It was our dad who taught both of us to cook, simple dishes at first—like the scrambled eggs he taught Jessie to make when she was five years old, or the simple butter cookie recipe he shared with Jilly’s elementary school class—and then on to more complex flavors and dishes. It was so easy, and so natural—a father sharing his acquired knowledge and passion for food, and passing down long-cherished family recipes to his daughters.
Until one day we literally couldn’t eat them anymore. In 2001, after traditional physicians had failed to alleviate her persistent symptoms, Jessie visited a naturopathic doctor and was diagnosed with a gluten sensitivity. Sure enough, after she’d identified the culprit and modified her diet, her symptoms disappeared. Jilly was diagnosed with celiac disease in February of 2004. She had struggled health-wise for years and was constantly misdiagnosed with everything from irritable bowel syndrome to iron deficiency. It wasn’t until she visited a new doctor in London that the answer was revealed. After hearing her symptoms, he suggested a simple blood test that confirmed celiac disease. Once she’d switched to a strictly gluten-free diet, Jilly’s life improved by leaps and bounds. Her illnesses started to fade, her health quickly returned, and she felt something she hadn’t in a long time: energy!
We’ll be honest: it wasn’t always easy adjusting to a gluten-free lifestyle. We needed to change the way we ate and the way we cooked and to learn to plan ahead and pay attention to ingredients in ways we never had before. However, our quality of life improved so dramatically that we saw our diagnoses as a blessing, not a curse. The generally accepted statistic is that 1 in every 133 people have celiac disease. Yet, as many as 97 percent don’t even know it! This number does not include the thousands of others who are gluten intolerant but do not have full-fledged celiac disease.