As you can tell by my blog, celiac disease, is a reality in my family. Several family members on my husbands side of the family have it, my 18yo daughter has it & I suspect more of my immediate family have it. This is still not a well known disease. It is an inherited, auto-immune disease with no medication to 'cure it' or alleviate the symptoms. The only treatment is a life long adherence to a strict gluten free diet.
Today that diet is easier to follow than it was 10 years ago when my mother-in-law was diagnosed with it. At that time, she was given a list of foods she could not eat by her doctor & very little other advice. After looking at that list I really thought she was condemned to a life of eating rice cakes & the paper the list was printed on. Stores didn't carry the flours you needed, or cookies, or breads, cereals or frozen dinners like they do now. Many things on the list have since come off because research has found them to be safe, such as white distilled vinegar. Making your own flour or ordering online was about all there was, and there were even fewer cookbooks out there. But one was like the Bible to those suffering with celiac disease, Bette Hagman's Gluten Free Gourmet cookbooks. Now this dear woman was diagnosed in 1959!! I can not imagine what little information there was 48 years ago, when I know how limited it was just 10 years ago.
But she accepted her illness and created works of art with rice flours, bean flours, potato flours and helped millions of people walk through the fog into the clearing when it came to cooking gluten free. She was our pioneer and now she is gone. She passed away last week and the celiac community lost a great crusader. I have about 5 of her cookbooks myself, having just purchased her latest ones (or at least for me) The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Comfort Foods and Bakes Bread. I honestly don't know what I would've done without people like her who were not only striving to take care of themselves, but actually took the time to put together recipes/menus to help all of us to be able to feed our families. She will be missed.
So Bette, I just wanted to say thank you. I never met you in person, but I felt like you were part of our family because of your wonderful foods. I pray that you are now in heaven, completely healed & dancing about knowing you can eat whatever you want up there and you wont have to explain gluten to anyone! God Bless.
4 comments:
I thought the same thing when I heard Bette had died - whatever would I have done without her cookbooks, when my daughter was diagnosed with cd 14 years ago? I think I must have baked her first bread recipe at least 200 times.... She was one of those people whose work touched thousands.
And, yes, it's fine if you want to put up a link to my blog. I'm going to be moving it soon (probably to blogger), but use the HSB address for now. And thanks!
Oh I know. I know the timing of our diagnosis was purely God because He knew I needed someone like Betty to go before me and do the research because I am just not like that, not my gift.
And thank you for allowing me to link your blog, I love it.
I may have asked you twice, one your blog I think, so if I did, just ignore me, I have THOSE kinds of moments from time to time. It's when they start to string together into a continuance of cluelessness that I'll get worried.
Hi Debi,
Of course you may link to my blog. Say, you probably heard all about it, but you are very welcome to participate in my blog event honoring Bette Hagman. This was a lovely, very touching post and I linked to it to my post on Bette.
-sea
www.bookofyum.com
Thank you so much. Yes I did hear about the tribute & I will get mine up here asap. We feel it's the least we can do.
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