This past Friday, I received my copy of Shauna James Ahern’s & Danny Ahern’s new cookbook and memoir, Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: A Love Story with 100 Tempting Recipes and I cannot say enough good things about it. I went through page by page, really looking at all the recipes and I can’t wait to start cooking from it. I think I am most excited about trying my hand at homemade gluten-free pasta and a tart of some sort.
Shauna’s blog and her first book, Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back…And How You Can Too, both really changed the way I look at gluten-free cooking and really, cooking in general. I have found so many great ingredients and grains that I never knew existed, let alone had tasted. I have been gluten-free for over 5 years and I am eating better now than I ever have. I know this new cookbook is going to do more of the same for me and hopefully for you, too. Whether you are gluten-free or not, there are some wonderful recipes in here that will allow you to experiment with new ingredients and you never know when you’ll need to cook for a gluten-free friend.
Do you want to a win a copy of this book?? All I want to know is what has changed the way you look at cooking? Tell me a story about a family member, a book, whatever! Leave a comment here on this blog post. I will choose a winner at random (using random.org) on Monday, October 4, 2010 at 12pm EST.
I can’t wait to hear your stories! Oh and stay tuned, I will have a couple more fun giveaways happening in the next month or so.
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Thank you to everyone that entered to win a copy of Shauna James Ahern’s & Danny Ahern’s new cookbook and memoir, Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: A Love Story with 100 Tempting Recipes. Reading all of your stories was so inspiring.
Congrats to the winner, Val R. who was chosen at random today at 12pm EST (using random.org).
Val, please contact me via email at beth.manos {at} mac.com with your shipping information and I will get the book out to you, ASAP.
Stay tuned for more giveaways in the near future. Thank you so much for sharing your stories and reading my blog. 🙂
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25 Responses
Thank you so much for spreading the word! We’re so happy that you’re excited about the cookbook. I can’t wait to see what you cook.
What’s changed the way that I’ve looked at cooking is the influence of my friend, Claire. She used to work at a farmer’s market, and now has an internship at Slow Foods in Brooklyn. She’s changed the way that I approach food, making me use fresher, more diverse ingredients and consider where my food comes from before I put it in my mouth! Now I’ve become a vegetable and farmer’s market fan!!
After two years of dealing with a mystery illness, I was finally diagnosed with Fructose Intolerance in 2009. Unfortunately there just isn’t a lot of information out there about Fructose Intolerance. Hopefully that will change as more and more people are discovering they are Fructose Intolerant. I imagine that six years ago when you went Gluten Free you maybe had a similar experience; that there wasn’t as much Gluten Free information and products as there is today. I do a ton of research on my own to try and find the best way to manage my symptoms. I try to cook most meals at home and am way more conscious about what is in my food and where my food comes from. In addition to adapting a Low Fructose diet, I’ve also found that I tend to feel better when I eat less Gluten and Dairy. I wish I could eat Gluten Free and Vegan all the time, but I’m just not that disciplined!
My husband was diagnosed with Celiac 3 years ago (when we were dating), and it brought us closer together in that we began cooking more together, creating meals, experiencing experimental disasters (and laughing over them), and approaching the gluten-free lifestyle as an adventure, rather than a chore!
Living in Buffalo for the past nine years has changed the way I look at cooking. With great shopping options like Wegmans, the Lexington Co-op and the Bidwell Farmers’ Market, variety and quality are abundant. Also, the numerous non-chain restaurants in the area offer a lot of ideas for meals to try at home!
I have loved cooking ever since I was little. My gran has cooked everything from scratch since I can remember, and I was always in the kitchen trying to learn everything! I love food probably more than I should, haha, and lately, I am only satisfied when I do the cooking. I love experimenting, and I will try anything! I can’t wait to learn more from this cookbook, and healthy recipes are what I need!
My grandmother forever changed the way I think about (and cook) food when she taught me how to make pasta sauce, pesto, eggplant parmigiana and pasta from scratch — all the way her mother taught her when she was a little girl growing up in Italy. She taught me the beauty of using fresh, simple ingredients and how you can make something poetic out of a few vegetables and herbs.
I’ve recently started experimenting with gluten free after I found out that my sister in-law’s food allergies have progressed to being gluten intolerant. She already is vegan due to egg and milk allergies and having to take gluten from her diet as well has been a challenge.
My friend has become gluten intolerant and I need to get my head around the range of food that we can eat when we lunch together. I keep making suggestions that are wrong, which is awkward for both of us. As well, I have diabetes and am looking for tasty ways to reduce my carbohydrate intake. This cookbook (and your blog!) look like a great combination of solutions.
My mother raised us on home cooked meals every single night, no matter how busy life got. She taught me that an easy dinner can always be made from scratch, with fresh ingredients and that it wasn’t that hard to do. I always make time for fresh food no matter how busy I am. This is why I love your blog, you prove that making homemade meals with fresh and seasonal ingredients is possible and easy, no matter how busy you are, and it seems you and your hubby stay very busy. Good for you! Thanks for sharing your recipes.
My sister was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in the last year and has to follow a strict gluten-free diet. The only problem is, she hates to cook and thinks cooking is going to be even harder now. I love to cook and have made it my mission to help her to love it, too. She has changed the way I look at cooking because I now look at each ingredient differently, and have even started to pay attention to packaged food more than I ever have before. I’d love to win this book to not only make some of the recipes for her, but show her just how easy it is to do it herself and hopefully give her the confidence to get into the kitchen and get to creating. Thank you.
Thank you to everyone that entered to win a copy of Shauna James Ahern’s & Danny Ahern’s new cookbook and memoir, Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: A Love Story with 100 Tempting Recipes. Reading all of your stories was so inspiring.
Congrats to the winner, Val R., who was chosen at random today at 12pm EST (using random.org).
Val, please contact me via email at beth.manos {at} mac.com with your shipping information and I will get the book out to you, ASAP.
Stay tuned for more giveaways in the near future. Thank you so much for sharing your stories and for reading my blog.
My food allergies have changed my view of cooking in general. But what motivated me the most on cooking from scratch is all the junk they put in ready-made foods these days. When you cook the food yourself, you know exactly what goes in it. Thanks for doing the giveaway!!!
Many things have changed the way I cook/eat/relate to food. The first was when I was 16 and diagnosed with hypoglycemia. The latest was last month, when I took a vow to eat a vegan diet for 30 days (I am normally an omnivore). I learned so much about vegetables and fruits and legumes and herbs.
My best friend suspects she is celiac and so I am, for support, also going on a gluten-free diet, as she eliminates it from her diet, probably for a couple of weeks at least.
So many experiences, so little time. 😉
Thanks for the possibility to win the book. I bet it’s great!
A few years back I went gluten free. I’d had digestive issues most of my life, unable to figure out what the root cause of them were, mostly thinking it was lactose intolerance but frustrated because cutting it out didn’t make me feel any better. When I started getting hives and headaches chronically too I decided to do some heavier investigating. I purchased a book called The False Fat diet and for the first time ever in my life I found out that wheat/gluten could be an allergen. Immediately I cut it out of my diet, eating only fresh non-processed foods and within a week I felt so much better that I knew I’d found the culprit. Sure enough I tested it a few times, reintroducing it into my diet… mostly out of weakness and temptation, and each time my symptoms came right back. So here I am over 7 years later, gluten free and feeling so much better. I’m much more aware now of what goes into my body than I ever was and I’m glad I can provide very healthy natural meals for my family. That book forever changed the way I cook in the kitchen.
babyfro97 at gmail dot com
What changed the way I look at food – and then how I cooked it – was going to the farmer’s market with a friend and seeing how much better everything looked there. I started making a point to use fresh ingredients whenever possible, and the difference it makes has really amazed me.
I found out 5 years ago that I was allergic to milk, wheat, corn, and soy. Add to that a healthy dose of lactose and gluten intolerance and you can imagine my knee jerk response. I’ll never eat again, right? So so wrong. Within 5 days of giving up the foods I was allergic to, I felt better. In fact, the last time I could remember feeling that good was sometime in early elementary school 30 some years before. I have a new appreciation for foods I never tried in my eat anything days (goat and sheep cheese, portabello mushrooms, onions, lentils, etc.) and a better understanding for why some things everyone else eats with no trouble make me miserable. Sure, I hate that grocery shopping is a long ardurous, expensive, process but I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.
Discovering the world outside my home and upbringing really changed the way I look at cooking. Growing up the majority of our meals were prepared foods, microwavable junk, Hamburger Helper. Striking out on my own allowed me to explore healthier options and new dishes and cuisines
Traveling to other countries has changed the way I look at cooking. Each culture has a different view on food, their own rituals, and their own amazing recipes.
When my husband went to culinary school, we had already gone gluten free, but we were somewhat limited in what we were eating and cooking. Mostly sticking to the decent stuff available at the grocery store and natural food store.
During his culinary training, we had a chance to sample so many flavors and ideas that we hadn’t previously encountered. We’re much more inventive and excited about food now. And eating gluten free is so much more tasty when you have a chef to make waffles, bagels, and more. I think we also realized how many things are naturally gluten free and have been gravitating towards cooking wholesome, uncomplicated food.
The day I realised that mashed potatoes come from actual potatoes rather than flakes from a box! I was a teenager- too old to have never had the real thing, but I have loved cooking everything from whole, real ingredients since then and have never looked back!
The last few months I’ve been cutting out all processed foods, getting back to natural foods. I had a piece of my son’s birthday cake and within minutes was back to the old feelings of instant stopped up head, plus I wanted more, more, more. I find that if I don’t start eating sweets and refined sugars, I don’t want them, but once I start, I begin to crave them again. I’ve gone gluten free and rashes that I had disappeared, I have more energy and overall just feel so much better that I sometimes can’t believe it.
I’ve always loved to cook, as I grew up in an Italian family where it was a rite of passage. In the last year or so, I have discovered that wheat is the source of many of my childhood stomachaches and have been even more conscious of what I eat, including the sources of my food. I’ve also cut out sugar for the most part and found that it really impacts how I feel. Alot of the food I cook for myself is mostly vegetarian and gluten-free, and when I share this food with others they can’t believe how good eating this way (and making your own food) can be!
I spent time studying food in Italy and that most certainly changed how I looked at ingredients, cooking and meals. Food is definitely a celebration, a way to connect with others while nourishing yourself. Its still sustenance, but of a richer kind. When I found out I couldn’t eat gluten, that definitely wavered. It’s books like Shauna’s that bring back those sentiments. I want to cook food that anyone would be happy to eat, gluten or not. Thanks for the giveaway!
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