About

Pat at Elegantly, Gluten-FreeHi, my name is Pat, and I’d like to thank you for visiting my site.

When I first had to go gluten-free, it seemed like being in a prison, not being able to eat gluten anymore.  I was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2000, after learning how to cook gluten-free for my mother-in-law.  She’d had to go gluten-free five years earlier.  (She was no blood relation, of course, so I was really in denial about that at first!  “No, Doctor, you must be wrong — that’s my mother-in-law who has that!”)

When I started cooking for her in 1995, there was maybe 5% of the information that is available now – a few books, barely anything on the internet – you can imagine how different it was.  My best resources were a binder of notes from the registered dietician who trained us, plus some Xeroxed copies of recipes shared with a few other celiacs we knew.  My mother-in-law tried almost everything in Bette Hagman’s cookbook, The Gluten-Free Gourmet (first edition).

Then I found Scott Adams’ Celiac.com, which helped immensely.  At first it was a huge help just to have the lists of non-gluten-free and gluten-free foods.   Now it has so much more — still one of my favorite resources.

After the struggle of getting my mother-in-law’s diet, and then mine, under control, we realized how hard it was going to be to enjoy eating with non-celiac people.  After spending our whole adult lives cooking for our families, punctuated by frequent pot lucks, carry-ins and family get-togethers, suddenly we had hardly anyone who wanted to share what we could eat.  That proved to be much harder on us than the limitations to our own diets.

I love my husband, my family, my dog…and cooking.  But, when I was diagnosed with celiac disease, I learned a whole different aspect of cooking.  I realized it wasn’t so much what the food was, but who was sharing it.

I have found that people with food allergies can share good times enjoying good food that even people on unrestricted diets will enjoy…because it makes no excuses.  It’s a little harder to find, but it’s still food that’s delicious!

Now my goal is to help other people on gluten-free diets who cook for a whole family (or office, or crowd…) of those who eat regular food.

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