celiac disease

First Efforts at GF Shopping

ImageMy first reaction to the news of having celiac disease (other than total disbelief) was a strong sense of irony.  How could I, the baker of all things wheat, now be allergic to that most basic of components of my baking?  Once I got used to the idea, I spent some energy investigating where I could buy GF foods.  My local Giant didn’t seem to have much at first glance but after perusing it a couple of times I saw that they had a fair amount of GF cake/brownie/pancake mixes, pastas, redi-mixed flour mixtures, GF condiments and the like.  I bought some GF bread crumbs and cheddar cheese crackers there because they were on sale.  The Giant in Coopersburg has a slightly bigger GF selection.  I got a bunch of rice pastas there.

I have only been to the Rt. 248 Wegmans but it has some great finds too.  I imagine the other two local Wegmans have similar GF stock.  Most important, they have the individual flours that are critical to making your own flour mixes and for many recipes out of GF cookbooks.  I bought some tapioca flour, some potato starch and garbanzo & fava bean flour there.  The G&F flour is hard to find but is used in a number of recipes.  I did find that a white bean flour from Echo Hill was a decent substitute.

Echo Hill Country Store is out in Fleetwood, PA; the edge of Amish Country.  It is a small busy store crowded with aisles full of packaged flours, pastas, rice and beans of a variety that is found no where in this area as far as I can tell.  My friend Marjorie took me there a few years ago and I used to buy a lot of interesting wheat flours there.  Now I buy everything but wheat there.  They have pretty much everything but the G&F flour which I later found at Wegmans.  And they have a good GF pasta selection at decent prices.  I also found a wide variety of rices there that I never see anywhere else.  I found brown risotto rice there! And black rice, green rice and a number of rice mixtures that looked interesting.  Even if you are not GF you should take a trip to Echo Hill.  Their spices have great prices, bulk dipping chocolate is to be had there and there is just a lot of packaged goods to check out.  You can even get real chocolate jimmies there!!

Health food stores carry a decent range of flours and Fry’s Foods in Hellertown has brown  rice flour as well as several other specialty flours necessary for GF baking.  They also have some great GF cereals there.

One thing I haven’t found is rye flavor.  One of my cookbooks uses it to simulate rye bread.  You can mail order it from Authentic Foods which is located in California.  I think I may have to put together an order this spring….  I do miss seeded rye and pumpernickel breads.  So I know I will continue looking for it in stores and one way or another I will make some rye bread soon. 

Most stores have redi-made GF baked goods like rolls and breads.  I have heard nothing good about them.  And they are very pricy; I saw frozen GF breads in Weis Markets that was $7.49 for a loaf! That is twice what wheat bread costs these days.  The GF rolls when touched (my man did that!) are hard and unyielding so I think for now I will be making my own from scratch. 

GF bread crumbs cost about three times what wheat bread crumbs cost but they are nice as they don’t really need refrigeration.  Still, these were made only of cornmeal crumbs which I take issue to.  I think I will stick to my homemade crumbs from leftover GF bread I made in the past.

Everyone says that, once you get the hang of it, home made GF baked goods are far superior to the pre-made stuff offered in today’s stores. So I cannot report to you on how they taste.  If I buy any I will let you know how it tastes.  And if you, fair readers, have tried any pre-made GF breads/rolls please do write in on what you thought of the taste and texture.  Tell me where you bought them too! Maybe I will be tempted to try one by your recommendation.

First published late March 2013.

A Kick in the Tummy….my first blog post……..

ImageSometimes the irony of life can really kick us in the butt. Or maybe in the tummy. We love something, maybe too much. And then we have to give
it up, to walk away…to change everything. Or so it seems. I am writing
this because I have to. I am a writer by inclination and sometimes in the past
I wrote for work. It is what I do to explain myself. To come to grips with
situations, to communicate to those I care about on topics I can’t seem to do
verbally. So, I hope it might illuminate for a reader or two what it feels like to lose a dear friend. Silly of me but I thought I would always have this friend…. no not a lover or girlfriend but my bff….wheat!

I grew up a small spindly kid with a love of toast with strawberry jam, baloney and butter sandwiches and my mother’s delicate yet rich bread pudding. She baked big loaves of white bread twice every week, from scratch.  The whole house was scented with the intoxicating perfume of yeast and wheat. I remember the fresh butter I made with cream from the cows and my mother’s purple grape jelly on a thick cut slice of warm, tender crusted white bread. I did long for Wonder bread at school lunch times but only because all my friends ate it. I wanted to fit in and that fat baloney sandwich on Mom’s crookedly cut bread gave me away as not able to afford the sleek slices of store bread my friends were contentedly munching on.… I grew up to be a baker on weekends…to make bread when it snowed, when my family visited, to bake dozens of Christmas cookies, and to carry on the traditions of my mother who was a fabulous baker winning prizes at fairs. I thought baking was how one showed love for family and friends. I did a LOT of it. And I enjoyed eating my own baked goods and pasta. I was proficient in angel food cake from scratch, in various flavors of crisp biscotti, and my pies were flaky engineering marvels of creamy fruity goodness. All meant to be shared and devoured by anyone crossing my life’s path. Gone. In the blink of a blood test. Gone…

I digress…. My story starts with some elevated liver enzyme levels and progresses through myriad tests as though I was Alice slipping through the looking glass to a medical wonderland of CT scans, biopsies, ultrasounds and endless blood work. It ended two weeks ago with a positive finding for celiac. The unthinkable had happened. I had to face a reality without wheat. Without rye bread sprinkled with caraway seeds. Without pasta topped with any number of beloved sauces.  Without barley soup full of fresh cooked vegetables. Without farro and green bean vinaigrette salad. Without gravy and without chicken piccata. I felt like the bottom had just dropped out of my menu. A gynormous hole had opened and all the wheat fell in never to be seen again. How could I be happy? How could I eat good food without my best friend, wheat? It seemed beyond the scope of possibility to eat tasty food without a bit of wheat ever appearing on my plate!

So now I know I have celiac disease and the journey to wheat free begins. It begins as many new things do with disbelief, with some measure of denial and then acceptance and the making of plans to carry on, minus my dear friend wheat. I have some real doubts that this will be successful or enjoyable but onward the journey goes as I cannot go back to the ways of wheat on most every plate of homemade food

Republished in March 2014, originally published February 2013 on Patch.

A World Without Wheat…Rewind…Relocate…Rejuvenate

Until now, I have only blogged on Patch, specifically Hellertown Lower Saucon Patch in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. When Patch fired our local editor, Josh Popichak, the website suffered severe deceleration. Without a real editor the local content screeched to a halt. I blogged a couple more times but felt that the integrity of the site was gone. Weeks passed. I missed writing and posting on the several topics I used to cover, particularly celiac disease and my struggle to become healthy and wheat free.

So I decided to start my own blog, Josh (whom I have remained in contact with) suggested WordPress. I investigated. And here I am!

I think I will re-post many of my old blog posts as I fear Patch will totally fold without warning and they will be lost. Keep an eye out for them! I will note the approximate date of their original appearance.

Welcome to A World Without Wheat… Re-born, post Patch, to Word Press. Join me as I continue my journey post gluten and loving it more or less depending on what’s for dinner….