If you are looking for an easy guide of what foods to avoid when cooking or eating without gluten, this is the list that I live by. I hope this is helpful.
Ingredients to avoid:
Grains
Wheat
Barley
Malt
Spelt
Rye
Kamut
Oats (unless specifically processed to be gluten free)
Other
(Modified) Foodstarch
Maltodextrin
Manufactured/Processed in a facility with wheat
Artificial flavoring (check with manufacturer)
Rules I go by
1. ANYTHING can have gluten in it.
2. Always check ingredients of any new product you use, any product with new packaging, or a new quantity of a product.
3. If there’s any doubt or question about an ingredient (ie: modified foodstarch (corn) ), don’t use it. Check with the manufacturer and get a definite answer or check online on both the company’s website and gluten free community resources that have been updated.
4. Check ingredients of products we use regularly, occasionally. Manufacturers change their ingredients often and without notice.
5. Read the entire ingredient lable. Check for allergy warnings at the bottom. A simple “Gluten free!” on the front does not guarantee that it is. There is no law against advertising specifically this falsely.
6. Hope for the best. You can’t be on top of everything. We can only do what we can.
Common misconceptions and questions
If you can’t have wheat, isn’t spelt okay? If it’s wheat that’s the problem then yes. Spelt is not gluten free. It just has smaller amounts of gluten in it than Wheat or Barley.
Why do some oats have gluten and some not? Oats, by nature are gluten free. But they are frequently raised with wheat and are cross pollinated with wheat as well as processed in the same mills, using the same equipment. Only oats grown and processed separately are considered gluten free.
I found a product that says gluten free but it has maltodextrin. Is it okay? Maybe, but since it’s a question mark, avoid it. Maltodextrin is made differently in Europe than in the US. One country makes it out of wheat, the other makes it our of corn. There’s no guarantee.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
My (Very Debatable) Opinions on DJing as You Go
(Ideas about DJing Part 2)
I have heard a fair number of voices opting for DJing as you go, catering to the people in front of you. I think this is an invaluable skill and one that I have enormous respect for, and one I have not developed terribly much (though I'm trying to). Because I don't have much experience with this practice, I'm going to offer a disclaimer: These are just my opinions, not right or wrong. I may do more on the spot DJing later and discover I disagree with myself. But this is what I have observed so far: The value of DJing on the spot ends up correlating a lot more with song selection than the flow of the night. Why?
When I choose songs, I have a sense for what songs people love to dance to, songs that are excellent to dance to, songs people love period, and songs that I love. These can often be four different things. If you are uncertain about what songs your current selection of dancers love or love to dance to and how this differs from your general tastes, DJing on the spot can be very useful so that you have a chance to see who is in front of you and make judgements about what they like.
Why do I find this less true with regards to the flow of the night? Except for the closing half hour or so, if you can assume that you have a sizable group of dancers in front of you when your set starts, you can choose an energy level to start at, and if they hook on to it, they will follow your decisions for where the energy goes. Dancers don't always know what they want to dance to until they hear it, so if your set says, I know you want to dance to this, the dancers will often agree.
Where I have found success DJing on the spot with regards to flow of the night is the last half hour, which is the time of the night that I am the least experienced with. You never know what people will do at this time of night. Sometimes people just get tired and leave, or get tired and stop dancing. Sometimes they never lose energy and dance and dance and are disappointed when the music is over. Sometimes most people leave but you have three couples having intense amazing dances until the music is done. I have found this is a time of night that is much more difficult to control.
For example: Last night, at the gaslight, I knew that the end of my set was a little shaky but I was hoping it would hold up. Things were going great but then about five songs from the end, people just stopped dancing completely. Granted, some of them had been there for three hours of lab, on top of the hour and a half of dancing, and that's a lot of up time. But I thought, I can't just let the dancing stop when there's 25 minutes left and still a bunch of people here. Here's what I did instead:
I faded out the current song. It wasn't great anyways. The next song was really amazing but people were out of dance mode. So I asked someone to dance. As soon as I did that, two couples followed. The next few songs had enough condensed energy that people stayed up and some additional couples joined us. I looked at my set again and realized that my second to last song had extremely low energy, whereas my last one was much higher (but in a beautiful end of the night sort of way). I realized that if I kept that second to last song, everyone who was tired would just leave.
So I deleted it, moved my last song to second to last, and found a happy low but constant energy song to be my final. I had almost everyone who hadn't left yet on the floor for the last three or four songs, even after 3-5 hours of dancing/lab work. Success.
I have heard a fair number of voices opting for DJing as you go, catering to the people in front of you. I think this is an invaluable skill and one that I have enormous respect for, and one I have not developed terribly much (though I'm trying to). Because I don't have much experience with this practice, I'm going to offer a disclaimer: These are just my opinions, not right or wrong. I may do more on the spot DJing later and discover I disagree with myself. But this is what I have observed so far: The value of DJing on the spot ends up correlating a lot more with song selection than the flow of the night. Why?
When I choose songs, I have a sense for what songs people love to dance to, songs that are excellent to dance to, songs people love period, and songs that I love. These can often be four different things. If you are uncertain about what songs your current selection of dancers love or love to dance to and how this differs from your general tastes, DJing on the spot can be very useful so that you have a chance to see who is in front of you and make judgements about what they like.
Why do I find this less true with regards to the flow of the night? Except for the closing half hour or so, if you can assume that you have a sizable group of dancers in front of you when your set starts, you can choose an energy level to start at, and if they hook on to it, they will follow your decisions for where the energy goes. Dancers don't always know what they want to dance to until they hear it, so if your set says, I know you want to dance to this, the dancers will often agree.
Where I have found success DJing on the spot with regards to flow of the night is the last half hour, which is the time of the night that I am the least experienced with. You never know what people will do at this time of night. Sometimes people just get tired and leave, or get tired and stop dancing. Sometimes they never lose energy and dance and dance and are disappointed when the music is over. Sometimes most people leave but you have three couples having intense amazing dances until the music is done. I have found this is a time of night that is much more difficult to control.
For example: Last night, at the gaslight, I knew that the end of my set was a little shaky but I was hoping it would hold up. Things were going great but then about five songs from the end, people just stopped dancing completely. Granted, some of them had been there for three hours of lab, on top of the hour and a half of dancing, and that's a lot of up time. But I thought, I can't just let the dancing stop when there's 25 minutes left and still a bunch of people here. Here's what I did instead:
I faded out the current song. It wasn't great anyways. The next song was really amazing but people were out of dance mode. So I asked someone to dance. As soon as I did that, two couples followed. The next few songs had enough condensed energy that people stayed up and some additional couples joined us. I looked at my set again and realized that my second to last song had extremely low energy, whereas my last one was much higher (but in a beautiful end of the night sort of way). I realized that if I kept that second to last song, everyone who was tired would just leave.
So I deleted it, moved my last song to second to last, and found a happy low but constant energy song to be my final. I had almost everyone who hadn't left yet on the floor for the last three or four songs, even after 3-5 hours of dancing/lab work. Success.
Where the Music Takes Me
(Ideas about DJing Part 1)
Poets often find that when they get to a certain point in a good poem, the poem will write itself. Not only does this mean it feels a little disconnected from yourself but also that sometimes you don't quite understand the lines you write or the poem will go in a completely different direction than you had intended. It can be frustrating if you had your heart set on writing on kind of poem that decided it wanted to be another, but if you let it be what it wants to be, the poem will be better in the end.
I find this to be the case when I DJ blues as well. The way I was taught to DJ was to pick a bunch of great danceable songs and then order them based on energy level, trying to create arcs and variance within the set while ensuring that the energy level is always steady- steadily increasing, or decreasing, but always steady.
I started out DJing this way. But pretty soon I found that this limited me. I would get bored with just following a standard arc, or frustrated with trying to plan where the energy would go and then trying to make my music fit that. The music didn't always want to.
So I began focusing on the part of DJing that is the most important to me, after song selection. I think good song selection is extremely relative and personal and will and should always reflect the DJ. I have my opinions on the danceability of individual songs but I try not to take an extreme stance on song selection in general. I began focusing on transitions.
Transitions are what I have always excelled at, even before i was DJing for dance parties. I used to make mixed CD's to play at my friends' parties and people would get really engaged with them, singing along, dancing, acting stuff out. I was addicted to the response I'd get from a really good transition, that wave of energy when everyone goes, "Oh this song!" You feel it, regardless of whether people use words to express it, and the better the set up, the better the transition, the bigger that wave gets.
When I work on a set, I largely let the transitions of the music tell me where the set is going to go. I keep in mind things like energy level, appropriateness, and variation through the set, but they come second to a transition that makes the next song pop, or as my first DJ teacher told me, "It should be like each new song is a gift that you're unwrapping."
I almost never know what the energy map of my set is going to look like until I'm most of the way through, and for each song, I listen to dozens of transitions into the next song. It's time consuming. But when I find that next song that makes me go YES! I know that the people dancing are going to do that too.
Poets often find that when they get to a certain point in a good poem, the poem will write itself. Not only does this mean it feels a little disconnected from yourself but also that sometimes you don't quite understand the lines you write or the poem will go in a completely different direction than you had intended. It can be frustrating if you had your heart set on writing on kind of poem that decided it wanted to be another, but if you let it be what it wants to be, the poem will be better in the end.
I find this to be the case when I DJ blues as well. The way I was taught to DJ was to pick a bunch of great danceable songs and then order them based on energy level, trying to create arcs and variance within the set while ensuring that the energy level is always steady- steadily increasing, or decreasing, but always steady.
I started out DJing this way. But pretty soon I found that this limited me. I would get bored with just following a standard arc, or frustrated with trying to plan where the energy would go and then trying to make my music fit that. The music didn't always want to.
So I began focusing on the part of DJing that is the most important to me, after song selection. I think good song selection is extremely relative and personal and will and should always reflect the DJ. I have my opinions on the danceability of individual songs but I try not to take an extreme stance on song selection in general. I began focusing on transitions.
Transitions are what I have always excelled at, even before i was DJing for dance parties. I used to make mixed CD's to play at my friends' parties and people would get really engaged with them, singing along, dancing, acting stuff out. I was addicted to the response I'd get from a really good transition, that wave of energy when everyone goes, "Oh this song!" You feel it, regardless of whether people use words to express it, and the better the set up, the better the transition, the bigger that wave gets.
When I work on a set, I largely let the transitions of the music tell me where the set is going to go. I keep in mind things like energy level, appropriateness, and variation through the set, but they come second to a transition that makes the next song pop, or as my first DJ teacher told me, "It should be like each new song is a gift that you're unwrapping."
I almost never know what the energy map of my set is going to look like until I'm most of the way through, and for each song, I listen to dozens of transitions into the next song. It's time consuming. But when I find that next song that makes me go YES! I know that the people dancing are going to do that too.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Random Acts of Kindness and Humanity Stories, Part 1
Two stories came into my head that I felt were important to share and that always make me smile. This is the first.
I was working the cash register at our bakery/deli and as was usual between noon and 1:30, we were very busy. I took the orders, passed them on to the line workers, rang up the customer and as fast as was possible, started on the next order. Stuff goes wrong constantly: customers asking where their order is, running out of napkins or coffee or forks, we need to pump more cheese through the automatic grater, yelling at the dishwasher to wash faster and refill the dressings at the same time. It always surprised me that we made it through the day without pissing off all our customers.
A tall man with dreadlocks made his order and paid with his card. I zoned out for a second as I was typing in the numbers and suddenly I realized I had entered his card number into the dollar amount spot, which would mean charging him over $60. I immediately hit cancel, but it was impossible to tell if the card had been charged already or not. There were five people in line behind him and I had no idea how to go back and cancel a previous charge, nor did I want to interrupt my boss with the 20 orders he had in front of him. I crossed my fingers, re-ran the card, and hoped for the best.
About a week later, the man with the dreadlocks came back. I noticed him speaking emphatically with my boss. The card mistake had slipped my mind and I figured he was trying to strike a deal with him or something, trade who knows what for a chance to advertise in our space or food, etc. About ten minutes later, my boss came back and announced there was a discrepancy in our credit machine records and there was a $69 charge unaccounted for, with no receipt to match it. I stepped forward immediately, explained what happened and asked if I could speak to the man with the dreadlocks to apologize. He had left but was planning on coming back in a short while.
When he did come back, I apologized profusely. When I told him I had entered his card number into the dollar amount number, his face changed. "Yeah, that is the number, 6925..." It was as if he hadn't really believed it was a mistake until that moment. I continued apologizing but his focus had shifted and he began to laugh as he walked out the door.
Several weeks later, the man with the dreadlocks came back. He asked for me, but I was unavailable. My co-worker went instead. She returned with a large wooden bead, about the size of a marble. There was a dragon fly burned on to it. The man with the dreadlocks had asked that she give the bead to me. It was beautiful and I was very touched. I took it home and found a leather thong to string it on and wore it as part of my costume for Ariel in The Tempest. I later found out that the man with the dreadlocks makes beads and other wooden decorations with burned designs for a living.
I never found out exactly why he gave me the bead. I believe in being honest with my customers, and while I try to focus on the positive for the sake business and making a profit, I will tell them when I have done something wrong without sugar coating it. It seemed that the bead was in thanks for my honesty, which was not something he was used to receiving from a business. But I also felt receiving the bead was a kind of message from the universe: Yes, your contribution is appreciated.
The Wooden Bead
I was working the cash register at our bakery/deli and as was usual between noon and 1:30, we were very busy. I took the orders, passed them on to the line workers, rang up the customer and as fast as was possible, started on the next order. Stuff goes wrong constantly: customers asking where their order is, running out of napkins or coffee or forks, we need to pump more cheese through the automatic grater, yelling at the dishwasher to wash faster and refill the dressings at the same time. It always surprised me that we made it through the day without pissing off all our customers.
A tall man with dreadlocks made his order and paid with his card. I zoned out for a second as I was typing in the numbers and suddenly I realized I had entered his card number into the dollar amount spot, which would mean charging him over $60. I immediately hit cancel, but it was impossible to tell if the card had been charged already or not. There were five people in line behind him and I had no idea how to go back and cancel a previous charge, nor did I want to interrupt my boss with the 20 orders he had in front of him. I crossed my fingers, re-ran the card, and hoped for the best.
About a week later, the man with the dreadlocks came back. I noticed him speaking emphatically with my boss. The card mistake had slipped my mind and I figured he was trying to strike a deal with him or something, trade who knows what for a chance to advertise in our space or food, etc. About ten minutes later, my boss came back and announced there was a discrepancy in our credit machine records and there was a $69 charge unaccounted for, with no receipt to match it. I stepped forward immediately, explained what happened and asked if I could speak to the man with the dreadlocks to apologize. He had left but was planning on coming back in a short while.
When he did come back, I apologized profusely. When I told him I had entered his card number into the dollar amount number, his face changed. "Yeah, that is the number, 6925..." It was as if he hadn't really believed it was a mistake until that moment. I continued apologizing but his focus had shifted and he began to laugh as he walked out the door.
Several weeks later, the man with the dreadlocks came back. He asked for me, but I was unavailable. My co-worker went instead. She returned with a large wooden bead, about the size of a marble. There was a dragon fly burned on to it. The man with the dreadlocks had asked that she give the bead to me. It was beautiful and I was very touched. I took it home and found a leather thong to string it on and wore it as part of my costume for Ariel in The Tempest. I later found out that the man with the dreadlocks makes beads and other wooden decorations with burned designs for a living.
I never found out exactly why he gave me the bead. I believe in being honest with my customers, and while I try to focus on the positive for the sake business and making a profit, I will tell them when I have done something wrong without sugar coating it. It seemed that the bead was in thanks for my honesty, which was not something he was used to receiving from a business. But I also felt receiving the bead was a kind of message from the universe: Yes, your contribution is appreciated.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Until Further Notice
This is weird. When you start writing a blog you have to come up with a title, theme, and format FIRST? And then write the posts? That implies that you know what you're going to write about before you get there.
When I write a poem, it's pretty rare that I write a title at the top and then write the poem that fits it below, and still more rare that that title stays through the editing process. What's more likely is that after writing it, I'll come up with something that vaguely summarizes what I've just written or, if I'm still unsure what my poem is about, I will leave it without a title, until i understand a little bit more about what I just did. But then again, I've never been good at titles.
I think about titles the same way I think about names of people. If I say "Don't you agree, Krista?" Krista is going to be like "Yes. What?" She knows that her name refers to her, I know that it does, and it's an easy way to communicate what/who I'm referring to. If her name was "Softy Billows Through the Trees" that might be a little tougher to communicate, and frankly, less fitting.
But then again, in a piece of literature, poetry or blogature, you might want to bring something more to the description of what you are about to read, something overwhelming and profound or subtle and mischievous, like one of those titles that makes you go wha? Until you read the whole book and then look at the title again and go OHOOO. Same goes for episodes of TV shows, and really everything. It seems more fitting to have the title at the END of the episode/book/ post to ensure maximum OHOOO reactions. Maybe I should format this blog to have the title of it at the bottom. That way after every post people can have that satisfying wahOHOOO response.
Or I could suggest a new title for the blog each time I write a new post, so that the title better encompasses everything that I've written, and place you (my readers?) forever on edge as to when I might change my title for real, and the blog would transform entirely. Though I guess that's what individual post titles for for, to avoid the whole transformation of blog drama. Damnit, more titles.
A title generator would be of use here! *Goes and searches for a blog name generator* Here's some of the names I got:
Orange Barbershop
Nervous Snake
Moving Helium
Severe Cosmic
Shiny Alpha
Quality Snake
I…see. That, "I shall never have to be creative with titles again!" thing fell through a little. "Snake" twice, really?
When I write a poem, it's pretty rare that I write a title at the top and then write the poem that fits it below, and still more rare that that title stays through the editing process. What's more likely is that after writing it, I'll come up with something that vaguely summarizes what I've just written or, if I'm still unsure what my poem is about, I will leave it without a title, until i understand a little bit more about what I just did. But then again, I've never been good at titles.
I think about titles the same way I think about names of people. If I say "Don't you agree, Krista?" Krista is going to be like "Yes. What?" She knows that her name refers to her, I know that it does, and it's an easy way to communicate what/who I'm referring to. If her name was "Softy Billows Through the Trees" that might be a little tougher to communicate, and frankly, less fitting.
But then again, in a piece of literature, poetry or blogature, you might want to bring something more to the description of what you are about to read, something overwhelming and profound or subtle and mischievous, like one of those titles that makes you go wha? Until you read the whole book and then look at the title again and go OHOOO. Same goes for episodes of TV shows, and really everything. It seems more fitting to have the title at the END of the episode/book/ post to ensure maximum OHOOO reactions. Maybe I should format this blog to have the title of it at the bottom. That way after every post people can have that satisfying wahOHOOO response.
Or I could suggest a new title for the blog each time I write a new post, so that the title better encompasses everything that I've written, and place you (my readers?) forever on edge as to when I might change my title for real, and the blog would transform entirely. Though I guess that's what individual post titles for for, to avoid the whole transformation of blog drama. Damnit, more titles.
A title generator would be of use here! *Goes and searches for a blog name generator* Here's some of the names I got:
Orange Barbershop
Nervous Snake
Moving Helium
Severe Cosmic
Shiny Alpha
Quality Snake
I…see. That, "I shall never have to be creative with titles again!" thing fell through a little. "Snake" twice, really?
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