About

Hello, Gluten Free Girl here.  I didn't always have Celiac Disease...

I was born a perfectly healthy baby girl at 7lbs 10oz and 20 inches long.  My dad said I looked like the tall, skinny California Raisin.

I was raised with a very broad palette of food to choose from.  My dad was the chef in our house and he loved to experiment with new recipes.  I remember that while most families were bringing in pizza for parent-sponsored classroom parties, my dad whipped up a set of French Breakfast Crepes.  He brought in assorted fresh fruit and homemade whipped cream to stuff them with.  Needless to say he was pretty popular with my teachers.

Living in New York (not the city, but the state) means that we have a pretty diverse population.  My school growing up had students who were English, Italian, Irish and German <-- pretty common for NY.  But we also had Indian, Arabic, African, Greek, Jewish, Australian, Brazilian... you name it.  So, I was exposed to the cuisine of several cultures just by eating at friends' houses.

Add in the fact that I grew up within 10 miles of the Culinary Institute of America...  Seriously, we had Easter Dinners at the Escoffier Room or Caterina de' Medici.  Or how about getting breakfast pastries at Apple Pie Bakery?  I was so darn spoiled.

We also had Adams Fairacre Farms for the freshest produce and meats you could buy.  Attached to their market was the lovely Pastry Garden, where we would buy fresh croissants every Sunday morning for breakfast.  Yes folks, this is how I grew up.

This doesn't sound very Gluten Free does it?  It wasn't.  I was perfectly fine, and healthy, until May of 2006. That spring, I had been out hiking and was bitten by a deer tick.  The result was that two weeks later I had a fever of 103 and rickets-like symptoms.

The blood test showed positive for Ehrlichiosis and borderline positive for Lyme Disease.  After the requisite antibiotics, my blood tests came back negative but I never felt better again.  I went to 10 different doctors over the course of 1.5 years.  Finally in 2007, after a Celiac-literate GastroInterologist reviewed my bloodwork, he advised that he believed I had Celiac Disease.  Shortly after, an Endoscopy with Biopsy confirmed it.

I have been 100% Gluten Free since then (with no cheating).  I do not experience the excruciatingly painful GI symptoms that I used to, before going Gluten Free.  However, I haven't felt 100% well since.  I hope you will join me on my quest to improve my quality of life and fight this disease.  This blog is my place to vent about failures, and to celebrate successes, to post recipes (because I'm a Gluten Free FOODIE), and to share with others.

Thank you for reading :)