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Warning-long post follows:

I went to a friend's house for a brunch with a group of running buddies. It
was a bring a dish to pass affair. The hostess knows about my gf diet and
was kind enough to bake a delicious cake from a gluten-free cookbook, buying
all the necessary ingredients - rice flour and *buckwheat* flour. Of course,
the recipe called for baking powder. This was such a wonderful thing for her
to do. My question: I have read so much controversy about buckwheat, and I
was unsure if the baking powder she used was gf.  I wondered if she realized
that she needed to be careful of cross contamination. And I wondered if the
buckwheat flour was pure or possibly contaminated. How do I handle such
situations? She was so kind to go to that much trouble, and I'm not even
convinced that buckwheat is harmful. I must admit I ate it, and it was
delicious. I haven't been well anyway, so who knows if I reacted to it. What
should I have done? Should I tell people not to bake for me? Or refuse to
eat? Or eat and take my chances?

At Christmas I went to my brother's house. His girlfriend was planning a ham
dinner. I told her I'd bring my own ham, as I had one in the freezer I had
already verified was gf. I got there and she informed me she'd made gravy
with corn starch so I could eat it. I thanked her for going to the effort.
She had seemed put off by my bringing my own ham. As I was eating the
potatoes and gravy, I commented on how delicious it was and asked how she
made it. She looked me straight in the eye and said she used the juices from
*her* ham but she had compared the ingredients on my ham and hers and so she
knew hers was fine. She didn't bother to tell me beforehand that she had
made this judgment for me, and let me go ahead and eat it. Her annoyance at
my bringing my own food (I also brought my own turkey at Thanksgiving) was
obvious. She was insistent that it was simply a matter of reading
ingredients. Just because the natural flavorings in my ham were gf doesn't
mean that her ham was gf. How do I deal with this??? This time it's a family
situation that I have to deal with regularly. I feel like she had no respect
for me or the seriousness or reality of hidden glutens.

Sorry to be so long-winded.

Elizabeth