Missing out on great restaurant evenings with friends? Learn how you, too, can indulge.

Step 1: Before You Go

Know your condition: Do your homework: learn, in detail, what you can’t eat, where an offending protein hides, the multiple names for it, and names for it in key languages. If you have shellfish allergy, the French bistro menu may refer to fruits de mer. Hint: they aren’t fruits. Nuoc mam pha? Sounds lovely but it’s Vietnamese fish sauce. Sodium caseinate? Dairy. Durum? That’s wheat. (Look up specific allergies and celiac disease at Allergicliving.com, and see left panel links for “hidden peanut”, “hidden milk”, “hidden gluten”, etc.)

Carry your meds: Allergists recommend epinephrine as the first-line medication for a food allergy reaction. Having an auto-injector with you is especially important whenever you plan to eat, since anaphylaxis can come on swiftly after consuming the wrong food. Consider that restaurant reaction horror stories almost always occur because the patron did not have an auto-injector on hand. Also have a food allergy action plan on you: in your purse, backpack or as a pdf on your smartphone. (See American and Canadian plans.)

Restaurant card: I recommend bringing a chef or food allergy card. These explain your allergies and the types of foods they are found in. Top chefs have told me that these can mean the difference between clarity and confusion in the kitchen. Find them at Selectwisely.com or Allergytranslation.com.

The right attitude: Let’s get you psychologically prepared to dine out. Your mental equipment includes: an approachable demeanor, a genuine smile and lots of pleases and thank yous. These will get you far at a restaurant. Conversely, anger or threatening language or behavior will get you nowhere fast. You will be pleasantly surprised by what a positive frame of mind will bring.

Next Page: Step 2 – Deciding where to dine

In a few short years, there have been huge strides in restaurant awareness of allergies and intolerances. Welcome to the brand new era of dining out safely.

One day in my early 20s, I went to brunch with friends at a new restaurant in a tony section of New York City. I didn’t call ahead to alert the manager to my food allergies, nor did I tell the server of my severe allergies to nuts and fish. My purse held a few antihistamines and my asthma rescue inhaler, but no emergency epinephrine auto-injector. It was the roll of the dice approach to food allergy management – and it didn’t pay off.

I ordered the plain pancakes. An inviting triple stack arrived, dusted with powdered sugar and a sprinkle of something quite unexpected. Pistachios had been artfully arranged on the plate and tucked between each layer. Immediately I flagged down the server, telling him I was allergic to nuts and couldn’t eat the pancakes. He whisked the plate away, returning it seconds later.

How did they remake an order of pancakes that fast? They didn’t. Peering under the top pancake, the pistachios were still there. The server had just scraped off the garnish and top layer. I flagged him down again: “I cannot eat this. No pistachios – anywhere,” I intoned, as my friends happily ate.

The same pancakes arrived a third time; between the second and third pancakes was still a sprinkle of pistachios. It was like the movie Groundhog Day: I kept getting the same wrong order over and over. The scene ended when the server stopped approaching our table. Instead, he glared at me, the “crazy” customer, from the safety of the bar.

I hailed the manager, who halfheartedly offered to make a fresh batch of nut-free pancakes. I declined. By now I didn’t trust the management, staff or kitchen to serve me anything safe. I left feeling demoralized, distrusting, upset with them, upset with myself and hungry. I never went back.

That was then; this is now. Recently, out with friends, we settled on a restaurant that I know takes the needs of the allergic diner seriously. The online menu had at least three dishes that appeared safe; this was easy to confirm by phone with the restaurant manager. The manager assured me the chef would gladly handle my food allergic needs, and they would be happy to welcome me.

Next Page: Changes in the way allergies are approached

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.

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 barley.

No more bread. No more beer. No more baked goods. Visit Italy, but pass on the pasta. Go to Paris and watch others savour a pain au chocolat. Skip those Sunday morning cinnamon rolls. You cannot have any of that food, because it will make you terribly ill.

Living gluten-free, however, is not as easy as avoiding bread, beer or baked goods. It means becoming a detective, searching for hidden ingredients. Gluten is disguised in the form of modified food starch, hydrolized vegetable protein, malt, dextrins, and even “natural flavours.” In order to stay well, those millions who must eat gluten-free have to read every box, decipher every ingredient, and ponder every bite. Restaurants can be a minefield, for all the hidden flours and cross-contamination.
It is a little overwhelming. But you can’t eat gluten; your life depends upon it.

When handed this news, most people shout, “No. No. No!” But I said yes. You see, I had been so sick before that diagnosis. For six weeks, I suffered with searing abdominal cramps, stabbing pains in the stomach, a massive tenderness on my left flank. I was sleeping up to 18 hours a day.

There was a trip to the emergency room, two ultrasounds, and two CAT scans. Then came chest X-rays, a colonoscopy and an endoscopy on the same day, more vials of blood drawn than I could count. Through it all loomed kidney stones, colon cancer, stomach ulcers, and ovarian cancer. Every test came back negative. No one knew.

So I rejoiced upon learning that all I had to do was avoid gluten for the rest of my life. When I found out how challenging that life can be, I began writing about it for other people. When I found out that I could cure myself through food, I began dancing in the kitchen.

Going gluten-free has changed my life. Since my celiac diagnosis, I launched a website called GlutenFreeGirl.com, which now draws thousands of readers from around the world. I landed a literary agent, then a book deal, all from my gluten-free writing. The Food Network liked my attitude and the food I made, and produced a segment about my life, which has been running daily. And I met the love of my life through my website, a beautiful man who happens to be a professional chef, a man who loves me through great food. Yes.

Eight months after being diagnosed with celiac, when my intestines had completely healed from eating better than ever before, I had the word yes tattooed on my left wrist. Many times, when I am in the kitchen, experimenting with gluten-free flours, I look down and see that word, and it reminds me of how I want to live.

My life since I was diagnosed with celiac is not focused on what I have to live without. My life is focused on everything I have now – great food, good health, a new life – everything to which I can say yes.

Next: Shauna’s Gluten-free Olive Loaf

We fell in love at first sight. When we began talking, we felt like friends. Sure, there was enormous physical attraction, but that was not the deepest flavour. Instead, we tasted comfort. Talking with him felt like keeping my hand wrapped around a warm cup of coffee. Our conversation tasted like potato-leek soup, like apple crisp, like coq au vin just out of the oven. We wafted vanilla and sugar between us. We devoured each other’s words.

Food is fuel for our relationship. It is one of the languages we both speak. When he starts to cook, we don’t talk. I do some dishes behind him, but mostly, I sit and watch, as he bends and listens to food in the skillet. He pinches salt between his fingers and dashes until the flavours start to sing. He plates our meal, his face wide with excitement, because he knows how much I’m going to love his food.

He is the executive chef at a Seattle restaurant – Impromptu Bistro – that in the past year has become almost completely gluten-free. Someone recently asked the Chef how he could change his French-inspired cuisine to never use flour or wheat. What he said was: “You meet this woman. You hold her in your arms, you fall in love with her. And then you find out that there’s something in your food that makes her sick. You teach yourself to adapt.”

One evening last June, the Chef made us a spectacular dinner. Pan-roasted beef tenderloin, on top of mashed potatoes, with a port-balsamic-veal-stock reduction sauce, with balsamic onions and soft chevre on top. Just before we ate, he started to slice up some bread to go with his meal.

Now, I’d never made a fuss about him eating gluten. But if he ate bread, he would have to brush his teeth before we could kiss. Just the breadcrumbs in his mouth would make me sick. That night, feeling close to him, I complained, “Do you have to eat bread tonight?”

Without turning around, he said, “Honey, you’re marrying a chef. You’re going to have to get used to the fact that he’s going to eat bread.”

What? I said. “What did you just say?”

He turned red, and said, “I said that I’m going to eat bread.” We danced around the kitchen, giggling, not saying it.

Later, in the middle of our meal – glorious, every flavor alive – he slipped down onto one knee. We laughed, and then I started crying.

Yes, I said. Yes.

Soon, we will be wed, in a large field with blackberries growing wild along the edges. One hundred of our closest friends will celebrate with us, in Discovery Park. It feels like the right name – every bite, and every moment we spend together, feels like a discovery.

And of course, the entire wedding will be gluten-free.

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

Shauna James is a writer based in Seattle, and author of the blog: glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com. Her first book,Gluten-Free Girl: How I found the food that loves me back … And how you can too, was published by Wiley and Sons in the fall of 2007. 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

Related Reading

Celiac expert Shelley Case on:

• Using Gluten-free Flours
• Reversing Anemia
• G-F Breakfast
• G-F Flatbread Recipe

People in Italy regard food as one of the most important aspects of life, and those of us with food allergies and intolerances are treated with respect. In Italy, I felt embraced, safe – and well fed.

As our vacation came to a close, we returned to Rome. On the morning we were to bid goodbye to Italy, we rose early and stumbled for the bus to the airport. The line to check in snaked interminably, and we missed our flight. Thankfully, we made it onto the next plane. However, this is where our honeymoon really ended.

As we boarded to start the first leg of our trek home to Seattle, we felt hungry. For 11 days, my breakfast had been slices of prosciutto, sheep’s milk cheese, and a gluten-free chocolate croissant bought at the local drugstore, which stocked entire shelves of gluten-free baked goods. But in the dash to the airport this morning, we knew there would be no time for breakfast.

I had planned ahead, requesting a gluten-free meal for the flight home. But, of course, we had missed that flight. There was only a slim chance that it would have been available any way. On our flight to Rome, when I asked for the gluten-free meal I had reserved weeks before, I was told, “Sorry, we ran out of those.” Ran out? A contrite flight attendant later said, “the Muslim man in back turned down his meal. You could have his.” (I didn’t bother to explain that following Islam does not make you gluten-free.)

We landed in Atlanta, and during the six-hour layover my stomach gnawed to the point of making me cry. Danny and I walked past every food booth and bar in one concourse, then moved on to the next. Everything was breaded and fried, dusted in crumbs, or perched on a bun. Welcome back to the United States.

Finally we settled on a bar with pub food – a place so packed, the waiter seemed frazzled beyond the point of speech. I explained, in urgent tones, that not one speck of wheat could touch any part of my bunless burger, and he nodded and ran off. When the patty arrived, shrivelled and tepid, it still looked good to my hungry eyes. But after two bites, I put down my fork and burst into tears. This wasn’t an all-beef patty. It was fleshed out with filler, no doubt containing gluten.

By the time we boarded our flight to Seattle, I was doubled over in pain, almost unable to move. I spent the next three days in bed or running to the bathroom.

After I recovered, I realized this: I’m on a mission, one restaurant and food service employee at a time. With my writing, I’m talking to everyone who will listen. Anyone who is involved in food should be aware of allergies and intolerances and know how to take care of us.

Those of us with serious food issues are not freaks. We are not annoyances. We are hungry, and we want to be fed.

For Shauna’s “Tuna Salad” recipe – see Allergic Living magazine’s Spring 2008 issue. To subscribe, click here.

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

Janet Smith was sure she wasn’t overreacting. Her 18-month-old daughter Heather had terrible symptoms: she was throwing up eight times a day, her stomach was bloated, and her diapers needed to be changed constantly. The pediatrician had told Smith it was the stomach flu. “But how long does stomach flu last?” she recalls wondering. “Four months?”

Finally, at her wit’s end, Janet took Heather to a gastroenterologist. He took one look at the tiny girl with skinny arms and legs who, at a year-and-a-half had only gained six pounds since birth, and knew the problem: celiac disease.

How celiac disease works

This autoimmune disorder affects the small intestine. When someone with celiac disease eats gluten – a protein found in wheat, barley and rye – the immune system attacks the small intestine and progressively destroys the villi, tiny finger-like projections that absorb the nutrients in food.

Heather was sent to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto for a biopsy, which confirmed the diagnosis. She was immediately put on a gluten-free diet, and the symptoms reversed. She’s now a healthy 9-year-old who loves to swim and has a passion for dogs.

But her disease isn’t gone; when Heather accidentally eats gluten, she vomits within the hour, and has diarrhea for weeks. Still, her mother considers her one of the lucky ones, because she was diagnosed early. Many children suffer for years with unrecognized celiac disease symptoms.

The gastrointestinal symptoms that Heather endured – vomiting, diarrhea and a bloated stomach – are typical of celiac disease in kids, says Dr. Stefano Guandalini, founder and director of the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Program and a renowned researcher.

The intestine is inflamed, and the body isn’t absorbing the food that the child is eating, which results in malnourishment, weight loss, lack of growth, and personality changes such as sadness and crankiness. Other symptoms include anemia, fatigue, low bone density and short stature. The trouble is, these symptoms are either hard to spot, or could be indicative of other conditions.

Timothy Cooper didn’t have the typical “celiac baby” look and his mother, April Cooper says he was a very happy infant. But from the age of six months until he was 11 years old, he only gained 30 pounds. He suffered from diarrhea, stomach pain and vomiting to the point of needing an intravenous drip to stop dehydration.

“He had all these symptoms that nobody saw,” says Cooper, who lives in Whitby, Ont. Finally, after Timothy didn’t gain any weight in six months, a pediatrician ordered blood tests for celiac disease, which came back positive, as did an intestinal biopsy.

Today, after being on a gluten-free diet for three years, Timothy’s weight has almost doubled, and he’s catching up in height to the shorter students in his class. “It really does make a difference when you absorb the food that you’re eating,” notes his mother.