One of the treats I used to love was an Amy's organic soy cheeze pizza. I'd cut up tomatos, add a little garlic salt, and chow down. But then I discovered just how sensitive to wheat I am. There was a rice-flour crust in the line, but it had real cheese, and I'm far more sensitive to dairy than to wheat. I stopped buying them, what with our small freezer space and the wheat problem. But in Whole Foods the other day I discovered that, true to their pledge to make a pizza for everyone to eat, there is now a rice-crust, soy cheeze spinach pizza. And since Ms. P is out of town until late tonight and the idea of cooking makes me want to throw things across the room, I tried it.
I admit, I was skeptical. Substitutions often don't succeed for me. I can't stand fake meat, soy cheeze in anything other than this pizza grosses me out, and the Great TofuDog Search of 2003 failed to work out in my favor. (It wasn't the taste; it was the texture. Hot dogs should not be floppy. It's just ... wrong, and it brings to mind too many dirty jokes.) Given that this pizza had, according to the label, a delicate crust that required not only baking but then broiling to ensure a crisp unburnt crust and melted cheeze, well, I was prepared for the worst.
And I like it better than the wheat crust, actually. It's really good. Of course, I then looked at the nutrition information, and the whole 9" round pizza is more points than I get in a whole day. A serving is a third, but I broke down and ate a half. I'm waiting for them to make a pizza for wheat-sensitive, dairy-allergic girls on Weight Watchers.
It's time like this that I long for a girlfriend. My best friend and I do not live near each other anymore. She's in the bottom middle of the country and I'm over here on the coast. She was recently diagnosed with Crohn's and is on a crazy restrictive diet to let things heal: no dairy, wheat, corn, sugar, MSG, etc. Eating out is well-nigh impossible. For a while she got salads with no dressing and a few lemons on the side, but eating raw veggies made things worse so now she has to cook them, and she can't trust restaurant cooks. She spent today with one friend who wanted to celebrate my friend's recent gaining of tenure by going out to eat and another who invited other friends along on their movie date, thereby ending up with a movie my friend doesn't want to see at a movie house that serves food. For not the first time recently, we fantasized about how our respective evenings would go if we lived closer.
We'd get a movie, something silly or musical or screwball, something that wouldn't rip open her newly-broken heart and wouldn't freak me out with violence. We'd cook something wheat- and dairy-free with lots of garlic and tamari. We'd crack open a good bottle of wine, because if you're going to risk nitrites and points, it damn well better be good. We'd bitch while we cooked, talking about the disaster that was my mother's recent attempt at holiday gift-giving and my friend's stupid ex-boyfriend and V's upcoming visit. While we ate we'd snuggle into someone's living room with animals and talk and talk and eventually get around to the movie. And when the evening was over, we would each feel heard and loved and seen.
She's lived in her city for nearly three years. The friends she has are not what she wants. In some fundamental ways they don't get her, and she always feels like she's doing more of the work. Here I have friends, but I don't have the girlfriend who is just mine--who loves Ms. P and R and likes to hang out with us but is really mine--and with whom I run away to coffee shops and movie theaters and diners for late-night hangout. We do our best, my friend and I, and we do okay. Daily phone calls make all the difference. But more often than not I don't want to be on the phone. I want to go to her house and snuggle her kitties and climb under blankets because she keeps the house even colder than I keep mine. I want to go out for tea and sit with our laptops and write while she grades papers and complains about the stupid things graduate students write about.
But she is not here and I am not there and neither of us can have dairy or wheat. So we phone all the time and eat our soy cheeze rice-crust pizzas and we know it could be worse, but we also know it could be better. And we wish we could have the better, just for a little while.