Welcome!

I'm Joe, and since I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in December 2007, my entire way of looking at food has changed.  Celiac Disease is an intolerance to gluten, which is found in wheat, barley and rye.  The only treatment is a lifelong adherence to a gluten free diet.  For someone, like me, who was brought up in an Italian household with lots of pasta, bread and pizza - this meant a whole new approach to dealing with food in the kitchen - with this new approach and reborn passion for creating food that I could safely eat, New Perspectives was born.

This blog has been a long time in the making - at the beginning, I wasn't very creative.  I started cooking very plain things that I knew were naturally gluten free.  I wanted to make myself feel better and let my body start to heal.  But I knew I would never be truly happy with dull eating.  So I started to branch out and get creative.  I found spices that I could trust using, and loved the way the scents and tastes could transform something plain and ordinary to amazing.  I started to experiment with gluten free baking... and honestly, I can only remember one true baking fail to date.... which is a pretty good track record.  This became my way of taking control of this disease and showing myself that I didn't need to be afraid of food.

Life for me has now become separated into two phases - pre-diagnosis and post-diagnosis... in the post-diagnosis world, the biggest change has been the attention that must be paid to every food item that I consume.  With this attention has come a new approach to everything I make in the kitchen.  Then Stefan came along at the end of 2008.  His love for food and cooking helped me to revisit my own passion for creating things that I could eat happily while continuing to get myself healthier than I've ever been.  So much of the happiness that we've found together has revolved around time spent in the kitchen.... sipping wine or a cocktail, brainstorming the next meal, or just whipping something up on the fly.

This blog is intended to show that gluten free eating can be care free, worry free, mainstream and easy to accomplish with just the basics that you find in your grocery store.  People who do not need to live a gluten free life will appreciate all of these recipes too.... and most won't know the difference.  So here is the beginning of our recipe collection - please enjoy and share our New Perspectives.

Joe & Stefan