Light and shadow: a vignette

She kicks her shoes against the gravel at the edge of the path, making a tcha-tcha noise with her tongue against the gap in her front teeth.

"Don't scuff your shoes, E," I say mildly. "They'll get wrecked." She grins and nods a little absently, and keeps dragging her feet, lost in some internal dialogue that probably involves horses, magic, rainbows and astrophysics.

In the pusher, C exclaims, "YOOK! A butterfly! See, over there..."

A hitches her bag higher onto her shoulder and says, "Our shadows look so long today. Why do they look different sometimes? Is it because of the sun?"

E emerges from her dreamworld, interested. "Yes, is it?" she asks.

I nod. "Mmmmm," I say. "Because of the rotation of the earth, the sun appears to be at a different place in the sky throughout the day. Your body blocks out a different amount of light depending on how high above head the sun is - so your shadow is longer at the start and end of the day, shorter in the middle of the day."

We cross the road, the big kids' hands on the pusher handle. The sky is the most perfect clean blue, completely cloudless, and it's getting warmer already.

E says, "Look, your shadow goes over the top of mine. It's strange."

A says, "Everyone has a shadow, don't they?"

Tempted as I am to retort, Except vampires!, I simply nod. "Sure, unless there is no direct sunlight. Cloudy days don't make shadows."

C burst out in delight, "A pidgeon! I did see one! An' a minah bird too!"

E flashes her sudden grin and leaps forward, landing both-feet-down on her sister's shadow. "I stepped on your head! I stepped on your head!" she crows.

A growls and squeals, "I'll get you, you little -"

"A," I warn, my eyebrow raised half a centimetre. Just enough to let her know not to try it.

For the rest of the trip, A tries in vain to jump on E's shadow. Quicksilver, they dart in and out of my path, a lightning shell game, half in fun, half in earnest. They laugh, and shout. C laughs too, and says, "Where is MY sheddow, Mummy?"

At the gate, they break away, headed for separate friends and separate days. "Have a good day," I call after them.

E turns back and blows me a kiss. And A quickly, triumphantly, stomps on her shadow.

"THERE!" she proclaims, finally satisfied.

Their shadows trail long behind them as I watch them go.

Gluten free and delicious #2: Parmesan tomato and tuna risotto cake

As I mentioned in my banana bread post, I was lucky enough to be sent a copy of Coeliac Australia's recipe book and a basket of ingredients in order to trial two recipes for Coeliac Awareness Week.

The banana bread continues to be a huge hit - C and I made it again on Tuesday afternoon, in fact, and there was none left by Wednesday night. Freeze, schmeeze - it has no chance of ever making it that far around here :-)

My second recipe was a savoury one, and I wasn't, to be honest, sure what the family would make of it. I opted to cook the Parmesan, Tomato and Tuna Risotto Cake, because my family have never been willing to eat tuna but they do like risotto generally, and I am searching for more inexpensive fish meals to put into our regular menu. (They all like salmon fillets and barramundi, but we can't eat like that every night!) Tuna casserole was a total flop, and fish pie, which was a modified success (3 out of 5 liked it, 1 ate it reluctantly, only 1 refused it outright) is incredibly fiddly and time-consuming to make.

Here is the recipe, reproduced from the Coeliac Australia cookbook, Gluten Free Recipes, with permission.

Ingredients

50g butter or margarine
1 onion, chopped
1 1/2 cups short grain rice (I used medium)
1 x 250g can tuna in brine
1 x 400g tin tomatoes
5 1/2 cups hot gluten free chicken stock
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup grated parmesan or romano
2 tsp dried oregano
shavings of cheese to top
(The instructions say serve with salad, but as my kids won't eat salad, I served it with baked veggies).

Method

1. Melt butter in a large saucepan and saute onion. Add rice and tuna and stir for 2 minutes. Add tomatoes and 1 cup stock, stirring occasionally until all liquid is absorbed.

2. Continue to stir, gradually adding remaining stock until all liquid is absorbed and rice is cooked (approx 15 mins).

3. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly before adding beaten eggs, cheese and oregano.

4. Pour mixture into a buttered and lined 20cm spring-form pan. (Or regular one if, like me, you don't own a spring-form :-) Bake at 200C for 40 min or until set.

Allow to cool slightly before taking out of tin. Cut into wedges, top with shaved parmesan or romano, and serve with side dishes.

Well, the recipe worked - the cake cooked and set, and sliced quite well. It smelled and looked appetising. But the million dollar question is, of course - did they eat it?

Husband loved it. He's requested it again next week.

I liked it. I wouldn't say it's a favourite dish, but I'd happily eat it on a semi-regular basis.

C, aged 3, scoffed all hers and asked for more. She was a huge fan.

A, aged 8.5, approached hers cautiously, but ruled it "not bad" and ate 3/4 of her portion.

E, aged almost 7, hated it. HATED it. She couldn't manage more than two bites. I thought this might happen; it's not a fault of the recipe, it's just that E does not do well with very "fishy" fish, and, other flavours notwithstanding, this is a very tuna-tasting meal.

Still, that's not a bad outcome - I can make this one again for the four of us who ate it and just give E a substitute protein (usually poached eggs) on the night. I certainly think it's a recipe worth trying for a relatively cheap, tasty, gluten free family dinner.


Disclosure: I was provided with a complimentary copy of Coeliac Australia's cookbook, and a basket containing all the ingredients for two recipes, by Porter Novelli on behalf of Coeliac Australia, with the understanding that I would trial two recipes during Coeliac Awareness Week. No payment was offered nor accepted for this process, and all views (and cooking mishaps!) are entirely my own.

This is not the post I planned for today

I was going to post the second of my two recipes tested from the Coeliac Australia cookbook today (parmesan, tomato and tuna risotto cake). I was going to write about cooking gluten free meals the whole family would eat. That's what's on my blog plan for this month, and in fact the post is already 3/4 written, sitting in draft, waiting to be completed and published.

It just seems that this post - fun, and useful (hopefully) as it will be - is not the post that needs to be written today.

Not when, like the rest of the world, I'm in shock over this. (16 dead Afghani people, most of them children, killed senseleslly in their homes. Unthinkable, yet, naturally, I lay awake last night thinking of it, imagining the terror and horror of it).

Or trembling with rage about this. Prosecution of women who suffer miscarriages? REALLY? The Handmaid's Tale is just around the corner; fiction and fact are about to collide, and I am still struggling to believe the depth and power of this anti-woman, anti-choice backlash. We do not live in progressive times.

Or incredulous about this. In Arizona, new legislation is on its way through the legislature that may allow doctors to not inform women of health problems affecting them or their babies while they are pregnant, IN CASE this might lead the woman to opt for termination. Women - infantilised, disempowered, child-bearing robots - are not, under this model, capable of being trusted with information about their own bodies - their own lives, for cripes' sake. As one commenter on that article put it, in Arizona, foetuses will now have more legal rights than BORN, ADULT WOMEN.

What I want to say is this -

Respecting life is a core and indivisible part of being an ethical human being, or an ethical society.

Respecting life does not mean that no lives - or lives-in-potential - can ever be ethically ended.

Respecting life means respecting the bodily autonomy of all people and their right to determine, insofar as disease and the rubs of life allow them to, what happens to their own bodies.

It does not mean that abortion is "good" or "desirable." It does not mean that I would choose it for myself (probably - but then I am lucky to have never been in the position where such a choice might become necessary).

It does mean that I respect the personhood - the full humanity - of women enough to say that "this is a choice that must be left to the individual to make, weighing all the circumstances and with all the relevant information."

Why?

Because women are human. They are not brood mares or robots. As human beings, they have the right not to have their lives determined by an ethos or philosophy they may not subscribe to, but is, in any case, external to themselves.

Because women matter. Their safety matters, their health (mental as well as physical) matters, their prospects for life matter. The putative desirability of an embryo potentially developing into a human being does not mean that women matter less, or magically vanish from the equation, because they are pregnant.

Because I do not want to live in a society that officiously controls the private lives, and intrudes with horrific legal penalties on the private griefs, of its citizens.

Because although I have never been touched by the need for reproductive intervention in either direction, precedents like this are awfully hard to control, and things that do directly affect people like me - health issues or autonomy issues that touch all women - may be next. (Martin Niemoller's famous words spring to mind).

Yes, it's Arizona, not Melbourne, Australia. Yes, the political climate here is very different, and it's hard to imagine these measures ever having legs in my country.

But that doesn't mean I should say nothing. That doesn't mean it's all OK, because it's not in my backyard.

Because one day it may be. And even if not, it's still not right, and women will suffer for it.

If women are human, treat them as such. If women are adults, treat them as such. Not every decision made by another person will be one that you (from your particular ethical vantage point) agree with or like. But that's life, or at least it should be.

Women are not incubators. And that is all I have to say about that.

Resources for living gluten free in Melbourne: Part 2

Yesterday I published Part 1 of my top 25 Resources list; today, here's my favourite cookbooks and retail / products, to finish off the list.

Cookbooks

1. Irrestistables for the Irritable (Sue Shepherd)
Dr Sue Shepherd is one of the local legends in the gluten free and other dietary needs field, and I really like her two cookbooks in this series (there's a sequel, Two Irresistible for the Irritable, that I've also got). Her recipes are mostly simple and I have never had one fail, although there are a few I probably wouldn't attempt. (The lamb pilaf on page 81 of the second book is one of our family's favourite recipes).

2. Coeliac Australia's Gluten Free Recipe Book
As my banana bread post from Monday would attest, I like this book a lot too! The recipes are straightforward and non-fussy, and the section at the start of the book on reading labels and finding substitutions is a good refresher for me and would be invaluable to a newly diagnosed person.

3. The Eat Well Cookbook (Jan Purser & Kathy Snowball)
My brother gave me this book when I was first diagnosed, because he is kind like that :-) It is full of recipes that are both gluten free and dairy free, and contains one of my most triumphantly successful puddings of all time, the light and gorgeous Lemon & Lime Delicious Puddings (p 141).

4. Four Ingredients Gluten free
I know there are mixed views on the Four Ingredients concept, and whether it actually constitutes "cooking" as opposed to, say, "mixing". I am, however, a big fan, especially when pressed for time, and there are some corkers of dinner ideas in here.

5. From My Kitchen to Yours (Sally Wise)
My beautiful friend M gave me this book for Christmas, and I've been greatly enjoying it. I haven't made many things from it yet, but everything I have made has been wonderful.

6. 100 Best Gluten-Free Recipes (Carol Fenster)
This is a treasure of a book, but it's really a cookbook, not a baking book - light on desserts, but full of excellent and delicious main meal ideas.

Retail / Products

1. Absolutely Gluten Free
Located in Werribee, this store is like a mini gluten free supermarket. I cannot begin to tell you what it feels like, as a Coeliac, to walk into a shop where you can choose ANYTHING ON THE SHELF without thinking twice! Owners Carleen and Shane are very knowledgeable and helpful, too, and having this shop within a reasonable proximity makes my life many times easier.

2. Muffin break gf muffins
When a major chain offers regular gluten free options, it's such a big thing for me; to be able to get something when everyone else does is so incredibly nice. Muffin break offers a good selection of gluten free treats and I have never been burned with contaminated product by them, not even once.

3. Macro range (Woollies)
The gluten free component of Woolworths' Macro range (organic / health foods) have been a godsend for me. I've used many products from this range and some of them have my undying devotion (to wit: the sponge cake!)

4. Silly Yaks Gluten Free
Back when I was diagnosed in 2007, mainstream supermarket chains carried little that was gluten free. One of the first product lines I discovered was Silly Yaks' pies, which a local cafe ordered in especially for a customer who was Coeliac. I used to buy the pies in dozens and freeze them, and I enjoyed every mouthful :-) With more options now, I don't spend quite as much on Silly Yaks, but I still think they're among the tastiest of all the g free pie-type products.

5. Orgran
Again, old habits die hard - when I was diagnosed, Orgran was the only pre-mix flour available in supermarkets, and I still like it better than the newer competitors, and still prefer it in my baking, because I know how it behaves! Moreover, Orgran makes a lot of other products that I really like - their crackers and crispbreads high among them.

So that's my top 25 things that I rely on in living gluten free in Melbourne. You input and thoughts are most welcome...

Resources for living gluten free in Melbourne: Part 1

One of the things that I have found most helpful as a Coeliac has been discovering a network of services, information and resources that supports gluten free living. There are masses of web pages, blogs and recipe books; there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of products, some available in mainstream supermarkets; there are plenty of great options for eating out. Sometimes knowing where to look, or how to narrow it down to the things that will be of most use to you with your lifestyle, can be the hardest part.

So I've put together a list of my own most-relied-upon 25 resources as a Coeliac living in Melbourne. These are all services / resources / products I've used over and over again; all things that make my life easier, more pleasant, or more fun. Of course, there are hundreds more I could've chosen, and your top items might well differ radically, but these are a good place to start.

(NB: One resource that I used to love, and would have topped the list, was Gluten Shmooten, a web page for Coeliac living in Melbourne. Tragically, it appears to be now defunct, as all the links are broken. Sadness :-(

I've divided them into 4 categories - Online Resources, Cookbooks, Retail / Products, and Eating Out. Today, I've put up the first two categories - Online Resources and Eating Out. Part 2, Retail / Products and Cookbooks, coming up tomorrow!

Online Resources

1. Gluten Free Girl and the Chef
Shauna James Ahern and Danny Ahern's beautifully written and photographed blog is probably my favourite of all the many gluten free food / cooking blogs on the Internet. While Shauna and Danny make some food that I wouldn't even attempt in terms of complexity, they also have a lot of simple, easy-to-prepare recipes, and general cooking tips and tricks, that I've found invaluable.

2. Nellbe's Gluten Free Kitchen
Janelle's blog is a gem, especially because, as a Melbournian like me, she's often writing about things like supermarket specials and local restauarants that are directly relevant. I love the gluten free menu plans too.

3. Coeliac Australia
As the peak body for Coeliac sufferers here, Coeliac Australia's site gave me a huge amount of help, encouragement and clear information when I was first diagnosed and really struggling with it all. I still find it a great hub of resources and visit there at least monthly to get new ideas and updates.

4. She Let Them Eat Cake
This is a baking site with a difference - egg-free, dairy-free and gluten-free all in one! I am neverendingly amazed at the variety and yumminess of the food that Maggie coaxes out of her apparently limited ingredients. Check it out, especially if baking for vegans; you won't be disappointed.

5. Gluten free eating directory
There are many gluten free restaurant lists and guides out there, but this is the one I use the most; it seems to be updated often and contains useful information about other aspects of the venue (eg kid-friendliness) that are relevant to me.

6. Gluten free goddess
Almost as famous as the Gluten Free Girl, I like this site a lot too, although I find the writing style a little less engaging. (But the recipes? Nom nom nom...)

7. Ali V, Gluten Free
A fantastic Australian site that draws together lots of knowledge about not just gluten free but FODMAP diets and related health conditions.

Eating Out

1. Nando's
Most fast food places are completely off-limits to Coeliacs, which, while not a bad thing in some ways, does make quick family takeaways a drag. I was very excited to discover that Nando's chicken, salads and spicy rice are all gluten free (you just need to avoid the chips).

2. MoVida
Discovering that one of our favourite Melbourne restaurants for a special meal out, Spanish cuisine oriented MoVida, could provide a wide gluten free selection was an unparalleled joy for me. It's not an everyday place for us but it is so nice to know I can have a fancy meal out for special occasions and eat beautifully without fear.

3. Yum Cha at the Red Emperor
One of my greatest loves, pre-children, was the work yum cha lunch. My husband and I also adored yum cha and ate it often on Sundays, frequently meeting friends to do so. Losing yum cha was one of my top five disappointments when I was diagnosed with Coeliac disease. Being able to indulge again, even if only once in a while, at the Red Emperor is such a treat.

4. Snappas Fish & Chippery (Werribee)
Gluten free fish and chips are getting more and more common, I'd pleased to say; I've eaten good gluten free food from fish and chippies in Bendigo, Geelong, near my parents' place, and so forth. Snappas is our most local one, though, and the service is always excellent. Restoring our monthly Friday night family fish & chips has been lovely for us all.

5. Fresh Chilli Thai
Thai food can often be gluten free by ingredient in any case, but when you find a restaurant that gets the contamination issue, you stick to them like glue :-) Fresh Chilli has three western surburbs branches, and their Pad Thai is my favourite thing in the wide world.

6. Sushi Sushi
This sushi chain, that operates all over Melbourne, not only does lovely sushi that is gluten free, they are now carrying gluten free soy sauce as well. Win!

7. So n So's
This Chinese and pizza restaurant (yes, you read it right!) has been providing a full gluten free menu to western suburbs diners for over a decade now, and not once have I ever been glutened by their food. I would say the Chinese food is nicer than the pizzas, but it's all pretty good, and such a relief to find locally.

I'd be interested to know what other Melbourne Coeliacs think of this list. What are your favourites and your best, to quote my 3 year old?