Archive for December, 2007
To all those who said, “Just hire someone, anyone, so you can put out more product!” I say a big, “HA!” Could “anyone” have decorated 40 cakes this week? With about four zillion cupcakes on the side? Would “anyone” have been so easy to be around even under pressure, he made working alongside him a pleasure?
And the man is good at what he does. And fast - I’ve seen him decorate an 8″ cake in 15 minutes flat. That used to take us most of a morning.
Welcome Wesley! May we have many happy years together!
I first learned about gluten when my niece was diagnosed with celiac, in early 2003. By the end of the year, half my family was gluten-free. Now, this was back in the days when they first realized how prevalent celiac disease actually is. I was working as a teacher’s aide in my kids’ school at the time, with 500 children in the school, and not one of them had been diagnosed with celiac. I used to walk around the yard wondering, which 4 or 5 kids here have celiac?
{Just for the record: my kids had all been tested for CD. They were the only ones in the school that knew for sure that they DIDN’T have it. But it obviously runs in our family, my father-in law has celiac, and my husband and most of our kids just feel profoundly better off gluten. And so a bakery is born.}
Anyway, when you approach a large group of people with the assumption that celiac disease is here, just waiting to be found, an amazing thing happens. Your eyes open up, and you see evidence of gluten intolerance everywhere.
Parity of proof - do doctors who preach GF have to meet a higher criterion?
The thing that really bugs me about that Biagi article (which I called “dangerous” in a previous post) is that it somehow counts as real research in a “peer-reviewed journal,” a piece of work that somehow marches Science along. It documents ONE PATIENT! How exactly does one person count as a statistical sample?
And yet Dr. Lewey wrote in his article, “However, since we are both clinically based and are reporting our single gastroenterologist experiences, and we are now known to have a bias that non-celiac gluten sensitivity exists…,” he can’t get his data published. You’d think one or two doctors presenting data on scores of patients would trump four doctors presenting one isolated case.
Just to give inquiring minds the conclusion to a lot of unfinished business:
Wesley, our new cake decorator, started yesterday and already we have extra cakes for purchase in the retail store, something that’s never happened before and is much appreciated during the holiday crunch! Need a last minute dessert? Come on down!
Online store is functioning again, bread is back on the menu, but we have to add a $12 “handling” fee to cover the packaging materials for frozen food. But, here’s a cool thing: We’ll also send a slip for UPS to take the box back. Just leave the box outside your door the next day, and your friend in brown shorts will take care of the rest.
Cookies seem to be the hot item of December, between the Channukah cookies, the gingerbread cookies, and now the x-mas cookies.
Cookie trays are available with decorated sugar cookies (egg-free) and gingerbread (egg-free/soy-free), 6 pieces $18, or 3 pieces $10. Also available are trays of mixed chocolate chip and quinoa-cranberry cookies, 2 dozen / $24.
Last week we made 180 gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free gingerbread house pieces -enough for 30 houses. As we rolled, cut and baked I wasn’t terribly confident that these houses would stand. I had memories of Christmas’ past of sliding roofs, crumbled walls, candies popping off…and these were gingerbread houses made of gluten and eggs. So how would cookies made with inherently structureless ingredients fare (besides a pinch of xanthan gum)? Surprise, surprise, shockingly well!! The cookie icing made with rice milk and powdered sugar held the walls and roof in place. I have to say that ironically this was my best gingerbread house effort to date. The roof stayed in place, the candies didn’t move…it was meant to be. I thus highly recommend our gingerbread cookie dough (we sell it by the pound) for gingerbread people and houses. Oh and by the way it is delicious too.
I took the 180 pieces down to the California Integrative Hyperbaric Center in Irvine for a gingerbread house assembly and baking class for parents with children on a gluten-free/ casein-free diet. Their enthusiastic response from the parents was inspiring. My worries about the gingerbread houses standing are insignificant compared to these parents’ delight in finding treats their children can actually eat. I think my days of “regular” gingerbread houses are over as The Sensitive Baker now has a house that everyone can build…and eat.
Online store functioning; glitch with shipping costs
Check out the new tab in our navigation bar - it leads to our online store! In fact, we’ve already had a handful of online orders, but we’re experiencing technical difficulties calculating shipping costs.
Here’s what’s happening: UPS calculates cost according to the size of the box as well as the weight. If we’re sending something like cookies or brownies, which don’t have to be kept refrigerated, they can go in a small cardboard box for next to nothing. (Usually under $10 within LA county.) The online store processes that just fine.
But if you order bread, it needs to go in a cooler. Without preservatives, even wheat bread stales within a day or two. Rice bread seems to go twice as quickly. At the bakery we bake bread, cool it, slice it, and freeze it at the peak of freshness. People often ask us, “I have a long way home, this bread will thaw by the time I get there - is that a problem?”
Dr. Kenneth Fine also gave a speech at the Greater Louisville Celiac Sprue Support Group in 2004 about the Early Diagnosis of Gluten Sensitivity: Before the Villi Have Gone. [I say "also" because I first heard him on the Nourishing Wellness show a few weeks ago and blogged about it, below.]
Similarly, Mara (from Sophie’s Produce) recently shared with us Gluten Sensitivity Confirmed by Genetics and Blood Tests in IBS, where Scot Lewey cites Predictors of clinical response to gluten-free diet by Wahnschaffe, et. al, and concludes,
- “The next questions may not be does NCGS exist but exactly how common is it? Is it one in ten or closer to one in three?”
The problem with getting excited about the Wahnschaffe article is that if you go onto PubMed and do a search on “gluten free diet” you’ll get even more articles like, Is a gluten-free diet necessary in patients with potential celiac disease? by Biagi, et. al, where they basically conclude that no, it’s not.
Last night was the first night of Channukah, and today we featured Star-of-David cookies - ta da!
Unfortunately those churros we hoped for didn’t happen. The cake lady was sick Monday and spend all day Tuesday making back-ordered bundts. This was all she could do today, because we’re busy getting ready for Eugenie’s cooking class tomorrow at the California Integrative Hyperbaric Center.
Eugenie is bringing the cutest little gingerbread houses to assemble and decorate in the class, and demonstrating a cake recipe (with a sample cupcake for everyone). That’s a lot of gingerbread, because last we heard the class was completely full.
If you tried and couldn’t get in, don’t despair! Eugenie is bringing extra gingerbread dough (soy-free) and sugar cookie dough (not) for sale at the low! price of $10/lb.; and extra packages of cupcakes. (6 chocolate or 6 vanilla $14, 6 vegan chocolate $17, 6 vegan vanilla $18.) (Not so low, I know. And the only soy-free one is the eggy vanilla. But that’s the best one. 
)
Dr. Kenneth Fine profiled on Nourishing Wellness
Dr. Allen & Jeanne Peters, the physician/dietician team of Nourishing Wellness in Redondo Beach, have an online radio show hosted by HealthyLife.net. You can hear them live on Thursday mornings at 9am. What’s even better is that you can listen any time by going to the HealthyLife “archives,” clicking on the Peters’ name, and selecting a program.
Anyway, the most recent show added to the archives aired November 08 2007 & features Dr. Kenneth Fine of EnteroLab. (Those are the folks who do the mail-order stool testing for “anti-gluten”-antibodies.) Dr. Fine talks about his experiences as a gastroenterologist, the prevalence of gluten intolerance, possible reasons for this epidemic, and the paleolithic diet.
I’ve never heard Dr. Fine speak before. He actually makes a good case, and I’ve got quite a bit I want to mull over in future posts. Oh joy for you.
