Eating Gluten Free. Com

So I wanted to put a plug in for my sister's company Eating Gluten Free. Those of you who have been eating GF for awhile understand the frustration that comes while searching for tasty GF foods. When my mom was first diagnosed in 2002 there weren't very many good options out there. It took a lot of time and money to find a product that tasted similar to it's non GF counterpart. I remember my mother being so frustrated as she tried recipe after recipe. My mom was sure she would end up eating rice and beans for the rest of her life.

Then one day my sister found out that her neighbor's husband and all of her children had Celiac Disease. Betsy, my sister, asked her friend what she cooked and what her favorite recipes were. Kirsti taught Betsy what she knew and they began cooking and modifying recipes together. Betsy wanted my mom to be able to eat good food and Kirsti wanted the food to taste good enough for her to eat because she didn't want to cook a separate meal for herself.

As they continued cooking together they found out that Macey's Grocery store held free cooking classes and they decided to hold one for Gluten Free food. The class was a success and they began teaching more and more classes. People who came for the classes began asking for more recipes and asked if they had a web page. From there they found a company that did GF mixes and they began producing a few of their recipes as mixes.

The company is still pretty small but it is beginning to grow. People from all over the world go to the web site for free recipes, cooking hints, and to order mixes. I love the recipes and use my sister's cookbook often. Many of my friends, who are not GF, ask me for the recipes because they are so good. I definitely recommend her web site as a must have favorite.

Also there is a really cool web site called Foodie View that has a Gluten Free recipe search engine. You can type in what kind of recipe you are looking for and it will give you a GF version. I would also suggest you check this one out.

Introduction to Celiac Disease

Celiac Disease (CD) is an inherited autoimmune disease that affects 1 out of 133 people in the United States. It once was considered to be a childhood disease that one could recover from, but it is now known that the disease can strike at anytime and that it remains throughout life.

Untreated, CD can become very painful and may contribute to other diseases. When a person has CD, proteins found in wheat, barley, and rye (gluten) trigger an immune response when ingested. This immune response attacks the intestines, damaging the villi, making absorption of nutrients difficult.

Symptoms are as varied as those who have the disease but include; diarrhea, constipation, fatty stools, painful gas, abdominal pain, and bloating. Complications from CD include; anemia, failure to thrive in children, osteoporosis, infertility, and delayed menarche (menstruation). Dermatitis herpetiformis, a disease that causes severe rashes to appear on the skin, is also associated with CD.

The only known treatment of CD is eating a gluten-free diet. This can be difficult especially for someone who has just been diagnosed with the disease. Over the past few years, as more information has become available, more corporate food companies are making many of their products gluten free. General Mills is one of those companies. Chex brand cereals have made many of their cereals gluten free, making it easier for those with CD to adjust to a gluten free diet.