Food Sensitivities

My wife's doctor recently suggested that some of her ailments may be related to sensitivities to some foods. A blood test confirmed that she does have sensitivities to gluten, dairy and a few other items to a lesser degree.

His suggestion was to go dairy and gluten free for a while and see how much better she might feel.

As the primary cook for our family, I was not happy to learn of my new cooking limitations.  After all, I was just feeling comfortable with the variety of wheat flours and cheeses we had incorporated into our meals.

I went kicking and screaming to our health food store in search of answers and options and my wife grabbed a bunch of cookbooks from the library.

In future posts I will write about my findings regarding individual gluten free items and brands, but for now, I want to mention that we are working our way through the "Cooking for Isaiah" cookbook with good success and rave reviews.  Many of the cookbooks I have found address one food allergy.  This one eliminates both dairy and gluten.

The things I like about this cookbook include great photography of many of the dishes.  If you are like me, I am a visual learner in cooking.  I like to know what the end product should look like.  It helps me in the preparation stages of a meal.  I also like the fact that most of these meals are family friendly, meaning that the smallest kids will love the meals.  And, many of the meals are easy to prepare and take minimal time -- or even better, can be made ahead.

What I don't like has nothing to do with the food, but rather what appear to be a significant editorial error on page 15.  Silvana shares her flour blend that is used in recipes throughout the book.  She then also adds a pancake blend version of the main blend for the waffle and pancake recipes in her book.  I am certain that rather than the 9 cups of flour blend, she really means 3.

I will start posting photos as we work our way through each recipe, but two weeks into making the various recipes, I can say that this newly purchased cookbook will be used a lot by our family.