Easy Gluten Free Living

Archive for the ‘Celiac Disease’ Category

If you have Celiac Disease, you know that the days of dinner in a hurry pretty much came crashing to a halt with your diagnosis.  Gone were the days of coming home and slapping a frozen pizza in the oven or calling the pizza delivery man or if you had half an hour, Hamburger Helper.

However, last week I found a product that has changed all that.  I was in a grocery store that I don’t usually frequent and came across an end-cap that had all Gluten Free products on it.  There was a chocolate cake mix, brownie mix, pasta, cookies and crackers.  All products that I’ve seen before. 

As I looked over the products to see if there was anything new, I came across Hamburger Helper look alike boxes.  Mrs. Leeper’s Gluten Free Dinners. 

Since I don’t have the luxury of being a full time work at home woman, “yet”, I was extremely interested in trying these.  However, since my husband is not a celiac, and not completely gluten free, I asked him if he wanted to try them.

My husband has been so supportive throughout my whole celiac ordeal, so of course he said yes.

We took home the Beef Stroganoff, and the Creamy Tuna (the tuna was my husband’s choice).  We tried the beef stroganoff that night.  It was very good for a boxed dinner.  I’ve become very spoiled in that I really like to cook and bake, so I’m very critical of boxed foods, but these were good. 

We tried the Creamy Tuna a few days later.  I was not too excited to try this because I didn’t think a boxed tuna dinner could taste very good.   But since we didn’t get home from work until late, this would be a quick dinner.

I was pleasantly surprised.  It was very creamy and flavorful.  Since my husband has high cholesterol, we used ground turkey breast instead of ground beef for the stroganoff and tuna packed in water instead of oil for a more healthful meal.  I will definately buy these again and try all the other flavors.

Mrs Leeper’s makes 6 different varieties of dinners:    

• Beef Stroganoff
• Creamy Tuna
• Cheeseburger Mac
• Chicken Alfredo
• Beef Lasagna
• Mac & Cheese       

There are also topping suggestions on the side of the box, that are appropriate for the dinner being made.                    

I would suggest you try these.

Mary Blackburn

Living Gluten Free

I’m sitting here at my computer, listening to Christmas music, and looking at all the snow we got yesterday, a little over 7 inches.  I know, a small amount compared to what some of the further eastern areas received. 

My labrador retriever, Charlie, loves this weather.  He just wants to go outside and play in the snow.  Charlie isn’t 2 years old yet, so if you know anything about labs, you know that they don’t reach maturity until after the age of 2.

My husband is wrapping presents for me, since I am so far behind.  I have had a cold for about 2 weeks now and I think it has developed into a sinus infection.  I’ve had a temperature ranging between 99.2 and 103.4 for the past 3 days, along with a screaming sinus headache.  So I haven’t gotten anything done as far as my baking, or present wrapping done that I was planning on doing yesterday.

So I was just wondering how ready the rest of you are for the holidays?  Is it just me or did they seem to come earlier this year?  Thankfully, this is my off year.  You see, we celebrate Christmas with my side of the family on Christmas Day and my husband, Jim’s side of the family on New Years. 

Every other year the celebrations are at our house.  So this is our off year, we will be travelling to Westmoreland County to my sister’s house Christmas day and then off to the eastern part of Pennsylvania to Gettysburg to my sister-in-law’s farm New Years Day, (weather permitting).

How do you celebrate the holidays at your house?  Tomorrow I’ll be back with some idea’s and tips on traveling and making sure you have some gluten free foods to eat at someone else’s house.

Mary Blackburn

Living Gluten Free

My friend, Susanne Myers, The Hillbilly Housewife, is hosting a virtual cookie exchange.  The following cookie recipe is my contribution.  I hope that you enjoy them.

                                        Gluten Free Mock Thin Mints

1 Cup Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Unsweetened cocoa powder + some extra for dusting
1/4 teaspoon Rumsford Baking Powder
6 Tablespoons butter softened to room temperature
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 Large Egg
1/2 teaspoon gluten free Vanilla extract

Sift together flour, cocoa powder and baking powder.  In a separate bowl, cream the butter & sugar until pale and fluffy with an electric mixer.  While still mixing add in the egg and vanilla.  Set mixer on low speed and slowly add flour mixture,  so as not to have it pouf out at you.  Mix on medium high speed until all ingredients are incorporated.

Dough will be very soft so cover bowl with plastic wrap and refriderate at least 1 hour or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.  With a teaspoon,  scoop up a teaspoon size piece of dough and roll in your hands to form a ball.  Place on the cookie sheets 2 inches apart.   

Dip the bottom of a glass into the extra cocoa powder and flatten dough balls into 1 1/2″ rounds (about 1/4″ thick).

Bake 8 to 10 minutes, until slightly firm to the touch, rotating cookie sheets half way through baking time.

Transfer cookies immediately to a wire cooling rack and cool completely.

Replace parchment paper on cookie sheets.

                                  Chocolate Coating for Cookies

One – 12 ounce bag semi sweet morsels
1/2 teaspoon pure peppermint extract
1 Tablespoon sweetened condensed milk
1/8 teaspoon salt

In a double boiler or a heat proof bowl,  set over (not in) a pan of simmering water, combine the chocolate morsels, peppermint extract, salt, and the sweetened condensed milk .  Heat,  stirring occasionally until smooth.

When cookies are completely cool, hold each cookie with a finger and thumb and frost with chocolate mixture.  I use the tines of a fork instead of a knife, so as not to get too much chocolate on each cookie.  Coat both top and bottom.  Place frosted cookie on parchment covered cookie sheet and repeat until all cookies are coated.

Place in refrigerator until chocolate has hardened, at least 1 hour.

Cookies can be refrigerated up to 5 days in an air tight container between layers of parchment paper.I hope you enjoy these cookies and all the others that you will find at the Virtual Cookie Exchange.

Mary Blackburn

Living Gluten Free

Today I have another recipe to make your gluten-free Halloween delicious.  I also have some more candy that I’ve found to be gluten-free.

• All Just Born Brand candies are gluten free.  That includes their Peep brand marshmellow candies, (all varieties), Mike & Ike, Teenie Beanie Jelly Beans and more.
• M & M’s, all brands except the krispy kind
• Skittles
• Tootsie Roll Industries, posts that all their candies are gluten free
• as does Ferrara Pan Candy Company
• Laffy Taffy
• Betty Crocker Halloween Fruit Flavored snacks
• Heath Milk Chocolate English Toffee small size bars
• Swedish Fish
• Snickers Bars fun size and minis
• Wonka Giant Pixy Stix
• Starburst Fruit Chews
• and Double Bubble Bubble Gum

As I come across more I’ll let you know here.

Here is another homemade treat for your tricksters.

                                            Wickedly Good Popcorn Balls

1. 4 quarts popcorn, popped
2. 2 (1 oz.) squares unsweetened chocolate
3. 2 cups granulated sugar
4. 1/2 cup light corn syrup
5. 1 cup of water

Preset the oven to 200 degrees.  Place popcorn into a large heat proof bowl and place it in the oven to keep it warm.  Put the chocolate into a heavy saucepan over low heat.  Stir constantly, and heat the chocolate for 5 minutes or until completely melted.  Stir in the sugar and corn syrup until well blended.  Add the water and stir to blend in.

Adjust the heat to medium and stir continuously until it comes to a steady boil.  Continue cooking until a candy thermometer reaches 250 degrees or hard ball stage.

Remove the popcorn from the oven and pour the chocolate mixture over the popcorn stirring to evenly coat popcorn.  When the mixture cools enough to be handled, form it into 3 inch balls.  Place popcorn balls on a wire rack to cool.

These popcorn balls are a good change from the regular popcorn balls we all grew up with.  When forming these balls, dip your hand into cold water to keep the popcorn from sticking to your hands.  Wrap the popcorn balls in plastic wrap or for a fancier look, pretty orange and black cellophane paper found at most craft stores, and tie the ends with a halloween ribbon.

We’ll be searching the aisles at the grocery store for more gluten free candy all this week, so check back often.

Mary Blackburn

Living Gluten Free

Are gluten intollerance symptoms different in children than they are in adults?  Well yes and no.

Children, like adults, can have any number of the symptoms in yesterdays post, and more.

Although celiac disease is a serious condition in adults, undiagnosed CD in children is a very real and serious health crisis.  With possibly as many as one in 80 children worldwide affected by celiac disease, it is being ranked as one of the most chronic childhood diseases affecting  children today.

Symptoms of a child with celiac disease can show up as early as three to five months after consuming gluten containing food for the first time, although for some children it can be as short as one month.  Some experts on feeding infants are recommending that solid foods not be introduced into the babys diet until almost five months old and should not be introduced to gluten containing food/cereal until after six month of age.

A celiac baby that is by all other standards ”normal”, will thrive until gluten is introduced into his diet, then he may refuse to eat and fail to gain weight.

Symptoms can and do vary from one child to another, just as they do in adults.  Some children become very sick with severe diarrhea and dehydration.  Stools may become abnormal, they may be pale in color, float because of all the air and fat in them and smell horribly.  Your celiac child may become listless, irritable, have difficulty concentrating, be cranky and if a puberty age girl, have a delayed puberty.

If you suspect your child may have celiac disease, see a gastroenterologist and have them tested.  A simple blood test, IgA antihuman tissue transglutaminase (IgA TTG) and IGA endomysial antibody immunofluoresence (IgA EMA), can give you the answers that you are looking for.  If the blood tests are inconclusive, you may need to have an endoscopy of the small intestine done.  This is a minor proceedure that can give you an absolute answer. 

However, DO NOT remove gluten from your childs diet before you have them tested.  Gluten must be present in the diet for the tests to be accurate.

Just know that celiac disease is a life long condition, but can be treated and controlled 100% by a gluten free diet.

With Halloween fast approaching, I will be talking about celebrating for the celiac child, with recipe substitutions and suggestions for trick or treating.

Mary Blackburn

Living Gluten Free

Celiac disease is a very common, yet very under diagnosed, incurable, hereditary, autoimmune disease.  Recent studies show that one  in 133 people , in the United States alone,  are affected by celiac disease.  The reason that it is so under diagnosed or misdiagnosed is because the symptoms can be so varied.

With most diseases there are a set of symptoms that are basically typical to that particular disease.  However, celiac disease has a broad spectrum of symptoms, none of which are “typical.”  Symptoms are triggered by the ingestion of gluten, the protein found in wheat, rye, barley, and sometimes oats. 

Symptoms of CD can be any one of or several of the following:  fatigue, anemia, unexplained weight loss or weight gain, skin blisters or other skin disorders, mood swings, depression, anxiety,  miscarriages, osteoporosis, irritable bowel, headaches, a bloated feeling, flatulence (gas), profuse diarrhea, severe stomach aches, joint pain, and possibly others that just haven’t been linked to CD yet.  As your body becomes more intollerant to the gluten in your diet, you may experience numbness or tingling in your face and hands.

With that wide of a variety of  symptoms, you can see why self diagnosing is so difficult.  If you experience or are experiencing any of these symptoms, check with your doctor to see if you may have CD.  You will want to ask for the following blood tests:  IgA antihuman tissue transglutaminase (IgA TTG) and IGA endomysial antibody immunofluoresence (IgA EMA).  That is a mouthful,  I know, however, these tests are currently recommended by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as being the most accurate.

Then if your blood tests positive for gluten antibodies, you will need to have a biopsy of your small intestine, to check your intestinal villi.  This is done as an outpatient procedure.

After that you go on a Gluten Free diet and feel better.

Just keep in mind, if you suspect you might have Celiac Disease, and you want an actual medical diagnosis, DO NOT start a gluten free diet before your blood test and intestinal biopsy.  You need to be eating gluten for the blood tests and biopsy to be accurate.

Tomarrow I’ll talk about different symptoms for children with celiac disease.

Mary Blackburn

Living Gluten Free

By now it is Thanksgiving 1987 and I am down to 100 pounds and beginning to feel so weak that I can hardly keep up with my family.  It takes all my strength to get my kids off to school and my husband off to work in the morning.  My house is a wreck, dishes are piling up in the sink.

I am feeling numbness in my face and tingling in my hands.  I am constantly hungry and extremely thirsty.  After I eat, I have extremely bad stomach aches and bloating.  I can’t venture too far from home due to the need of being near a bathroom at all times.

I need to go Christmas shopping for my children, but I am so weak by now that I spend most of my days in my pajamas and robe.  Nothing seems to help and my PCP really can’t tell me what is wrong.

Finally, the last straw for my husband is the weekend after Thanksgiving.  We were at my in-laws for the weekend and I just couldn’t wait to get home.  The diarrhea is almost non stop now.  If I eat, I need a bathroom, period. 

My husband tells me to call my gynecologist.  So first thing Monday morning I do.  Thankfully, he gives me the name of a gastroenterologist.  I call him, go see him, and schedule a biopsy of my small intestine.  This in itself is a miracle, because there weren’t a whole lot of Doctors with any knowledge of Celiac Disease back then.  Thank you Dr. Richard Raizman for saving my life.

The biopsy shows that the villi in my small intestine is pretty much gone.  Villi are microscopic hair like fingers in your small intestine that greatly increase the surface of your intestines so that your body can catch and absorb digested nutrients that your body needs, more efficiently.

The diagnosis, I have Celiac Disease or at that time they called it Celiac Sprue.  Basically, the food I am eating is poisoning me.  I am told I need to cut out all foods with gluten in my diet.  No bread, no pasta, no pizza, nothing with wheat, barley, rye, or oats.  At first, I really have no idea what this is going to mean for my family and I.

Then I go to the grocery store and begin reading labels.  Do you know that gluten or wheat is found in almost every processed food?   Soups, cereal, gravy, soy sauce.  It is hidden in just about everything that I have fed my family over the past 11 years that my husband and I have been married.  I am devastated.

Unlike now, store bought gluten free food is almost non-existant and what is out there is awful.  It tastes like saw dust.  When my husband and I got married I didn’t know how to cook.  His love and encouragement helped me to become a great cook.   Now I have to start all over again and re-learn how to make good food that won’t kill me.

My story continues tomarrow.

Mary Blackburn

Living Gluten Free

The year was 1987, I was a happily married 28 year old mother of 2 children, a son 9 and a daughter 8.  I had just become my daughter’s Girl Scout co-leader and we were off on our first camping trip to Girl Scout Camp Henry Kaufmann in the beautiful Laurel Mountains of Western Pennsylvania.

It was to be a 3 night 4 day trip, we were both so excited.  My family are seasoned campers, my husband and I had been camping pretty much since we first met and our children had their first camping trip when our son was 22 months old and our daughter was 6 months old.  So this was not a new thing, just that we would be staying in tents in a Girl Scout camp instead of a state campground.

Camp Henry Kaufman had it’s own full time cook and all the campers had their meals in the dining hall.  The food was great, and Cookie made all her own homemade breads and rolls for the meals.  I will later come to find out that all those great homemade glutenous breads and rolls are slowly killing me.

After day number 2, I came down with a severe case of diarrhea.  I spent a lot of time in the latrine, and sucking down large amounts of Kaopectate.  This was in the summer of ’87, the month of July to be exact and Pennsylvania was having a pretty dry season that year.  I assumed that I had picked up a case of giardia from drinking the water at camp. 

When I came home my symtoms really didn’t get any better.  I went to my primary care physician and he pretty much confirmed my thoughts on the giardia (without doing any testing).  So he gave me a stronger anti-diarrheal.  It seemed to work.

Now I have to say we were into August by now and my father-in-law had a huge garden that we pretty much ate out of all August and September.  Good things, like, fresh corn on the cob, cucumbers and onions, tomatoes, squash, zucchini,  and things like that.  Not a lot of bread or pasta meals during this time of year.  So my “problem” got better.  My conclusion…, must have been the water at camp.

However, when the seasons changed and we started eating normally again, my problem came back with a vengeance.  So back to the PCP for more anti-diarrhea medication.  Only this time it didn’t seem to work. 

I kept taking the medication, but the problem persisted.  I soon went from a healthy 135 lb woman to a tired, cranky, sick 100 lb skeleton by Thanksgiving.

Tune in tomarrow and I will give you the “Rest of the Story”.

Mary Blackburn

Living Gluten Free

Welcome to Easy Gluten Free Living, a website for Celiacs, by a celiac.  In case you stumbled upon this website by accident, let me explain to you what a celiac is.

A celiac is a person with an intollerance to gluten, protein found in just about every grain except, corn, rice and depending on who you listen to some gluten-free oats, (those processed only in a plant that does not process glutenous grains).  The reason I say depending on who you listen to follows.  I pulled this right off of the Celiac Sprue Association’s website:

“Inconclusive information exists concerning the inclusion of oats in the gluten-free diet.  Some clinical studies indicate that uncontaminated oats may be tolerated by some people with CD.  Other studies indicate that some people with CD have an immune response to oats (avenin).  Currently, there is no way to identify which people with CD may tolerate oats.  Therefore caution is advised when considering the use of uncontaminated oats in a gluten-free diet.”*

When I was diagnosed 22 years ago, I was told no wheat, barley, rye, or oats, period.  So I have basically stuck to that instruction, until recently.  However, I haven’t injested enough oats as of yet to make a decision for myself.  I’ll let you know here if I find that I am having a reaction to the “Gluten-Free Oats”.

This website will be a place for information about Celiac Disease and how to keep you or your loved one happy and healthy on a gluten free diet.

I named this site Easy Gluten Free Living because once you get over the shock and denial of being intollerant, (or as most people say “allergic”) to gluten you will find that it really isn’t that bad, just a bit inconvienient.

I hope that you will find this website informative, helpful and inspiring.  In the days and weeks to come I will be giving you meal/menu ideas to help with mealtime.

Come back often and please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Mary Blackburn

Living Gluten Free