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Saturday, June 21, 2008

Gluten Free

Life without wheat, barley, kamut, or other cereal grains. Despite how hard it seems at first, it's actually not that bad.

Vegetarian + Vegan Recipes

I was vegan for a number of years. I still love vegetarian food with a passion. But when I developed food allergies, so many foods were eliminated from my diet that I had to reintroduce some meat back into my diet. These are some of the tried-and-true recipes that I lived on back then. Go at 'em.

Soup

I must have spent half of my undergraduate career eating soup. Cheap, filling, healthy, flavorful, and quick was what I was after. A lot of these recipes can be made in the crockpot--I like being lazy.

FAQ

Here are some questions I sometimes get.

Desserts

Stop crying and listen. Santa may not exist, but gluten free vegan desserts that actually taste good do. And you're in the presence of someone who takes her cookies very, very seriously. I'm no pushover. Give these bad boys a try. You won't regret it.

Breads

There's more to life than a tapioca loaf and gluten free muffins that taste like hockey pucks. I give you permission to stop spending half your weekly food allowance on useless products that taste bad and have no nutritional value. Instead let's bake our own breads and call it good.

Slow Cooker Recipes

Slow cooking your food is an incredibly economical, easy, and healthful way to approach meals. What some people think of as a glorified chili pot is to me one of the best ways to cook. The reality is that I'm lazy and I don't like to wash a lot of dishes. It works for me. Give some of these recipes a try!

Recipe Index

Contact Me

Need an answer to a question? Or tell me your opinion about a dish? Or bestow upon me the greatest secret to your great grandmother's cousin's second removed aunt's moroccan tagine (I'm game!)? Drop me a line.


About Me

I created this site more or less because of the lack of real food out there for celiacs. While there are some really great online sources, man (or woman) cannot live on rice flour, tastless egg replacers, and cardboard waffles alone. It takes the joy out of things.

Food Allergies

Let's not ignore the glaring elephant in the room. Food allergies majorly suck and it really can interfere with your life. I get it--I know. I'm with you. Whether you're the one with the food allergy or you're living with someone with food allergies, it can be a shock. Changing your whole lifestyle can be hard especially if you rarely cook or eat our a lot.

But after the initial shock and the transition, you might find life to be a little more predictable and a little kinder to your tender tummy. After my diagnosis, I literally threw out every potentially contaminated equipment in my kitchen. I gave away any pan that wasn't stainless steel. I gave away my beloved cast iron pans to family, thew away all plastic bowls, all my silicone cookware. I got rid of every cutting board, every wooden bowl: everything. I was devastated. Then I threw out anything that contained wheat. Don't worry--I donated unopened things to the food bank. Never again to make curry with roux cubes or make pancakes with bisquick. It was hard. I couldn't eat anything ready made in a store besides rice cakes. And woman cannot live on rice cakes alone.

But I then realized that I could cook. Quite well, actually. And if I was vegan for so many years and didn't have a problem, I realized that I could totally do this whole "allergy" thing. From my perspective, it's way harder to actually be physically able to eat something, but resist for personal reasons than to be unable to eat things for fear or my health. So I got over myself and made some Iri Dofu(a Japanese tofu dish. Heavenly.) over rice that night and realized that I don't need wheat or gluten or dairy or eggs to make my culinary life whole. There are plenty of naturally gluten-free options out there that don't require large purchases of specialty items.

So after two years, I made this blog. While there are some awesome sites out there, there are a lot of blogs out there that make cooking and baking a bane to the Celiac. You do not have to cook with rice flour and you don't have to eat hockey pucks or be satisfied with terrible tastes or textures. You really can eat real food that tastes awesome. You don't have to be a talented cook either. Whether you use the crock (the tool for non-cooks), the oven, the grill, or the stovetop, you can bake and cook things that rival and surpass their wheat laden counterparts.

I still eat cookies, bake cakes, make waffles on the weekends, and make excellent food for my family that is still worth eating. And sometimes worth drooling over. It's okay...don't let food allergies beat you!

Stocking the Kitchen

What's for Dinner?

Recipes

Recipes

 
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