There has to be more to Celiac Disease

Going off of gluten over 10 years ago no doubt saved my life. The doctors had just kept doing the same things for years and I just kept getting worse. I got a lot of recommendations for taking a lot of Maalox. I received prescriptions for anti-depressants. I was told to go on a bland diet. When I finally found out I had Celiac Disease, I was eating chicken noodle soup and soda crackers only. That was my bland diet and I wasn't able to digest even that. Go figure. It was almost totally gluten.

Then someone had me stop eating gluten and within two weeks I was back to looking and feeling more normal. It was an amazing transformation. Before starting the diet I was bloating up by a pound a week on that soup and crackers diet. They were unable to get my blood pressure to register because it was so low and my body temp was low. After the two weeks, temp and blood pressure were back in the normal range and the bloating had gone down so much the nurse did not recognize me. 

But there are still so many things that isn't known and so much that doesn't all fit together. I understand that part of it is because it caused malabsorption for so many years of my life. This caused me to live for years without the proper nutrients. In my high school years my weight dropped to 110 lbs. I am 5'6" and that made me very, very skinny. But at times it seems that the damage is continuing, not stopping. 

On Twitter I ran across a tweet that mentioned a cure for Celiac Disease. I have always been told there isn't a cure. You can just "maintain" by following a gluten free diet. So is this a quack thing or the real deal? 

I went to the web site. They are not selling anything. All the info is pretty much there. So where is the catch? 

Let me know what you think! http://naturallygoodmagazine.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry090705-203726

Just a Note About The BBQ Throw Down Sides

Along with the BBQ ribs that I prepared for the Throw Down, my friends and I enjoyed some tasty sides that are traditional favorites with ribs. (See yesterday's post!)

Now I started cooking when I was 9 and pretty much learned the method of a little of this, a dab of that and a handful of this over here. I prepared the sides that went with the ribs pretty much the same way and you can too.

Get your base item and figure out how much you want. For example, if it is potato salad, first figure out how many potatoes you would want per person. If it is coleslaw, cut up enough cabbage for each serving you are planning. Then put in the other ingredients to personal taste. Take a little sample of the dish as you go along being careful not to double dip. No one likes a double dipper.

Here are the ingredients and seasonings for the sides:

Potato Salad: Boiled red new potatoes. Boil with the jackets on, chill and cut up. Then add: mayonnaise, hard boiled eggs, celery, sweet relish, dijon mustard, celery seed, salt and pepper.

Coleslaw: Shred some green cabbage. Then add: chopped napa cabbage, chopped dill pickles, chopped pickled pepper slices , honey, mayonnaise, salt and pepper.

Ranch-style Black Beans: I used canned black beans. Then add: brown sugar, chopped onions, bacon slices, powdered mustard, ketchup and pepper sauce.

We also enjoyed fresh baked gluten-free Buttermilk Biscuits. Since these had not been tried out on my non-gluten-free friends, I was curious to see what they thought. The guests were packing up extra biscuits to take home, I am guessing they turned out just fine. The recipe I used for the biscuits can be found in the Culinary Institute of America's gluten-free cookbook.

To top off the menu were my attempt at gluten-free Fried Apple Pies. They worked and didn't taste all that bad, but they just are not there yet. When I get them a little closer to the real thing, I will be sure to let everyone know. That is one thing I have yet to find in the world of gluten-free...fried pies.

A Virtual Throw Down Is A Brewin'

So here I am, a 50 year old woman on Twitter (okay, that is NOT me in the pic.) I was told it was one of the places I needed to be since I was laid off from my job. I have found it is like being sucked slowly down by quicksand. Everytime I move there is something else grabbing me.

Then came the announcement from one of my fellow tweets, @LifeByChocolate, that he and some of his tweets were going to have the very first annual Virtual Throw Down (minus Mr. Flay...sorry Bobby.) I tried to resist, but there was something said about barbecue ribs. So I moved and twitched in my chair. And I got sucked right down a little more into the land of Twitterers.

Barbecue, you see, has been in my life since I can remember. My grandfather, Walter Jetton, or Grandy as I called him, was well known in Texas for some pretty good ribs. He cooked for the likes of Lyndon B. Johnson, Eisenhower, Jim Nabors (aka Gomer Pyle) and Steve Allen. He had an old chuck wagon that he carted around and set up to make it look like he was using it to cook from.

What I remember though is the rib he would stick in my mouth as a kid when I walked into his office at Jetton's Cafeteria in Fort Worth, TX. He would be trying a new recipe and knew that I, at the ripe old age of 5, would tell him the truth without even understanding the possibility of hurting his feelings. He also kept silver dollars in his desk and he would slip me one as my treat. If only Mom hadn't put those in the bank....

I was 8 when Grandy passed so I don't have years of memories, but what I do have are many, many memories of his love of people and of food. He served on the city council, gave to local charities and was an active church member. I don't think he ever met a person that he didn't like.

So here I go, venturing into territory that he never imagined but one, I am sure, he would have whole heartedly approved. I will take his recipes and add some modern twists of my own creation. And, of course, they will be gluten free. The biggest challenge will be coming up with a fried apple pie that is gf and that he would approve of.

If you want to join in with your own rib fixn' or fried chicken, you can find the rules here: http://lifebychocolates.blogspot.com/2009/06/virtual-throw-down-twitter-and-blog.html

Guess I better get to workin' on it. Happy eating, ya'll!

Grandy - I hope to do you proud! :)

The Beginning of Gluten Free Southern Cookin'

My youngest son eats gf and lives in NYC. He emailed me the other day telling me that I should open a gluten free southern cooking restaurant in the heart of Manhattan. He pointed out that there are not any southern restaurants in Manhattan, just Harlem, and absolutely not any southern eateries that are gluten free. Just think, I could corner two markets at once! Part of me thinks he is just homesick for some of mama's cooking, but part of me thinks that would be a great idea ya'll!

For kicks, I decided to begin honing some recipes. I have been working with recipes from the Culinary Institute's Gluten Free Cookbook and found one there for Buttermilk Biscuits. These came out so sweet and light. They were golden on top and you would never know that they were gluten free. I found for an extra special treat I would warm with a little (more) butter and dark chocolate chocolate chips on top. You can then swish the chocolate and butter once melted across the top and it becomes a little cake! Just never mind the calories!

But they are sweet and even though they do not have yeast in them, they come out tasting like the sweet yeast rolls that I used to bake as a kid. It kind of reminded me of a Kolache dough. Ah, Kolaches! How I miss Kolaches!

Surely I could turn these delectable things into a gf form of a Kolache! First, the filling. I decided to go with fruit. Some of the most popular fillings are apricot, prune, apple, or cream cheese. In Texas, you can get Jalepeno Kolaches or Sausage Kolaches. Just don't order those from anyone in Nebraska or you will get an earful from a Czech descendent who will loudly explain to you that a true Kolache does not have meat or jalepenos in them. Nor should they ever!

I didn't have any fresh fruit on hand, so I looked in the freezer. There I have several bags of frozen cranberries and a bag of frozen mangoes. Not sure mangoes would work, but might play with that another time. With the frozen cranberriesI had frozen cranberries I made a basic cranberry sauce but added some vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg to the simmering fruit. After I got the dough formed in the pan, I made indentions and spooned in the cooled sauce.

This comes super close to stopping that craving for Kolaches. Okay, so it isn't what you would usually think of as Southern Cooking. But, it brought me a little closer to my home state of Texas where you can get some of the best Kolaches in the U.S.