New Gluten Free Support Network

Please join our Gluten Free Support Network for help and more gluten free ideas. Joining is free, give and get positive help on your gluten free or alternative foods journey.

This is also a place for people to ask questions about aspects of Trina's recipes. Trina will also be using this as a way to answer more questions, give variations on recipes based on her books and generally help with people's questions.

There are many support groups for those with various food intolerances, this is a nice place to share and help others along the way. Connect get to know others, and if you have a business that caters to gluten free or other food intolerances, feel free to join and post informaiton.

Tell about your travels and how you found interseting places to eat, praise a chef or cook, tell the world, get a voice, make a difference, promote real foods!

Gluten Free Pumkin PIe

Just looking at some of the photographs I took at holiday meals. This gluten free pumpkin pie was really delicious. I even made the pumpkin filling by baking a fresh pumpkin and hollowing it out rather than using a tin. There is a taste difference when you have time and pumpkins are in season.

Hope to have some new goodies to share as 2009 progresses. Lots of new ideas up my sleeve, can't wait to do some more testing.

Did you see the TV interview and taste test? Go to my website at www.glutenfreetrina.com and have a look or find me on YouTube. It was a lot of fun! So glad everyone is loving my new gluten free cookbooks. Thank everyone of you who wrote me, yes, I'll keep writing!

Hugs and Happy New Year!

Trina

New Blog Address

To make it easier to answer questions and keep up to date with everything and still have a life, I have created a Blog alongside my Gluten Free Trina website, here is the link,

http://www.glutenfreetrina.com/blog

You can read my more recent posts here. Always glad when people write.

Hope you had a great gluten free holiday and New Years!

Wellsphere

Have you heard of the new Wellsphere on the web? It is a place that has many interesting links to blogs and other articles about Healthy Living, answers to health questions etc. Have a look at
http://www.wellsphere.com

Fashion, Gluten Free Carrot Cake & Fun

Last Friday night Whitby History Museum sponsored a Fashion Food & Fun night as a fundraiser. I baked my gluten free carrot cake with cream cheese frosting so that attendees who are gluten intolerant could eat without worry.

The event was a lot of fun, and along with Jane, of New Vision Nutrition, I was able to give a short talk about the gluten free diet.

Even though I thought my cake turned out a bit dry this time. Making a huge batch to feed a hundred is different than just making a regular sized cake. However, it was a hit and wheat eaters and all ate and enjoyed. I got a call the next day from a friend who took some home to her husband and he said it was the best carrot cake he had eaten, wheat or no.

The family is getting together this weekend, so I’m thinking a chocolate cake would be in order. I’ll try and get a photo of it before it is gone and post it for you.

New Books done and a Taste Test

Finally after hundreds of hours of research, testing recipes and photographing I have finished my next two gluten free cookbooks: Health & Nutrition - A Gluten Free Trina E-book. and a small sampler book called ‘A Sampler’.

I have also managed to get my new website www.glutenfreetrina.com/ posted with all the new information about my books.

Recently I was invited to do a taste testing at an event where about 200 women attended a conference. My friend Jane Snyder of New Vision Nutrition was going to be there. Jane helps people find out how their diets can impact their health issues and advises dietary changes. Since she has been finding many people have absorption issues which are often caused by gluten, she has advised people to try a gluten free diet. In many cases this has helped.

The problem is a dietary change of this scope means people have to learn how to live a gluten free lifestyle. Often, they go through a few weeks of the diet, feel better and then despair what to do to not feel deprived of foods they love.

Because food is not only a necessity of life it is a big part of our enjoyment of life it becomes hard to totally deny yourself of many comfort foods you have enjoyed in the past, and those delicious looking delicacies that are around everywhere, just to taunt you!

I understand this as, the only way I could convince myself not to cheat, was to tell myself to go home and make it myself, only, make it gluten free.

This is why most diets fail altogether, we need to be able to enjoy or food!

Well, I’m getting a bit long winded here, but anyway, I went to the conference along with several of my freshly baked Famer’s loaves of gluten free bread. It was different from Celiac events I had been to before where everyone there just loved my bread, saying “It was the best they had ever eaten!” I know these people are used to a gluten free diet. They probably haven’t tasted wheat bread for a long time.

Well, the beautiful fragrance of freshly baked Farmer's Style bread wafted through the halls of the conference center and pretty soon I found a line up of people who wanted to try my bread. So there I was handing out nice little slices of freshly buttered bread.

Well, they loved it! I can tell you I was not amazed exactly, I know my bread tastes good and is filled with only good healthy ingredients, but it sure did make me feel good, that these were people who normally eat wheat based breads also loved my gluten free bread.

I didn’t think I would meet anyone there who actually was on a gluten free diet, but I did. Not only that, I started asking, “Do you know anyone who has to be on a Gluen free Diet, could you tell them about my cookbooks?”

Well it seems almost everyone knows someone! In fact a woman standing at the table beside me said her husband was on a gluten free diet, and he would be thrilled to learn about my cookbooks as he used to bake pies and misses them. She said she never usually tries anything gluten free because it just does not taste good to her, but my bread ‘looked’ so good she gave it a try and loved it!

I’m happy to say, sales are going quite well of my new books. Check out my website, www.glutenfreetrina.com/

At the end of the month, I’ve been invited to do another taste testing and bring my gluten free carrot cake this time. It is going to be in Whitby, Ontario October 24th 2008. At the Centennial Building, 416 Center St. South, Whitby, from 7 to 10 pm. Tickets $10.00 each. It is a fundraiser for the Whitby History Museum & Children’s Centre.

I’ll let you know how that goes.

PS. The recipe for the Farmer's Style Brown loaf is in my book, Health & Nutrition.

Still working on my new book

Well, here it is almost fall and I am still working on my next book, a lot of work! I’m finding it really rewarding though, as I experiment with new recipes and they work!!!!! Then photographing them is fun too ...

This next book is turning out to be an encyclopedia of sorts. All the foods we can eat in a gluten free diet. There are lots of them! People often ask me if a gluten free diet is healthy? And so I am making this book answer questions on nutritious ideas I have implemented in feeding my family a gluten free diet.

Everywhere you find lists of foods you can’t have, but having a list of foods you can have, how nutritious they are, how to prepare them and also give you ideas to include enough variety will be very helpful I’m sure. I’ve also made a list of things you find on labels, both gluten free and not, that will help you decide if something is right for your dietary needs.
A gluten free ingredients list has a great many new terms as even I have found out! I’m hoping to give people a resource guide …all in one place!

Basically, yes, it is healthy, if you know how to manage it properly and with lots of variety. So I started doing research in January about all the foods we can eat, and how nutritious they are, (or not) and there are tons of choices. It has turned out to be hundreds of hours of research and writing though, and now I’m doing the layup part and have over a hundred pages so far. I'm thinking I may have to write a book series to get everything in. I so want to share all of the things I have been doing and make it easier for others. It is hard enough having to change your whole lifestyle, food wise, to have everything laid out for you as far as recipes and anecdotal information of what it has been like for us, I’m sure would help.

I think a lot of people will love my new book series, just because it is the latest up to date information on how to have a healthy gluten free diet with recipes that also help you with other dietary restrictions as well. A valuable resource to help save time, money and keep healthy. Well, better get back at it!