Your St. Patrick’s Day celebration will revolve around  people, food, and beer.

Corn beef is almost always gluten free. To be absolutely certain, check out this article which lists the brands that promise ‘safe’ products on their website.

Check out this recipe collection from Elana’s Pantry. This recipe for ‘Shamrock Smoothie’ certainly looks intriguing, and this article includes other ideas for the St. Patrick’s Day celebration involving children.

Last but not least, let’s talk  about the beer. Barley — not wheat — is the problem where beer is concerned. There are many brands of wheat-free beer available, but how do we avoid barley? Here is a link to a review of six brands of beer which are brewed from sorghum or other acceptable grains.

I’ll be drinking Omission beer. It tastes like the beer I drank while living in Germany; this is before my diagnosis, of course. It is brewed from barley (just like the brew we are used to) but the brewers have figured out a way to extract the gluten from the brew making it somewhat less than 10 parts-per-million gluten.

Now the story gets a bit weird. Forgive the digression, but articles about great beer are useful at St Patrick’s Day and this story says a lot about why celiacs get confused, the FDA seems paralyzed and unable to act and gluten free blogs get confusing. Anyway, one group of bureaucrats believes that a product that contains (or ever contained) a gluten toxic grain can’t ever be considered gluten free. Another group of bureaucrats relies on test results and therefore consider Omission beer ‘safe’ and drinkable. I live in Oregon where Omission beer is labeled gluten free. People in other states may find Omission beer with different packaging that says nothing about gluten or gluten free.