. She was secretary not only to Sir Bobby R9obson and also to Sir Alf Ramsey. They always say that behind every great man is a great woman. But can any secretary lay claim to be behind two such legends? She actually served every manager from Sir Alf to George Burley.
Stuart White and Pat Godbold
She has an amazing tale to tell. This sad story in The Independent shows the true side of Sir Bobby’s character. It also shows how we can forget our heroes.
Sir Bobby’s statue was bedecked in scarves and flowers.
Sir Bobby's Statue
Tributes Under the Statue
I do have a video of Pat and Stuart White and I may put it up. But I suspect there’ll be a much better version on the BBC tonight.
The football was a bit of an anticlimax and I thought the crowd would have been larger. But Ipswich won 3-1, with a couple of good goals from Pim Balkestein and Connor Wickham. The third was one of the best own goals I’d seen in years.
Flags at Half Mast for Sir Bobby
Economics of Home Cooking
I cooked a pan load of chilli con carne last night using the recipe on this blog.
The kilo of organic lean beef mince from Waitrose cost just under £10, the organic beans and tomatoes another three and if you add in the herbs, wine and spices then the total is under £20. Obviously, using cheaper ingredients could cut this cost. In fact when I made the previous batch a few weeks ago, I used some of the same organic mince, which was just about to go past its sell-by date. It cost just £6. So I always look for more of this, as lean meat is good for my cholesterol.
I make the chilli con carne in one large saucepan, so it really isn’t a great problem for washing up either!
I reckon that for my £20 or less, I get eight portions of about 400 grams each. Last night we ate three large portions with microwaveable rice and the rest I froze in one double and two single ones.
So each organic chilli con carne, with lean beef, lots of spices and included wine cost me £2.50. That’s about £6.25 a kilo.
Perhaps this is expensive, but it is very simple to do and I could cut the cost to about £1.50 (£4.25 a kilo), by using less expensive beef, cheap plonk and ordinary kidney beans and tomatoes.
A look on Waitrose‘s web site shows that they have a prepared chilli con carne at £5.98 a kilo.
Is mine better? Don’t know! But I suspect it has more meat in it and being a coeliac I know that it is totally gluten-free.
Are Restaurants Getting Better?
On Sunday, I went up to London and had a very good meal, risotto followed by liver, in the Camden Brasserie. And yesterday, I went to the Bull and Bush in Hampstead. There it was a steak with a pint of Aspalls cyder.
The point about both these restaurants is that neither would claim to be particular allergy-friendly and don’t say as much on the web site, but they both know about allergies and checked my order with the chef.
Writing twenty-four hours later, I have had no reaction.
So I would recommend these places to everybody; coeliacs or not.
Coeliac Videos
This interesting set of videosfrom the Celiac Disease Centre in the USA is well worth watching.
The Celiac Disease Centerat Columbia University was established within the Department of Medicine at Columbia University in 2001 under the guidance of Peter Green, MD, one of a few recognised experts on coeliac disease in the United States.
The Center’s mission is to redefine the future of coeliac disease and treatment through continuing advances in patient care, research, education and patient advocacy.
This is the way that information from specialist centres will be distributed in the future.
The Anonymous Widower 