I learned to bake from my mother. She’d get me to retrieve the heavy bag of white flour and heave it up on the counter. Then I watched her mix that flour with butter and sugar, milk and baking powder, into cookies or pies. As I grew older, I became the baker. The flour flew [...]

With celiac disease, I thought I’d never eat pie again. Now, I’m sharing my carefully weighed, gluten-free pie crust recipe. We just never know what sweet things life will bring. 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 [...]

So much more than pasta 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. [...]

For almost as long as I have been alive, I have wanted to be a writer. But no one could have told me that my first book would be a gluten-free food memoir. As a pre-pubescent, I poured out my heart in a teddy bear journal. Later, I dreamed fictional worlds, wandered through words on [...]

On a warm July day, my friend Jeanne and I stand side by side, in companionable silence. She and I are slicing strawberries, the juices staining our fingers red. The tips of our knives click on the cutting board. One more topped and sliced, ready. We are making jam. Jeanne has come to my home [...]

Having lived through an entire seasonal cycle of eating gluten-free, I learned one lesson most profoundly: pay attention to the rhythm of the kitchen. 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 [...]

Before our daughter was born, my husband and I thought we knew what would happen; a planned Caesarean section meant we knew the date she would be born, our bags were packed, and our birth-announcement e-mail was already saved as a draft. The only hitch was the food. We asked one of our childbirth preparation [...]

A belly swells with baby – and good food. 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 [...]

You must have noticed it, too. Suddenly everywhere – the words “gluten-free” appear. They’re on packages of foods and bottles of beer and advertising supplements for grocery chains. Companies that produce food have begun to take notice of those of us who cannot eat gluten. According to a report by Packaged Facts, a market research [...]

Yes. When my doctor told me that I had celiac disease, I said it out loud – yes! Not the typical reaction, I know. Most people, when told they must live without gluten, begin grieving right away. Imagine being told that never again can you eat gluten – the elastic protein in wheat, rye, and [...]