I was at the mall today (Lougheed Town Centre, to be precise) and it wasn’t as insane as I had feared, given it was Boxing Day.
I remember way back in olden times when the local news would run a story every year about people camping overnight outside A&B Sound to get Boxing Day deals on electronics. Now A&B is gone, vinyl records which used to be cheap are overpriced and bought by hipsters, and enough stuff is bought online that the crowds are not as madding as they once were. Overall I’d have to say things have improved, though I kind of miss checking out the New Releases section at A&B, since I often had no idea what was actually new until I did this.
My partner wanted to spend some of his Christmas money on a bread maker. It would take precious space on the kitchen counter but his eyes sparkled and I could not in good conscience deny him. Tonight we have a bread maker. It’s still in its box on the living room floor. Why?
Gluten.
Gluten is apparently as difficult to find as precious metals. Maybe moreso. Most bread recipes call for gluten and while there are workarounds, we had flour that was not enriched and gluten would be needed. I did a search for gluten in Vancouver and this produced about a billion results–all for gluten-free anything you could think of. Gluten-free bread, gluten-free cereal, gluten-free bathroom mats. But actual gluten? It’s like a unicorn. People talk about it, you hear of it, but you never see it and start to wonder if it really exists.
Tomorrow we’ll be checking some specialty food stores with the goal of buying a ten year supply of gluten should any of them have stock on hand. Maybe a 50 year supply. I can make that a bucket list item–bake bread with REAL GLUTEN when I’m a hundred years old.