-image via Pinterest
My children want roti jala for dinner.
Roti jala is made of flour, egg, coconut milk, and oil, a batter that you would then pour into a cup with five nozzles at the bottom of it, to cook into a spider-webby-looking pancake. We always make it at home, and since it is an interactive cooking experience, one person makes the batter, one person cooks it, and another folds it into easy-to-eat roll-ups, making roti jala is fun.
This time, not so much.
My children have recently been medically recommended to be put on a gluten-free diet. After their fungal infections two weeks ago, it was imperative to me to follow the doctor’s instructions to a tee.
I am not a crunchy mama. I have no judgements for anyone who are, or who aren’t. How I choose to parent my children is how I choose to parent my children because no one child is alike. If you know how prescribed drugs have affected my family, you would understand why I don’t take them anymore. If I go to the doctor, it is to get professionally diagnosed, and then go home and try to remedy it with food. I try not to medicate my children unless it is absolutely necessary, but we have all (apart from the three-year-old) been vaccinated. It’s a juggle that requires a lot of faith in trusting my gut in what needs to be done at the time, with a particular child.
I believe that technological advances have muddied the already powerful ingredients nature provides. I cringe when I see “new improved recipe” plastered across boxes and cans in supermarkets, because to me, it means another thing that my parents and grandmother will not understand. As toddlers, we were fed Nestum for breakfast, Milo in our bottles while watching TV on sponge mattresses before lunch, and we survived. My grandmother would say I am babying my children all too much, replacing canned corn made into jelly for dessert, with fresh fruit. My mother would say it is too much of a hassle to make sourdough bread for them instead of just buying the Gardenia bread, a staple we’ve had in all of the many houses I grew up in. My father would grunt his disapproval at the price of bottled drinking water.
So I scour the internet for gluten-free recipes. I go to the supermarket to get gluten-free alternatives. I cry when I have to put them back on the shelves because they are just too expensive. I scour the internet again for cheaper versions, homemade versions, that I can afford.
Being gluten-free is still a concept unknown in Malaysia. Gluten-free options are not catered for those who have diseases here, it is a lifestyle chosen by the elite and those who are exposed to Western trends and want to look cool, Americanised.
I admit I am privileged enough to have been able to pay for the doctor’s consultation, to have my children diagnosed is privilege enough, no matter how many days I cried after paying the bill, anxious about the eighteen days remaining until the end of the month, and whether we can survive until then.
I find a gluten-free recipe for roti jala. The lady who wrote it swore by it. It’s easy! The people who reviewed it gave it five stars. It worked! It’s really good! I can’t even tell it’s gluten-free! My baked-goods-loving children are hopeful. I am hopeful.
In the pan lies a gloop monster melted because of its vicinity to its very own Kryptonite. In the pan is the clay piece formed after being held in the tiny hands of a tantruming toddler. In the pan lies an ogre’s booger, sizzling and dispersing steam but staying true to its form no matter how much you try to move it with a spatula.
I was so frustrated I threw the frying pan into the sink and let it fizz under the rusty tap water.
I contemplate my ability to parent, to feed these two tiny humans, to make sure they are safe and healthy, and I cried.
My 9-year-old came up to me with tears in her eyes too. She almost always cries when she sees me crying.
It’s okay, Mama, she says.
But it’s not okay.
I feel like a specimen of Darwin’s inspection, I am not the fittest, I shall not survive. Instead of natural selection, my kind, the lower-middle-class, sometimes-crunchy-mama kind, living in a forever developing country, are doomed for extinction soon due to economic frailty.
My daughter tells me we’ll have bananas and oats for dinner instead. I close one eye knowing that the oats are not 100% gluten-free because I could not get 100% gluten-free oats at the supermarkets. Online, there is but one option for it, the most expensive kind. A friend, French, living in France, whose husband needs a gluten-free diet too tells me oats are okay, that even if they are not totally gluten-free, they would have very little gluten in them that I will still be able to monitor the reaction to the allergen on my children without it getting too serious.
My children eat their bananas and oats for dinner in silence.
I go back to the internet looking for a different meal we could have tomorrow so we can live on, without actually living, for another day.
Lisha I’ve been where you are, I am where you are ! My son was born with allergies, to almost every food you can imagine, I breast fed him for two years because it was all he could eat without a reaction, I gave up all the worst allergens, it was hell! And I could never afford the best organic ingredients or even always what was recommended but he survived and so did I.
You are an amazing mumma, you do everything within your power and your children know that. Especially your eldest. Don’t beat yourself lovely, not for the things that are out of your control. Always remember, you are uncontrollably brilliant. X
I feel you. I feel you so strongly about how it is a privilege to eat healthy and how frustrating gluten free is especially with kids. One of the best options I have found for this is replacing gluten with potatoes. They are cheap, healthy and can be made into so many recipes. They are a staple in our home I will steam them, make them into tortillas (steamed potatoes with a little cassava flour mashed up) and mashed. Sending you so much love in your kitchen as you make this gf transition ❤️