Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back...And How You Can Too [Paperback]

Shauna James Ahern (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 2009

"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 Shauna James, 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Blogger Ahern's story sheds light on celiac disease, a little-known and difficult-to-diagnose autoimmune condition. Those afflicted cannot digest gluten, a protein in wheat, barley, rye, and related grains. Ahern explains how she learned of her malady and found that she was able to enjoy food while avoiding gluten. She even met and married a chef. This entertaining memoir includes gluten-free gourmet recipes. (Library Journal, February 1, 2008) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

Do you love food? Do you, or someone you love, have to avoid certain foods? Imagine passing on the pizza during your honeymoon in Rome, or skipping the sugar cookie s your sister makes at Christmas. Shauna James Ahern understands your pain-literally. After years of inexplicable exhaustion and endless medical tests, she found relief in her diagnosis of celiac disease. After giving up gluten, she learned how to live well and love food more fully. Now you can, too!

In Gluten-Free Girl, Shauna James Ahern shares the journey that changed her from a typical Gen-X processed-food junkie to a fun-loving foodie who enjoys cooking and living gluten-free-naturally. Readers from around the world have followed her stories and insights on her award-winning blog, glutenfreegirl.com. Now she shows you how to say yes to a gluten-free lifestyle, too, and embrace a whole new world of fresh foods and flavors.

Even if you never learned to cook, Shauna shows you how to feel comfortable in the kitchen. You'll discover (or rediscover) the kick of ginger, the irresistible crunch of fresh greens, and other delicious delights. She gives you dozens of terrific recipes that every9one will love, such as Curried Carrot Soup, Chicken Thighs Braised in Pomegranate Molasses, Crusty Sorghum Bread, and Fig Cookies. Her dishes focus on ingredients that are naturally gluten-free. She has not simply reworked recipes and plugged in gluten-free substitutes-these are original recipes. You'll also find important guidance on navigating everyday life without being "glutenized," from reading between the lines of food labels to traveling and eating out safely and successfully.

Enlivened with funny accounts of Shauna's experiences, this book is as entertaining to read as it is to prop up in the kitchen. Whether she's reminiscing about the Wonder bread and Fried-bologna sandwiches of her childhood or misusing on the pork-chop -shaped mouse pad she won at a professional cooking conference, her stories are lively and interesting.

Part memoir, part best friend giving advice, part cookbook-and all inspiring-Gluten-Free Girl will put the spring back in your step and your diet, one delicious meal at a time. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470411643
• ISBN-13: 978-0470411643
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #44,829 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Disorders & Diseases > Allergies

More About the Author

SHAUNA JAMES AHERN started her professional career as a child actor in Los Angeles, in the late 1970s. You might have seen her on Rhoda, where she played Amy Finkelstein, the girl who ate crayons.

After that, she taught high school English, ghost wrote a gardening book with the girlfriend of a celebrity, ran a screenplay editing business in Manhattan, and taught more students how to write research papers.

Now she is considered one of the most authoritative sources of gluten-free living on the Internet. Her popular Web site, glutenfreegirl.com, was named one of the best food sites in the world by Gourmet.com, Bon Appetit.com, and The London Times, as well as being named one of the 20 best blogs by and for women by The Sunday Telegraph. Gluten-Free Girl won Best Food Blog with a Theme in the World in 2006 and receives thousands of hits a day.

Her book, Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back and How You Can Too (Wiley and Sons) is now in paperback. Her next book, Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: A Love Story in 100 Tempting Recipes, written with her husband Daniel, will be published in the fall of 2010.

She currently lives on an island off Seattle with her husband, Daniel Ahern, a professional chef, and their toddler daughter, Lucy. They are happy and sleep-deprived.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

95 of 118 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not About the Gluten-Free Recipes, May 9, 2008

By 

Maneki Neko "M.N." - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back...And How You Can Too (Hardcover)

This is a good read for someone who is already a fan of the Gluten-Free Girl blog and enjoys reading about her personal experiences, life and food philosophy, and positive outlook on Celiac Disease. Although I like the blog and the author's literary persona, I'm afraid this book did not satisfy my desire for a gourmet gluten-free cookbook. There are some recipes sprinkled throughout the book, and many of them sound (and probably are) quite good. However, the true test of a gluten-free chef is really their bread products. There are only a few baked carbohydrate recipes in this book, including a sorghum bread, pizza, and pie crust. Tonight I tried the promising recipe for Crusty Sorghum Bread in the hopes that quality of recipe would replace quantity and I could enjoy a great gluten-free artisan's bread recipe. Halfway through making the recipe, I was a bit astonished to find that the main liquid ingredient in the recipe, club soda, had no quantity listed. The instructions just said to add "as much as is needed to wet all the ingredients completely." Further, at that point the dough should be "soft and firm, like a baby's bottom." Descriptive and lyrical though that is, I had no idea exactly HOW wet the dough should be. I'm an experienced gluten-free baker, but gluten-free dough can have VERY different textures before being baked. Sometimes they are very wet, like cake batter, and other times the dough is much drier. And I can only imagine that the instructions would be even more confusing to someone NOT used to how weird gluten-free baking can be. I found several strange things about the recipe that in retrospect should have warned me that it might not be the kind of loaf I was hoping for. The author tells the reader not to be too optimistic about the bread's rising, because "no gluten exists to stimulate its rising." Later, she says "at the end of the evening, slice up any remaining bread and put it into the freezer. Gluten-free bread usually turns rock hard the next day." (130) Anyone who has made Bette Hagman's bread recipes knows that gluten-free bread CAN rise to the extent that it doubles or triples in size, even, with miscalculation, overflowing out of the pan. Further, those same bread recipes actually do not turn rock hard the next day- they stay just as soft as when you made them for several days until either mold or dryness gets the best of them, depending on your climate. I thought perhaps since this book was written to inspire newly diagnosed individuals, the gluten-free girl was trying to manage expectations and make sure no one would be disappointed. So, I persevered and finished out the recipe, trusting that some of the oddities (using the bread dough hook that is generally always avoided in gluten-free baking, letting the dough half rise and then changing it to another container etc.) were perhaps informed by the chef's training and might pay off in unexpected ways. At last, the loaf of bread was finished. It didn't look exactly like the artisan's loaf I'd imagined but it did have something of a crust and easily came out of the Dutch oven. Ten minutes later I sliced it, as instructed, and served my partner a slice with butter and tried some myself. The first thing I thought was that it tasted very gluten-free. The taste of the baking soda was also quite strong, making the recipe seem more like a quick bread than the more sophisticated yeast bread recipe it was. I have been eating gluten-free bread a long time, so I was not comparing the flavor to gluten breads. Compared to the gluten-free breads that I usually enjoy (such as the soft, whole grain loaves by Bette Hagman) this bread tasted more like a healthy gluten-free muffin than gourmet bread. I thought perhaps my partner would enjoy the bread. Although they can eat gluten and do, they are used to trying out gluten-free breads that I make, and I always solicit their opinion. Unfortunately, even lathered in butter, they didn't want to eat it after the first bite.... and generally they have the first slice of gluten-free bread and ask for more. I was terribly disappointed because I had very high expectations and really expected to enjoy the star bread recipe of the book. My fear is that newly diagnosed readers who try the bread will really end up thinking that gluten-free bread can't rise, and that they have to resign themselves to bread that doesn't last longer than a night. I would like to assure those readers that gluten-free bread can and does do both of those things. Please find inspiration in the Gluten-Free Girl's attitude towards life and positivity- but if you are looking simply for a gluten-free cookbook and seeking bread recipes you can make the staples in your household, this may not be the book for you. I hope that if there is anyone who reads this review that has tried this bread recipe and enjoyed it more than other homemade gluten-free bread recipes, they will post comments to that effect. I think it is important to review the recipes as well as the literary artistry in a book like this, and I hope that some readers will find this review and any follow-up comments useful.

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This woman is ridiculous, March 30, 2011

By 

Betty - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back...And How You Can Too (Paperback)

I got this book from a friend because I'm trying to adjust my diet due to some health problems, and although I do not have celiac, I do need to avoid wheat, so I had high hopes for this book and Shauna Ahern's blog. Disappointed is a gross understatement. The bottom line is that this woman can't cook and has no business authoring a church bake-sale advertisement much less a single book. When I found out she has more than one and another cookbook is in the works thru her blog I nearly died. Her recipes don't work, and the ones that do are made with naturally gluten free ingredients so as a cookbook this tomb is only useful as a doorstop. As far as the "love story" portion of this beauty - as other reviews have already mentioned, the author falls all over herself selling readers on her wondrous love with her amazing "chef" husband. First of all, if you're going to reference a chef in the title of the cookbook then the person therein should probably have a few more credentials than a glorified line cook in a couple of middling restaurants, and secondly, I haven't read prose this unbelievable and pretentious since I attempted to get thru Twilight. Don't bother. Really, Don't. Why isn't there less than 1 star? Couldn't we institute a negative star rating of some sort - come on Amazon, work with me!

39 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth the read; two big flaws, May 17, 2009

By 

B. Wood - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back...And How You Can Too (Paperback)

I love food and like to read about it, and I read this book in about two days. Ahern's descriptions of food are a real treat; as I read them I thought, "Hey, that's EXACTLY what that food tastes like." I also could relate a lot to her experience of growing up on a bland American diet and discovering new tastes in adulthood.

Her attitude about eating gluten-free is very good - I have researched many a restrictive diet and gluten-free seems most intimidating. She chooses to see the glass as half-full and looks at her restrictions as a gift that opened up a whole new world of food and healthy living.

The first problem with the book is there are not enough recipes. It's really more of a food memoir. The few recipes that are provided are not really mindful that a lot of GF eaters also need to avoid other allergens. I wish I could have combed through a book chock full of her recipes, culling out those that are also dairy, egg, and nut free.

The second problem with the book is Ahern's writing style. There is an arrogance that distances the reader. I'm sure this is more a function of being a first-born and child of a professor rather than a real personality flaw, but it's pretty hard to take at times. (Like when she tells about the proper pronunciation of quinoa then triumphantly proclaims something like, "We learn something new everyday." As if most of her readers didn't know how to pronounce quinoa). The other thing that drives me crazy about her writing is her overuse of the comma (,) as a literary tool. She puts commas in like too many crushed peppercorns and it is distracting!

The flaws cost a star each, but I still recommend it, especially to people on any kind of restricted diet.