Saturday evening we went to hear Seraphic Fire at St. Nicholas Church in Pompano Beach. Walking in from the back I saw something I had never seen before: a church food truck. The white lettering on the blue side identified it as “The Holy Grill of St. Nicholas” and included the slogan “Our COD is an Awesome COD.”
In his address to the audience before the concert, the priest said that the truck has served over 68,000 meals to the homeless in Broward County. Afterwards, he told me that it also appears at festivals, where it serves Scotch eggs and Guinness-battered fish and chips. Hence the awesome cod.
I can eat everything but, since my surgery, some things (like pistachios, which I love) are easier to swallow than other things (like almonds, which I’m ambivalent about). And I wonder: Do certain foods go down easier because I like them, or do I like them because they go down easier?
I was browsing at Barnes & Noble in Boca yesterday when I remembered that I was out of Cheerios. So I walked over to Whole Foods, where I found myself enveloped by a swarm of shoppers buying sweet potatoes, string beans, stuffing, pies. Lots of pies. Taking my cereal up to the cashier, I said, “We’re having a modest Thanksgiving this year.”
Today is Fat Tuesday, which means that tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the season during which Christians traditionally give up things they love – often foods, frequently chocolate. Tomorrow is also Valentine’s Day, so some “fasts” may be delayed 24 hours.
For as long as we have been going to Doc B’s in Fort Lauderdale, Hania has been lodging a complaint about the absence of gluten-free desserts. Managers change fairly frequently, so each new one hears her lament. Once we sat next to a man visiting from corporate headquarters in Chicago; we watched as he observed and instructed staff; he too got an earful from Hania.
Last night we found another new manager at the restaurant. Hania stopped him as he passed our table and launched into her spiel.
“But we now have a gluten-free dessert,” he told her. Not the flourless chocolate cake that she had long recommended, but a kind of chocolate mousse. It wasn’t on the menu yet because they were testing it out.
It was delicious, more complex than a classic chocolate mousse, with hints of salt and caramel, and a sprinkling of shaved nuts on top. (We passed on the whipped cream.)
Hania felt like a culinary agent of change.
Hania never cared much for pizza until she was diagnosed with celiac disease. You always desire that which you can’t have. Back then – 2001 – there were not a lot of gluten-free products, and few pizza places made gluten-free crusts. Things changed as eating gluten-free became trendy. Pizzas appeared with cauliflower crusts, which were OK, though hard, crispy, and not very tasty. They were all about what was on top of them.
Each time a new pizzeria opened, we tried its gluten-free pizza. Patio Bar & Pizza, Mister01, Pommarola. They all disappointed, especially Mister01. The guy got a special visa for this!?!
Last night we went to the new Emmy Squared, next to Fresh Market, which specializes in Detroit-style pizza. I hoped that the thicker crust, even its gluten-free version, might save us from the cardboard-like crusts we’d been eating – and it did! I was reminded of the rectangular slices I used to eat at the Italian Bakery in Phillipsburg, NJ, which were basically tomato sauce on top of baked dough and were so delicious you could eat them cold. Emmy’s crust was moist and chewy – words rarely associated with gluten-free – and the sauce and cheese were just as tasty. We finally found a great gluten-free pizza in Broward Country!