When I first decided to go gluten-free I found one of the hardest things to deal with was the reaction of other people. When you say that you can’t eat pizza because gluten and dairy make you extremely ill, a lot of people look at you like maybe that is just something the voices in your head told you once they got past your tinfoil hat.

Someday they may have a new version of the game Clue where Mrs Peacock was killed in the kitchen with a pizza but for now, people do stare and wonder if you are making it up.

Eventually, however, you get past dealing with the stares and you start finding all the kindred spirits who also live gluten-free and it starts to become hilarious. You go to the park, you meet someone who also cannot eat gluten. You bring gluten-free cookies to church and learn that a parishoners adult son is also gluten-free.

Or, as happened to me tonight, you go to Outback Steakhouse for dinner and find out that your waitress is friends with a gluten-free blogger who goes by Gluten Free Gidget. So of course I had to check Gidget out.

Gluten-Free Gidget is a far better photographer than I am. Her pictures of food look appetizing, and she has a lot of them. She is way more Martha Stewart than I am, which can be a good thing. If I ever started compulsively cleaning my entire kitchen between batches of cookies, my husband would have me checked for brain tumors.

Most of her recipes are traditional and include different types of flour as opposed to different types of cake mix or flour blends but this one was the kind I would have written if I thought of it first. I saw this and thought that even people who, like me, cook this way largely out of a burning desire to not experience pain and die prematurely, might make this one. These are no bake chocolate peanut-butter cookies. I may have to try them myself with sunbutter instead. They are gluten-free dairy-free, vegan and corn-free. And no bake, did I mention the no bake part enough yet?

You can get her recipe here

http://glutenfreegidget.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/no-bake-crack-cookies/

Page down a few times when you get there to get to the actual recipe part. This looks like a fun one to do with kids as well. Not very diet friendly, but if you want diet friendly she actually has quite a few vegan recipes that look both healthy and interesting.

Long story short, the sooner you get over the fear that people will think you are weird because you cannot eat what they eat, the sooner you will get to meet all the other kindred souls who aren’t bringing up their own food allergies / sensitivities. And who knows, you might learn something great once you open up.