A little story

When I said I do, I thought I said it only to the man I loved. I didn't realize that I was saying I do to an auto immune disorder, called celiac. It's not like he hadn't said that he had it before we walked down the isle, he just hadn't explained in detail what it meant. The first couple of years nothing major changed, he wasn't following his diet. He had flare ups, he was grouchy when those happened. When he couldn't get a flare under control he would ask me to make him some rice. Then it happened. He couldn't handle the flare ups and he wanted to go back on the diet.

Ok I thought not so bad, we didn't eat a lot of bread or pasta products. Which kind had always been a little heartbreaking for me. Pasta, Italian in general, is my favorite food. So I removed flour from my cooking. Much harder than I had ever thought it would be. I am a baker, at one point I thought I wanted to be a pastry chef, flour is a staple in those recipes. Then he started telling me about other items, soups, chips, french fries, and soy sauces that all contained the dreaded gluten. I wiped out three-fourths of my pantry. I was down to cooking fresh meats with veggies and that was it. Nothing new, nothing gourmet. Not my cup of tea. I am a gourmet girl. Homemade pasta tossed with a cream sauce filled with roasted red peppers, chicken, roasted onions and mushrooms. That's my kind of food. I was reduced to fixing roast with mashed potatoes and gravy thickened with cornstarch. I only used salt and pepper because I was afraid that anything else would have gluten in it.

I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't open up the pages of my cooking mags I got each month without crying. I craved pizza. I craved sandwiches. I craved pastas. I wanted to fix those things and have my husband enjoy them with me. I didn't want to wait until he was working late or fix two meals each night. I wanted to bake again. I wanted cookies to line my counters. I wanted to bake cakes again. I didn't want to be gluten free anymore. If anything was going to end this short marriage, 3 years now, it was going to be his diet I thought.

I started researching, I found gluten free all purpose flour on Amazon, I bought a case. It arrived, I made cookies they weren't bad. Ok, I thought I can do this. I made gravy, it worked. I made noodles, they weren't bad either. Oh boy, oh boy I can start baking again. I made bread. Scratch that I made hockey pucks and a door stop. You see, I had just subsituted his flour for my wheat flour. No one told me I couldn't do that. I made my grandmother's bread recipe. I kneaded, raised, punched down, raised again. I then formed it into hamburger buns and into a loaf of bread. I let it raise one last time and then baked it. When it came out of the oven it was hard, white, and just flat out nasty. I was broken again.

I gave up on baking and started looking for other items. I found a love for Amazon.com simply because I could find gluten free items. I bought spaghetti, cookie mixes, brownie mixes, bread mixes, macaroni. The downfall, you have to buy a case at a time. Some is better than others. What I needed was someone to tell me, this is good and this is why I like it. Or better yet, this sucked and this is why it sucked. So that is how this blog was born. From a woman who thought a gluten free diet might end her marriage to the man of her dreams. It's from a woman who loves to be in the kitchen. It's from a woman who is still learning how to do this thing. I'm no expert. I might fail. Ok, I will fail. I just hope my failures will let others know they aren't the only ones.