I am a celiac. This means that I have to eat gluten-free food, without any traces of wheat or gluten. This also means that moving to Germany was one of the sillier choices when it came to food accessibility – as almost everything has wheat, modified starch, glucose syrup, glucose-fructose syrup or dextrose. Candy like Haribo is off-limits, as they coat their molds in wheat starch in order to make the gummy bears come out easier. One could argue that it means you have to eat well here, because there is so little processed food without some sort of wheat or gluten in it. (Don’t even get me started on gluten-free wheat starch, that is another post.) Unfortunately, when you are low on energy, it makes it very difficult to simply find anything to snack on.
This is why I miss Catalonia, or all of Spain, really.
Going to Spain means going to an entire country that understands what disease I have, what steps they need to go in order to accomodate that, meanwhile treat me completely normally. No one thinks it is a trend, rarely do you find someone who thinks it’s annoying, and good food is everywhere – particularly if you like seafood. Me, I’m partial to baked goods.
Between this grey weather and no gluten-free bakeries, I am really dreaming of Catalonia.