Food

I'm a picky shopper, when it comes to food. No gluten, no MSG (E621) or its close relatives. Not much lactose. Avoiding these foods was challenging enough back home, and now I have to read labels in Dutch to avoid them.

Fortunately gluten-free foods seem fairly easy to find here. Both the Albert Heijn and the C1000 grocery stores nearby have almost half of one side of an aisle devoted to gluten free items that would traditionally have gluten. So I can get gluten free bread and pasta easily, as well as bread and pastry mixes.

MSG, however, is pretty common. And apparently unpopular enough that companies have started using the same trick I've seen for many years in the US: call MSG something (anything) else. The EU has E-codes for food additives. E620-629 are MSG and its fellow free glutamic acid co-conspirators in causing me migraines. But there's also gistextract (yeast extract) in quite a few items, which is just free glutamic acid from a different source. A pre-made salad I bought at AH had this in the salad dressing, and actually listed it as one of the ingredients from a biologisch (organic) source. ... Don't worry, I keep a supply of safe dressing at home :-P

One thing different here is that there are a lot of pre-packaged pre-seasoned/prepared meats ready to throw on the stove or in the oven. About half of them have MSG, even where it usually wouldn't in the US. So I ate a lot of MSG my first week or two. Potato salad usually has it too, which I was eating until last week. I guess I started buying it before learning MSG's E number, and once I learned it, assumed I'd checked for it on previous visits. Jan found it listed during a trip to the store :-P

I found out that brewer's yeast has free glutamic acid, which makes my current folic acid supplement pretty useless for stopping migraines because the base is brewer's yeast. Oh, and I started drinking sake a month or two before moving over, and this also uses a yeast creating glutamate. I've been drinking 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup most days.

So basically I've been making myself sick in various ways since I got here. I decided to write about food today because I spent most of yesterday in a migraine state, and am still feeling pretty funky today. On the plus side, wine is still safe (negligible glutamate) but I like sake waaaay more than wine. And I have a few bottles of sake left in the house :-(

At least eating out is less problematic. Chinese restaurants aren't addicted to it here. Any fast food restaurant that also exists in the US should be avoided if MSG is unwanted. I found out it comprises three ingredients in a Burger King crispy chicken burger. Gotta make the processed sludge taste good somehow I guess :-P

Italian food over here seems identical to back home. Though the local Italian place also does some french food (no objections here). The Chinese food is quite a bit different though. There's still sweet and sour, spicy, and a few other things, but orange or lemon sauces are uncommon, as well as breaded and fried meat chunks like you'd find in the US with a sweet and sour dish. But it's still pretty good. Instead of a hot fudge sundae, the default dessert is a "dame blanche" which I think is french for "white lady". Ice cream, chocolate fudge.

Bottled water is also a bit different. When asking for it, the waiter wants to know if you want "blauw" (blue) or "rood" (red). Blue is uncarbonated, red is carbonated. The color-coding seems pretty consistent - even in the Ikea restaurants.

Speaking of Ikea (pronounced ee-kay-uh here) "frites" are typically eaten with mayonnaise here, rather that ketchup, though both always seem to be available. The Ikea version of mayonnaise, called "fritessaus" (french fry sauce) is pretty nasty.

I've been doing a lot of cooking since arriving, since while Jan is working full time, I'm at home waiting for my resident card full time so I can work or take Dutch lessons. I've been making lean proteins and vegetables mostly, sometimes rice to go with dinner. We have a "combivent" in the kitchen, which is a combination oven and microwave. Except the microwave half doesn't work - the wiring seems to be disconnected. Jan's going to fix it One Of These Days :-P I haven't missed it much, except when reheating leftover rice on the stove.