At the tender age of 25 my intestine ruptured as a result of undiagnosed Crohn's Disease. It was the darkest time of my life as well as the best thing that ever happened to me. After several major abdominal surgeries to remove the damaged bowel and form a stoma (where your intestine sits on the outside of your body, through a slit cut through your abdomen, and an ileostomy bag is fitted to collect
your waste), this procedure was reversed 9 months later once my bowel had healed enough to be stapled back together. the doctors and 'experts' i was seeing at the time gave me drugs and told me i'd be fine as long as i took them every day. who was i not to trust them? none of them ever mentioned my diet. in fact, when i enquired if i needed to change anything, the response was, "you could try, but i doubt it will make much difference." fast forward a few years and my move to qld. my neighbour in brisbane happened to be a naturopath. my sister was also studying naturopathy, and fairly soon i began to take notice of this alternate approach to health. i kept hearing the advice to cut out gluten, refined sugar, and lactose from my diet. for someone who grew up on cocoa pops, white bread, nutella, and milo, there was no way in hell i would consider such a drastic move (the horror). i mean, i have such a sweet tooth, i couldn't imagine going without all the things i loved. so i didn't change anything. but there is only so long a girl can be in denial. i just kept finding new information and meeting knowledgeable people. one day, a forward thinking gp put me onto the specific carbohydrate diet which is specifically for coeliacs, and sufferers of other intestinal conditions. it is no gluten, no grains (including rice and corn), no sugar, and no lactose.it is based on protein, fruit and veges, and nuts. honey as a sweetener, and homemade 24hr yoghurt. it is full on and i did not follow it thoroughly, but it did open my eyes to another way of eating and caring for my body. i was starting to understand that i was responsible for my own health and that we really are what we eat. the best part of the scd cookbook i had (healing foods by sandra ramacher) were the cakes of course. they were (are) delicious. i no longer felt like i was missing out; in fact, i preferred these moist cakes to normal cakes. i'd make one cake per week for myself and happily made my way through it with copious cups of tea over the next seven days. soon my friends started asking me to make their kids' birthday cakes and id bring cake to any event that was on. the problem was that every time i went to a cafe and ordered the ubiquitous orange and almond cake (that's all that was on offer for gf pre 2012), i thought it tasted like cardboard. it was also expensive. id always leave thinking, "my cakes at home taste so much better than this." by that stage i'd also become a "label reader" and was frequently horrified by the chemicals and refined sugars in most processed foods.
