Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Gluten Free Girl


I started reading Gluten Free Girl by Shauna James Ahern after stumbling upon the glutenfreegirl blog site. She has beautiful pictures, heart warming stories and healthy recipes. I recently started teaching the Celiac Disease classes at work, something I really did not know much about but needed to find out about quickly (and that is how I found Shauna's site). I knew Celiac Disease involved a gluten free diet but I had no idea how involved avoiding gluten can be. I started reading this book not really expecting much except to hear about one person's experience with Celiac Disease (I actually expected it to be a dismal story to be honest). I was totally amazed and completely surprised by this book. It is really not the story of a Celiac Disease sufferer but actually the story of someone who almost looses her life due to a car accident and health problems, only to regain her life by falling completely in love with food. Real food. Healthy, fresh, flavorable, enjoyable food. For her this also involved learning how to avoid gluten, but really this book is about finding the joy in food and treating your body well through preparing healthy food. It is an excellent book for anyone who loves food or wants to begin loving food, loves the Seattle area (as that is where much of the book is set), loves true stories about real people, and of course for anyone who has Celiac Disease. I highly recommend this book and if you are not much of a book reader then check out the blog because it is equally good!