gluten-free at McGill: volume two

I haven't made much progress in my research vis-a-vis restaurants in the area; I usually just bring my lunch and heat it up at Birks (most days) or Newman (my biweekly self-indulgent days). I just needed to share with you this beautiful moment; the angels governing sweet potato enjoyment provided me beautifully with a single sachet of salt and pepper on the table here in the Birks common room. Delicious! I preroasted four or five sweet potatoes the other day - a lovely lunch, in a pinch, provided you have salt and pepper.

market day at McGill

I bought so many beets. I'm very excited.

garden, groceries, & volunteering at McGill

Broccoli, arugula, lettuce, spring onions, daikon, clover, several other wildflowers. 

I bought guar gum! I had always wanted to avoid the gums but I have really hit a wall of gluten-free frustration lately (one too many inedible loaves of bread where formerly you were able to take a few humble ingredients and shape a truly gorgeous loaf will do that to you). This seems a little more natural than xantham gum, so at least I'm holding on to that. I'd really love to make bread sticks with halved cherry tomatoes and oil and herbs, the tops roasted and salty, mmm. I'll keep y'all posted.

Some goodies from the Co-op. Now that school's over till the fall, I'm hoping to get to NDG to get meats and dairy and things every couple of weeks. I may try ordering from Ecollegy again, though I really like the experience of browsing and choosing in person. Ambrose has a week of vacation from preschool in early August, so I am planning on taking him to the farmer's market at least once. Modest goals.

Today I met with a member of Organic Campus, a group at McGill that presently functions primarily as a market for a McG ag graduate farmer who runs an organic, eco-friendlyish farm an hour outside Montreal, regarding the possibility of volunteering. I'm pretty excited to dive in next week! I also learned that there's a farmer's market every Thursday at McGill starting late August and running through the fall. Crazy! Back in my first wave of university studies, I don't remember noticing any of this stuff! I'm also going to look into volunteering for the Concordia greenhouse. I'm excited to be serving sustainable ag and to meet like-minded people from both universities!

I'll leave you with a tantalizing thought - I have a block of cream cheese defrosting on my counter, and three boxes of incredibly ripe, fragrant strawberries in the fridge which tomorrow will be transformed into a beautiful cheesecake. I made a rhubarb one two weekends ago - I think tomorrow I'll do two layers of each instead of one. If you're in my 'hood, come by for a slice.

Gluten-free at McGill v. 1

Hello beautiful people!

I've decided to do a little series on what exactly gluten-free folks can find to eat on campus at McGill when it's not possible to bring food.

So, being gluten-free at McGill so far has not been easy. I know in the last post I had things all planned out, I had my snacks organized, and I was ready to go, but I've had some wrinkles. On Sunday we had a fiesta with the wine so I didn't get around to packing my lunch-snacks, Monday morning was too rushed, so I brought only an orange to school and hoped to find some other reasonably-priced GF snacks. Nothing fancy, you know, just some cheese or an egg or something. Not easy!! A lot of campus cafes are closed or shortly closing for the summer. Engineering Cafe had a basic, mostly primal salad (good) for $7 (very not good). They were also out of fries. Oy!

Wrinkle #2 is that I seem to not do well with nuts, which you may recall were a big part of my dry, portable protein plan for school. I don't recall whether I've mentioned it here at all, but I had been off nuts for a few months, thinking I was intolerant (I get skin reactions from nuts sometimes), then I'd decided I had probably been eating gluten-contaminated nuts, so I was paying attention to brands and carefully reintroducing them into my diet. So I've had nuts nearly every school day till midway through this week; on Tuesday I had a real bad tummy ache that just went on and on, by night time I was still bloated and uncomfortable. I had an intuition that it was the nuts. So that's out of the picture again, I'll probably abstain and reintroduce a few times more over the next few months to be sure, but at home I guess I'm accepting a nut-free reality.


This is my updates nut-free lunch pack for today - carrots, snowpeas, two HB eggs, a piece of cheddar, and a handful of dates.

But... what to eat in an "emergency"?


Option 1 - sprouted flax & sesame crackers and sardines from Couffin Bio on Sherbrooke.The sardines were delicious and sustainable but a little pricey (3$+).

Option 2 - french fries from A&W on University (delicious but not super nourishing; not a good weekly fallback).

Edit: I've since figured out that many (most) restaurants fry onion rings and other sides with wheat batter in the same fryer as their fries - do not eat French fries from a restaurant unless you've confirmed that they use a designated fryer!

Option 3 - free apples from the Birks student lounge (admittedly this is not a reliably consistent option).

So far, that's all I've got. There's a Cultures (looks good, some bowls, soups and salads are GF, though weirdly the smoothies are not) and a Thai Express (which looks potentially promising though I don't totally understand the chart) on University I'll look into, and there's some possibility that the student-run Nest cafe in the SSMU building will attempt to reintroduce GF options in the fall (I emailed the present manager to volunteer help). I also emailed Student Food Services this week to tell them I think offering GF food is important, so while I only got back a pretty basic, "We're working on it, but there are lots of dietary restrictions on campus and we can't accommodate them all equally", who knows, maybe other options will emerge. I'll try to post updates by volume here to document my adventures and as a resource to other GF students on campus.

For now I am rethinking my packed lunches... More canned fish and some fish jerky attempts will probably play into my near future. Stay tuned!

If you are new to Leek Geeks, especially if you are a gluten-free McGill student who found us on google, please leave a comment and say hello! :)