About - Our Story

 

In 1996, I married a young, bright, enthusiastic woman and we began planning for a hopeful future and a large family.  It soon became clear, however, that we were not completely in control of our destiny.  While she was in graduate school, Angela’s health took a slow but progressive turn for the worse.  After several months of fatigue, digestive symptoms and unexplained aches and pains, even more symptoms emerged: rashes, hair loss, peripheral neuropathies (tingling in fingers/toes), muscle weakness, numbness and pain, headaches, and then a complete shutdown of her reproductive system.  Countless doctor visits with numerous specialists followed.  Their diagnoses included Epstein Barr Syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, undetectable Lyme Disease, adrenal dysfunction and multiple sclerosis, yet no tests were conclusive. Angela continued to work and to plod through each day, but she was beginning to forget what it felt like to be “well.”  Some days were so bad that she opted to take out life insurance at the age of twenty nine.  Instead of planning for a baby and decorating a nursery, we began contemplating her seemingly eventual funeral.  After nearly three years of suffering, a family member sent us an article, detailing a digestive disorder called Celiac Disease.  That started the ball rolling.

 

Celiac disease, as explained by Peter H.R. Green, M.D., Director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University, is a multi-system disorder which begins in the small intestine.  The disease is triggered by gluten, the primary protein found in wheat, barley and rye grains, which causes an immune inflammatory response in the cells that line the small intestine and result in the flattening of the intestinal villi. The damage caused in the small intestine renders the body unable to absorb nutrients properly, causing a general malabsorption which leads to varied and complex physical symptoms.  Celiac disease is now considered one of the most common, and under-diagnosed hereditary autoimmune disorders in the United States.  Treatment is easy: no medicine, no therapy, just strict life-long adherence to a gluten free diet.  

 

This sounded simple enough,  so Angela decided to give it a try.  Day one without bread, pasta, cereal, pastries, cake, muffins, etc. wasn’t too bad, and so she began day two, similarly, with eggs and bacon for breakfast, chicken and carrots for lunch and grilled fish, baked potato and beans for dinner.  As early as day two on the diet, the symptoms began disappearing.  By days three and four, there was no going back… the headaches were gone, the numbness had ended, digestion was normal, fingernails began growing and her spirits were lifting.  Within three months of no gluten, her gut and body were healing and the hormones that had shut down were beginning to be produced again.  It became clear that Angela had adult onset celiac disease, and our hope of resuming normal life activities, and of one day having a family, were back on the horizon.  It did, however, take nearly four years of strict adherence to the gluten-free lifestyle (along with the prayers of our priests and our friends) to finally conceive, but with no doctors and no drugs involved!  And so, every day we revel in our beautiful, healthy young sons, Joseph Anthony and Andrew Robert.

 

Angela has always said that she doesn’t miss wheat and gluten, and that nothing could taste good enough to make her want to ingest it again.  But I couldn’t help notice her wistful look when we passed by a bakery, or when various dishes like soups or pasta dishes arrived in a restaurant, or at Thanksgiving dinner when Grandma dished out the stuffing.  Once in awhile I heard, “Gee,  that banana bread smells great,” or “I wish I could have a bowl of clam chowder,” and “Remember when I could eat chocolate cream pie?”  And so, with a life-long love of cooking, a culinary arts degree from Johnson & Wales University and the desire to create good gluten -free meals and desserts to keep my wife healthy, I dove into experimenting.  Using various combinations of chestnut, sorghum, tapioca, corn and rice flours, as well as many of the gluten-free products on the market today,   I began to develop a repertoire of dishes that Angela could eat.  I eventually began conducting gluten-free cooking demonstrations for support groups, friends and natural food stores such as Wild Oats and Whole Foods.  At the demos, I often posed the question to those in the crowd:  If I were to create a cookbook what kind of dishes would you be interested in making?  “We want to know everything—how to make easy soups, appetizers, entrees and desserts!” was always the answer.