It has been a long while since I posted about my food issues, but I was made painfully aware of them again during the last (long) weekend. As is traditional for me, I spent a few days hanging out with friends that I see once a year to share these days for our common hobby: doing bookbinding work.

What I did last weekend - repaired books and brand-new boxes and folders. And some gold embroidery :)

This was the first time I stayed at a youth hostel since developing (or, more correctly, since becoming aware of) my food intolerance issues. So, as a good guest does, I handed in the shortlist of things I cannot eat well beforehand... and hoped for the best. (There's a shortlist and a complete list of things. The shortlist is the really important stuff, the complete list also contains things I can eat occasionally, but try to avoid.)

It was not a very nice experience. First of all, some of the information seems to have gotten lost between admin and the kitchen, leading to an awkward situation admirably solved by the cook.  Secondly, the foods that were available to me often were the kind that I consider borderline acceptable: industrially made and thus laced with conserving agents, modified starches, glucose syrup and other things I try to avoid. Under normal circumstances, I will eat these occasionally, for example if there is no other choice or if I really want to, but not on a daily basis or several times a day. Thirdly, there was a lack of salads or vegetables in general, which was cutting down my options of avoiding the borderline foods.

I could feel all this in sinking energy levels, a dip in my general happiness, a craving for fresh foods and some other symptoms that clearly showed me I was not eathing things that are good for me. All that is not nice - but the worst thing, and what caused me most stress in retrospective, was having to ask for my food.

Now, in a youth hostel setting, there is usually a buffet style setup. You get your plate and cutlery and help yourself to whatever you would like, in whatever amounts. For vegetarians, or for those with intolerances or allergies, there's clearly labeled food on the buffet, and you are supposed to eat what you were booked for and not plunder the food of the special needs folks. Sometimes, when there is only a single person having a special serving and lots of other people, your serving might not be out on the buffet but brought out when you come, or when you ask for it, eliminating the danger of someone else consuming the special stuff.

That is all very understandable. However, when that means that
a) you do not know whether there is anything special for you or not, and you have to ask the serving people if the normal food is okay for you, and they look at you in a confused sort of way and have to go ask the head cook, and
b) you tell them you need to avoid wheat, but they consistently refer to you as needing gluten-free, or ask you if you have booked gluten-free diet (which I had not), and  get confused if you tell them that gluten-free will work for you but you have stated wheat-free and not gluten-free when booking, and
c) serving people are not always available and you may need to wait, or shout for them, to get an explanation of whether you can eat the stuff available or not, and then wait for your special-snowflake-food or get in line with all the others -
well. It made me feel difficult, and cranky, even though the kitchen people did try their best to help (but were stunningly under-informed). It also let me end up with meals that were not very satisfying, regarding taste, composition, and amount. I could probably have asked for more this or more that, but I did not want to go and wait (or holler) and ask again.

Worst of it all, though, having to state my special needs almost every single meal made me painfully aware of the intolerances instead of letting me handle them matter-of-factly, as I usually do. That will make anyone feel like the odd one out, and rather sick instead of healthy. It was not a nice experience. At all.

So in case you ever need to cater to someone with food intolerances? Try to make things easy for us.
Sharing food is a very social thing, so getting special servings sets you apart from the group. This may be necessary due to the dietary restrictions, and we do very much appreciate getting food that we know will be safe to eat, but getting different things all the time will, over time, do things to your soul. If the special serving is handled efficiently and matter-of-factly, it is not so bad, but every little issue on top of getting something different from the others - having to ask, having to explain, having to wait, even having different plates - will add up to emphasise that we are not part of the group in this respect. Eating is a social thing, and sharing food is a powerful symbol of belonging together. So being set apart continuously is also a powerful sign - of not really belonging.

We're feeling the odd one out or left out often enough - there are so many foods and snacks and things you cannot eat if you cannot eat wheat, for example. In a setting where a group is catered for, anything that makes us feel like our requirements are easy to meet will help. We approach foods prepared by others with a good dash of insecurity about what is in them and whether we will be able to have them or not, so labeling foods to indicate they are clear for us to eat will be a huge relief. Kitchen staff who know about our needs and do not have to run and enquire first help, too (though it's preferable that they run and enquire to serving food they don't know about). The more normal you make us feel, the easier things are for us, and the more pleasure we will have from eating in the group. The optimum would be, of course, to have foods for everybody that we can eat, and to communicate clearly that this is the case (without us having to ask). Reassure us that we can have more (if we can have more). Tell us how you have booked our needs if you decide to let wheat-free run as gluten-free (perfectly okay with me if that is easier for the kitchen, but I need to know what to ask for). Don't make us ask every time for every single thing... because that makes us aware, again, of how much we are the odd person out.

Today is International Hug a Medievalist Day!

Are you confused now? Wondering why you should want to hug a medievalist? Never mind. This piece explains it all.

I don't know if it was a medievalist who came up with the Horrible Histories song about the English kings and queens, but it's certainly in line with medievalist humour.



I might rely more on my coffee cup for that list, though, than on learning the song by heart...

And speaking of coffee, if you like either coffee or frisbee-like flying objects or stories about inventors, I recommend you follow this link to a story about the inventor of the AeroPress and the Aerobie. We have an Aeropress that we bought about 6 or 7 years ago, in the museum shop of the London Science Museum, and it is a wonderful thing - the Aeropress for making coffee, and the museum shop for buying things, not the other way around, of course.

The world's oldest pretzel has been found in Regensburg - a carbonised baked good that dates to the eighteenth century.

Terry Pratchett's name will be sent around in our equivalent of the Clacks towers.

The indiegogo campaign for Con Man has reached almost 2 million USD.

For those of you with a delivery address in Germany, I am running a spring special in my shop:
 there's a 5 € discount on shipping for delivery inside Germany this week, until March 20. (Minimum order for this is 20€.)

And it's sunny outside - I hope you can enjoy some weather as fine as the weather here, too!

Due to my sort-of-newly discovered food intolerances, the baking this year is both a little different and, in a way, a little more important than usual. Having the typical cookies for the season was always important for me, and baking them became one of my personal traditions years ago - I think it is more than a decade by now. (Wow. Time really flies.)

Traditionally, though, I only made cookies. A few things were not home-made, but bought - such as Lebkuchen (gingerbread). You might have heard of the Nuremberg Gingerbread, which is a speciality, and apart from the few very big producers of said food, there are small bakeries that have even better gingerbread. Which, however, always includes a few things that I cannot or do not want to eat these days, such as wheat flour (in the wafer at the bottom and usually also a little in the dough), soy lecithin (in the chocolate covering) or glucose-fructose syrup (in the candied orange and lemon peel, as well as in the apricot jam sometimes added).

That is a pity. And a bad thing, because this season without gingerbread? It's unthinkable for me. Which is why I had to trawl the 'net for different recipes until I found one that comes close to the recipe of our previous favourite gingerbread maker. I reduced the sugar content, though, and upped the amount of nuts and almonds.

Just in case you want to make some, too - here you go:

8 egg whites
200 g brown sugar
10 g salts of hartshorn
200 g marzipan (I use marzipan paste which has less sugar and more almonds)
200 g hazelnuts
600 g almonds
100 g lemon marmalade with peel (substitute for the candied peel)
100 g orange marmalade with peel
120 g honey (use an aromatic one)
50 g apricot jam
30 g gingerbread spices
pinch of salt
flour as necessary

Beat egg whites and sugar for several minutes, until the sugar has dissolved completely. Grind nuts and almonds (I use half of them finely ground, half more coarsely). Mix all the ingredients into the beaten egg-sugar mixture; tear the marzipan into small pieces first so it will dissolve better.

The dough should be viscous and sticky. If it's too liquid, you can add in some flour of your choice, or more finely ground nuts. Let it stand in a cool place overnight (or at least for a few hours) before baking.

For baking, place portions onto a silicone baking sheet, baking paper, or place portions of the dough on the traditional wafer thingies. Bake for c. 10 mins at about 200°C. The gingerbread should be slightly toasted brown on the outside, but still moist on the inside.

These days, the light has become golden, and leaves are starting to fall off the trees in nice autum colours. Mornings and evenings are colder, and I'm waiting for the first leaves of our willow fence to fall off, too - they are still hanging on, but are getting yellow more and more.

Now, autumn is definitely pumpkin season. Not only because of yummy things you can do with pumpkins, but also because of the pumpkin art that is done around Halloween (and yes, Germans do enjoy that too). If you are looking for some inspiration, look at this gallery of pumpkin carvings.

And should you be one of those that like a bit of garlic in their pumpkin meal, here's a nifty trick for peeling a lot of garlic, really quickly:

I've been blogging about food before. Naturally, since it is a thing that I enjoy a lot. (Especially baking. I've been called a "cake extremist" recently, and man, I'm proud of that. My cakes tend to feed legions.)

With my recent forays into different-nutrition-land, due to the elimination diet, I have read what feels like gazillions of articles about food and what you should eat, and what not. Eliminating a lot of the previous staples and mainstays of a diet does pose a challenge, and I was happy to find that there are a lot of suitable or almost-suitable recipes out there already. You can find them if you search the 'net for "paleo AIP recipe". AIP stands for "Auto-Immune Protocol", and that's basically the elimination diet scheme. It is a sub-section of eaters who eat what they call "paleo".

Now. I'm of the opinion that "who heals is right" - no matter what the approach. But I am also, due to my profession, attentive to things such as proper terminology. And calling a modern diet "paleo"... that just... gah. GAH. (I'm not alone in that, by the way! See here. Or here, where "archaeologists officially declare collective sigh over the paleo diet". I'm in!) I have enough colleagues who try to learn more about diets from the past - medieval, 19th century, and inbetween - and if you talk to them at any length, one of the things guaranteed to come up is the impossible task of sourcing raw materials that are like they used to be back then. (Just like in textiles. Ah, I can so relate.)

Mind you, we're talking about foodstuffs less than 300 years old, in some of these cases. Or less than 2000 in most. Paleolithic stuff? That's at least 12 000 years ago. More than twelve thousand! Folks! We know about nothing on how food was back then! (I blogged a very nice video about that ages ago, by the way. Here.)

There are a few other things that irk me. Some are due to personal tastes, such as the liberal use  of coconut flour about everywhere where baking is concerned, or the liberal use of other coconut products. (I like coconut a lot - but only in very specific circumstances. Not everywhere.) Some are due to a different personal stance on things, such as the declaration that sugar is really, really bad because it's so nutrition-poor and has been processed so much - but then these same authors happily use stevia (processed) or other weird sugar replacements, also very much processed; or honey which is less processed and yes, not as nutrition-poor as honey, but not that far away from sugar either. (There are some who agree with me in that stance, though. Like this one.)

So. My summary? There's this scene that calls itself "paleo". While the name still makes my hackles rise, a lot of the articles and essays on nutrition for healing are interesting, helpful, and do give food for thought. As always, though, every person is different, and different things will work for each and everyone, so finding out things for yourself is still the thing to do. That said, the recipes - both "normal paleo" and AIP - are really worth looking at, if only for interesting combinations of things to cook or prepare. And if you suspect having a food intolerance, they will be insanely helpful when you try to figure out what to eat and what to forego.

Avocado, to me, is a weird fruit. It doesn't taste fruity, it has a taste that I find very, very bland (up to "this tastes like nothing", but I like the texture it has. I got into first contact with them quite, quite late, and I think my first taste where I really liked them was as avocado sushi roll. (Texture, you see? That weird crumbly-melty mouthfeel in with the rice and the wasabi and soy sauce tastes, something like a cool melting blandness on the tongue.)

Recently, though, I have been experimenting in the kitchen, and in my quest for new (new to me, at least) recipes I have stumbled across avocado pudding. Yes, avocado pudding.

Basically, you take an avocado and puree it, adding something for sweetness (like a banana that you puree right along with it, or a few dates, or honey, or cold baked sweet potato, or fine sugar) and something for taste in addition to the banana or whatever - such as vanilla, cocoa, or berries. (Or not, depending on your preferences.) Plus maybe some liquid - water, milk, almond milk, whatever, to give it a slightly softer texture and have some more of it. It seems to be a thing out there, in the raw/vegan/"paleo" scene. I thought it weird at first (possibly not least because I am sceptic about things praised as "soooo good" and "even better than the original version" by vegans) and sort of stalked the basic idea for a while, not knowing whether I should or not. Then I tried it.

I don't much care for the taste of sweet potato in there, but with banana and strawberries? Really nice. Especially if you add in some chunks of fresh fruit, too. The most patient husband of them all tried the sweet potato version and found it rather... well... very much not to his taste, but then I haven't warmed to his favourite avocado version either (he likes it with some mustard, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper as sauce).

So if you are feeling adventurous and have an avocado and a banana to spare - you might want to try it. I'm not regretting that I did! (In case you want more of a recipe than I have given, any search engine will inundate you with recipes, and probably also with praise of the oh-best-thing-ever.)