When I accepted a marriage proposal
from a man who had two teenagers, some of my friends and family were
a little scared for me. A lot scared, in fact.
"There's a special place in
heaven for the step-parents of teenagers," my mother told me,
jokingly. However, after teaching high school for 17 years, I was
pretty sure I could handle it.
"But they don't go home at the
end of the day," one of my friends said to me.
"There won't be 34 of them in the
same room, either," was my retort.
I'm only a month into this whole
step-mom thing, but so far, the biggest challenge has been cooking. I
love to cook, but I am in an unusual situation. My step-daughter,
Hannah, who is 15, is gluten-intolerant. For a person who considers
her stand-mixer with dough-hook one of her most prized possessions,
this was hard for me to take. I didn't realize how often bread and
rolls and pasta and tortillas played backdrop to the meals I cook,
until they were off limits. And while there are gluten-free
alternatives to these items, they are often expensive and a bit
questionable in texture. Anyone who has ever substituted a veggie
burger for a real hamburger, expecting the same experience, knows
what I'm talking about.
But, Hannah loves to cook, and is
willing to experiment to find what will work. Last week, she invited
a girl friend over to make home-made pizzas for dinner, and while
shopping for supplies at the grocery store, she knew exactly which
gluten-free pizza dough mix yielded the best results.
Gluten-free cooking often means that
instead of pasta or bread, grains and rice provide the new backdrop
to our meals, instead. Quinoa and brown rice are becoming my new
"go-to" staples, which is probably a whole lot healthier
for the entire family.
Add into this mix my step-son, Peter,
age 13, who was diagnosed with type one diabetes less than a week
after Geoff and I married. The day he was diagnosed, Peter and his
dad came home from the hospital with a binder about three inches
thick; a how-to manual for managing diabetes. All of the information
about testing blood sugar levels, counting the carbohydrates in a
meal to calculate the proper insulin dosage, and what and when Peter
could eat was absolutely overwhelming. Peter took all of this like a
champ, never complaining, and instantly incorporating the numerous
blood sugar tests and insulin injections into his routine like it was
no big thing. For me, the challenge was to figure out what I could do
to make life normal for Peter.
Probably the biggest challenge for
Peter was not having to stick himself for his blood tests and
injections, but rather that he couldn't eat whenever he felt like it.
I don't think any of us realize how much we "graze" during
the course of a day, unless we're not allowed to. Peter's doctor told
us that he should take an insulin injection before each meal, and
before bedtime, to manage his blood sugar. He could not eat unless he
took insulin to help him convert the carbohydrates in the food, and
he could only take insulin every four hours. So, between meals, there
was no snacking.
The doctor did give us a list of
"free" foods, meaning they had no carbohydrates, so Peter
could eat them without taking an insulin injection. The list read
like a manual from those high-protein diets. Hard-boiled eggs, cheese
sticks, peanuts and beef sticks were the main items, and all I could
think was, "Well that doesn't seem very healthy!" In later
weeks, we learned from the diabetes education team at the hospital
how to account for other snacks, but at first, things looked pretty
dismal.
In the days following Peter's
diagnosis, we religiously studied the labels on pre-packaged foods,
the nutritional content of different restaurant offerings, and used
various internet sites to calculate the nutritional value of
different recipes, fresh fruits and vegetables, and we all began to
think about the make-up of our food a bit more. Just as Hannah's
gluten-intolerance means that everyone in the family is eating a lot
less by way of refined flour products, Peter's diabetes will make us
all think twice about nutrient-devoid, carbohydrate-heavy food
choices.
"What on earth do you cook for
them?" one of my friends asked, horrified, when we met for a
girls' weekend. In truth, it has been fun modifying some of my old
favorite recipes. My most recent success came in the form of
gingerbread waffles. I have a recipe in my Harrowsmith cookbook that
I have been playing with for years, adding whole wheat, reducing oil,
and otherwise trying to improve its nutritional content. The first
time I tried a gluten-free version, I used rice flour, but wasn't
particularly happy with their grainy texture. This week, I used a
mixture of almond meal and gluten-free baking mix, and replaced most
of the oil with canned pureed pumpkin. The almond meal certainly
changes the protein to carbohydrate ratio for the better, and while
there's not enough pumpkin to count as a whole serving of vegetables,
I figure that the little bits add up. Besides, they still had that
decadent breakfast treat feel to them, which was exactly what I
wanted.
Sauteed apples make the perfect topping to my modified gingerbread waffles.
Cooking is one of the ways that I show
people I care about them. Making my dad his favorite chocolate chip
cookies before he went away for a hunting weekend, baking bacon and
ham filled sandwich rolls for my brother to take on the Chicago to
Mackinac sailboat race, finding an elegant cheesecake recipe for my
mom's birthday are just things that feel natural to me. I am finding
that this form of affection is also helping me to navigate the tricky
terrain of step-parenthood. Catering to my new family's nutritional
needs is one of the most non-threatening ways I have found to show
them that I care about them.
