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Learn to COOK - Against the Grain: The Slightly Eccentric Guide to Living Well Without Gluten or Wheat
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List Price: $16.00
Our Price: $42.95
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Holt Paperbacks
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 641
EAN: 9780805036251
ISBN: 0805036253
Label: Holt Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Holt Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 1996-06-15
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Studio: Holt Paperbacks
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Editorial Reviews:
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An extensive manual for surviving without wheat or gluten, including a resource guide, shopping tips, and a listing of support groups for celiacs.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time and money
Comment: The learning curve when you find out you and/or your family is gluten sensitive is steep. I wasted valuable time trying to eek information from this chatty waste of paper. The tiny amount of information buried under the self-important personal dribble is out of date. Gluten-Free Diet: A Comprehensive Resource Guide, by Shelley Case, a dietitian, is a much better use of time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: extremely uneven
Comment: This book has multiple personalities. One is a personal story of coming to terms with having celiac disease. Another is lists of resources for the gluten intolerant. And a third kind of mixes the two -- tells how the author was able to come to terms with things because she developed strategies for living and eating.
First of all, it's really important to know that a lot of the information about what you can and can't eat is just plain wrong. Some of that is because these things become outdated quickly, but some is less understandable than that. For instance, she says that while cream soups are likely to have gluten in them, broths won't. That's totally untrue -- most of the common brands of broth do have gluten in them. And it's a particularly odd mistake to be making given that on other things, she advocates being far more careful than the standard resources do. Like she says don't use distilled vinegar because it MIGHT be distilled from wheat, but again, everything else I've read on this subject says that 1) it's probably not distilled from wheat but more importantly 2) the distillation process removes gluten.
So if you're going to get this book, get it for the personal part, about how she dealt with her diagnosis. It's pretty entertaining and there's some value to being reminded that you're not the only one. That said, while I think it's valuable to have something to read in that area, I'd say she's more than just slightly eccentric. A lot of her stories about how her friends reacted to her diagnosis seem like extreme worst-case scenarios -- suffice it to say that I was diagnosed long before I was as sick as she describes herself as having been, yet my friends were a lot more sympathetic than she says hers were.
Finally, with regard to her strategies for living. Another review here mentions that they're sort of for the caviar set, and I have to agree. These are instructions for someone who not only has a LOT of money to spend on special-ordered foods, but who feels comfortable asking restaurant staffs to go way out of their way to accommodate her.
On the whole, I'd say there are better resources than this book. Some of them are online, others are informational books like Shelley Case's "Gluten-Free Diet: A Comprehensive Resource Guide." But if you want to read everything you can on celiac disease and living gluten-free, this is at least entertaining.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a must-have, for the wheat-intolerant "newbie"
Comment: I've had this book since late August '03, and already I have probably read through the entire thing about 4 or 5 times..and it's still great! Not only does it have tons of information, tips, & recipes, ...it is HILARIOUS! Reading it makes me feel like maybe i'm not the biggest weirdo for having to dissect my food in front of everyone at a dinner party. I swear, any celiac/wheat intolerant person who reads this will finally be able to laugh out loud at all the funny/eccentric things (i.e. eating caviar w/ a spoon, bringing your own rice pasta to Italian restaurants) that one tends to go through with gluten/wheat intolerance. Especially after you've just been diagnosed (as I had), it's great to know that there's someone else out there who has the same annoying issues as i do (i.e. difficulty eating out at restaurants, dining with friends), and can offer some good advice on how to cope. So, the next time you're down in the dumps because you had to sit through your neighbor's pizza party by munching on peanuts and carrot sticks (and gathering weird/pitiful looks from others at the same time), don't sit and mope..go and read "Against the Grain" and you'll be a happier camper!
Customer Rating:
Summary: chatty but sloppy
Comment: Some of the advice in this book is great, especially on suggestions for enjoying meals socially without feeling like a freak. However, based on the title and the author's condition, it's easy to assume that the only foods recommended in the book are gluten-free, and that's not true. Several of the recipes and purchased-food recommendations are wheat-free, but not gluten-free, and are NOT clearly identified as such. I found the tone to be rather snobbishly superior, as well- perhaps a nice book for those in the caviar-eating set, but not written for the unprivileged who can not expect to be waited on hand and foot or to be able to afford all the specialty foods the author considers necessities.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Celiac's Bible
Comment: Along with the words, you have Celiac-Sprue Disease, your GI doctor should hand you this book and tell you to go home and read it. A diagnosis of Celiac seems overwhelming and the diet restrictive. The author uses humor and common sense along with personal experience to ease the pain and educate the consumer reading the book. Although a Gluten-Free diet is unlike any other, you can get a good, basic feel for it using this book. It helps to get one over the hump and on the road to wellness. I highly recommend this book. If you have Celiac Disease do yourself a favor and get it, if you have a friend or loved one with the disease show them that you care.
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