Dan Kline column: Sometimes happiness can be found in a muffin tin

Tag : cake tin

I cried when the New England Patriots won their first Super Bowland I wept openly when Stephane Matteau scored the double-overtimegoal that sent the New York Rangers into the Stanley Cup finals in1994.
I’ve gotten teary over movies, books and the occasionalcommercial, but until last weekend I had never shed a single tearover a muffin.
Realistically, food should not make you cry. I’ve had a fewbad restaurant experiences that made want to cry and the occasionalcooking fiasco that brought me close to tears, but until thisparticular muffin I had never actually broken down over a bakedgood.
The muffin in question, a somewhat crumbly mocha chocolate chip,was not even a spectacular representation of its kind. It waspretty good, however, and since it was the first muffin I had eatenin months that did not have the taste and texture of drywall, itseemed all the better to me.
Muffins, you see, along with bread, pizza, cookies, bagels andcountless other foods, had become forbidden for me when I learned afew months ago that I had an allergy to wheat. While this diagnosisfinally explained why I had gone through 18 months of stomach pain,it was a particularly difficult one to get used to.
My wheat allergy won’t kill me and I don’t have Celiacdisease, a condition that makes avoiding all wheat and glutenproducts incredibly important.
Instead, I have a simple inability to tolerate wheat. Eating itwon’t bring death, but ingest enough and my intestines hurtin a way that makes me wish it did.
Giving up wheat involves numerous sacrifices. In addition to thefoods mentioned previously, numerous products contain wheatsomewhat secretly.
Everything from Twizzlers to many types of barbecue sauce, most soysauce and a variety of other items contain gluten, making eating inrestaurants quite literally a gastrointestinal crapshoot.
Since I live in a fairly cosmopolitan area, we’re lucky tohave a number of grocery stores that carry gluten-free products.Unfortunately, in addition to their lack of wheat, these productsall have something else in common: they neither look nor taste likethe foods they attempt to replace.
Nearly every gluten-free, wheat-free food substitute has an odddensity and a strange after-taste. Bread products are decidedly theworst as the average gluten-free muffin or roll tastes onlyslightly better than eating a picture of the real thing.
A lifelong fan of muffins (and a mortal enemy of scones), I missedthe occasional weekend morning spent lingering over a muffin and anewspaper. I had attempted to bake every manner of gluten-freemuffin and failed to make an edible one.
Not eating wheat made my stomach feel better, but it was a struggleto not occasionally trade my physical well-being for a coffee cakemuffin, toasted and slathered with butter. Even the opening of agluten-free bakery about 20 miles from my house did not fill mewith much hope.
That, of course, was why I had to explain to my 4-year-old son whyafter entering the aforementioned bakery and sampling a muffin, Iwas crying. Now I would never cry over a tart or a donut andI’d be unlikely to even sniffle at a any sort of fritter, buta gluten-free muffin that actually tastes like the real thing hadme weeping in a bakery.
Though they weren’t there at the moment, I wanted to thankthe couple that opened the store. She developed Celiac disease asan adult and he was a baker who figured there must be a way to makebaked goods that she would like without wheat or gluten.
She did like them and, for the two of them, that might have beenenough.
Instead, the retired couple chose to open a store to help peoplelike me. They didn’t need to, but they did and I’m notsure there’s anything that can be said to thank them, butI’ll try.
Sometimes, it’s not fame or riches or even nobler ideas likelove or friendship that make people happy. Maybe occasionallyhappiness is a fairly decent muffin and the idea that somebodycared enough to make it for you.
(Editor's note: Swampscott native Daniel B. Kline’s workappears in more than 100 papers each week. When he is not writing,he is general manager of Time Machine Hobby, New England’slargest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com . He can be reached at dan@notastep.com .)