Category Archives: Celiac Disease

Chicks Are Home…

04 Saturday Feb 2012

Posted by in Celiac Disease, Chickens, Gluten-free

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

, ,

…still alive and so am I.

I have worried over them like, well, you have to say it– a mother hen. I believe I’ve had more stress than they have. Are they eating? Why is that one sleeping so much? Is it too hot? Is it too cold? Are they pooping right?

They were peeping at the store, they peeped all the way home, and when they had been in their cage about ten minutes of sort of standing around, they all piled together and passed out. I, of course, feared some sort of instant death. I took myself off to keep busy. Fifteen minutes later my husband reported, “They’re all peeping and eating like crazy.” My response was, “Oh, they are not.” He’s such a one to tease.

Chicks first gluten-free meal

But they were. I’ve been watching them ever since, can hardly get anything done for watching them. They are chickens, for heavensake! Why are they fascinating? And the strangest thing– their little peeping makes me happy. The sound is for me like happy comfort.

They arrived earlier than expected to St. Elmo Feed and Seed, so by the time I picked them up Friday morning, they’d received over 12 hours of water and commercial chick starter. I’m sure God gave this to me so I could feel more confident. I can report, however, that they went at my gluten-free ration with eagerness. I was thrilled.

Let me pause and explain the gluten-free feed is for me– so that I don’t have to be immersed in commercial chicken feed which is filled with wheat and barley. As a celiac, I can eat all the chicken and eggs that I want to, but messing around with the feed presents hazards.

Basically, here’s the mixture we started with: cornmeal already on hand (Bob’s Mill stone ground), millet, steal cut instant oatmeal (McCann’s from Ireland that I haven’t been able to eat and could bear to toss out), alfalfa pellets put in the food processor (doesn’t work too well), brown rice, table salt, then added molasses to make sort of crumbly. They ate it quite happily, as you can see above.

Since then, I’ve learned that the babies love cracked corn softened with a small amount of water, but they do not like the feed mix dampened. I should have gotten alfalfa meal. A dish of milk did not fare well. The chicks very favorite by far, and easy, has been a mixture of cracked corn, Bob’s Red Mill cornmeal, Bob’s Red Mill rice cereal, and McCann’s steel cut oats (Bigstreetrod says, “If this keeps up our eggs will only cost us $15 a piece.”), soaked for a short while in water. Scarfed that stuff right up, as you can see.

So far, so good. We’re all learning, and we’re not dead yet.

Another Chicken Hurdle in Progress– looking for gluten-free feed

31 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Celiac Disease, Chickens, Faith, Gluten Intolerance, Gluten-free

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , ,

The coop progresses. All a learning experience. My husband is a saint.

My son telephoned. “How’s the chicken coop building comin’ along?”

“Good…only we discovered that all the chicken feed has wheat and barley in it.”

“Oh, yeah?” Great laughter ensues on the other end of the line. “You know, I guess you could expect that. I just never thought of it. Can’t you use gloves…oh, man, the dust.”

“Yep.”

I asked a gluten-intolerant friend how she handled the feed. She uses the commercial chicken starter crumbles and pellets, all with wheat, and doesn’t have too much of a problem. Her husband empties the pellets into a container for her, to hold down her exposure to the dust.

I thought: Okay, I can do that.

But I could not be easy about it. The feed–chick starter, grain, and pellet– contain what is known as wheat middlings. This is ground everything from the wheat kernel, and lots of dust. It would be around our place. I’d be cleaning the baby chicks’s cage daily, with the feed all over the newspapers and the chicks themselves. Might as well be putting poison all over and expect me to be just fine. Maybe I would wear a haz-mat suit?

Dear husband and I researched, and researched. I found a  commercial feed company that made a feed without wheat and barley, only the company was all the way out in California; price and shipping precluded this option. I actually discovered several other celiacs who wanted to raise chickens and had the same concerns. One woman chicken-raiser had discovered her celiac and that of her child last year. Being unwilling to expose gluten-containing feed to her child, she had started her spring chicks in the hen house, only to lose them to a predator.

We found more and varied homemade feed recipes than Carter has pills, and all but a couple contained wheat and barley, and most recipes seemed complicated beyond measure. Now, just where does one buy dried kelp? How natural is that for a chicken to eat?

I came to Greener Pastures website, whose author, Ronda Jemtegaard, wrote that it would be unlikely to find consistent information on making feed anywhere, since all chicken raisers have their own opinions. She advised reading all that one could, taking the information and coming up with a trial recipe that suited you. I really did not want to go to so much trouble. I wanted something easy, grabbed off the shelf in two seconds.

But I kept thinking of all the celiac and gluten-intolerant children (not to mention myself and my family) who might benefit from having a solid gluten-free recipe for their chickens and avoid a lot of worry.

And so, throughly reluctant, I am smack dab in an experiment on how to make starter gluten-free chick feed as easy as possible. Show me how, Lord.

Enter Miss Madelyn of St. Elmo Feed and Seed, St. Elmo, Alabama. Yesterday I explained my conundrum and desire. “Do you think I can make a starter feed without the gluten?”

“Of course you can,” she said. It turns out that her grandson is gluten-intolerant, and she completely understood my situation.

I gave Miss Madelyn my list of ingredients. She explained what would be best for a couple of them. She said, “You’re gonna have healthy chicks.” St. Elmo Feed and Seed dispenses the most invaluable of products– confidence.

So, the experiment begins. We get our chicks on Friday! I’ll report on the feed recipe in a month, providing I have not killed the chicks.

Dear hubby so irreverently says, “I know where they sell more.”

Wish us, and the chicks, well.

Gluten-Free Pecan Pie Bars

07 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by in Celiac Disease, Cooking, Gluten Intolerance, Gluten-free

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

I’m going to post a few of my family’s favorites, especially for my friend, Mary Ann. These are never fail, because I don’t cook anything difficult. Here’s one I adapted from The Joy of Cooking cookbook. We’ve gotten such an abundant crop of pecans this year! These bars are like mini-pecan pies, but much easier to make.

CurtissAnn’s Gluten-Free Pecan Pie Bars
You will need:
1/2 cup butter, or butter    substitute
1 1/4 cups gluten-free flour    mixture **
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon xantham gum    (optional, but helpful)
1 1/4 cup white sugar
1 whole egg
4 egg whites
2 1/4 cups finely chopped pecans
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 – 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 12 baking dish, or approximate size.

Cream together:
1/2 cup butter or butter substitute
1/4 cup of the sugar

Beat in:
1 whole egg and vanilla

Combine:
Gluten-free flour and salt. Add to butter mixture in three parts, mixing well each time. Use spatula or hands and pat and smooth into greased baking dish. Bake about 15 minutes, remove from oven.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan, beat 4 egg whites until frothy.
Mix in:
Finely chopped pecans
1 cup sugar
cinnamon

Cook this mixture over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Stir often to keep from burning. Increase heat slightly and begin stirring constantly until mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pan. You’ll be able to tell that it changes. It happens all of a sudden. Remove from heat and spread mixture evenly over the baked pastry.

Return pan to the oven and bake another 12-15 minutes. Let cool completely before slicing into bars.
** Any gluten-free mixture is fine. My mixture is loosely: 1 1/2 cup brown rice flour, 1 cup sorghum flour, 3/4 cup tapioca starch, 3/4 cup arrowroot starch.

A pecan bar (or two) and cup of tea in the afternoon is just the thing!

Blessings,
CurtissAnn

Dining Gluten-Free at Writer Conferences

25 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by in Celiac Disease, Gluten Intolerance, Writing Life

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, ,

This is actually Tom's Restaurant, NYC. Famous...

Image via Wikipedia

A few weeks ago a writer said to me that she was nervous about having to deal with eating gluten-free at an upcoming writer conference. Oh, my, did that bring back memories.

Navigating three to five days of eating out for a person with celiac disease or gluten-intolerance can be a nerve-wracking proposition. One slip, and a person can spend three days to several weeks recovering from the digestive and body ache effects of a gluten hit, as we call them. Double the stress if you are a writer and introvert, and stepping out of the comfort zone of your little cubby hole where you write and live a great deal in your mind.

Learning to navigate eating at a conference was not easy for me, but if I can do it, you can. Here are a few guidelines I follow to minimize my chance of getting ‘glutened’:

1. Ask for what you need.

You can’t receive, if you don’t ask. “People want to help you. Let them,” was one of the greatest things I heard in the beginning of my celiac journey. We all are tickled to death to help. Saying, “I need your help…I have food allergy,” gets wonderful results. Ask the waiter things like: “Do you marinate your meat?” “What spices do you use?” “Can you please check to see if there is wheat listed in the spice ingredients?” Conferences are the time to splurge on a fine, pricey restaurant, too. Chefs at the fine restaurants have had training and are able to adapt easily to your needs.

Ask for help when you register for a conference, too. If there is no place on the registration form to ask for a special meal at the luncheon or dinner banquet, contact the coordinator and explain your food needs. Most conferences will accommodate. I also recommend booking a room on the concierge floor, if possible, which usually provides a continental breakfast with a variety of fresh fruit.

2. Keep it simple.

Choose plain foods that are naturally gluten-free and say, “I have a severe allergy to wheat and must avoid eating it,” when questioning the waiter. Yes, I just say wheat. I’ve never encountered barley or rye at a restaurant, unless it is bread that I already know I cannot eat. And yes, I know celiac disease is not a simple allergy, but do not go into great detail about the condition. Eyes will glaze over.

3. Eat before you go to the banquet.

I know, a contradiction of the above about asking for help. I use this tactic if I have not made prior arrangements for special food, or if the conference cannot accommodate me, or I don’t have confidence that the food can be safe, or I just don’t feel like bothering with any of it. How do you do this? I find something at a cafe or nearby deli, or see below.

4. Pack food to take with you.

Whenever I travel, I take favorite comforts: my own favorite tea, mug, electric tea kettle, even metal utensils and cloth napkins. I also take packets of instant quinoa hot cereal, plastic containers of gluten-free cookies and muffins, jam, and even little containers of canned fruit. For an emergency, a tin of Vienna sausage. (When attending my very first conference banquet after being diagnosed, not at all knowing how to deal with the situation, I actually pulled a tin of Vienna sausage from my purse and ate it at the table, totally supported by a helpful writer friend.

Small matters:
Avoid scrambled eggs on breakfast buffets; they often have flour added. Remember restaurants can use soy sauce in their steak marinates. Rice pilaf in a restaurant can have wheat or barley added.

Have a great time!

blessings,
CurtissAnn

May is National Celiac Awareness Month. You can find out more info by visiting the links listed at the bottom of the page.

Related articles