I became aware of celiac disease something over 10 years ago when my sister was diagnosed with the disease.
She had anemia, and her doctor finally tested her for celiac disease when standard treatments didn't work to make her better.
Ingesting gluten, for her, meant her system reacted badly and didn't absorb the nutrients from the food she was eating.
Gluten is found in grains such as wheat, barley, and rye.
Ten years ago, celiac disease and the concept of gluten intollerance was pretty unusual.
When we started investigating, we did find a population of others with the disease, but there was nowhere near the awareness of the disease or even concept of avoiding gluten that there is now.
And there certainly weren't the products available to help folks with the disease.
My sister's diagnosis meant we had to get very creative, and that she probably was going to be without bread or pasta for her life.
Luckily, times have changed! My sister didn't mind so much that she couldn't have pasta, missed bread a little more, but really missed dessert.
Cookies and cakes were immediately removed from her diet, and that just was a problem.
On the other hand, her preference for sweets has always been toward the candy end of the spectrum, so we had some avenues to explore.
Now, my sis is not a cook.
She's okay at it, but she doesn't have the interest to become much more than adequate/good.
I seem to have gotten those genes.
On the other hand, she got the be neat and enjoy housework genes.
As you might imagine, part of the aversion to cooking is the mess it makes of a kitchen.
We have a bit of a disagreement on who found what when, but we did end up with a recipe for a meringue Christmas cookie.
Prior to this our only encounter with meringue had been the fluffy stuff on top of our father's favorite pie, lemon meringue.
Neither of us were fans of that particular incarnation of egg whites and sugar, but the cookie recipe sounded interesting.
Interesting to me as a cook, interesting to my sister because it involved a topping of peppermint candy.
The cookies are a basic meringue recipe (egg whites beaten stiff, sugar added, with a small amount of cream of tartar for stability, piped onto a baking sheet in cookie form, topped with crushed peppermint candy, and baked in a very slow oven to dry them out).
The cookies were very good, and we were on a mission to find more recipes.
One thing we've both noticed over the years is that there are more and more products on the market for folks who must or have chosen to eliminate gluten from their diets.
There's even a gluten free section at the local markets and a bakery (a bakery!) not too far away.
This is not to say that all of the products offered are good - or even edible in some extreme cases - but it does show there's a good, big, expendable-income market out there.
And the gluten-free products come at a premium.
This is not a market option for poor folks.
We have found some real treasures.
A company in Missouri, Domata Living Flour, offers a gluten free flour that makes some incredible brownies, works well for breads, and even allows for some really good gravy-making.
It is, however, quite expensive.
My sister has found some passable bread mixes for her bread machine, as well.
Again, expensive.
Eating out used to be next to impossible, but now most restaurant chains, and many local houses, offer gluten free alternatives.
Some even have a separate gluten free menu.
She still has to be careful to ask specifically about how some dishes are prepared, and she has to be sure that fryers used for her french fries don't double as cookers for items that are breaded with flour.
The gluten free world is now planets away from where it was 10 years ago when my sister was diagnosed with celiac sprue disease.
Although she still has some hurdles in eating out and diversifying her menu, it isn't very often that she feels especially deprived.