This all started with the trailer for Julie and Julia which my husband and I happened to catch in one of those rare moments we didn’t race past all the adverts on the DVR. Husband turned to me and said, what a cool idea! A girl cooks everything in a cookbook and blogs about it! I agreed, that would be cool.

Problem being, 6 months ago I finally hauled myself at his isistance to a Gastroenterologist for some…let’s just say intestinal troubles. Final ruling: wheat intolerance. No, that’s not the same thing as Celiac’s Disease (think lactose intolerance vs. milk allergy). But it has now put me in the gluten-free camp and let me be the first to say loud and clear…I MISS COOKIES!

My friends have tried to persuade me to spend a day at Whole Foods and pick up the gluten-free breads and cookies and biscuits and crackers and cakey-things I haven’t eaten in the last 6 months. I stalwartly refuse, citing all the extra calories and sugar put in that stuff to beef it up. People think I’m crazy. I’ll admit to a little.

Husband pointed out the enourmous cookbook I’ve been compiling from collected recipes and said, why don’t you blog on a gluten-free cookbook? And I’ll even help you rate the recipes!

And this is how we got here, because I’m always on the lookout for a decent, realistic gluten-free recipe. You know, the kind that’s under 35 million ingredients and all of them are pronouncable and even more importantly, findable on a store shelf. Even more important is taste and texture. For the uninitiated, be sure that gluten-free doesn’t mean bad tasting but it does usually have a different texture to get used to. Husband calls it the ‘poopy factor’ after my first batch of gluten-free muffins came out resembling, well, you can guess.

So here’s what I’m going to do for you: I’m going to find tasty wheatless recipes and test them out in my own kitchen with lots of pictures so you can see the ups and downs of it and post the results right here on  imisscookies.com I’ll even let you know how the taste test came out (and the poopy factor) and where you an get these lovely foods to create yourself. And since we are Pittsburgh-based, I’ll let you know once in a while where you can grab some gluten-free goodies or ingredients so you don’t have to do the scavenger hunt I went through.