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.
.jpg) |
| The GF Writers Cooking Journal |
.jpg)
