What is Gluten Free?
What is Gluten Free – Many people ask me often about gluten free and if there is a difference between being gluten free and celiac disease. I admit, for a minute I was unsure of what the difference was. I had assumed for a very long time that all cases of gluten intolerance were celiac disease. Now I am not only certain that this is not true, but also, gluten intolerance is not a synonym for celiac disease. I have learned this happens. We discover one of the greatest things you can do for yourself by carefully choosing what you can eat, and carefully reading the ingredients of the food you buy. I wish I could turn this into a book, but it would have to be 50 recipes long and it would have to be up to my head. I don’t have an answer to that, but I’m trying to scratch the surface.
For those of you just beginning the gluten free diet – what is gluten free? Doesn’t it just mean you avoid wheat, barley, rye and malt ingredients? For the rest of us, it means we avoid those grain ingredients which are commonly found in foods and we have to be very careful because the gluten could be hidden in dozens of other ingredients that you can’t even see. Anytime you are learning a new recipe, the best thing to do is to go to the library or go on the Internet and search for gluten free recipes, or you can make your own account and find more recipes that are like the ones I wrote about.
When I decided to go gluten free, I didn’t want to give up the foods I was used to. I soon realized there are countless gluten free foods that I enjoyed, but that I had no idea how to cook. I spent a lot of time looking for recipes and the only way to cook was to go to the library, look up recipes in a search engine like Google or just type in ‘gluten free recipes’ into a search engine like Yahoo.com. I never thought I would be making a Bring Me Back Together type dish! Although, there are a lot of recipes that you can follow.
Here is what I came up with for my homily on the gluten free diet. I thought I would make a super yummy pie crust. It’s not a pie crust but a flat bread crust, flaky and buttery. The best part is that it holds its shape when cooked and it has a wonderful nutty flavor. What are berries? They are seeds in a soft gelatin capsule that dissolve when they thaw. Put 4 or 5 in a food processor with 1/2 cup water and pulse until you have a coarse meal. If you have a food processor, add the food to the pulse and process for 2 or 3 minutes. Then, add 1 egg, 2 tablespoons milk, the rest of the milk and ground spices (such as cinnamon, nutmeg, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, etc.) and blend until you have a coarse meal. If you have a food processor, now add the water and process for 2 minutes. Add the dry ingredients to the food processor, Process until thoroughly mixed and enjoy. I enjoyed this so much that I made a dinner recipe of it the next day.
I changed my routine to include gluten free dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I love to think that these dishes areMAclean!It was one of those recipes that stayed with me and now I have a family ofarthritis patientsand my arthritis is getting better!
