Finding My Way Around . . . Again

According to Anthony Bartlett, founder of St. Louis Transplants, I could probably be called a "replant," someone who has lived in the city before, but has left and then returned.  Actually, I'm a re-re-plant, because I've left twice, and in April, 2013 I returned for a third time. 

The first time was too long ago for me to remember (I was in my twenties).  The second time was in 1989.  That's when I was diagnosed with celiac disease, shortly after the birth of my second son.  The doctor was (and is) one of St. Louis' - indeed the country's - finest, Dr. Anna Niesen.  She listened to my list of symptoms and right off the bat (just trying to work in a little baseball here) asked me a question that none of the dozens of doctors I'd seen before had thought to ask:  "Have you ever heard of celiac sprue?"  That's what is was called back then, in order to differentiate it from tropical sprue. Nowadays they leave out the "sprue" part. I hadn't heard of it, and neither had pretty much anybody.

In any case, the cure was to go on a gluten free diet.  In 1989 the only way to do that was to order food from places like Ener-g Foods, and the only way to do that was over the phone or in the mail.  We're talking pre-interwebs here.  The only thing available in the grocery stores was by its nature already gluten free:  fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, (some) cheese.  Yay.  Oh, I almost forgot - Coco Pebbles was gluten free, too. 

Now, partly because of the number of people, especially children, who are being tested and diagnosed with either full-blown celiac disease, gluten intolerance, or wheat allergy, and partly because the number of celebrities and athletes who switched to a gluten free diet for performance or "lifestyle" reasons convinced mainstream food manufacturers that a huge piece of the gluten free pie was theirs for the taking, the variety of gluten free foods is staggering.  

Want a gluten free cake mix?  Biscuit mix?  Müesli?  Pizza crust?  Pie crust? Pop-toaster-pastry? Whole grain bread?  You got it.  And you don't have to go to a stinky health food store to buy it. 

For the past seven years, my family and I lived in the Denver/Boulder, Colorado area. Talk about GF awareness!  No grocery store would dare to not have a designated gluten free aisle; no restaurant worth it's salt would not offer a separate gluten free menu. I'm pretty sure that even the glue for the bumper stickers on all the one-in-three-cars-is-a-Subaru was gluten free.

So, when we moved - again - to St. Louis in the spring of this year, I was eager to see what kind of gluten free market was here.  Would I be able to find my favorites?  

The answer is a BIG "Yes!"  It goes without saying that Whole Foods has a wide variety of gluten free foods, but the competing chains of Schnucks and Dierbergs have outdone themselves in the gluten free department. In fact, both stores outshine the Colorado chain grocery stores, even Safeway.

Happily, quite a few restaurants also have either separate GF menus, or the GF items are marked as such on the regular menu.

In future posts, I'll be writing about these restaurants.  First up is one I recently visited, Milagro Modern Mexican. All I want to say for now is OMG.  It's a gluten free paradise.  It's gonna take me several more visits just to go through all the GF items on their menu.

Lucky me.