BurgerTime (tm)

Goddamn, I want a hamburger.  

I've been living gluten free for two years now, give or take a few months in either direction.  This is a necessary thing.  When you put wheat gluten, or that of barley and rye (and to a lesser extent, oats) in my body, a curious thing happens:  I get dumb.  Very dumb.  I lose access to my long term memory, have a difficult time processing new information, my reflexes slow dramatically and, perhaps most oddly, my eyes stop tearing.  This lasts for anywhere from two hours to a day.  Somewhere in the nature of 7% of celiacs suffer these same symptoms, rather than get "the poops."  While I have yet to be formally diagnosed as such, I have reproduced these symptoms often enough that it simply makes sense to behave as if I were a celiac.

This has further necessitated a radical alteration of my diet.  I know, I'm only removing one foodstuff; you wouldn't think that would be so complicated, yet...  Everything deep-fried is breaded.  Candy manufacturers dust rollers with wheat flour to prevent sticking of products, particularly chocolate.  Restaurants thicken their soups with flour.  Most pernicious is modified corn starch, which is a ubiquitous thickener of sauces, yogurts, creams, and everything low fat.  Modified cornstarch is not always, but usually, modified in such a way that includes the addition of wheat gluten.  This prompts a less severe response from my body, but it's there all the same.  

What this means for me is that it is very difficult to eat at restaurants, and that certain things are off limits unless I make them myself, or feel willing to pay three or four times as much for an equivalent product that lacks the offending ingredients.  The first two months of this were pure torture.  Constant food cravings, watching my friends eat things I loved, never really feeling full, and a significant lack of convenience.   These feelings have largely subsided, as one should logically expect.  However, I do occasionally keenly miss certain items of food, most notably variations on the sandwich.  

Yes, I know that gluten free bread abounds in variety at health and organic food stores, and even to a lesser extent at mainstream supermarkets; but this bread is expensive and, quite frankly, a poor facsimile.  It is brittle and usually of lesser dimensions, making for smaller and harder to eat items that are, because of these traits, generally less enjoyable.  These facts make it much easier to cut wheat and its related cultivars out of my life entirely, though I must admit that the temptation to eat what I want and just be stupid for a day rears its head every so often.

Today is one of those days.  I will not succumb, but I sharply crave a hamburger.  Specifically, I am craving a Wendy's classic triple, an Everest-like mountain of beef and bread.  I want to make a base camp in the lee of the second patty, and would risk losing a few other climbers on the way to the top.  Luckily for me, there's a 3g network there now, so if things get to hairy we can call for help.  

Or fries.