I never had the desire to cook before or after I got married. My husband, on the other hand, is a great cook and really enjoyed it prior to us getting married. A few months after we got married my husband found out that he had several food intolerance (gluten, dairy, egg yolk, tomato). This really put a kink in my dislike for cooking since I had to trudge through this daunting phase of feeding him food that wouldn’t make him sick. On top of that, this was WAY before the internet was helpful for much of anything besides email.

Little by little my poor husband endured some of the worst allergy friendly food. Almost everything was grainy, crumbly, card board like, etc. Then we had kids who also had allergies from intolerance to an anaphylaxis allergy. By this time, the internet was of more help and stores carried some decent tasting food in a box. My family of four, moved to Kigali, Rwanda in 2012. This took living with food allergies and intolerances to a whole new level. By this time, all four of us had food allergies and/or intolerances. A super kind gal in Rwanda made us a fresh loaf of gluten free (GF) bread for us to eat upon our arrival. This was the firs time I had ever tried homemade GF bread. It changed our world! This was a season of throwing me into the world of home cooking/baking everything from scratch. It stretched me in far more ways then I ever knew was possible.

When we returned from our 6 months living in Rwanda, I continued to bake bread for our family since it was so much cheaper and tasted better than buying bread. From then on, I bought flour in bulk and began experimenting with any recipe that looked remotely good. There have been some interesting foods along the way for sure. I have found that in this day and age, the internet makes the life for those of us with specialized diets, not as hard. Over these last 10 years of living on specialized diets for all 5 of my family members, I can truly say that I now enjoy cooking and baking most of the time. This is a good thing since I spend 5-8 hours most days in my kitchen. A lot of baking, means a whole lot of dishes too. Most days I run our dishwasher 2-3 times and hand wash a lot as well. Don’t worry, to live a joyful life on a specialized diet doesn’t mean you will spend as much time in your kitchen as I do. It is what works for us, allows us to eat a huge variety of great tasting food that is safe for all of us, allows us to live on a low grocery budget, and gives me a much needed creative outlet.