Aunt Rissy and I are the proud parents of two high school teenagers. It’s amazing I can even remember that, as according to them, we each lost 60 I.Q. points on the morning of their respective 13th birthdays. We expect to start gradually regaining our lost intelligence sometime during their 25th year. We’re hopeful anyway.
Being intellectually challenged parents, we have the privilege of learning many new things each day. Such as “You don’t understand, it’s different than when
you were growing up.” We’ve also learned much about how many text messages a teen can crank out each day – it’s about 2,000 – unless someone broke up with someone else and then it’s more. So far I think we’re keeping up pretty well with our new fountain of knowledge – with one notable exception:
Beast.
“Beast” sounded like a simple concept to me. Big animals, red meat, triple-decker fat burgers or some such thing. Given the simple nature of the term I was pretty confident that “beast” was some teen slang for “totally awesome food dude.” And better yet, it sounded gluten free to me.
Turns out I was a little off the mark. “Beast” is one of those multipurpose noun/verb/adjective/adverb type things that means something like “awesome.” You can be “beast” on the field or dance floor. A cool game, CD, or movie can be “beast.” You can “beast” (dominate) someone in a game or sport.
So being a quick learner, I quickly figured out that Glutino English Muffins and Bards Beer are “beast.” More importantly, Aunt Rissy is a total “beast” when it comes to gluten free cooking.
Just when I had gotten comfortable with the whole “beast” concept, my son hit me with a new concept:
Beast Sauce.
Apparently he is “the beast sauce.” All I want to know is whether or not it’s gluten free.
After an 18 month adventure through the catacombs of the medical system, I was formally diagnosed with Celiac Disease. The bright side of that journey is that I know 3,712 nasty and horrible conditions that I do NOT have.
[...] After trying to start with an exclusive approach to eating, and failing miserably, I had my Duh! moment. Why not turn my approach (and frown) upside down and start with a universe of zero “safe” foods and add to the list things that are absolutely gluten free. Over time, as I learned more, I could add to my “safe” list. This approach virtually eliminated my gluten incident frequency while allowing me a series of small “victories” as I learned new things that I could enjoy. It’s all a matter of positive versus a negative perspective. After much deliberation, I have concluded that a positive perspective is, like, way better. Or as my kids would say, the positive outlook is totally beast. [...]