A Few Words About Wheat Allergy vs. Celiac Disease

Don't worry, this isn't going to be a dissertation about allergies and celiac disease.  Just more of a disclaimer.  Since my husband is allergic to wheat, as opposed to having celiac disease, I have a lot more "wiggle room" than those cooking for celiac.  Eating wheat for a person with celiac disease can potentially be fatal.  There are lots of helpful sites online with loads of information about celiac disease:  how to identify it, how to find out for sure if you have it, what foods (besides wheat and other gluten-containing grains) to watch out for, etc., etc.  With celiac, it's even best to have cooking dishes (and especially a breadmaker) dedicated to only non-gluten foods. 

With a wheat allergy, all the above is not necessarily the case.  In talking to friends who have gluten intolerance/allergy, it seems that every person reacts in different ways to different foods; what one person can tolerate, another can't, for example.  So, at least initially, it's a lot of trial and error to find out what does or does not cause a reaction.  And unless you have the type of allergic reaction that causes anaphylactic shock, while the allergic response may be very unpleasant, it's usually not life threatening.

You may have noticed in my first post that I said my husband was also allergic to milk, and then in my second post included recipes containing buttermilk.  That's because we have discovered, through trial and error, that it is just the whey in milk that he reacts to, so he can tolerate almost all cheeses (yahoo!) because the whey is removed in making cheese and he also does fine with buttermilk and canned milk used in cooked food (I have no idea why, but I'm grateful).  So there you go.  If it's allergies you're working with, you have a lot of experimentation ahead of you, but you may also have a much more lenient diet at the end.  If you have celiac disease, not so much.  One thing I've noticed is that there are very few people with just one food allergy.  If you have one, it's very likely you've got several and just don't know it yet.  So, some of my recipes may work for you and some may not, depending on your particular set of allergies.  The good news is that there is usually a substitution that can be made to make it work for you, so don't give up!