today some teacher went around giving us exchange students pumpkin cake. to the one student who can't have gluten, instead of cake they got a handful of candy.

i didn't get anything. now, i know my diet is weird, but the thing is you could just give me a banana or piece of seaweed or something (something you can buy at the school convenience store!), anything at all shows that you were thinking of me (which is what i imagine the cake/candy is for, right?).

once people understand that i can't eat added sugar/wheat they really get the impression that i literally can't eat anything at all... but the thing is, i can eat ANY food as long as YOU haven't put sugar in it. this simply means you can't BUY the food, you have to actually make it in most cases -- which comes to my second point of that apparently no one cooks anymore.

we're all sitting around feeling goodwill from some cake you bought at the store, but actually, i could've just gone out on my lunch break and bought it myself. i'm not complaining exactly but it somehow feels a little shallow if you think of it that way. y'know how back in the day, at a potluck they'd bring their most expensive items to give away to the guests just to prove they had tons of money? yeah.... you have the money to buy a cake. on our first day of class a different teacher handed out persimmons to everyone, and i thought that was really great - doesn't have gluten, nuts, dairy or anything else a lot of people have problems with, and it's a fruit you see hanging from trees in your japanese neighbourhood.

no traditional japanese food has sugar in it. the average person didn't have sugar back then. the problem is, the meaning of "traditional" now apparently means "dating from around 50 years ago" (throwing away the hundreds and thousands of other food history we have). there's a ton of stuff like dango which is NOT made from wheat or anything bad at all ——— until they put sugary syrup sauce on it, and they apparently don't sell it anywhere without sauce. same for grilled meat.

anyway. i was just thinking about food again because i wanted to invite my japanese friend to watch some harry potter movies (in japanese) since he loves them and we wanted to watch them too, but i wanted to try making some harry potter themed food to go with it... well apparently all they eat in harry potter is breadstuff and SWEETS. if i'm really really lucky i can figure out how to make some kind of amazake ice cream with carbonated water and sweet potato bits and pass it off as butterbeer...