Learning to Cook Again

I have always loved to cook for others and was devastated to find out that it would no longer be the way I wanted it to be. Most people visiting my site see the beautiful food, recipes shared, and decorated tables. They do not know the challenges that I had to face to get here. 

Shortly after getting married, I had allergy testing done and found out that I could not have wheat or hazelnuts. The hazelnuts I could live without, but wheat was in everything. Needless to say, I was shocked at these results! I cried when I began to research what foods contained wheat. Oh, it’s so much more than you can imagine. The first time I went to the grocery store after finding this out turned into a 3 hour shopping trip that left me incredibly discouraged. Just the time it took to read the ingredients on the labels was extremely overwhelming; there was not a gluten-free section at the time.

The first event that I attended was a baby shower for a friend. I was so excited to celebrate this day with them, however I had not even thought about the food. I stood there with my plate surveying the delicious looking display and quickly realized that there was nothing on the table that I could eat. I became painfully aware that my allergy changed everything. I was still navigating learning how to feed myself and I could not expect that anyone else had prepared food for me either. In the South, events are all centered around food and this was a painful, unintentional isolation that I had not accounted for.

At the next event, I got smarter. I thought that I would a bring a vegetable tray, so I had something quick and easy to bring and enjoy. I asked the hostess if I could bring a dish due to my food allergy and she was relieved that I was going to bring something that I could have as well. After two hours of munching like a rabbit, I realized that veggie trays would not be enough. The second lesson that I learned from this was to bring something that I really enjoyed because it may be all that I get to eat.

The more that people learned about my food allergy, the more I realized that they had no idea how to accommodate me. They were just as unsure about how to feed me as I was when I started this journey. As a teacher by training, I saw an opportunity to help people understand gluten-free living. It was hard to explain to people what I could eat because they were so worried about accidentally making me sick. I knew that I had to find a way to help.

I mourned how things used to be, but I had to figure out what could be. I sat down with my husband and together we worked to make menus centered around naturally gluten-free foods. Ah, the shift in perspective made such a difference. Once I started looking at real foods, I began to see all the foods I could have instead of what I couldn’t. Over the last ten years, this change in how I viewed food was vital to embracing this new way of living and marked the beginning of this chapter in my story.

Now, after years of navigating these situations and several journals worth of recipes, I want to not only teach people to cook, but I want to teach people to cook, entertain in an allergy friendly way, and do so spectacularly. I’m still learning! Every day has some new challenge, but I have found the joy that I had lost when I started this journey.