From a very young age I learned that my family wasn’t allowed to eat like other families. Two of my sisters had allergies to many things but the important ones being corn and wheat, and my mother being allergic to wheat as well. Whenever my family would go to the grocery store I noticed that if my mom the night before said “I want fettuccine alfredo,” we would go get everything to make fresh pasta, the alfredo sauce, parsley, and mushrooms. We couldn’t just go to a Olive Garden and order some to go. That’s where my love of cooking first began, I wanted my family to be able to have all the foods they loved but couldn’t have due to their allergies.

When I was old enough to actually understand why they couldn’t eat a certain food that is when I started to experiment in the kitchen, watching my dad cook, seeing how he chopped food, and asking questions. From that point on I was either reading a cookbook, in the kitchen with my dad if he wasn’t away on business, or watching cooking shows. A few of the cookbooks I read were, “Paleo Life,” Learning to Cook for People with Celiac’s Disease,” They really went into depth and helped me understand about how the body reacts to someone who eats wheat. They listed possible side effects ranging from the major being death possibly for celiac people, to coughing and bloating to being some of the minor results of ingesting wheat or whatever a person could be allergic to. Over the years I’ve noticed that it depends on how much (wheat, corn, nuts, egg, milk, ect.)  a person has consumed determines how strong the symptoms are depending on your severity to the allergy. For example; my sister has a severe allergic reaction to tomatoes and if she is near it, touches it, or happens to consume it she could die, have hives appear, pass out cold, or lose consciousness and have to be rushed to the hospital.

After watching my sister ingesting a tiny bit of tomato totally unaware and watching her pass out, unresponsive and my dad having to carry her out of the restaurant and rushing to the car and driving to the ER with my mom trying to get her to wake up. I remember thinking “my sister might die and I haven’t told her how much I love her,” her lips were turning blue, her face was looking ashen, and I was petrified. That was truly the start of me making pretty much everything from scratch after that horrible and terrifying  day. I never wanted that to happen to her again. From then on I bought books that explained the difference in the flours like coconut, brown and white rice, garbanzo bean, and more flours that can be used in gluten-free cooking. The books had good advice that helped me cook better to this day.

The very first food I tried to cook in the kitchen was fried chicken. Usually when you make fried chicken you use flour, egg, and panko breadcrumbs. Well with the allergies present in my family some breadcrumbs are made with corn and bread that was made with glutinous flour so I had to use breadcrumbs that didn't have corn and  were gluten-free. Next was the breaking option and I had experimented with rice flours and found out that it could keep some foods crispy and light on the outside of whatever you are baking, frying, or pan frying. So I went with the white rice flour and a glutino breadcrumb mix. I dipped the chicken in the flour, then in the egg mixture, and finally in the breadcrumbs. Then you just fry or bake the chicken. Another one of my mom's favorite is Divinity Cookies when she showed me a recipe for pecan divinity cookies I couldn't wait to try my hand at making something that I've heard people say is difficult. The comments online said that the hardest part about making divinity cookies was making sure you didn't get any egg yolk into the egg whites. The goal was to have the egg white so you could whip it up with a whisk or a mixer. Another key piece of advice was to not make the cookies if it was damp, humid, or going to rain because if it did it would mess up the entire cookie.

When I go to college I want to do both kinds cooking and baking because I want to be able to cook both ways to the best of my abilities. I can't really choose one or the other so I'll do both. With me learning how to cook gluten-free, corn-free, and with other allergies I want to be able to make all kinds of people happy and eventually own bakeries or restaurants. I know that there will be all sorts of risks, senses of you feeling like you are not doing it right, and times where you want to give up  but I believe that in the end it will make a difference so you just have to stick with it so you can accomplish your goal. My goal is to make others happy by cooking foods that they’ll love and can eat without wondering if it is safe to eat even though some restaurants have a gluten-free menu or even sometimes a corn-free menu but even then they can’t truly guarantee that it is free of what you’re allergic to. I want to be able to create an environment where people with allergies can not worry about if they will get sick they will know that what they order is safe. Thanks to my dad and various others in my life I have learned that I want to cook.