In my late teens, when the Air Sup­ply song ​“Mak­ing Love Out Of Noth­ing At All,” was pop­u­lar, I devel­oped an aller­gy to wheat flour and white flour. Although it’s not as restric­tive as a gluten aller­gy, it gave me a legit­i­mate rea­son to pass on most of the foods that define us cul­tur­al­ly. Mat­zo, mat­zo balls, latkes, chal­lah, kugel and bagels were all out. My sis­ters joked that I got to ​“eat food out of noth­ing at all.”

As a result of my aller­gy, I’d spend most of the Jew­ish hol­i­days as a young adult sit­ting around light­head­ed, think­ing about Far­rah Faw­cett in her red bathing suit, and won­der­ing what the big deal was about Jew­ish food. My aunt Ernes­tine tried mak­ing me a charoset birth­day cake with pars­ley icing one year, but it just made me feel more strange around my friends.

And so, I got to suf­fer through the dark ages in terms of gluten-free prod­ucts. From the Mid­dle Ages when every­thing had the con­sis­ten­cy of cor­ru­gat­ed fiber­board to today when every­thing tastes like a syn­thet­ic rub­ber auto­mo­bile floor mat com­bined with a Ralph Lau­ren pil­low case. (Actu­al­ly, today, most if not all GF prod­ucts, actu­al­ly taste like the odd assort­ment of things in the dis­count bin at Urban Outfitters.)

All of this got me think­ing about a theme snack for my future book club appear­ances. Since I’m south­ern­er and I’m Jew­ish and I’m wheat-free, I’ve decid­ed that the pre­ferred food for my book club should be wheat-free veg­e­tar­i­an mat­zo ball soup and sweet tea. To help you host wheat-free authors like myself, here are the recipes for both the soup and the tea.

Slash’s Spe­cial BohoXO Wheat-Free Veg­e­tar­i­an Mat­zo Ball Soup

Stock:

2 box­es of organ­ic veg­e­tar­i­an stock (or make your own)
2 cups of water
3 stalks cel­ery (fine­ly chopped)
2 TB of salt (more to taste)
1 cup parsley

Mat­zo Balls:

2 cups crushed up rice crack­ers
1/2 cup crushed up rye crack­ers
2 TB wheat free tamari
¼ cup of water
2 eggs or egg sub­sti­tute
1/8 cup of rice flour
1/8 cup pota­to flour or oth­er wheat-free flour

Direc­tions:

Bring stock to a rolling boil for fif­teen min­utes and then low­er to medi­um heat.Combine all mat­zo ball ingre­di­ents in a bowl except the flour and stir well until it becomes a glob-like mass. Add flours and stir until the balls become a bit dry­er. From the mass, form into tes­tic­u­lar-sized balls (or golf-sized balls) and drop them gen­tly into the broth. Your lit­tle globlets will be done in about 30 – 40 min­utes. Don’t stir them too much or they will break apart and dis­in­te­grate into noth­ing­ness. Serve in cos­tume, prefer­ably with a lot of hot, bare­foot Jew­ish friends around.

Slash’s Spe­cial BohoXO South­ern Sweet Tea

2 cups of white sug­ar
1 Lip­ton Tea Bag
1 ice cube
1 large glass

Direc­tions:

Fill a a large glass with white sug­ar. Place an ice cube on top of the sug­ar. Place the glass in a warm room with­out an air con­di­tion­er for 10 min­utes or until the ice cube melts. Put a Lip­ton tea bag between your teeth. Swig­ging the whole con­coc­tion down. Enjoy!

Slash Cole­man is the author of The Bohemi­an Love Diaries, the per­son­al per­spec­tives blog­ger for Psy­chol­o­gy Today, and an advice colum­nist at how​doi​date​.com (Ask Uncle Slash). He wrote, pro­duced, and starred in the PBS Spe­cialThe Neon Man and Me, which also won the Unit­ed Solo Award for best dra­ma and is cre­at­ing The New Amer­i­can Sto­ry­teller for PBS. Vis­it his web­site here.

Relat­ed:

• Nosh on This: Gluten-Free Bak­ing Clas­sics from a Jew­ish Amer­i­can Kitchen
• Gluten Is My Bitch: Rants, Recipes, & Ridicu­lous­ness for the Gluten-Free