Welcome!

Jessica Addie and I (Abby Kathryn) have been good friends since 2005.  JA always thought she had acid reflux disease, but it turned out to be allergies!  She gave up dairy, gluten, tree nuts, soy, and peanuts about 3 years ago and has been a healthy, happy woman ever since! 

I found out I was allergic to foods the hard way... I kissed a boy after he ate peanut butter and I went into anaphylactic shock!  Turned out I was really allergic to peanuts, tree nuts and soy.  Let me just say that although the ER doctors/nurses were awesome -- they did all find it hilarious that I wound up in the hospital for kissing a boy!

This event happened to bring JA and myself closer together.  She helped me figure out what to eat since everything contains soy or has traces of nuts.  This was also before the "allergen-free" craze started so it was hard to find food to eat.  Then a year ago, I got sick and had to give up gluten and dairy.  JA was there again to help me figure out what to eat!

The two of us then began experimenting with baking to figure out how to create the foods that we missed -- cakes, pies, cookies, and anything sweet.

We fell in love with a few blogs to help us get started on our baking adventures:
     - Cybele Pascal
     - GF Goddess
     - GF and the Chef (she happens to live near us!)

But we wanted to make our own things.  We are still using Cybele's gluten free flour blend:
     Mix together:
        4 cups brown rice flour (try and find superfine)
        1 1/3 cups potato starch (not flour -- that is a thickener)
        2/3 cups tapioca starch (sometimes called tapioca flour)

We hope to use this blog to figure out our own cooking styles and maybe become experts in baking allergen free!

And remember: just because we don't use any gluten, dairy, soy, nuts or peanuts doesn't mean our stuff isn't good -- our cookies ARE better than your cookies!