210 Diet Wise
When we lived in south Manchester in the remains of
a large manorial estate, I ran my office from home. My
young pre-teen son, both entrepreneurial and a skilled
young cook, spotted a market immediately and offered to
serve my patients a variety of tasty cooked lunches, which
would conform with the dietary restrictions – wheat-
free, milk-free, corn-free etc. He made a few dollars and
learned what was to be a very valuable trade. He grew
up to be a prize winning chef, with his own magazine
column, working in Michelin-starred restaurants.
The point of saying that is to be able to say that most
patients were delighted and surprised at what could be
done, without the common and seemingly “indispensable”
ingredients found in the average kitchen. He came up
with a great many soups, salads, pot roasts and even a few
desserts, to show that the case is not a hopeless one, and
that if a young kid can do it, most people can.
Ingenuity and creativity are required but not unrealistic
culinary skills that would be beyond the abilities of a
typical adult.Consider flours (farina): today it is possible to get flours made from
buckwheat (not wheat and not in the grains family), potato flour, gram flour
(garbanzo), sago flour, tapioca flour, chestnut flour and many others. Wheat
is highly prized, for its gluten content, which makes it sticky, especially suited
to bread and cake making. Rye, oats, barley and triticale are also gluten
foods and available as flours but they contain much less gliadin, which is the
fraction of gluten that makes wheat sticky.
The trick is to learn to cook differently. Fluffy loaves may be out
but scones and pastry can be made to work, with some care.
Dairy substitutes
There was a time when the only substitute for cow’s milk was from the
goat or sheep. Goat’s milk has acquired an almost mystic reputation over
the centuries for curing diseases, from eczema, to colic, asthma to catarrh.
Sickly children were often switched to cow’s milk in the old days and usually
made a full recovery. I can now tell you why, with certainty: goat’s milk creates