Toxic Comfort Food
I must admit, it was a little depressing to read Two for the Road at the time I was reading it. We were on a short road trip of our own, staying in a little cabin on Lake Murray, a few miles north of the Red River in Oklahoma. I’d been there before with friends, and I was now sharing the place with my man and our little dog.
I remembered the great catfish and home cooking restaurants I’d been to with my friends, and I would have shared those too, except for one minor problem. The husband had just been diagnosed with Celiac disease, and he couldn’t eat any of it. Add the fact that it was Thanksgiving week, realizing that naked green beans, naked turkey and naked mashed potatoes were the only things he could eat on that normally joyous feast day, and it makes for a pretty sad vacation.
Meanwhile, I’m reading this book about all these places he wouldn’t dare eat in, reading all these recipes I’d never be able to cook for him. I’d look up from my book and smile a little sad smile at him, altering the recipes in my head, thinking, yeah, that could work.
Thank goodness for our next-door neighbors, who don’t even realize how they saved our vacation. Before we left for Oklahoma, the doorbell rang, and there was Ted Brown with a great big smoked pork loin wrapped in tin foil. He’s a wizard with the barrel smoker, and the meat was magically tender and delicious.
We made pork nachos to watch Monday Night Football, pork omelettes for breakfast, soft pork tacos with lime, onions and cilantro on corn tortillas for lunch the next day. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t have the requisite BBQ sandwiches. That meat made everything delicious. Oh, and imagine how wonderful our Sunday soup tasted with all that neighborly warmth cooked in. Food is still amazing, even without the wheat.