As I was on bedrest last week, I had a lot of time to whittle away. What better to do with it than my old passion of reading a book? Well...I read three instead. My favorite was Gluten Free Girl by Shauna James Ahern, and by favorite, I mean, a better memoir than Julie Andrew's Home was! It has a lot to do with me, as I can totally relate to this woman, because she has celiac disease. Her book's subtitle is a perfect mantra for the gluten intolerant: "How I found the food that loves me back". This book is about a woman's life journey from a packaged-food, slightly overweight childhood, to a gourmet 4 course meal chef (gluten-free, of course) who meets the love of her life in one of the sweetest ways I've ever heard. This woman has lived all over the world, and therefore has defined her gluten-intolerant life (read: no pasta, bread, cookies, cake, etc.etc....) in one word: YES.Included are a few amazing recipes, one of which I am going to try out before I give the book back to the library, her pizza crust. One of the worst things about being gluten free is giving up pizza when your friends come over for a movie night. "Well, I guess I'll just have a salad instead" gets pretty annoying after the 7th one in a row every time you go out to a resturaunt. Instead, Mrs. Ahern defines her way of life not by "I can't" or "I will never" but by "I will try to make something better than what I had before!" and her mouth-watering descriptions of in-season food preparation will make your mouth drip with hunger!
*(Celiac symptoms are most common in women, but 1 out of every 100 people has it. Only 3% are estimated to have been diagnosed, the rest suffer with chronic bouts of diareaha, bloating, severe fatigue and anemia, hypo- or hyperthyroidism and in the worst cases, chronic vomiting, infertility, and cancers of the colon and stomach if left completely untreated. )*
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We need to get together when we come back in November, my blogging friend!