Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back...And How You Can Too by Shauna James Ahern
BUY IT NEW
- $25.95 List price$24.65 Online Price$22.18 Member price(Save 14%)Limited Time Offer! Everyone receives the Member Price on books.
See Details
Reserve it at BN.com & pick it up in 60 minutes at your local store.
Enter a zip code
(Hardcover)
- Pub. Date: October 2007
- 288pp
- Sales Rank: 526,765
Buy it Used: 17 copies from $5.00 See All Available
Customers who bought this also bought
Product Details
- Pub. Date: October 2007
- Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
- Format: Hardcover, 288pp
- Sales Rank: 526,765
- ISBN-13: 9780470137307
- ISBN: 0470137304
Synopsis
"A delightful memoir of learning to eat superbly while remaining gluten free."
—Newsweek magazine
"Give yourself a treat! Gluten-Free Girl offers delectable tips on dining and living with zest–gluten-free. This is a story for anyone who is interested in changing his or her life from the inside out!"
—Alice Bast, executive director National Foundation for Celiac Awareness
"Shauna's food, the ignition of healthy with delicious, explodes with flavor—proof positive that people who choose to eat gluten-free can do it with passion, perfection, and power."
—John La Puma, MD, New York Times bestselling co-author of The RealAge Diet and Cooking the RealAge Way
"A breakthrough first book by a gifted writer not at all what I expected from a story about living with celiac disease. Foodies everywhere will love this book. Celiacs will make it their bible."
—Linda Carucci, author of Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks and IACP Cooking Teacher of the Year, 2002
An entire generation was raised to believe that cooking meant opening a box, ripping off the plastic wrap, adding water, or popping it in the microwave. Gluten-Free Girl, with its gluten-free healthful approach, seeks to bring a love of eating back to our diets. Living gluten-free means having to give up traditional bread, beer, pasta, as well as the foods where gluten likes to hide—such as store-bought ice cream, chocolate bars, even nuts that might have been dusted with flour. However, Gluten-Free Girl shows readers how to say yes to the foods they can eat. Written by award-winning blogger ShaunaJames, who became a interested in food once she was diagnosed with celiac disease and went gluten-free, Gluten-Free Girl is filled with funny accounts of the author’s own life including wholesome, delicious recipes, this book will guide readers to the simple pleasures of real, healthful food. Includes dozens of recipes like salmon with blackberry sauce, sorghum bread, and lemon olive oil cookies as well as resources for those living gluten-free.
Mindy Rhiger - Library Journal
With a diagnosis of celiac disease comes one large don't: don't eat gluten, which means no more bread, baked goods, or beer. But living gluten-free isn't as easy as just avoiding a few trigger foods. Gluten is everywhere, often hiding in processed foods and in places one might not think to look. Ahern has been blogging since 2004 about living gluten-free on her popular, award-winning food blog, Gluten-Free Girl. Now her story makes the transition to book, and it's a successful venture that centers on the idea of what it takes to love food while living with food restrictions. Readers with or without celiac disease will appreciate the recipes, advice, and inspiration for eating well. After all, "everyone deserves good food." Part food memoir and part how-to, Ahern's story traces her journey from processed-food-fed child to gluten-free gourmet after her celiac diagnosis. Engaging and passionate, this book will make everyone who reads it remember the pleasure of food. Highly recommended for public libraries.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Shauna James Ahern shares her stories, photographs, and recipes on her blog, gluttenfreegirl.com. The site, which receives thousands of hits a day, won Global Best Food blog with a Theme in 2006. She has been featured in the New York Times, the Seattle Times, and Newsweek.
Customer Reviews
- Reader Rating:
- Ratings: 10Reviews: 9
- See All Reviews
Ho humby Anonymous
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
June 06, 2009: I have tried to read this book several times and have never been able to get all the way through it. The information isn't organized well and her personal narrative jumps around a lot chronologically. She goes on and on about family issues, including her mother's health problems. There's a big long section on her relationship with her husband which seems like total TMI. Some of the recipes sound ok but I also read her blog and have seen photos of these dishes and have not been inspired to make them. I will stick with more tried and true resources, thank you very much.
A Writer/Foodie Writes a Memoir...Oh, and She's a Celiacby Anonymous
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
January 24, 2009:
I ordered this book thinking it was a cookbook. It's actually a celiac memoir. Not terrible reading to pass the time. Read it on the train, or plane, or the bathroom. Shauna's writing is organized, she is obviously well educated, and it shows that she cares about writing and eating well. So it would seem that for her this book is her love letter about food, based on her experiences and offered up to the world, honestly noble in her intentions.
Unfortunately it is not simply a cookbook with an attached warning sticker: "Written for Foodies", and I'm sure Shuana would argue that's not the point--that the point is we see that food is accessible, and that we should all dine from the world's grand table, with all of it's finest offerings. She's *right*, perhaps we should. But she's delusional, too. Most people who face celiac disease are looking to eat so they don't get sick...not so they spend more $$ to eat "well", which is entirely subjective. Most of us aren't 150 yards from the fresh fish market like she is, and most of us are working families who see a movie out with the kids as a splurge....so um...'no'...we probably don't want to go out and buy pomegranite molasses.
On Shauna's list: "The Top Ten Noble Tastes" there is no reference to the "other grains" considered staples in most kitchens, and a lifeline for many celiacs. Really (and I mean really) expensive vinegars and oils, but no sustenance staples upon which the average celiac would rely, and would have rather seen listed here.
Don't get me wrong--Shauna is an excellent writer....but her book lacks any real substance, and she sends mixed messages....such as using highly negative descriptive words for the foods from her past----foods she admits to having loved and wolfed down with gusto----and highly seductive and beautiful imagery for the "new foods".....and then using those same positive descriptives for a hot dog (when she finally breaks down and starts eating meat again) at a NYC outdoor vendor....even though that kind of food would have fallen into the "bad food" category if it had been from her hometown. She arbitrarily decides for us what food falls into the praiseworthy category, and what foods do not belong, and when she's critical---boy is she ever critical! She purposefully overdramatizes to get her points across and in doing so makes her parents out to sound like unstable people who practically poisoned her, despite the fact that she went willingly. They are just as innocent as she was, in other words. It also seems cruel that she would use this forum to discuss a very personal private hell her mother endured surrounding agoraphobia. That's not what human beings should do do each other, much less family.
The tone of the book is summed up on page 53, wherein Shauna admits "....Two kids raised to believe that they should be different than most people (translation: smarter and more educated)..."
A bit of an alienating read...which is a total shame because if she had taken certain unnecessary personal bits (her ego clearly sat on top of her computer staring at her as she hacked this one out) out of it the book would have been superb.
loading...
loading...
loading...