At first, I mourned. Months past, and I began to experiment. Sometimes, my baking sessions turned out well. I threw together a faux Fig Newton recipe that was so extraordinary from the first try that it ended up in my book. However, the bagels with teff flour? Those were gross.

Mostly, I felt mystified. Why did some recipes work while, other times, cakes fell or came out of the oven raw in the center? I was following established recipes, substituting gluten-free flour mixes cup for cup. Then this year, a breakthrough. I bought a kitchen scale.

Reading Michael Ruhlman’s book Ratio, I discovered what I had been searching for – a formula. I learned that traditional bread always follows the same ratio: five parts flour to three parts water, plus some yeast. I baked a few loaves with gluten-free flours in this ratio, hoping it would work. It didn’t. They were a little too dry and crumbly, with the consistency of cornbread.

I don’t give up easily. I pulled out pen and paper, a calculator, and recipes from my website that really worked. After some time, I understood. Gluten-free bread has to be five parts flour, three parts water, and one part liquid that’s also a protein (for me, that’s one egg, which weighs two ounces. Another suggestion is flaxseed meal mixed with water, sour cream, or yogurt.) Gluten is a binder, but it’s also a protein. We have to replace both parts.

I baked a loaf of bread weighing everything on the scale: 20 ounces of flour, 12 ounces of water, plus two eggs. I threw in xanthan and guar gums for binding, some sugar, the yeast, a good pinch of salt, a bit of honey to counteract the slight bitterness of the gums, and great hope.

Three hours later, I had a good loaf of bread. Not just good gluten-free bread, but good bread.

I’ve much to learn but have started to crack the code. These days, my toddler stands on a chair beside me at our kitchen counter. As I tumble sorghum flour into a bowl, she reaches for the buttons on the scale. Gently, I block her hand. “Wait a second, sweetie. Mama needs four more ounces and then we can make this pie together.”

See Shauna’s recipe for gluten-free pie crust.

Shauna James Ahern’s and Daniel Ahern’s new cookbook is Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, published by John Wiley & Sons. Their blog is Glutenfreegirl.com.

Makes one double-crust 9-inch pie
(or two single-crust pies)

Ingredients

• 5 oz (142 g) almond flour (not almond meal)
• 2 oz (57 g) gluten-free oat flour
• 2 oz (57 g) tapioca flour
• 2 oz (57 g) teff flour
• 2 oz (57 g) sweet rice flour
• 3 oz (85 g) potato starch
• 2 tsp (10 mL) xanthan gum
• ¼ tsp (1.25 mL) guar gum
• ½ tsp (2.5 mL) kosher salt
• 2.5 oz (71 grams) or 5 tbsp (75 mL) butter, cold (or non-dairy butter sticks)
• 2 oz (57 grams) or 4 tbsp (60 mL) leaf lard*, cold
• 1 large egg
• 3-6 tbsp (90-120 mL) ice water

Method

1. In a food processor, mix almond, oat, tapioca, teff and sweet rice flours with potato starch. Add xanthan gum, guar gum and salt. Mix well.
2. Add ice cold butter and leaf lard in pea-sized pieces. Pulse food processor several times until the fats are incorporated. The mixture will look sandy.
3. Whisk egg with 3 tbsp of water. While dough is mixing, drizzle in the eggy water. If the dough feels dry, drizzle in a bit more water. If it feels sticky or wet, sprinkle in a bit of potato starch.
4. Place the ball of pie dough in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 15 minutes.
5. Roll dough between two pieces of parchment paper, about ¼-inch thick. Carefully lift the top piece of parchment paper and turn the dough out into a pie plate. Arrange until flat, fix breaks by patting dough together. Crimp edges.

*Leaf lard is the highest grade of lard and contains good, unsaturated fats, unlike the hydrogenated lard at the grocery store. Buy through a local farmer, or online.

Shauna James Ahern’s and Daniel Ahern’s new cookbook is Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, published by John Wiley & Sons, and being released September 28. Their blog is Glutenfreegirl.com.

Makes one double-crust 9-inch pie
(or two single-crust pies)

Ingredients

• 5 oz (142 g) almond flour (not almond meal)
• 2 oz (57 g) gluten-free oat flour
• 2 oz (57 g) tapioca flour
• 2 oz (57 g) teff flour
• 2 oz (57 g) sweet rice flour
• 3 oz (85 g) potato starch
• 2 tsp (10 mL) xanthan gum
• ¼ tsp (1.25 mL) guar gum
• ½ tsp (2.5 mL) kosher salt
• 2.5 oz (71 grams) or 5 tbsp (75 mL) butter, cold (or non-dairy sticks)
• 2 oz (57 grams) or 4 tbsp (60 mL) leaf lard*, cold
• 1 large egg
• 3-6 tbsp (90-120 mL) ice water

Method

1. In a food processor, mix almond, oat, tapioca, teff and sweet rice flours with potato starch. Add xanthan gum, guar gum and salt. Mix well.
2. Add ice cold butter and leaf lard in pea-sized pieces. Pulse food processor several times until the fats are incorporated. The mixture will look sandy.
3. Whisk egg with 3 tbsp of water. While dough is mixing, drizzle in the eggy water. If the dough feels dry, drizzle in a bit more water. If it feels sticky or wet, sprinkle in a bit of potato starch.
4. Place the ball of pie dough in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 15 minutes.
5. Roll dough between two pieces of parchment paper, about ¼-inch thick. Carefully lift the top piece of parchment paper and turn the dough out into a pie plate. Arrange until flat, fix breaks by patting dough together. Crimp edges.

*Leaf lard is the highest grade of lard and contains good, unsaturated fats, unlike the hydrogenated lard at the grocery store. Buy through a local farmer, or online.

Shauna James Ahern’s and Daniel Ahern’s first cookbook is Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, published by John Wiley & Sons. Their blog is Glutenfreegirl.com. Shauna is a regular columnist in Allergic Living magazine.

When my husband-to-be and I told people that we were going to Italy for our honeymoon, everyone had the same reaction. “What! That’s the land of pasta and pizza. You have celiac. What are you going to eat?” I smiled and said, “you’ll see.”

For months, I’d been doing research. On chat boards and blogs, dozens of people wrote about safe, spectacular meals in Milan and in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna.

In Italy, food is a way of life. Eating produce in season, using local products, everything organic – these are recent trends in North America. But in Italia, generations have been making the same red sauce from the recipe passed down from mother to daughter.

And so, with the giddy expectations of a honeymoon after a joyful wedding, Danny and I boarded a plane to Rome. Just in case, I packed gluten-free energy bars and trail mix. But I never touched them.

In Gubbio – a tiny town nestled against a mountain in the region of Umbria – we ate a three-hour lunch in a 12th century restaurant. When the waiter brought an amuse bouche of roasted barley, I demurred. A moment later, a small martini glass appeared before me, filled with fresh buffalo mozzarella, red bites of tomato, and a flourish of green olive oil. It was unlike anything I have ever tasted.

In Norcia, also in Umbria, at the town’s best restaurant, I asked a waitress about eating safely. In broken English and gestures, she told me that two celiac chefs worked there. When the waiter set down a sizzling platter of black-truffle risotto, I couldn’t speak.

Officially, one in 250 people in Italy has celiac disease, but anecdotally, the incidence is higher. Over the past decade, the country has responded; every child is routinely screened for the disease. I was told that adult celiacs are given two paid days off a month, in order to buy and prepare their food. Drugstores stock shelves of gluten-free chocolate croissants, almond biscotti and focaccia.

The last day of our trip was in Rome, and Danny and I went for our final cup of gelato. Eating gelato proved easy, because every gelateria offered cups along with cones. As I was savouring my last bite, my gaze fell upon a box at the counter. It’s label read, “Il cono per tutti.” A cone for everyone. It was a gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free cone. I ordered one more, in a cone. How could I resist?

In the culture that loves its food, eating gluten-free is graciously easy. Besides pizza and pasta, food in Italy also means grilled sardines, chickpea crepes, chewy salumi (cured meats), and forest chicken roasted in myrtle and wild thyme. In 10 delicious days of eating through Italy with my darling husband, I never once grew sick. I have never eaten so well in my life.

Next issue: A bumpy trip back

For Shauna’s Italian-inspired “White Beans in Red Pepper Sauce” – see Allergic Living magazine’s Wnter 2008 issue. To order that issue or to subscribe, click here.

Shauna James Ahern’s first book, Gluten-Free Girl, published by John Wiley & Sons, is now available.
 

Shauna James Ahern’s and Daniel Ahern’s new cookbook is Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, published by John Wiley & Sons. Their blog is Glutenfreegirl.com.

But in adolescence I suffered sometimes debilitating fatigue. For years, I couldn’t bring my writing to completion; it’s hard to write on days when your brain feels more fogged than San Francisco Bay in the rain. As I grew older, an outline for a novel languished for years in a drawer.

Then I was diagnosed with celiac disease, and started writing about living gluten-free, writing with fervour. It felt like the most urgent force. I started a website to share my stories. If I had been prevented from pursuing my biggest passion by the brain fog induced by eating gluten, then I wanted to show other people how to find their way, through food. Writing is normally a solitary process. But a website is a chance to publish daily. You finish a piece and publish instantly, and the feedback is just as immediate. And the responses to the pieces I wrote about discovering teff (a gluten-free grain) or gluten-free flours or the love of my life through food? Astounding. I had found my community.

The book deal was even better than the imagining. But it came with a shock. I had four months to write an entire manuscript. My publisher wanted to promote the book to coincide with National Celiac Awareness Month in October. They needed it, pronto.

Before I was diagnosed with celiac, I never would have made it. But with the energy of good health and the experience of publishing on the Internet nearly every day for a year, I had the chops. So I wrote the manuscript – part memoir, part cookbook, with stories of strolls through farmers’ markets, the bad food of my childhood and falling in love with a chef – in 120 days. I even sent it in a day early.

My editor then whittled the 500-page behemoth into 350 pages in nine days. Nine days! She gave me two weeks to polish it. All I could do was work. And as always in a rush, not all went smoothly. My computer froze up the day I was meant to print up the last version of the manuscript. I went through 22 slightly different versions of lemon olive oil cookies before picking the recipe that would go to print. There were a dozen other little exigencies. But they didn’t stop me, I just kept writing.

By the time you are reading this column in Allergic Living, I will be holding my book in my hands. Since I was a child, I have wanted to hold a book of my own making. Through the doing – not the longing – I became the writer I had wanted to be. This gluten-free life turns out to be one of abundance, in which I never feel deprived. At times, I am instead overwhelmed by how much arrives. When you are doing what you love, and you are doing it to help other people, magic just happens.

Shauna James Ahern’s first book, Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back … And How You Can Too, is published by John Wiley & Sons.

For Shauna’s gluten-free Chocolate-Banana Bread or Cake recipe – the cake she made for her wedding – seeAllergic Living magazine’s Fall 2007 issue. To order that issue or to subscribe, click here.

Shauna James Ahern’s and Daniel Ahern’s new cookbook is Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, published by John Wiley & Sons. Their blog is Glutenfreegirl.com.

Jeanne has come to my home to teach me how to can. Like generations of women before her, she learned from her mother how to stir fruits and sugar together, making preserves – and then seal them safely in glass jars. In the dead of winter, Jeanne can open her cupboards to find ruby strawberries gleaming in the darkness.

Like many of my generation, I had no idea how to do this. For most of my life I loved food, but I didn’t really know where it came from or who made it for me. The only cans I opened were tins with manufacturers’ labels purchased at the grocery store. Some packaged foods contain so many preservatives that it seems they could survive for a hundred years with the same over-salty flavour.

Four years ago when I was diagnosed with celiac disease, I began to examine the label of every food. I found that I didn’t recognize (or couldn’t pronounce) most of the ingredients that I would have put into my body before without a thought. I began to eat closer to the ground; I used whole foods and cooked meals from scratch. Within a few months, commercial jams tasted too sweet to me. Canned green beans became an abomination. Give me six glorious weeks of eating corn on the cob when it’s ripe and ready, and I’ll wait all year in anticipation, rather than ever eating again from a bag of frozen corn kernels.

I still eat in season, mostly. Now that we have a garden, my husband and I love feeding our baby daughter raspberries right off the bush. We pick the tiny alpine strawberries nestled among green leaves and pop them in her mouth, waiting to see her expression. The mint leaves we brush with our feet release their scent and leave me dreaming of mint jelly with lamb in the winter.

In our sunny kitchen, Jeanne teaches me how to sterilize the jars and boil them until they are sealed. I dream of pickled okra, tomato sauce and brandied cherries this winter. Making my own food brings me closer to my great-grandmother who knew how to do this – long before there were packaged foods that contained gluten where it should never have been.

For Shauna’s “Pickled Sunchokes” recipe – see Allergic Living magazine’s Fall 2009 issue.
To order that issue or to subscribe, click here.

Shauna James Ahern’s first book is Gluten-Free Girl, published by John Wiley & Sons. Write Shauna at:editor@allergicliving.com

Shauna James Ahern’s and Daniel Ahern’s new cookbook is Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, published by John Wiley & Sons. Their blog is Glutenfreegirl.com.

Before I went gluten-free, I cooked according to recipes. If the pasta dish in a cookbook called for tomatoes, I bought tomatoes, no matter what the season. Now, I can’t believe I ever bought pale tomatoes with no real flavour in January.

When I found out I could no longer eat gluten, I found real food. I began eating foods in the season in which they grew. That is what my body wanted.

Now, if it’s autumn, when everything grows a little darker, a little heavier, there’ll be a fat orange squash sitting on my cutting block, left over from a trip to the farmers’ market the day before. Butternut squash soup – maybe I’ll make that tonight, I’ll think. I breathe out, and know I can make it through the day, as long as I make it back to the kitchen.

In winter, it’s pitch black by 4 o’clock outside my living room windows. Every year, it takes me a few weeks to remember that we are animals first and civilized beings afterward. We’re in hibernation mode. But this past winter, standing in front of the stove humming, the blackened windows steamed up from the heat, I didn’t feel that bad about the darkness. Instead, I braised meats, sautéed dark greens, and ate whole grains and starchy carbohydrates. My body wanted to store up reserves against the cold.

In spring, when the farmers’ markets rise to life, baby peas appear in my green salads. I rediscover tender artichokes, muscular arugula, and then the first batch of spring goat cheese. This past spring, I ate ramps, delicious wild leeks, for the first time.

And now, in this season of summer, when the sun stays late, I have boundless energy to create. I eat fruit and vegetables straight from the stand. Sunlight floods my kitchen, and I swing my hips in front of the stove, creating new concoctions, like a blackberry sauce with cayenne pepper over seared salmon.

All summer long, I am making food I used to buy at the store: lemony hummus; basil pesto; chicken curry salad; raspberry frozen yogurt. Everything I make tastes much more alive than the commercial imitations. Every food I create makes the next recipe easier.

And, there are strawberries.

The other day, when I asked my favourite produce man at the Pike Place Market in Seattle what was best that day, he pointed to the strawberries. Full as pregnant pauses, more lurid red than anything in nature in recent months, and dotted with seeds that were destined to stick in my teeth. I had to have some. I took a bite and nearly cried when an authentic sweetness came rushing to my tongue. With subtle warmth, a high clear taste, as rushing sweet as a first kiss at the end of the evening – these were strawberries.

If I eat in season, and plan meals in my kitchen according to the ingredients the earth is offering at the time, I feel alive. Besides, what would be the joy of strawberries in summer if I ate them all year long?

For Shauna’s superb gluten-free Vanilla Bean Fruit Salad recipe see Allergic Living magazine’s Summer 2007 issue. To order that issue or to subscribe, click here.

Shauna’s first book is Gluten-Free Girl: How I found the food that loves me back … And how you can too, published by John Wiley & Sons. Write to Shauna at editor@allergicliving.com

Shauna James Ahern’s and Daniel Ahern’s new cookbook is Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, published by John Wiley & Sons. Their blog is Glutenfreegirl.com.

The only hitch was the food. We asked one of our childbirth preparation teachers about making sure my meals would be gluten-free during our three-day hospital stay. “Oh, that’s going to be impossible,” she told us. “I’ve worked with a lot of patients through this process, and none of them has been able to eat gluten-free safely.” Dumbfounded, we stared at her. No gluten-free food at a hospital?

We packed a cooler full of our favourite food and asked friends to bring us meals. We all agreed that we were going to eat better than anyone else in the hospital, but by the time friends arrived with a platter of sashimi following the birth, we had realized that the best-laid plans often shatter.

Our daughter was born healthy and squalling. Nine hours after she emerged into this world, she stopped breathing. In the middle of the night, my husband and I learned a new definition for terror as we watched our newborn daughter being rushed to the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU) to the deafening sound of code blue alarms.

Food became the farthest thought from our minds. But as we hovered over her incubator, the kind nurses reminded us to eat, to take care of ourselves. I waved away the menu, telling them there was nothing safe for me. The last thing I needed as I willed my daughter to breathe was a gluten reaction. And then a nurse slipped me a different-coloured menu, upon which was written in bold letters: Gluten-Free Menu. I swear, that was one of the first moments in which I started to let myself hope that everything was going to be OK.

The hospital had made a huge effort in the previous six months to understand gluten and where it hides, and especially the dangers of cross-contamination. Two pages of options – including hash browns with eggs, sandwiches on gluten-free bread, and chef salads – were guaranteed to feed me and keep me strong.

For the next 10 days, we ate cafeteria food delivered to our daughter’s NICU room that had been prepared in an industrial kitchen, and I never once grew sick.

By the time we came home with our daughter, who was finally healthy and breathing sweetly, I once again lived in hope. Hope not only for my daughter’s long and vivid life, but also hope for the world in which she will live. If the hospital in which she was born had a gluten-free menu, maybe one day she will say, “You mean people didn’t know what it meant to live gluten-free? Wow, how everything has changed.”

For Shauna’s “Potato & Leek Soup” recipe – see Allergic Living magazine’s Winter 2009 issue.
To order that issue or to subscribe, click here.

Shauna James Ahern’s first book is Gluten-Free Girl, published by John Wiley & Sons.

Shauna James Ahern’s and Daniel Ahern’s new cookbook is Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, published by John Wiley & Sons. Their blog is Glutenfreegirl.com

I have never thought of living gluten-free as a deprivation. But the day I followed a bizarre craving for lemongrass, right that instant, I realized that eating while pregnant might be a bit more challenging. Scanning the shelves of my favourite grocery store, I found that everything I wanted contained gluten, while the celiac-friendly options left me feeling nauseated. Pregnancy, it seemed, was going to be a fascinating food journey.

During my first trimester, I woke up exhausted and went to bed tired. In between came several bouts of nausea. I didn’t want to eat much through the roiling motions of my stomach. There would be no saltine crackers for me, so I lived on gluten-free toaster waffles for a while.

Thankfully, the powerful food aversions disappeared in my second trimester, while the cravings continued. No longer nauseous, I just wanted food, all the time. Not just any food, however. I wanted protein.

Beef called to me. I drank three large glasses of milk a day, after an entire adulthood of staying away from the stuff. Roasted chicken breast, handfuls of almonds, bowls of yogurt – these foods filled my days. Cheese became my best friend. I nibbled on French feta, tangy Brie, and gluten-free mac and Manchego cheese.

As my belly ballooned to eclipse the view of my feet, I wanted to experience as many aromas and tastes as I could. Starting in the fifth month, fetuses experience what their mothers smell. I knew this was true when my husband put a sizzling hot pork roulade under my nose and the baby kicked me. By the seventh month, the amniotic fluid changes taste according to what the mother eats. So I ate spicy Thai food, homemade gluten-free bread, Ethiopian-spiced lentils, lamb with harissa, and roasted peppers. My baby was going to love food long before she was able to eat it herself.

Not once was I tempted to eat gluten. Not only because I know that just a smidge of it will make me sick, but also because I was not alone in my body anymore. I knew that every bite of food I ate made my child grow. Eating anything from a selfish craving could hurt her. I wanted to eat everything mindfully, and with great gusto.

Going gluten-free three years ago helped me to be re-born. Throughout my pregnancy, I was healthy and fit, gaining only as much weight as the doctors suggested. It wasn’t until the very end that my ankles swelled, or I felt short of breath. By the time our dear daughter was born, I was eating better – and feeling more alive – than ever in my life.

And then our lives opened entirely, when we held her in our arms.

For Shauna’s “Pan-roasted Chicken Breast with Orange-honey Sauce” recipe – see Allergic Living magazine’s Fall 2008 issue.
To order that issue or to subscribe, click here.

Shauna James Ahern’s first book is Gluten-Free Girl, published by John Wiley & Sons. Send Shauna your comments at editor@allergicliving.com

Shauna James Ahern’s and Daniel Ahern’s new cookbook is Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, published by John Wiley & Sons. Their blog is Glutenfreegirl.com