Why CELEBRATE? I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in 2008 - two days before Thanksgiving! "The Holidays" in my family start with Thanksgiving and don't stop until New Year's Day - of course all of our traditional favorites are gluten laden. Everyone just knew that "the news" was going to ruin everything for me but...
Let's go back - TEN WHOLE YEARS - that's how long I had been telling doctors that something was wrong before I finally self-diagnosed, a hard to find, colon cancer and resigned myself to the fact that I would probably never live long enough for a physician to find it and start treatment. You see where I am going here - to be finally told that I had Celiac and the "cure" was to give up gluten, well, let me tell you that was definitely cause to CELEBRATE or so I thought.
Now granted I had very little idea of what gluten was exactly. Bread? Right? If I gave up bread all would be fine - NOT! Little did I know that this, whatever it was, would show up in virtually everything in my life from my morning cereal to my makeup to my daughter's play doh. LOL, my celebration was getting rained on big time. After making a couple of what my granny used to call cry pies (whining, groaning, etc.) reality came back and as they say the truth shall set you free - all I had to do was remember how scared and frustrated I was before the diagnosis and it was again time to CELEBRATE.
I started hanging out at the book store and the library along with lengthy trips cruising down the Route 66 of cyber space and discovered lots of the gluten-free recipes called for 2 or more times the ingredients, considerable more prep time and the cost was often not justifiable. Pollyanna's smile was slipping. My lifestyle, like most of us, made time a highly prized commodity - this was not good! I love my family, I like to cook but I certainly didn't plan on preparing two different meals every time we sat down to eat. Somehow, some way I would cook one meal and we would all enjoy it - dang it! Transform Pollyanna into Sherlock Holmes... and here we go again - I wasn't dying - CELEBRATE
Lifestyle change and new diet - CELEBRATE
I wasn't dying (worth saying twice) - CELEBRATE
And thus a blog is born with the hopes that others with this diagnosis will be able to make the transition with ease and joy while finding their own reasons to
CELEBRATE
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