Grace

Actually, that's got nothing to do with me or my life, which is quite honestly a chaotic, shambolic disgrace littered with last-minute patch-jobs, noisy children, demented pets and mysterious outbreaks of fractal unlikeliness. But we do have Grace in residence at the moment, which is kind of a contradiction in terms unless you know that Grace is a medical student, here for a month on a John Flynn scholarship -- and an old friend of mine from back in Briz, with the VISION writer's group.

Grace arrived here on Sunday, while we were all still more-or-less in shock and recovery from the awfulness of Saturday (and Friday, and Thursday, and Wednesday...) so her initial impressions of Chez Flinthart must have been relatively low-key. Certainly, the kids didn't immediately attempt to swarm her. And I believe she even managed an afternoon nap, which is definitely not the norm hereabouts.

A month of Grace, in theory, poses a minor problem foodwise. Apparently she's gluten intolerant. She promised to get her own corn tortillas and her own gluten-free soy sauce (who the hell knew they put gluten in regular soy sauce anyhow?) but the reality is that she poses no problem at all for me, or the family. I do rather a lot of Asian-style cooking that works around rice, so most of our main meals don't actually have gluten in them to begin with.

Cases in point: we had a chicken soup on the Sunday night, using home-made stock. No gluten anywhere. And last night it was all about the tacos that Smaller Son adores. Still no gluten. Tonight, since I'm out teaching ju-jitsu, I'll set up some rich cream-of-mushroom soup, entirely gluten free. Tomorrow night I expect we'll have nasi goreng, since Elder Son loves it and I haven't done it in a while. And then maybe san choy bau. And by then, we're onto the weekend, so I'll probably fire up the Charcoal Gorilla.

Too easy. And yes, there's a reason for posting all this: I've got a few gluten-sensitive friends who read this and who may be visiting at some point. I'd like them to know that feeding them is no obstacle!