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When I recall moments from childhood, time spent in my father’s vegetable patch inevitably races to mind. Splashes of green cabbages rotund like pregnant bellies and strawberry red tomatoes fat and full like starbursts on hyper active drugs strap my memory. These memories invade the same way stringy weeds overtake gardens at the height of late Spring.

Weeds. Humph! The stringy nemeses to plant life the world over. Little do these vegetation invaders know that they have an enemy in gluten-free.

According to the blog, Prairie Road, corn gluten meal is currently being promoted as a lawn fertilizer and weed killer. You can use this natural weed preventative, which contains 60% protein, from Spring to Fall.

More than a dozen companies sell this gluten-free agent.

So, why not fight the weeds in the months ahead, whatever their form, and do it gluten-free.

Notify the Restaurant Beforehand.

Think back to when you were in school (for some of us, that’s a harder challenge than others): Did you prefer when the teacher popped a quiz, or when you had advanced warning to review materials and make sure everything was in order? When dealing with the gluten free diet, most restaurants are going to prefer the latter.

When you can, it’s best to make reservations and let the restaurant know about your special dietary needs in advance. This gives the restaurant time to get up to snuff on the details of the diet, look into what might be gluten free for you, and (sometimes) even make special accommodations.

One of the best gluten free experiences I had in Philadelphia was at a restaurant called Lolita. They didn’t have a gluten free menu, but were recommended as well-versed in the diet. When we visited (after calling a few days in advance), the kitchen had gone through the menu and marked everything on it that was gluten-free for me (about 90% of the menu, btw). It felt great to have so many options to choose from, but it was even better that the whole exchange was seamless and hassle-free.

The day we designate for mom arrives but once a year. We can show our moms how much we appreciate them this year by doing something that they do for us daily–cooking.

Cooking often becomes a perfunctory task for mothers. They prepare meals without thinking and we sometimes eat without thanking.

So, why not reverse this trend for the one day of the year that honors mom’s title. According to www.glutenfreeceliacweb.com, FamilyFun.com allows you to do just that by featuring several gluten-free Mother’s Day dining options. The site’s Bagel Family Portraits emerges as one of their most original.

Essentially bagel halves covered in creme cheese and adorned with raw vegetables arranged as hair and facial features, these portraits can serve as a fun family breakfast or snack project on Mother’s Day or any other day.

Consider the following ingredients and materials to design a bagel for each member of the family: 1 large bagel, cut in half, toasted or raw, mini bagels, cut in half, as many halves are as there are kids in the family, raw or toasted, smoked salmon, sliced into strips, small black olives, sliced in half, 1 large leaf of curly parsley, cut in half, red pepper, cut into the shape for the mouth, 1 large carrot, a handful of chives, green pepper, sliced into two circles of equal size, about 1/4-inch in diameter, 2 or 3 peanuts, finely chopped, and cherry tomato or small, red grapes.

Enjoy taking the cooking reigns this Mother’s Day (It’s not chiefly a woman/mother’s task afterall). Your younger brothers and sisters should especially enjoy this project.

You can find gluten-free bagels at Whole Foods, your local supermarket or any general health foods store. A couple of options include Glutino Premium Plain Bagels and Enjoy Life Foods Cinnamon Raisin and Classic Original Bagels.

You can find preparation instructions here.

The smokehouse stench of barbeque will soon invade nostrils nationwide. From late May to early September, miscellaneous meats lathered in a gooey, brick-red tinted sauce will dot t-shirts, hands and mouths alike and invite the familiar buzz of bite-happy mosquitoes and scrap-hungry flies.

Those of us who love BBQ but opt out of cooking it ourselves can look to restaurants for gluten-free alternatives. In her newest blog entry, Gluten-Free BBQ, celiac blogger Suzanne Mangini points to Smokey Bones Barbeque and Grill as a possible option.

“I love BBQ!” Mangini exclaims. “While the best BBQ around comes from our backyard smoker, we [haven’t yet fired it up] this season.”

She goes on the explain that she dined at Smokey Bones last week for the first time in a year. Mangini knew that their meats, sauces and rubs were gluten-free, but was “unsure about their sides.”

Luckily, Smokey Bones keeps a current, in-store list of gluten-free items available on their menu. Mangini chose baby back ribs, mashed potatoes, and apples.

“I always enjoy sautéed apples,” Mangini adds, “as they are like apple pie but without the crust.”

She warns against the restaurant’s garlic toast and baked beans as they contain gluten.

Even with those exceptions, it remains possible for celiacs and non-celiacs alike to enjoy a good summertime BBQ. A little carry-out from Smokey Bones can help make that possible.

Reward Extra Service with an Extra Tip.

Another no-brainer. I generally tip between 20-25% when someone handles my needs well, though I’ll go higher for exceptional service. The reason is that waiting on a Celiac requires far more effort than waiting on a typical patron. If you tip like everyone else, the waiter actually makes less money for the time invested with you than he does elsewhere. That can actually create a disincentive for the waiter to invest in serving you well! But, a good time can remove that disincentive, and a great one can actually incentivize him to go all out for you on future visits.

Hopefully, Obama girl won’t begrudge us her most infamous line for a post or two. We’re using it for a larger good after all.

Unlike the mini-skirt, halter top clad YouTube sensation, author/blogger Shauna James Ahern (a.k.a Gluten-Free Girl) of Seattle applies her crush to a broader mission.

A 38-year-old celiac, she shares recipes and life experiences on her blog, glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com and in her 2007 memoir, Gluten-Free Girl .

Ahern’s blog features commentaries about food and everyday life. Her entries include slice-of-life senarios and carry a conversational tone. Each post tells an engaging story infused with information, humor and a twinge of self-deprication. She covers everything from an intricate Strawberries, Blue Cheese, and Balsamic Reduction Sauce to the excitement she feels when asparagus sprouts in Spring.

Ahern recently teamed with the staff at Ritrovo Italian Foods to help promote their gluten-free artisanal products, which include rice and corn pastas.

Ahern and Ritrovo’s co-founders gave their Seattle neighbors an opportunity to visit them at Metropolitan Market throughout the latter end of April (18 - 26), where they distributed samples and fielded questions about gluten-free cooking.

They rest atop an ivory liquid surface, like mini, window-tiled pillow cases kissing the shallow end of a pool full of white-out. Half soggy and half crunchy, they hasten to or away from your silver spoon.

“Gotcha!” You silently proclaim as you capture a few on your metallic scooper. Perhaps your eyes graze this product’s package as you chomp, taking note of the bright red and blue heading: Rice Chex Simply Nutritious.

Simply nutritious. Hmmm.

Well if you eat gluten-free, the word simple assumes an entirely different meaning. What some view as a perfectly innocuous snacking experience can translate into a crash course in Delightfully Dangerous Digestion for you.

General Mills, perhaps seeking to captialize on the free-from craze, now offers a gluten free version of this crispy favorite.

Gluten Free Rice Chex cereal is no joke. It is the real deal, the genuine article, and a whole slew of other nothing like the real thing baby cliches you can imagine. The barely-malt-filled Original Rice Chex, not to be confused with Rizchecks (Thank you, Miss Ringwald), of yesteryear now faces some mean competition. Gluten free Rice Checks cereal replaces barley malt syrup with molasses, a non-threat to celiac diets.

The brand still ensures 100 Calories per serving and promises no artificial flavors or colors. You can find the product at all major grocery store chains for a suggested retail price of $2.99.

Make Yourself a Familiar Figure.

As a gluten free diner, frequent visits to the same restaurant can have two impacts. First, working with you regularly reinforces for the staff the specific needs of your diet. Second, regular visits increase your value as a customer. And, the more valuable you are as a customer, the greater the incentive is for the restaurant to invest in providing a variety of delicious gluten-free options.

When I lived in Philadelphia, I used to visit My Thai on South St. once a week. The first time I visited, the owner invested the time to help make me a special gluten free meal. The food was good and the meal didn’t make me sick, so I went back the next week. And the week after. And the week after that. After about a month, I had established myself as a regular. At that point, during one visit the owner started asking me a bunch of very detailed questions about the gluten free diet. The next time I visited, he had a very pleasant surprise for me - he had gone through his menu and checked every single dish on it for gluten, and it turned out that there were only two dishes in the whole restaurant he couldn’t modify to be gluten free. It felt so good that he would put the effort in for me, that I’d still be eating there every week if I hadn’t moved to Virginia.

Maybe it speaks to a preoccupation with Walter Conkrite, too many cameras and bright lights, or 15-minutes-of-Andy Warhol-look-at-me, look-at-me heaven, but rightly or wrongly, people sometimes look to entertainers and TV personalities for cues on everyday living. The meaty fanbase of The Late Show host David Letterman offers little exception to this rule.

During the intro for Letterman’s April 1st program, his late night talk show’s announcer proclaimed, “And now…wheat and gluten-free…David Letterman.”

The buzz around the blogosphere has largely coalesced around the fact that Letterman’s announcer made similar proclamations in the past and so viewers should take the announcement with a salty grain of tentative truth.

It remains unclear whether or not David Letterman maintains a gluten-free lifestyle. Still, the beautiful damage remains done. Celiac blogger Suzanne Mangini asks in her April 3rd, Is Letterman gluten-free? entry, “So, is Letterman gluten-free? Even if it was a joke, it was still a mention of GF and that’s always a good thing in my book!”

I think Mangini might be on to something here.

Letterman, like most celebs, even those with the smallest followings, can tip the least known concepts.

Perhaps he can pump interest into gluten-free living with this announcement the same way Oprah Winfrey renews excitement in reading with her book club selections. (Sorry Frey “but he lied, he lied” bashers, but even in light of the controversy, A Million Little Pieces still retains its awesomeness.)

Perhaps any publicity works better than no attention at all. Gluten-free diets yield so many health benefits, even for non-celiacs.

Whether or not Letterman lives gluten-free then becomes immaterial. He, in all his superstar wonderment, has helped spread the word.