Mosaics' Blog

My husband and I went to our first ever Republican Party dinner. It's not really my "thang", but we needed to go because my husband is considering running for Congress in 2008. We needed to do a "meet and greet".

Celiac.com Sponsor (A13):
 

Anyway, we had specified ahead of time that I needed a gluten-free meal. The person my husband talked to on the phone told us that one gluten-free meal had already been requested for someone else, so it would be no problem for me to have one, too. So when we found our table (there were over 700 people there), I saw that all of the salads already had croutons on them. We found a caterer and told him that I needed a salad sans croutons. No problem. The next time I checked, the salad was there.

While we were sitting there listening to the speeches and eating our salads, another caterer came to our table and wanted to know who had ordered the "special" meal. Feeling a little put out (special?), I confirmed that it was me. Soon the entrees started arriving. Everyone around me had their meal - a nice plate with a small chicken breast/alfredo sauce, rice with lovely julienned veggies, and a nice little beef tenderloin. It looked very good and smelled even better. Several minutes after everyone had started eating, they brought out my "special" dinner. It was a plate heaped with steamed veggies - cauliflower, broccolil, carrots and....what? Pasta!? First of all, I did NOT want to eat a plate of steamed veggies while everyone else was dining on beef and chicken with yummy sauces. Then, when I saw the pasta, I was dumbfounded.

I told the caterer, "Uh, everyone at the table but me has a gluten-free meal. Pasta...gluten." He seemed puzzled. I told him to bring me a plate like everyone else had. Then I confirmed that the alfredo sauce didn't have any flour in it. And I ate every scrap of food on the plate. Well, that's not exactly true. The beef was a little rare for my taste so I gave most of it to my husband. Which turned out to be a good thing because dessert was a big helping of chocolate mousse, which I love, in the shape of and about the size of a waffle ice cream cone, covered with a shell of dark chocolate. Yum.