When Amélie was first dia­gnosed it all seemed fairly straight for­ward, just fol­low a glu­ten free diet, great, how hard could that be?! Oh dear, were we in for a shock! Shopping was no longer just buy­ing your usual ingredi­ents with a few treats now and then, oh no, shop­ping now entailed first, find­ing the Free‐from aisle, which believe me in some shops is not as easy at it sounds. Secondly, read­ing the ingredi­ents list, whether it says Gluten Free or not (you can never be too care­ful) and lastly, will Amélie actu­ally like it!

I was amazed that whenever I read the list of ingredi­ents on the major­ity of glu­ten free products there would usu­ally be a high con­tent of sugar. We soon real­ized this was to try and add fla­vour to quite bluntly, what were bland and card­board like products. Not only that, but they were and still are, incred­ibly expens­ive. Amélie was only 2 yrs old when she was dia­gnosed, this means that she doesn’t know the taste of the equi­val­ent glu­ten con­tain­ing products, we do and we are not pre­pared to just accept them.

After hav­ing Billy, our second child, I took some time off work, so, I used some of this time to join Facebook and Twitter and try and find other fel­low Coeliacs and recipes. Wow! I found a whole new world, a very under­stand­ing and sup­port­ive world. I’ve found web­sites which con­tain some fant­astic, easy recipes and inform­a­tion on dif­fer­ent ingredi­ents, essen­tial to the coeliac diet and ones I had never heard of before. I can chat to people, ask ques­tions and get answers. Also, I have found Coeliac bakers, chefs, and small busi­nesses which provide deli­cious tast­ing glu­ten free products.(see Cakes the Biscuit) Their stand­ards are high and their food is won­der­ful. Amélie will be able to under­stand and appre­ci­ate the true fla­vour of food.

Take a look at the Coeliac Links page for the web­sites and blogs I par­tic­u­larly like. I will be adding more as I find them. Enjoy – thanks for read­ing.