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!