After the whole work debacle, I was spending a lot of time at home during the day, not just taking care of myself, but trying to figure out how to proceed with this huge undertaking. One day, I had the TV on and was watching a popular morning show. They mentioned some new diet book and something about celiac disease. Then they put up a graphic of the word celiac—only it was spelled CILIAC. They spelled it wrong! Obviously, nobody fact-checked the graphic. It wasn’t even the British spelling of the word (which is “coeliac”). They went on to talk about a new diet, and how taking gluten out would make you lose weight. They mentioned celiac in terms of taking out the gluten. The irresponsibility about this disease was everywhere! Making this out to be some diet plan was a whole mess on its own, but to spell it wrong? It all felt like a joke. It made this whole disease feel like a big joke.
Another time, on the same program, one of the hosts was talking about what she would like to see in a partner. I remember her saying something about not wanting a man who’s a finicky eater and all gluten-free and stuff. I don’t want my man asking for gluten-free, I want a man who can eat a big steak! Or something like that. It was a really insensitive comment, and after a reaction from the celiac community, she did apologize on the air, which was wonderful. But it dawned on me that people don’t see celiac disease as a real illness.
These people were all rational, intelligent, successful people, even doctors, but they all had a problem understanding this, and it’s very hard to know what to do in the face of that. I have to believe that people just don’t fully get how much a comment like that hurts. I’m not picking on anyone in particular because the misinformation is everywhere. It’s on talk shows and news shows and the Internet, and it gets passed from person to person like bad gossip. It’s been the butt of jokes in the media, from comedians, and even in movies. I get why people say those things—I really do. “Gluten-free” is trendy right now, and everything trendy is a source of ridicule, but the fact is, that for some people, giving up gluten isn’t a trend or a fad, and we would love to be able to eat foods containing gluten. But we can’t because of what it will do to us. It will cause serious harm and there is nothing funny about that.
When people make those flippant comments, what they don’t realize is that comments like that are painful and humiliating, and make us feel worse than we already feel. Imagine some guy who has celiac disease thinking, “I guess no woman will want to go to a restaurant with me. She’ll think I’m being pretentious.” Or worse yet, “Maybe I don’t seem like a man. Maybe I shouldn’t ask about the steak, and just eat it however it’s prepared. I might get really sick, but at least people won’t be annoyed at me.”
Sad, but this is how it feels all the time. Even worse, though, it makes others believe that being gluten-free is not a real necessity. Then, waitstaff get flippant about your dietary requests. It seems like every restaurant suddenly has a gluten-free sign without actually knowing how serious they need to be about avoiding cross-contamination. Unmonitored food companies slap “gluten-free” on their product labels without fully realizing what that entails. It’s not just about replacing wheat flour with rice flour. It’s so much more, but the more this disease is ridiculed and brushed aside in the media, the less seriously everyone takes it, including those who provide the food we need to eat.
The truth is that there are a lot of celiacs out there, and life itself is difficult enough without having to contend with this kind of callous attitude. This makes things worse for the whole celiac community. I don’t think anybody is being purposefully cruel or even purposefully dismissive of anyone’s health issues. It’s just mis-education and misinformation about this disease. I guarantee you that nobody who has celiac disease wants it or chose it or enjoys living this way. We would all give up a lot to have it disappear, yet the mainstream ignorance about it makes life a hundred times worse than it already is.
But as I sat there in my living room, staring with dropped jaw at the television, I realized my first impulse was to get online and go to the celiac forums or write a blog about what I’d just heard. That would raise some awareness, but how was that going to change the situation? I would be preaching to the choir. So instead of posting endlessly online about what’s wrong with the world, and why people shouldn’t misconstrue and misunderstand celiac disease and the people it afflicts, instead of lamenting how we so often bear the brunt of jokes and are the victims of misinformation, I wondered what I could do that would be more proactive.
I had a ton of knowledge about this disease at this point, but thought, who wants to take medical advice from an actress, and how would I go about it anyway? My blog was called Jennifer’s Way to address these exact issues. It’s about how I learned to navigate this new world I was living in, in my own way. But I wanted to do even more. I also believe that food is a major reason why we as a community, even as a country, are getting sicker and sicker. I knew I couldn’t change the food industry. Instead, what if I could give people an alternative? What if I could create a place where celiacs could go and feel completely free? Free of questions, ridicule, sneers, and, most important, gluten? I could take all my recipes, made of the best gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free, organic, allergy-friendly, non-GMO ingredients, and make clean, nutritious products. It was a mouthful and a hell of an undertaking, but I believed it was the way to start my journey.
AT THIS POINT, I had already packaged my gluten-free flour mix and pancake mix, and was making them available on my blog, but it wasn’t enough. The interaction with others through my blog was great, but I wanted to do more.
I think the universe points you in the direction you need to go, and this was my direction. I was standing in the middle of my apartment feeling so frustrated with what I saw on that television. That’s when I thought, “No. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to be a part of the solution.” Even if I just made a small step, it would be a step in the right direction. I would open my bakery.
But if I was really going to open a bakery, I needed money. I began talking to some people about the idea, and I had a lot of meetings. I discovered one investor was going down some not-so-appropriate avenues and using my name. One memorable meeting with someone very high up in the food industry was a disaster. He looked me in the eye and said, “Jennifer, let’s be real. This bakery and this product aren’t exactly a necessity. Nobody is going to come into your bakery just to get a gluten-free cupcake.”
“You are absolutely wrong,” I said. “Absolutely wrong.”
Everyone told me not to do it. Even my family. My mom said, “Jen, you don’t know what you’re getting into. Opening up your own business is a lot of work. Can’t you just sell your idea and sit back and collect the checks and rest?” My family had some concern because of my health. They wanted me to take an easier road. But I’ve never had an easy road. I figured, why the hell start now?
So I went into my own bank account, to see if I could start this bakery without any help. I came up short. And then, one afternoon, as I sat there crying after a particularly cruel meeting during which I was told I should really just go sell my recipes to the health and beauty community as a diet and call it a day, Louis came up behind me and put his arms around me.
“I’ll give you the rest of the money,” he said. “I believe in you and I believe in your products and I see what you deal with, and I know we can do this.” He could have closed his eyes and supported me with words only, but he didn’t. He put his money where his heart was.
I found a spot on the block where I had always dreamt my bakery would be, in a former hair salon that had graffiti all over the walls and sheetrock covering beautiful old brick. We wanted the place to feel like a cozy home and a peaceful retreat. It’s a very healthy block in the East Village in New York City, with a raw restaurant across the way, a juice press serving fresh juices a few doors down, a raw vitamin store, even a famous Russian bathhouse that has steam, sauna, and massage. It’s just one storefront after another offering the healthiest things out there. It is the perfect spot for me.
So, without listening to the many friends in the restaurant business who told me not to do it, without listening to my family who told me not to do it, without listening to all the friends and acquaintances and colleagues who told me not to do it, I did it anyway.
And boy, were they all right!
I say that with a laugh, but it has been extremely difficult, even to get the place open, because of all the regulations and rules a new business must comply with in New York City. After running through three contractors, Louis and I soon realized we would have to do most of the work ourselves. We tore out the sheetrock to expose the brick. We added beams and antiques and even made a counter out of an old antique door (it still has the locks and hardware on it). When our final contractor kept extending the deadlines, Louis and I fired that company, then got in there with sanders and finished off all the wood ourselves.
We put white subway tile across half of one wall, and then we added a big chalkboard. The bakery is about relearning how to live and experience food, and the chalkboard is a reminder of that. We change what’s on there, from specials to facts about celiac disease or gluten. Right now, for example, it says, “Did you know many prescription medications contain gluten?”
I turned old potato sacks from a flea market into cushions for the chairs. The big communal table came from an antique market, and the bakery cases came from Etsy.com. We painted the bathroom and hung posters, and it was all truly a labor of love. Today, it is just the cozy, peaceful retreat I imagined, but it was quite a job getting there—the health department codes, the handicapped accessibility requirements, the ten-foot turnaround, the proper sinks, the six-foot turnaround, the food protection certificate. I had to go to Harlem and take the test with all the other wannabe waiters and shop owners and bartenders. It was a drastic change from working on a TV set, just wild. We know so much more now than when we started, and it’s certainly not glamorous. I spend my days covered in flour, washing dishes, mopping the floor. But it’s my bakery. I wanted it to feel like walking into your grandma’s kitchen and feeling safe, and just relaxing and enjoying the food, and I think it does feel exactly like that. I might not have done everything right, or in the most efficient or practical way, but I did it.
WHEN PEOPLE COME into the bakery, the first thing they notice is the smell—it doesn’t smell like a “specialty bakery”—it smells like fresh bread and cookies, like cinnamon and vanilla. Every day when I walk in, that smell hits me in the face and takes me back to that happy, warm, welcoming time in my childhood when food was exciting and comforting and represented everything good.
When we’re baking the chocolate chip cookies, the smell takes me back to the days when I baked cookies with my sister at Christmas. When we’re baking the onion bagels, the whole shop smells like savory onions and soft bread, and people marvel at the chewy texture. The pumpkin muffins fill the bakery with the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg. And the bread! Just like I remembered. It’s not easy to get that airy texture in bread. So much gluten-free bread is like dense clay. Or to get that little bit of crunch on the outside of the cookie, but the soft center. I never stop experimenting. It’s a science and an art, and the bakery is my laboratory and my studio. All I have to do is go into the bakery, and I can forget everything else and focus on nothing but what I am creating. It has always been and remains my very favorite thing to do.
Now, every day, people come in to my bakery and get to eat something safely. This is the other huge part of the bakery for me. That refuge I wanted for myself has also become a refuge for everyone who walks in the door. It’s a strange thing that happens when people see me. I think that if they have heard I own the bakery, they don’t really expect that I’ll be behind the counter. I can’t count the number of times that someone is standing there talking to the girl at the register, and I walk out from the back in my flour-covered apron, and the customer sees me and just stops talking, and stands there, and then bursts into tears. I guarantee it’s not because they loved what I did in TV show number ten. It’s more about coming face-to-face with somebody who gets it, really gets it. Gets what it truly means to have this disease. On many occasions, it has brought people to tears. This means everything to someone who deals with such difficulty every day, especially when their families don’t get it, their parents and siblings don’t get it, their colleagues, their bosses, their doctors don’t get it. People tell me they have been suffering alone, and trying so hard not to suffer, or, at least, not to make anyone else suffer. This disease wreaks havoc on every aspect of your life.
I understand, and in the everyday life of a celiac, the people who truly understand are few and far between. I think people have a few basic needs. They want love, they want to feel safe, and they want to be heard. Celiac disease takes away two of those things. You are not heard. The average time for diagnosis is eight to ten years. And you do not feel safe anymore, in any situation where food is involved. For me, who was so enraptured by food, who had such a love affair with food, who loved to travel independently and try new foods and experience new things and immerse myself in new cultures, celiac disease took all that away. As far as feeling loved, it can be hard when you don’t have a partner who understands. Family friends and personal relationships all get tested when you make such a drastic change in your life. When people come into the bakery, it’s like they let out a huge sigh of relief. Sometimes, they even apologize for crying. That’s the one thing I hear from people with celiac all the time. They are always apologizing. They are sorry for being an inconvenience, sorry for being annoying, sorry for not being any fun, sorry for being so much of a “problem.” You have to get to the point where you forgive yourself for having celiac disease—for having any disease. And eventually, you also have to get to the point where you forgive the people around you who don’t understand, if you want any peace. They can’t possibly understand what you’re going through. It’s not their fault, either.
This is why it’s so crucial for us to find support, and that right there is one of the main reasons why I opened this bakery—not only to provide a place where I can give people back a feeling of safety and joy when they eat, but to create an environment where everyone gets it, where you don’t have to make any excuses, where you never have to apologize. Where you don’t even have to say a word. Or you can share your story. Or you can simply order a cupcake, without discussion, without questions. You can just order a cupcake, and eat it, and enjoy it, and feel happy.
So, as hard as the bakery has been, every square inch of reclaimed wood and bakery case glass, every tablespoon of gluten-free flour, every baking sheet and platter and chair and piece of chalk in that bakery came out of a labor of the greatest love. There are times when I still think, “What the hell did I do, opening this place?” Yet, it’s as rewarding as anything I have ever done, a million times over. No movie can compare. No award can compare. Nothing can compare to being able to deal with people on this level and make them feel like they’re not crazy. Like they are heard. Because, in this bakery, they are.