This will probably be amusing, because I am tired and frustrated

Sunday, September 23, 2007 - Posted by Amanda Bast
I should be doing homework, but I need to get this out first. I went to a wedding this weekend, and I was prepared for amazing gluten-free wedding food. It had been pre-arranged, and the bride assured me that the kitchen knew, the servers knew, and I would be eating safely. I was excited.

Well, here we have the play-by-play:

Round one: bread
Clearly, I wasn't expecting to eat this. I went to the washroom while everyone enjoyed their gluten. The waitress* came and informed the table that they knew about my "glucose" allergy.
Mom: "The waitress is clueless."
*note: only one waitress is involved in the following anecdote

Round two: Italian Wedding Soup
Me to waitress: "Umm, this has noodles in it, I can't eat it."
Waitress: "Really? This is what they gave me."
Me: "Um, I can't eat it."
Waitress: "Let me talk to the sous-chef." She leaves with gluteny soup, then returns with the same soup, but it appears to have the noodle-things taken out of it. "Here."
Me: "This is the same soup. Are you sure?"
Waitress: "No, let me check." She leaves with second bowl of gluteny soup. The rest of my table eats the green soup and is nearly finished before she returns. "This is a curry soup, they weren't sure about the other one, but this one is okay, right? That's what they said. THey had the menu switched with the other kitchen and they didn't know about it." WHAT? That doesn't even make sense. She sets down a bright RED soup.
My brother: "FREAK! RED SOUP FREAK!" Thank you for the comic relief, Matt.
The soup was good and spicey. I figured I wouldn't eat all of it, because I didn't want to fill up on soup (dumb move, #1).

Round three: Ceasar Salad
I knew this was going to be an issue right away.
Mom: "Oh boy, this is going to be interesting."
Waitress sets down salad with croutons in it in front of me. CLEARLY I CAN'T EAT THE BITS OF CRUNCHY BREAD.
Me: "Ummm, I can't eat this. There are croutons in it."
Waitress: "Oh? Really? You can't? Do you have allergies?"
ARE YOU FREAKING SERIOUS????????
Me: "Ummmm yeeeeees I do. I can't eat the croutons."
Waitress: "I didn't know." Leaves with gluteny salad, returns with a bowl full of lovely looking greens, tomatoes and cucumber. Awesome.
Mom: "That looks good. What kind of dressing is on it?"
Me: "Ummmmm there isn't any." I start digging through the salad looking for something hidden, but all I found were some onions. I try eating it dry. GAGGING OCCURS. It looks good, but tastes like EARWAX. Everyone at the table notices. I look around the table looking for dressing alternatives. Rum and coke. No. Beer. No. Horseradish. HECK no. Water. No. Orange punch. BINGO. "Heather, can I have some of your punch?" I proceed to spoon punch onto my salad. People from the table next to ours look at me like I'm an alien. I keep myself from flipping them off. The salad is now bearable, but still leaves much to be desired. At least I ate some of it. I want my soup back.
Josh: "Be nice to the waitress, she's hot."
Heather/Matt/Me/Mom: "NO SHE IS NOT."

Round four: Beef somethingorother
Mom: "I wouldn't get my hopes up, if I were you."
Me: "Don't worry, they've been successfully squashed."
Waitress brings out the beef. It looks SO good. I sit and watch everyone eat their meal. She brings out a plate, with a bun, gravy and something else gluteny on it.
Me: "I can't eat that. I'm allergic to bread."
Waitress: "Ohhhh really? Ok, I'll go get that other one for the person with the allergy."
Me: "Wheat, I'm allergic to wheat."
Waitress: blank stare. She doesn't know what WHEAT is. She leaves with gluteny food, and returns with my food. A HUUUGE slab of beef. It's red. I am not even kidding you, there was blood on the plate. The vegetables underneath were good (praise the Lord) but oh gosh, the meat was plain and the same colour as my soup. Ohhh I wish I had my soup.
Everyone else: "Oh man, this food is amazing!"
Mom: (whisper) "Don't worry, I think it's gross."

Round five: mousse cake
Waitress: "Can you eat this? They told me to ask you if you can eat this."
Me: "It's cake?"
Waitress: "Yes."
Me: "I'm allergic to wheat."
Waitress: "Um, ok. So you can't eat this?"
Me: "No, cake has wheat in it."
Waitress: "So do you like, want like, fruit on a plate? Like, or what?"
(I am pissed off/wanting to cry/HUNGRY by this point.)
Me: "Sure." She leaves with gluteny cake and returns with fruit. Unripe, gross, hard fruit. I ate the strawberries. Dad and Mom had left, and returned to find dessert. It had nuts in it, and Dad is allergic. He tells the waitress.
Waitress: "oohh my gosh, I'm sooo sorry. Do you want like, fruit, or like pudding, or some other kind of cake or anything? I'm sure we have something without nuts. I'll go ask." She leaves with nutty cake and returns with mousse. CHOCOLATE GLUTEN FREE MOUSSE. I stare in disbelief.
Me: "where did you get that?" Dad shrugs. I want to cry. She is gone before I can say anything. Dad eats his mousse. I get a spoonful. I am eating hard canteloupe. Cute and probably COMPETANT waiter comes to our table and offers me wine. He probably saw that I looked like I wanted to murder someone (and then cook them up, gluten free) so I guess he thought his services would be helpful. My initial response: "HAND IT OVER. JUST GIVE ME THE ENTIRE BOTTLE, AND THEN MAYBE WE CAN MAKE OUT." Actual response: "No thank you." Small smile.

Round Six: Denny's
It's time for breakfast! Food I can eat! Yay!
I'm slightly wary of Denny's, only because of Wally's "My sister ate spaghetti and parmesean cheese at Denny's when she was three and puked all over the car because Denny's is disgusting" story, but I decide to enjoy it anyway.

The waitress was somewhat helpful, but I find that I can only eat scrambled eggs. I order an ommelette. A NINE DOLLAR OMMELETTE. It better be good.
I think they used an entire onion in my ommelette alone. I didn't eat about a quarter of it, but there was a LARGE pile of onion on my plate. It is 6:00pm and I still taste onion from breakfast. I wish I was kidding.

Round seven: lunch
Or not. I am still munching on onions from breakfast

Round eight: dinner
The desire to not eat has never been stronger. I don't lose my appetite. It just doesn't happen. I tried to eat some, but failed. It also didn't help that Diana was eating rice with ketchup, salsa, peas, sausage and BANANA on the other side of the table. Holy POO I want to puke. There are large bags of candy beside me that I have no desire to eat.

You've probably heard me say that being Celiac isn't that bad, because it isn't. I'm not one to complain about it. But holy mother of all things gluten, it was bad this weekend.