Celiac Disease
I was diagnosed with celiac disease in 1995 after about two years of active symptoms. I was in college at the time and went home to see my old pediatrician. He did a couple of tests but then sent me to a gastroenterologist as he thought I had celiac disease. Unfortunately, the gastro did not want to test me for celiac since I was not losing weight, even though I had the other most common symptoms (diarrhea, gas, bloating). He tested me for a multitude of other things but came to the conclusion that I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and sent me home with a book and some medication. My pediatrician was fairly certain I had celiac, since my bloodwork indicated it, and pushed the issue until finally the gastro agreed to do the biopsy. The pathology report report came back “villous atrophy”, which means active celiac disease. Despite this, the gastroenterologist told me that he really didn’t think I had it “that bad” and could probably cheat on the gluten free diet, which is the only treatment for celiac disease. I soon learned that the gastro was very wrong and cheating on a gluten free diet was very bad advice. And so I began my gluten free journey.
Vegetarianism
In the spirit of full disclosure, I must state: I am not a vegetarian. What, you say? Your tagline above says “Gluten Free and Vegetarian Cooking” – is this false advertising? Nope. I am what people would call a flexitarian, meaning I mostly abstain from eating meat, fish and poultry but will periodically partake. In our house, my husband is the vegetarian, specifically a lacto-ovo vegetarian. There are many types of vegetarians. Lacto-ovo vegetarian means that he does eat lacto (milk products) and ovo (eggs), but he does not consume meat, fish or poultry. So he is a vegetarian and I am gluten free.
Our Cooking Style
When we moved in together, way back when, it took us about a year to figure out a new combined meal planning and eating strategy that worked for both of us. We knew that we did not want to make two meals, one for each of us, every evening. So we started looking in cookbooks and investigating new ideas together. I wasn’t overly fond of tofu and didn’t know how to really cook rice. I had previously only ever cooked instant rice – yikes! He enjoyed tofu but had his particular likes and dislikes too. So over the past twelve years, we have developed our own style of cooking, particular to us.
I am the first to admit that I am not a creative cook. I am also not very good at cooking multiple dishes at once and getting them all on the table at the same time. On a daily basis I can handle getting one main hot dish on the table with maybe some rice, bread or a salad on the side. Beyond that, I just don’t do it as I don’t enjoy the stress of it.
I rely heavily on other people’s recipes, from cookbooks, magazines, fellow bloggers and websites, for my meals. You will find that most recipes I post here are “adapted from” others. I am not an original recipe writer. In fact, I get teased by my husband about how many recipes I have stashed around the house. I have a large cardboard box full of them, torn out and copied from all over, all untried. The box even moved across country with us. If my husband had helped pack up the old house, they probably would have ended up thrown in the trash and not come with us. But I have an excuse, it must be genetic, as I come from a ‘long’ line of recipe hoarders. Both my mother and maternal grandmother are recipe hoarders and we frequently send each other recipes to encourage (one might say, enable) one another’s habit. So while I still have the box, stuffed in one of the closets probably still unopened since the move, I continue to feed my need for more recipes from other sources. But the good news is that I do try these new recipes! I really do! But unfortunately the rate of acquisition is higher than the rate of consumption. We all have our bad habits I suppose. At least mine is fairly innocent and leads to yummy things in my kitchen, so no one really loses. And since we enjoy trying new and interesting foods, this habit feeds on itself by keeping us both interested in preparing and consuming healthy, gluten free and vegetarian meals.
Contact
Feel free to email me at rseuler {at} hotmail {dot} com.
