About a year ago I found out that I have Celiac Disease, which is defined by the Celiac Disease Foundation as: A lifelong autoimmune intestinal disorder, found in individuals who are genetically susceptible. Damage to the mucosal surface of the small intestine is caused by an immunologically toxic reaction to the ingestion of gluten and interferes with the absorption of nutrients. About 1 in 133 people in the United States suffer from this.
Wha?!
Well, at the time of diagnosis this disease wasn't exactly news to me. My mom suffers from it, and ironically, so does my mother in law. (Coincidence? Or proof that the disease is far more prevalent than we all think.) My husband thought he had it when we first met, then had more tests to discover that he was lucky, and does not have it. But to quote my doctor upon hearing the diagnosis from my gastro-specialist: "You kids are screwed." Yeah, thanks.
Basically what this means for me is no wheat gluten. No flour, no cupcakes, no bread, no pasta, generally anything totally yummy, is pretty much off limits for me. And it is really surprising how many foods you would not think of include hidden gluten - like soy sauce for example. Malt flavoring, salad dressings and many preservatives. It has been a rough year trying to manage this, but at least I have a great support system, and I can basically control my symptoms with my diet. But the gluten always seems to get in, and cross-contamination is a big part of the problem. I am not supposed to have even a crumb of wheat, so this means I can't even use a toaster that has had regular bread in it. It's a lot to take sometimes. Especially for someone who used to LOVE cupcakes, cereal, pasta, bagels (sigh) I used to be a bread head! But it became not worth it to me to suffer the symptoms, just for the instant gratification of what ever it was I was eating.
There are some, um, interesting gluten-free bread products. Let be the one to tell you that a cupcake made with tapioca and rice flour, does not come close the dreamy confections from Crumbs that I recently read about on Weezermonkey's blog. But I recently heard about a bakery, called BabyCakes, which offers gluten free baked goodies that was supposed to open this fall, but I just read that they have pushed the opening to late 2008, boo. Oh well, I hear scientists are working on a pill that would allow people with this problem to ingest gluten with no problem, so I am keeping my fingers crossed for that.
Otherwise, I can always sneak it on special occasions, like the night of our wedding, when we got back to the hotel room, to find a few slices of the most delicious looking cake I had ever seen, I couldn't resist it.... I can't say I felt great the next day, but I was on such a high that whole weekend that I didn't let it get me down :) Although out cake baker, Cake Divas, made the top layer gluten-free, (hence, why were cutting into the little top layer) They gave it a great effort, but the gluten-free top layer tasted like cardboard, yuck! All the rest of the layers were regular cake, so our guests didn't have to suffer!
And now you know the meaning behind the name of my blog... Since rice is a popular substitute in a gluten-free diet. ;)
4 comments:
Long live the glutenites!
I am laughing at "bread head"! And now I adore your blog title even more.
BTW, there is a girl on The Nest (Rock_Lobster) who also has celiac disease, so I read all about it one day in her bio (http://tinyurl.com/2u4ers)! She is pretty cool, but, sadly, she's not local (lives in WI), or else you could swap food suggestions. :)
I was going to be sad that you couldn't have all those things you listed, but in my book, rice isn't a bad substitute. I looooove rice. :)
bahaha. glutenites.
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