Against the Grain: The Slightly Eccentric Guide to Living Well Without Gluten or Wheat

According to its witty, wise, and glutenimpaired author, Against the Grain is about how to save your life and eat happily ever after. It is also the first truly hip primer on creativity and resourcefulness for the gluten intolerant and wheat allergic, and for anyone who feeds them, loves them, heals them, entertains them, and wishes them well.

Offering chapters such as Restaurant Assertiveness Training; Have Allergy, Will Travell and Etiquette for the Allergic; and signature recipes from some of the most celebrated chefs in America—including some for kids growing up wheat-and gluten-free—this talented and very funny writer proves that life for those on a grain-restricted diet can, indeed, be a "piece of cake."

Beginning with introductory essays by two eminent gastroenterologists who explore the symptoms, diagnoses, and management of gluten intolerance and wheat allergy, Against the Grain is crammed with things no one ever tells you: how to charm a chef into eating out of your hand, how to avoid senseless cheating and why you should, which airlines are friendly to the gluten intolerant, how to recognize the culinary terms that spell hidden grains (roux is not cheek color), and how to order a good meal in fifteen languages.

The author has left no resource untapped. Along with a required reading list, Lowell provides a state-of-the-art resource guide that shows the grain challenged how to contact fast-food chains, international and domestic support groups, information hot lines, diagnostic clinics, airlines, railroads, cruise ship lines, and companies specializing in mailorder and wheat-and gluten-free foods.

Against the Grain is the definitive guide to coping with wheat allergy and celiac disease, but at its heart, it is so much more. Teaching assertiveness, acceptance, and self-nurturing, it is an empowering tool that offers solid proof that celebrating one's uniqueness is always preferable to suffering in silence.

During her award-winning career as an advertising creative director, JAX PETERS LOWELL, one of advertising's "Best and Brightest Women" of 1988, was often seen nibbling rice cakes and other gluten-free snacks during commercial shoots, crises, and protracted periods of stress. She has recently embarked on a second incarnation as a full-time author, writing fiction as well as nonfiction. Her first novel, Mothers, debuted this spring, and she is hard at work on a second. A native New Yorker who now lives in Philadelphia with her husband, John, two cats, several cartons of rice pasta, and a bread machine, Lowell was diagnosed with celiac disease in 1981.