Gluten for me? No thank you!

Having a healthy lifestyle is something I have grown up doing my whole life. It was never something that was hard for me because if I was hungry I knew what to eat since everything in my pantry was organic. Once I found out about my gluten and dairy allergy things changed for me. Suddenly it wasn’t just me being able to run to the store to buy whatever was available that was organic, I had to stop and read labels and make sure it didn’t contain anything that could potentially cause me problems. Not only am I allergic to gluten and dairy but I am also allergic to corn, beans, pork, and beef so reading these labels have become significant to me.

After finding out about the allergies I realized that I also had to learn how to cook alternative ways. With the help from my mom, we spend the summer creating new recipes or twists of my old recipes in order to help familiarize me with the new changes. For example, there is this brand of dinner rolls my mom used to buy all the time and we would use regular ingredients like butter and egg yolks. Since I am allergic to both things, we found a brand that sells what is called an egg replacer. “Egg replacer may be a commercial powdered product specifically developed as a substitute for eggs in baking, or it may be an ingredient or combination of ingredients that work to replicate the action of eggs in a recipe.” (thespruceats.com) This we use in the mix to help give it the same texture of normal dinner rolls and it works perfectly. Different ideas like this have helped me substantially as I’ve learned to cook a lot of other foods.

Primarily when asked about my allergies I usually just tell people about my gluten/dairy allergy. The response I always get is essentially the same, (“Wow what can you eat? Do you even eat?”), because people are just very un-educated. So, to walk everyone through my process, first off yes, I do eat since I am indeed a human. Next, I have a two-step routine which I use depending on if I am going out or staying in. If I go out, I usually find out where I am going to eat and then I look up the menu ahead of time in order to figure out what I can have since I never want to be holding up the group. Fresh Kitchen is usually my go-to restaurant because all of their foods are gluten-free. If I stay in and cook, I just make food the way I usually do, just with slightly different ingredients. If I am cooking with butter instead of regular butter, I use a brand called Miyoko’s which is actually a plant-based butter. The brands Follow Your Heart and Kite Hill I also use for cream cheese, or parmesan. Also, instead of, for example, having avocado toast for breakfast, I will make avocado toast on gluten-free bread. Other than a few brands changes, I usually make foods that don’t naturally carry any gluten or dairy.

At the end of the day, eating this way has just become a new lifestyle for me. It is never difficult unless I am in a place where my choices are extremely limited. Residing in Tampa has become the best solution for me because this city is already so health conscious so I never really run out of options if I ever want to go somewhere. I believe if people were just a bit more educated, having this lifestyle wouldn’t seem as such a big of an issue as it is made out to be.

Photo by: Emily Banaitis