One Sunday while attending mass at Chicago’s Old St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, we’ve discovered that faith-based communities are increasingly becoming health-aware. Low-gluten Communion hosts, suitable for most Celiacs, are now available at Old St. Pat’s at all Masses as an alternative for those who cannot receive regular Communion host due to health reasons. One just has to inform the Mass coordinator before Mass begins and at Communion identify himself or herself to the presider as the person to receive the low-gluten host.

Apparently, this option is a viable solution to a long-standing problem, at least in the Catholic Church. Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, wrote about this issue (more…)

Blueberry muffins have been a fetish of mine since I was a child. They are a handy on-the-go snack that freeze very nicely. I make bulk batches when I get the urge and then freeze them for future use.

After several unsuccessful attempts I have finally figured out how to make them light and moist. Rather than use sugar and a liquid, I substitute with maple syrup (honey tends to make them brown too fast) and I use 1/3 part almond flour in my muffin mix. I have used both fresh and frozen blueberries but I prefer fresh, folding them in after the batter is fully mixed. (more…)

When you’re on a restricted diet, you’ve got built in limits. For those of us who are gluten-free, alternative flours are an expensive fact of life.

I’ve tried both store bought and homemade flour mixes. I like quinoa flour, brown rice flour, and almond meal for various purposes.

But there’s another flour I really like for baking that you might not find at your local health food store: coconut flour. (more…)

If you are looking for something different, here’s a quick and easy way to cook sweet potatoes that’s not the same old mashed, or Thanksgiving sweet. (more…)

I waited until the last minute to get together something for my son’s Mother’s Day Tea Party. Wanting to make these cookies as healthy as possible by avoiding all sugars, even maple syrup, I decided to check out Pecanbread.com, a website devoted to helping folks following a Specific Carbohydrate Diet. There I found a handful of recipes. One in particular peaked my interest because I had all the ingredients for it on hand. This was my first attempt to bake cookies without any flour or sugar and I was very surprised at the results. The kids loved them, and for anyone not familiar with the SCD diet, as it is often referred as, this recipe is gluten-free, corn-free, dairy-free, soy-free, and Feingold approved. Oh, and one last thing I forgot to mention–delicious! (more…)

If you have issues with sensitive skin, and especially if you have recently been diagnosed with allergies or intolerances, you may want to take a long look at your soaps, deodorants, perfumes, and cosmetics bag and perhaps do a little purging this weekend. Many favorite name brand cosmetics and personal products are full of common allergens and known cancer causing toxins. After having had a few strange reactions after using popular drugstore brands over the years I finally switched to high end cosmetics only to find that even those irritated my skin. I soon became an occasional makeup wearer, but now there are better options available for women with sensitive skin and known allergies. Not only will your complexion improve, and your confidence, but you may actually feel healthier too. (more…)

If you have a full time job and are attempting your major allergy-friendly cooking on the weekends, then this recipe is just the thing you need for a fast semi-homemade meal in no time at all. From start to finish you can have this one on the table in 30 minutes, thanks to Eden Organics two awesome gluten and corn-free prepared canned items: Caribbean Rice and Beans, and Diced Tomatoes. This dish is also naturally dairy, egg, and soy free. Traditionally a spicy dish, my three boys ate this tasty lunch in stride with a touch of added honey.

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We like to make oatmeal once a week, now that we’ve been gluten-free for a year. There is a lot of controversy on the use of oats in a gluten-free diet, but several new studies have proved that as long as the oats are Elisa batch tested and are certifiably free from cross-contamination they are perfectly fine for celiacs.

Today there are several companies offering gluten-free oats in both Canada and the States, so do check out whether or not your local grocer would be willing to carry one or more brands for you. This dish is great for a weeknight. Yes, you heard me right. I said weeknight. Just simply dump all the ingredients into a 2 quart slow cooker just before you go to bed; set it on low and in the morning your breakfast is ready. This is the favorite breakfast dish in our house.

Our version is naturally corn-free, soy-free, and dairy-free. (more…)

So what do you do when Lay’s decides to add corn oil to your only safe corn-free vending machine junk food snack? Well, you start to think outside the box a little. We know there are other chips on the market that offer the consumer a corn-free experience, such as Cape Cod or Miss Vickie’s Vintage chips. But let’s face it, these are high end chips, and worse yet they don’t come in convenient individual sized bags for on the go allergy sufferers. We needed an alternative for our rainy day munchies and a fun and fattening episode of Paula Dean’s Home Cooking put some ideas into my little chef’s head. He decided we should deep fry something too. I wanted to chalk it full of veggies if I could, so I settled on three lovely and large sweet potatoes. (more…)

If you have drooled over the Starbucks bakery display or have dreamed of having just one more scone again, I am here to tell you that it is time to wake up and get cooking! Little chef and I bought a scone pan from Nordicware while at our local Dominick’s store, a Safeway affiliate. It wasn’t cheap, and I hesitated to buy it, but at the last minute I gave in to my little chef’s cajoling.

This morning we decided it was time to try it out. The pan is made out of heavy cast aluminum and it makes eight large triangular shaped scones. We altered the recipe supplied by Nordicware and had tremendous success! All three boys thought it was delicious, and I even caught little chef picking the crumbs off of his plate. I think our version was a bit on the sweet side (well at least for our tastes, as we have been low sugar for about a year now). But it may be perfectly suitable for the average sweet-tooth. To put it into perspective, my diagnosed son wanted to know why we were allowed to eat dessert for breakfast….. (more…)