gluten free beer – Cathy Salustri

#BecauseGluten: Beer me.

The nectar of the gods is not a crisp apple cider.

Anyone who knows me will tell you, straight up, I do not like craft beer. I’ve written about it — here and here, for instance.

When The Amsterdam on Central Avenue in St. Petersburg was a place, one of the owners explained to me that I simply wasn’t educated enough to appreciate it. Call me crazy, but I know what I like, and no amount of education is going to make me appreciate a sour, grapefruit basil-infused porter. When I drink beer, I’m simple. I like porters, stouts and a few maligned beers (Bud Light Lime, Dos Equis and Imperial). Although I like to drink local beers to help local businesses, I won’t drink local beers I don’t like.

And here’s the problem with gluten-free or gluten-removed beer: If celiac sufferers had known in the 1980s they had celiac, we’d have plenty of GF or GR Bud Light Limes in the world. But we didn’t know we had it back then. Most celiacs believed they simply had food allergies or, more recently, IBS, so GF beer is a relatively new thing. As such, brewers tend to try and make it taste like the craft beer so many people buy, which means I don’t like a good number of GR or GF brews, and it’s a small playing field already.

For someone whose favorite beer in the world was Holy City Brewing’s Pluff Mud Porter, the preponderance of IPAs and fruity ales leaves me cold. My go-tos? Daura Damm, Omission Lager, Trader Joe’s NGB and, sometimes, Omission Ultimate Light Golden Ale.

As for picking up some GF or GR beer, hands down, Shep’s has the widest selection. The St. Pete store also sells singles, so I don’t have to commit to an $11 six-pack I may hate. I’m also a fan of a couple other places in Tampa Bay, but two spots in particular — one on either side of the bridge — are worth a stop.

You can either get Daura at the bar from Ybor City’s New World Brewery, where the staff is amazing about my hummus with corn tortillas, please (I don’t even have to tell them anymore). There’s another GF beer on hand, but it’s… well, it’s not my style.

While Mangia — a casual, celiac-friendly Gulfport restaurant — carries GF beer, like New World, the prices are designed for eating in-house. A long list of ciders and meads is featured, too — far more than their GF/GR beer menu, but that’s for another column.

At local breweries, I tend to go with local cider or wine, because none of them deals with GR or GF beer, which I get. There are development, brewing, and cross-contamination issues. But what I wouldn’t give for a gluten-free version of Cigar City Brewing’s Puppy’s Breath Porter.

If there’s a local brewery that needs a guinea pig to taste GF/GR beers, I’m your gal.

This article initially appeared in Creative Loafing.

#BecauseGluten: Celiac cheat days are a thing, right?

Maybe I can have gluten one day a month.

As long as I’m being honest here — and, really, I find when discussing my intestines for roughly half a million of my closest friends, honesty works best — I would’ve happily wallowed in anger for a lot longer than I did if not for Meaghan Habuda, CL’s intrepid food editor and my appetizer BFF.

See, I’m familiar with anger. I’m comfortable in it; I know how it feels against my skin, and, yeah, it’s like an itchy wool coat that doesn’t flatter my figure at all, but I know where to find it. So staying there would’ve been easy, except Meaghan made me feel bad. We had decided to go grab something to eat and get a drink after work, and — for reasons not at all related to anything we stand for at CL, like local, fresh ingredients or innovative dishes — found ourselves at the Tyrone Square Ruby Tuesday (we judge us more than you ever could).

Meaghan wanted to write about a new ice cream something-or-other in the area, so Calypso and I sat on the dog-friendly patio and perused the menu (well, OK, I perused and she lay down, bored with life and unable to get to any of the good crumbs). Certainly something here would be gluten-free, right?

At this point, I continue to cling to the idea I don’t have to tell people I have celiac and that I can find workarounds with maybe a little gluten here and there to accommodate what I still refuse to admit is a disease.

By the time Meaghan arrived, I’d found a compromise: some sort of dip with Parmesan, and we’d get it with corn chips instead of pita. Still unwilling to utter the words “gluten” or “celiac” in public, I ask in what I thought was a casual tone if the topping had breadcrumbs in it, and if I could get the corn chips instead of pita. The waitress answered my questions — she didn’t think so, and of course I could — and she walked away, turned back and fixed her gaze on me.

“Are you gluten-free?” she asked.

I felt the white rage bubble up.

“Apparently.”

She nodded and disappeared inside.

“You were so mean to her,” Meaghan (unquestionably the nicer of us; see above) said. “She was only trying to help, and you yelled at her.”

I only had a moment to ponder what a jackass I’d been before a man with a walkie-talkie wire in his ear came over to our table, introduced himself as the manager, and informed us the cheese dip we’d ordered likely had come into contact with gluten and, as such, wouldn’t be set down in front of me.

My anger dissolved into abject horror. It was as if a secret agent from the bowels of the Ruby Tuesday lair had come out with a top-secret gluten warning. So much for trying to surreptitiously order gluten-free food. So much for walking a thin line between gluten and gluten-free without anyone noticing.

To his credit, he tried to help me find something for a pre-dinner snack. I settled on cauliflower, which tasted nothing like cheese dip.

I didn’t apologize to the waitress, who came over and apologized for not being able to bring me the food I wanted. I started to strategize in my head.

Maybe I can have gluten one day a month, I told myself. Like a cheat day.

Then I floated this past my medical team.

“No,” said Dr. Gorgeous’ PA. “If you have celiac — and you do,” she said, seeing the look on my face, “you shouldn’t have gluten. Ever.”

“Not ever?”

“Not ever.”

Nevertheless, I persisted.

“OK, but, I don’t get sick, right?” I didn’t wait for her to answer. “So, if, say, I had gluten every now and then, or in small amounts, how much could I have before it damaged the villa in my intestines?”

“With an actual celiac diagnosis, the amount of gluten you can have,” she said, and my eyes widened with hope, “is none.”

“Even if I don’t get sick?”

She didn’t sigh with great patience, which is to her credit.

“So, here’s the thing: Gluten may not make you sick now, but once you’re gluten-free for a few months, if you have gluten, it will probably make you sick.”

Great.

Next up: Depression.

This article originally appeared in Creative Loafing.

#BecauseGluten: Read the label, swear, put it in the bin

In which I find myself firmly out of denial about my celiac, and full-throttle into anger.

These people are fucking crazy.

If you read my first column about my recent celiac disease diagnosis, you know I dallied with denial. I transitioned from that right into anger and, well, let’s simply say I have lots of feelings about this stupid new lifestyle, none of which you would call “calm” or “accepting.”

Here’s how that went:

So, OK, I have celiac. Sure. So, um, give up breads, right? I can probably swing bread. It’ll suck some, because nothing compares to a hot loaf of bread with feta and smoked beef, or my dark chocolate bread smeared with Brillat-Savarin, accompanied by a glass of dry merlot and maybe a few walnuts. And the occasional late-night English muffin, like Barry and I do sometimes, with a little butter and strawberry jam…

Stop. Thinking. About. Bread.

You know what sucks? I gave up most “white” foods years ago because of the sugar (diabetes runs in my family). So I’ve been eating those goddamn whole-wheat English muffins for, what, 10 years now, and it’s done me no good whatsoever. Sure, I don’t have diabetes, but hell, at least every now and then diabetics can have a slice of white bread.

Oh, shit, pasta. I’m going to gave to give up pasta. Listen, that’s not exactly a Dutch name up on my byline, there. One of the best memories of my grandmother is making macaroni with her — cutting them on her hand-cranked machine and letting them dry all over the house. It’s safe to assume there was gluten everywhere, from the distinctively Italian wrought-iron wall by the stairs to the crushed-gold velvet striped wallpaper. This is like watching my childhood die.

Although I have a few days before I meet with Dr. Gorgeous (whose PA has asked me not to ask Dr. Google about my condition) and a week before I’ll have a session with a dietitian, I can’t wait that long. I’ve decided that I’ll quit gluten New Year’s Day, so I want to be prepared. I head over to Facebook — after all, that’s not Google and the PA didn’t say anything about social media, right? — and start seeking out celiac groups. Taking a deep breath, I post in one, explaining that I’m a recent diagnosis who previously viewed the GF movement with disdain. But now, in a turn of karma so severe 2,000 years from now Buddhists will meditate about me, I need advice.

“You’re going to have to throw out all your pots and pans and cutting boards and dishes.”

Um, excuse me? I can understand the wooden stuff — wood’s porous, so maybe some gluten got ground in there. However, I have my grandmother’s pots. When my father was a baby, she cooked breakfast for him in those. No way in hell do those go. And the dishes? Jesus fuck, it’s not like they’re made of bread. They’re ceramic. One set is depression glass. No fucking way.

“Make sure your makeup and lotion are GF!”

GF? WTF? I absorb gluten through lotion? Aside from my Sephora stuff, I don’t buy cheap lipstick. I’m not throwing out my Dior, not even if it’s made with camel feces, which, come to think of it, might be gluten-free, so maybe that’s the way to go. But no. The Dior lasts forever and looks amazing. And my lotion? My conditioner? This is too much. These people aren’t doctors. Some of these comments are helpful while others are clearly over the top. For example, the lady who won’t let gluten in her house. Can you even accomplish this? It would be easier to move than to do that, right?

I scroll away from my post and read others.

“I pooped my pants!” one post reads.

These people are fucking crazy.

I shut my laptop.

Grocery shopping also makes me rageful. See, I’m trying to buy things that don’t have gluten in them because in a few weeks I’ll be totally GF, so I have to start studying labels like there will be a test later (and there kind of will). And of course I forget my damn glasses. Trying to figure out if Trader Joe’s Carolina Gold Barbecue Sauce has gluten in it or not, I about lose it in front of the Lululemon-clad suburbanite and the middle-aged hipsters stocking up on Three-Buck Chuck for their shitty dinner parties and the poor cashier who doesn’t understand why I have a nasty look on my face.

In our pantry, I have two shelves filled with bread flour, whole-wheat flour, whole-wheat pastry flour, White Lily all-purpose flour, semolina flour — you get the idea. I start putting everything I can’t have anymore into a big copper basin, the kind you use to hold drinks at a party. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m thinking that arranging it all pretty-like will make this easier. I develop a rhythm: Read the label, swear, put it in the bin.

Flour, the stuff of bread, macaroni, pie crusts and muffins.

Oh, bloody hell.

Basin.

Durum wheat semolina elbows. Mixed with peeled tomatoes and butter and salt…

Dammit.

Basin.

Peanut butter pretzels.

Shit.

Basin.

Soy sauce.

Wait a minute, fucking soy sauce? *Rereads label.* Fucking soy sauce.

Basin.

This fucking sucks.

Next up: Bargaining.

This article originally appeared in Creative Loafing.

#BecauseGluten: Me? Celiac? Impossible!

For me, the first stage of celiac disease was denial.

From my friend Meaghan Habuda, when she was the Food & Drink editor at Creative Loafing and I wrote this for her: #BecauseGluten is a new semi-regular column chronicling CL A&E Editor Cathy Salustri’s journey into an involuntary gluten-free lifestyle. She’s taking her recent celiac diagnosis kinda hard.

I stared at the phone message, hoping my iPhone had transcribed it wrong:

“This is Kristin from Center for Digestive Care. We have your EGD and lab results back and they are suggestive of celiac disease. Can you call me back?”

Suggestive of celiac.

Suggestive.

I called Kristin back and explained to her that I did not have celiac.

“It’s a trendy disease,” I told her as I pulled into the Fairway Pizza parking lot.

“That it is,” she agreed. “Nevertheless, you actually have it.”

“It’s incredibly rare,” I said. “And I don’t get sick when I eat gluten.”

“So, there are two tests we have to do for a positive diagnosis of celiac,” she continued, “a blood test and a biopsy. We did them both, and both of them suggest you have celiac.”

“Suggest? OK, so what else could it be?”

“Celiac.”

I made a follow-up appointment, thanked her and hung up the phone. I walked into the pizzeria and ordered eggplant parm with spaghetti and garlic bread. Screw celiac.

I hate the whole gluten-free fad that’s sweeping the nation. People swear off gluten like it’s crack, but most of the people I’ve met who do this don’t really understand what gluten is — and, consequently, what gluten-free means. They’re avoiding it to lose weight or because it’s healthier (which doesn’t work when you sub in gluten-free processed foods loaded with sugar and fake things) or because they don’t feel well and read about gluten on their friend’s Facebook page.

I hate it. All my friends know I do; for years I’ve joked I was allergic to gluten-free food.

When I took the job with CL last year, I found myself with excellent health insurance and a wonderful doctor. Dr. Ligia Perez took one look at my bloodwork and ordered a bone scan and a hematologist. A few weeks later I learned that at 43, I had anemia so severe she told me to stop working out until we could get it under control.

My hematologist said he’d never seen iron levels so low and ordered iron infusions. He also gave me a shot called Prolia, which would help halt the osteoporosis but could cause my jawbone to become necrotic. He then referred me to a gastroenterologist to figure out where my iron was going — I suspected ulcers — and I found myself staring at the incredibly gorgeous Dr. Patil, who had to be a good 10 years younger than me and said I needed a colonoscopy.

Middle age was looking just ducky.

“Why, exactly?” I asked.

“It’s possible you have celiac,” Dr. Gorgeous told me. I politely replied that I did not have the “disease of the day.”

“It is incredibly rare, but given your symptoms” — anemia and osteoporosis combined with what my family calls “The Salustri Stomach” (when we get stressed, we become physically ill) — “you have a one in five chance of having it.”

Although I disagreed, the medical community seemed rather concerned as to why my body had almost no iron and also why my bones had started to disintegrate at a (relatively) young age. I couldn’t argue that I could barely get out of bed some days, and I did want to feel better, so I agreed to an endoscopy and a colonoscopy. Once they found the ulcers I had diagnosed myself with, I could get back on track.

I’m not going to go into the horrors of the colonoscopy except to say, there’s something not right about looking at an extremely good-looking man and knowing that, in a few minutes, he’s going to be more intimate with your bowels than any human being has a right to be.

A few days later, the phone call from Kristin. That night, Barry and I went to PJ’s for some oysters and contemplated what celiac meant. I declared I would only tell my family — if you have celiac, your family members may have it as well — and a few close friends. Our favorite waiter, Enoch (we go to PJ’s a lot), came over to see how we were doing and noticed I’d ordered Redbridge, a gluten-free beer that tastes like kittens dying.

“Oh, hey, are you gluten-free?” he asked.

“Me? Hell, no. That’s such a bullshit thing!” I said. And when our server came over, I ordered a Bud Light Lime. “See? No gluten-free here.”

“Yeah, it has gotten crazy. People do it because it’s popular,” he laughed and went back to his tables.

“See?” I told Barry. “This is what it means. I can’t tell people. They’ll think I’m an asshole capitalizing on a trend. I know, because I am that person.”

I finished the Bud Light Lime — gluten and all. To make my point, I grabbed a packet of crackers off the table and ate them, too.

Karma, man. She’s a gluten-y bitch.

Next up: Anger.

Note: This post initially appeared in Creative Loafing.