gluten-free girl recommends

Little Bean arrives into the world in less than a month. So, what is the best action to take before giving birth?

Start another website!

Actually, I’ve been brewing this new baby for far longer than Little Bean. For over a year, at least, I’ve been saying to friends and family, “I’m working on something called Gluten-Free Girl Recommends.”
“Cool idea,” they all say.
“Yes. As soon as I can make it happen…..”

You see, this has been quite the year. Within the last year, the Chef and I moved house, got married, went on a honeymoon to Italy, launched my first book with trips across the United States, kept working at the restaurant (Chef), kept writing this site and other projects (me), signed a two-book book deal, and became pregnant with our first child. You know, a few things. And that’s just the highlights.

Still, I’ve been dreaming this website, a complement to Gluten-Free Girl, through it all. It has danced in the back of my head, sometimes waltzing, sometimes doing a furious tango.

As I have traveled across the country, and sat here at my desk, so many of you have asked salient questions. What’s your favorite gluten-free flour? How can I eat safely at a restaurant? Do you know any gluten-free lipsticks? Are there any bread mixes worth the money?

We are a community, and I love the conversation. But lately, the emails in my inbox have swelled to voluminous levels. I simply cannot answer most of them. Now, with a baby coming and a book manuscript due in the winter, I’m going to need all the energies I can muster. And since so many of the questions I receive do repeat each other a bit, I have wanted to create a space where everyone can gather, and start another conversation.

Enter Gluten-Free Girl Recommends.

This new site will be updated three times a week (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) with pithy prose, my photographs, and links to places where you might find more of what you like. (For those of you paying attention here — with the ingredients posts on Monday and the recipes/stories posts on Thursday — that means there will be some new gluten-free content every weekday.)

There are already 50 posts up there, culled from the archives of this website — small passages of prose about a place to eat or cookbooks we find useful. There are also a few new posts on there too. I thought about writing for months before letting anyone see it, building new material. But I wanted you to be part of the development instead, adding your own opinions. (And frankly, I’m just running out of energy these days!)

Let me make this clear. This will be a recommendations site. I’m not going to be reviewing restaurants just after they open, or saying nasty comments about gluten-free mixes that turn out to be horrible. I receive so much gluten-free food from producers. Most of it tastes grainy and disappointing to me. You see, I want a truly memorable food experience every time I eat. Most of the time, that means we focus on real food around here, not packaged goods. But when I try a mix that tastes fantastic, that I will buy again for this home, I want to share it with you. I love the family stories that have evolved into thriving businesses. We should all celebrate those.

At the new website, I’m going to be giving you experiences to which I have said yes.

You’ll see, on the sidebar, a list of categories:

Cookbooks and other books.
Cooking utensils.
Gluten-free foods.
Ingredients.
Other artists and their work.
Places to eat.
Places to buy food.

These are all experiences that make our lives richer around here. Where would I be without Jamie Oliver books, the peltex spatula that makes cooking easier, sea salt caramels, good olive oil, the necklaces from Superhero Design, Volterra restaurant, or the University District farmers’ market? We want to share our enthusiasms with you.

(Over the next couple of months, there might be some baby stuff in there too.)

And I intend the Places to Eat category to be particularly helpful. Every day, I receive letters asking, “Where can I eat?” If you want a specific city, you can simply search Places to Eat, New York (for example) and find out what I know. (You can also ask the New York bloggers!) So many restaurants in Seattle feed me safely and well. Over time, I’ll be sure to share all of them with you.

There’s something else that’s different about the new website. We will be taking ads on Gluten-Free Girl Recommends. The Chef and I have thought about this for months. It felt important to both of us to keep this site ad-free. But I have written every piece here — and created every recipe — for free. This site has been one of the biggest loves of my life. But with a new baby coming, and our budget always interesting, we decided that ads seem reasonable.

There is another reason for the ads. Rather than going with an established ad network, and thus end up with ads not tailored to the gluten-free community, we have decided to create our own network — the Green Apple ad network. With the help of my fabulous designer friend, Kaytlyn, we will be designing and placing ads from gluten-free foods producers and great food makers. So many of you ask me, “Where can I find teff flour?” Well, we hope that soon there will be ads that make a direct link for you, so you can read the site and simply buy what you need.

(If you are a representative of a foods producer reading this now, please feel free to contact me.)

Speaking of Kaytlyn, I cannot say enough about this woman. Kaytlyn Sanders, who runs the excellent design business Beneficial Design, has shepherded me through this entire process with grace and good humor. And a huge amount of talent. We have become close friends through the past two years of working together, and I cannot imagine my life without her. This website would not exist without her. I mean, look at that new banner up there!

(That is the rooster and hen who live in our neighborhood and come to our front door every morning these days. The Chef is especially fond of them. He took that shot while lying on his stomach on the living room floor, pointing out to our front yard.)

Kaytlyn is a genius, and a kind one at that. So, if you have any design needs, please contact her. Your website and life will be better for it too.

There is more I could say here — everyone has a birth story, right? — but this feels enough. I’ve been dreaming this baby for nearly a year, and now launch day is here. Time to take the stage, little one. Go knock yourself out.