This whole GF thing....

Do you know how rare it is to find other people at random who are also affected by Celiac Disease? I just found out yesterday that a good friend of my neighbor's is also a Celiac. So, my mom, me, and now one more person in this town. Oh, and my friend's mom. My goodness, but that's few and far between. I live in a town of 6,500 souls. I don't think there's even a CD support group in the area, no GF restaurants, not even GF OPTIONS most places. No wonder. I'm beginning to feel like I need to start raising awareness or something. My husband and I have been kicking around the idea of a GF Cafe/Bakery for a couple of years now. I'm thinking it sounds like an awesome idea now, but I need to work out the funding, and employees and such. I should ask all my friends how they'd feel about it first, I guess, they're the only people I'd want to hire. Kind of like Ace of Cakes on Food Network, huh? Get all my friends together and build a business. Wouldn't that just rock, to be able to do the thing I love best, cook for people, and have a true love for my work? We can all hope.

The GF sugar cookies were such a hit that they're already gone. Of course, if your family is anything like mine, baked goods of any sort don't last long in most households, I'm sure. My family is always eagerly awaiting my recipe tests, which is nice. No matter what I feel like making, someone is happy to have it. So far, I've got bread perfected, lots of cookie varieties, muffins of all sorts, cakes, cupcakes, scones, biscuits, lots of stuff I didn't eat for a while after I stopped eating wheat because the alternative GF foods were just not worth eating. That was my inspiration to relearn how to cook and bake without wheat, the GF foods that were like eating cardboard, and the anticipation of my family.

It was unnerving how much I had to give up in my diet, so many things to miss. Oh, for a bagel! One of the Costco parmesan ones, toasted with butter! But no more bagels, at least until I learn how to make them, and no butter when I do, everyone in my house is allergic to milk and all things milk anyway. Oh, for a Hostess Chocolate Cupcake... but I make some awesome GF Chocolate Muffins, which come in as better than a Hostess Cupcake, just a different texture and whole grain, without preservatives! And no mystery white goo in the middle, either, though that may be the best part of the cupcake. What else do I miss... Twix. But those, I'm not even going to try to replicate. Fresh hot Sourdough bread at the store, I miss the convenience of just picking up things at the store. But now, I go grocery shopping and if they're baking in the bakery, I indulge in the smell but try to make it as quick as possible, because my gluten sensitivity is so great that I have reactions simply from sharing the air with the particles of wheat flour from the bakery! And I can live without the pain of a reaction, thanks very much.

My kids are both gluten sensitive, too. I'm not going to list off the tests done to determine this, there were none. I figured it out by trial and error. But at least I figured it out quicker than my mom did, she didn't find out about her Celiac Disease until she was near 50, and I was 24, almost 25. I've been sick my whole life, my mom was, too. My kids will not have to go through what I did, that's the good news. No one needs the stomach pain involved in a wheat reaction, no one needs the emotional unrest of not knowing what's wrong with them for years and years, the depression, withdrawal from life, anxiety, even just the heartburn! I'm finally at a point where I am truly happy to be gluten free. Of course, I don't think I was ever happy before going GF, anyway. There was too much in the way of me being happy.

I've never felt this good in my whole life.

For Seconds...

Listening to some reggae on the KMUD radio station, thinking about the awesome gluten free sugar cookies in the kitchen that I made. Finally, sugar cookies again. I was never the biggest fan of the sugar cookie, per se, but now I have a new appreciation since I have perfected the recipe. Now, all my recipes take experimentation, but these I got almost perfect on the first try, and perfect on the second try. Totally gluten free, dairy free, and whole grain, so not just a treat, but still at least a little bit good for you. The draw of them in the kitchen may be too great to resist.

For beginnings...

Hmmmmm.... I gotta say I never really expected to start a blog. Not once. Not ever. And yet, here I am. I guess I should introduce my subject matter, though it will vary, I'm sure. To begin, we should all understand that I have Celiac disease, which is a severe form of gluten intolerance characterized by an inability to digest gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, rye, kamut, spelt, and triticale. I found out three years ago, almost four now, and boy but my life has changed since then. I now have two children who have the same problems I do with food, I've lost 75 pounds on the gluten free diet, and I feel like a whole new person. I always had severe anxiety, depression, stomach pain, heartburn, weight gain, bloating, and gas for my whole life until 3 years ago. If I had known when I was younger what normal people felt like, I would have done lots of things differently in my life. As is, I always knew there was something wrong with me, and I knew normal people didn't feel like I did, but I felt like there was nothing to be done for me. Doctors always treated me like I was just overweight and depressed and I felt like no one ever listened to me, so I have very little faith in the medical community as a whole. Since discovering what is wrong with me, though, I no longer suffer from anxiety or depression, heartburn, stomach pain (unless I eat something I shouldn't have!), bloating, or gas. And obviously weight gain is no longer an issue, either, since I've lost that 75 pounds! Of course, I'm still a little overweight, but 10 pounds is nothing compared to 85, right? So I guess that might be enough for openers, huh? More tomorrow, or whenever I get the chance to post.