Introduction to the GF Writers Cooking Journal

For an introduction to a blog on cooking, one should begin with a food related story. I’ve many of those to tell, but this relates to the other end of the spectrum, my Gluten-Free life and my writing life. Many times I’ve been in company where the topic turns to food. People seem to be most excited with the latest news of the wonderful new restaurant or food trend they’ve found. No one wants the Debbie-Downer’s of the World to intervene with a comment about their own personal food intolerance. Most of the time, I just nod and sometimes interject a question or two. For example, if there is a new restaurant in town called “Dough”, I’m pretty sure that someone with gluten intolerance would have a hard time finding something to eat there. But there are times when you must act as if you are interested enough to visit a place called, “Dough”.

 

There is actually a restaurant in our city called “Dough”. But I’ve never visited the establishment. Ten or twenty years ago, there were no items on menus for Gluten Intolerant people. If you went on a cruise ship, you could eat a salad. If you went to a restaurant, you could order a salad. And if you went to a fast-food place, you could order a drink of soda or water. (I do eat the fries at McDonald’s occasionally, I confess!). But there was a no-man’s land of food establishments for those of us who couldn’t eat many of the items prepared in restaurants.

 

The one bright spot has always been health food stores. Good ol’ oat-barrel smelling, cramped little holes in the wall that contained delis where people wouldn’t look twice if you asked for quinoa or wheat-less bread. These were the places I frequented in the first ten years of my Gluten-free journey. Now, the terrain has opened up to the point that even my friendly neighborhood grocery store carries as many items as I found ten or fifteen years ago in those small little local shops. The down side is that most of the little mom and pop health food stores are no more. But, that’s the way of the world for so many of these little shops, this is just one more example.

 

Now, Gluten-free foods are found everywhere. Gluten-free items are in the forefront of many menus, and some places exclusively serve GF food. That is how far we’ve come. But I still remember the days when I struggled to find items like bread, flour, pancake mix, hamburger buns, GF graham crackers (still hit-and-miss), cookies (there has to be a reason for living), and many other items we take for granted in our kitchens and pantries.

 

When I heard that I would have to eat this way for life, or be forced to live with the pain I’d felt for almost twenty years, then there really wasn’t a choice. I knew I had to commit to changing my diet, and changing my life. Most people didn’t know that I had a special-needs diet, but close friends and family have always been key to my success. My mother, especially, was so supportive of my diet, as she knew more than anyone else the pain I’d suffered for years with a leaky gut and IBS.

 

When I did go to the doctor, they gave me pills to stop diarrhea and cramping. This was helpful, but it did nothing to address the underlying problem. In the back of my mind, I knew this, of course, but by then I was so desperate for any help at all, things like finding the root cause didn’t matter anymore. I wanted something to stop the pain. After years of struggling, from the time I was in high school until I was about 35 years old, I finally found help. A friend had recently been to see a wonderful nutritionist in our area. Her name was Betty Wedman St-Louis. Her name even sounded smart.

 Our friend, Tony, had a history of colitis, and several members of his family had died from the disease. Tony was, like me, desperate and willing to do anything at this point in his life. He swore by Betty and subsequently, I was introduced to her. She was up front about the tests I needed to take, which were expensive as they were not covered by insurance. They did a blood test and sent it off to a lab. The results were that I had a high amount of food intolerance to not only wheat and dairy, but also mustard, beans, and shrimp.

 

The beans were not that important to me. I was not surprised about being allergic to dairy either. But the shrimp and mustard bothered me. I loved shrimp, and the type of salad dressing I used was honey-mustard. In fact, mustard was an ingredient in so many sauces and foods that I ate, I had no idea of the extent they were hidden in foods. The same could be said of wheat.

 

Who knew, for example, that Rice-A-Roni had wheat in it? Or soy sauce? Or, for that matter, almost any sauce available on the commercial market. There were labels to be read, and I had to sort out what was acceptable, and what was not. For the first year, Betty gave me a couple of really great digestive enzymes to use with my meals. After doing more tests, Betty confessed that my stomach was in about the worst shape of any she’d seen. The numbers were literally off the chart, and I had to slowly rebuild the cilia and good bacteria in my gut.

I noticed improvement rapidly, but would still suffer stomach pains from time to time. After about six months, the healing process progressed to a point where there was a noticeable difference. After I ate dinner every night, I didn’t automatically experience stomach pain. That was a major breakthrough. And if you have lived with IBS or celiac disease or leaky gut, then you know what I am talking about. You don’t want to go back to the old way of living and eating. There is no choice.

 The good news is that I went to health food stores every week for many years. They were, and still are in some cases, the only places where you can find the items you need on a gluten-free diet.

The GF Writers Cooking Journal