Delightfully Gluten Free

June 29, 2009

From A Teen’s Perspective

Filed under: 2009 GIG Conference — Cassandra @ 7:26 pm

I asked Colleen, a 13 year-old, to write about her experience in the TAGS program at the GIG conference.  This is what she has to say:

My first impression of the day at lunch: this day could have been worse. My last impression of the day in the hotel room: I’m not sure this day could have been any better. The TAGS (Teen Advocates for Gluten Sensitivity) conference was a truly amazing experience that taught me about speaking for myself and helped me meet other gluten intolerant teens like me.

When I first walked into the room, I saw maybe two or three other teens in there. I had come in with a friend, so that made about five people. I resigned myself to a pretty awkward day. Just as my friend and I came in, a lot of other people arrived. Maybe this won’t be so bad, I thought. We sat down at a table with some other girls. One girl sitting next to me introduced herself, pretty soon we had gone around the table telling everyone our names. After everyone had trickled in, Cynthia stood up and gave a little talk, and then introduced the first thing we were doing- a kind of Iron Chef competition. We were broken into four teams of three or four, and there were three judges, two of whom were teens at the conference. The team I was on lost, but the competition was fun, so it didn’t matter. Next we had a presentation from one of the teens at TAGS talking about what he did (like designing a video game and talking to one of President Bush’s closest associates) to advocate for himself. Throughout the day we also had a talk from Chef Aaron about ordering gluten free at restaurants, and we did several activities. At lunch everyone just had fun. There was definitely some stuff to laugh about. One of the girls at the conference accidentally went into the boy’s bathroom! At the pizza party (gluten free, of course) afterwards, everyone behaved like old friends, even though we had only known each other for half a day. We all exchanged emails, facebooks, and phone numbers so we could keep in touch.

This amazing conference really helped me discover how to advocate for myself, but more importantly, it helped me find other teens in the same situation I am in. I made new friends, and had a lot of great and funny experiences. The TAGS conference was definitely one the highlights of my summer, and I can’t wait to go back next year.

June 28, 2009

Leadership Day – GIG Conference 2009

Filed under: 2009 GIG Conference, Awareness Campaigns, Reviews — Cassandra @ 9:39 am

Update: Check the bottom of this post for an update on the chicken nuggets.

One of my favorite things about the GIG Conference is the leadership day, the day before the conference officially begins.  If you are a leader of a GIG branch and have never come, you should really consider coming to next year’s leadership day.

We always share things with each other that work well for our local groups, and ask questions of each other for help.  I think everybody always leaves with new ideas for helping their group.

Andrea and IThis year, Andrea Levario, of the American Celiac Disease Alliance, spoke to us about ways for us to get better involved with advocating for Celiac Disease.  She took a few members of our group to the state legislature offices to meet with a senator and representative (hopefully I can get someone to share about that with you).  Advocacy is something we all need to get involved in, and it can be really simple, too.  Just go to the ACDA’s website, follow the links, and fill out the form.  You can leave the form letter as is, or change it to suit your personality and situation.  There are currently multiple issues to write about.

As usual, the leadership dinner was such a fun time!  Check out the pictures (#1-34 are leadership day).  Every year, I make more wonderful friends at the leadership day.

I have to brag a little.  Out of the 45 attendees of the leadership day, 11 were from the various groups in Texas.  After all the discussions throughout the day and meeting with some vendors about various issues, we decided that we should form an alliance (of sorts) of all the support groups in Texas, including the CSA, CDF, and non-affiliated groups.  It’s a big state, and there are a lot of us asking for donations from the same companies at the same time of year, and we want to spread that out better and be more involved with each other.  We want to make a statewide calendar of events.  We are just getting this started, but if you are a member of another support group in Texas, please contact me (or Betty if you know her info) so we can get this going and get everyone involved.  We don’t want to end up with neighboring cities having their walks on the same day (like we did with Dallas this year).

Oh, did I mention the chicken nuggets?  We had some excellent chicken nuggets at the leadership dinner. (I’m working on finding out the brand.)  They were the crispy, crunchy outside, white meat on the inside kind of chicken nuggets.  I think I need some of those right now…

Chicken nugget update from Cynthia Kupper: The chicken nuggets were from GF Naturals…and they are healthier than normal chicken nuggets. They are lower in total fat, made from real chicken pieces (not fabricated chicken pieces) and best of all they meet the requirements to carry the Whole Grain logo! check them out at http://gfnaturals.com/ourfoods-products.html

And tell them you want to opportunity to buy them. right now they are only sold to food service. If you offer to buy in large packages, this might help.

June 16, 2009

TAGS – 2009 GIG Conference

Filed under: 2009 GIG Conference, Awareness Campaigns — Cassandra @ 6:19 pm

Brand new this year and really exciting is the TAGS program – Teen Advocates for Gluten Sensitivities.

Oftentimes, after a child has outgrown the ROCK program or their local support group’s kids program, the teenager no longer wants to attend meetings.  The problem that this generally poses is that they often don’t learn to speak up for themselves, many of them even going to college and fading into the background while Mom and Dad send food to them.  While not a terribly bad fate, it is often not one they would choose.

Enter TAGS.

GIG wanted to get these kids involved in a way that they would enjoy, and have a place for them to talk to each other.  To kickstart the program, there was a day of classes at the conference for teens.  Cynthia Kupper, national director of GIG, had this to say about the teen program:

I worked with the teens at the GIG conference. I have to say “They are Awesome!” 20 teens participated in a Chef Challenge, first thing in the morning. Few of these kids knew each other, and about the same number actually cook – but they all formed their teams and worked together to create some fun, creative dishes. The first place team won certificates valued at $125 towards the 2010 Conference.

Next they opened up time meant “just for them” to work with a mom of a ‘tweener’ looking for answers to help her child. They had great advice and insight for her. I was proud of their maturity in helping her.

Max Renke, a fabulous teen advocate from NH told the group about all the wonderful things he has done to make a difference for himself and others living with gluten sensitivities. He did a similar talk at the evening banquet and got a standing ovation!

TAGS (Teen Advocates for Gluten Sensitivities) is a national teen support system that these young people will be helping launch. I can’t wait to see all the wonderful things these young people are able to accomplish. Already they want their own leadership conference and can’t wait for the next Chef Challenge.

www.TAGSatGIG.org

I had the chance to observe some of the teens’ discussions.  If you want to know where the power lies, it is with those kids.  This group isn’t just about having fun (which they do and will have a lot of), but it is also about Advocacy.  Max Renke has been advocating for Celiac Disease since he was 9 years old.  He has met with senators, representatives, his governor, and President Bush’s chief of staff.  How much more powerful it is to hear about the issues from a child or teenager than it is from an adult!

Check out some of the pictures from the TAGS (TAGS pictures begin at number 66), and invite the teens in your life to get involved.

June 13, 2009

Seattle

Filed under: 2009 GIG Conference, Reviews, Travel — Cassandra @ 8:43 pm

I really enjoyed my trip to Seattle, for the GIG Conference.  Today, I want to share with you about the trip and the city (Conference stuff will come later).

Traveling freaks some people out, and with good reason.  I had a friend get delayed in an airport in another state for over 12 hours once.  That’s pretty tough on a Celiac.

Including my day of travel, I had 3 days that I would be gone prior to the conference, and 2 afterward.  I packed a whole bunch of Wonderbars, Lara Bars, and Glutino bars in my backpack (about a dozen combined), along with a bag of Glutino pretzels.  Mom brought along a bag of peanuts, raisins, and chocolate chips (and a bag of not-gluten-free-cereal, which we shall not name, lol).  We left my house at 4:30 am, so we had to have breakfast and lunch with us.

This worked for us.  I ended up sharing some of my bars with Mom, and we got some Planters peanuts on each plane (we had a connecting flight) and some soda.  Had we been stuck and run out of food, it would have been easy to purchase some fruit and a Snickers.  There were also acceptable chips in the vending machine.  It may not be the best meal, but you won’t find me starving in an airport.  :)

When we got to Seattle, we headed downtown.  Mom had decided to come with me when I came home from the conference last year and announced it would be in Seattle.  She has a cousin there, so we decided we would make the most of Andy’s time off, and have some  mom and daughter time.  We wandered around downtown, taking in the sights, and headed to Pike Place Market.  It was really interesting to us, because we have absolutely nothing like it around here.  It was past our lunchtime, but we’d had peanuts and Wonderbars, so we decided to get some fruits and veggies from the vendors.  Most of them have some prewashed stuff if you ask.  We got some cherries and snow peas to share, and I had a peach and Mom got an apple.  We were quite content with that as we wandered through the market.  (We’re not very high maintenance.)

I did decide that I wanted a Valencia Orange Cake, seeing as we were at the home of Starbucks.  The original Starbucks (at/across from the market) does not carry pastries, so we headed to another one (they are on every other corner there).  We did not make it.

Up ahead, I saw a huge handwritted sign in a window that said “Gluten-Free Cookies.”  Of course, we went there.

Cinnamon Works is a little bakery across from the main marketplace.  I grilled the owner, and felt pretty secure.  She did tell me she’s not a certified gluten-free place, but, to be honest, I don’t know that many places that are (though I always want to see more!).  We had some great cookies (one was pumpkin).  I was a bit worried, later, when a friend had told me that a friend of hers had gotten sick from that place.  I did fine, so, hopefully, it was the other person that was the unlucky one (meaning that hopefully the bakery is usually very good about gf).

That evening, when we headed to the store (to get a razor, because apparently I could razorburn someone to death on the plane), I picked up some small bags of dried fruit (that said gf on the package!) and some peanuts, so that we could wander for hours on end the next day.

I really wanted to be extremely impressed with our next big adventure, but sadly, the Flying Apron Bakery did not quite get that high.  Don’t worry, it was a good, safe place to eat, it just didn’t thrill me. 

Mom, her cousin Linda, and I shared a pot pie (which I thought was horrid, I’m sorry, but Linda sort of  liked) and an apron pocket.  We liked the apron pocket quite a bit, though, especially Mom.  I guess it was like a calzone, with a tomato sauce and lots of veggies inside.  We tried 3 different desserts, and really liked an apple/pecan cake-thing (it was an exhausting week, and I can’t find any mention of it on their site, so I can’t tell you what it was actually called).  We did enjoy the place and being able to go out to eat and share with each other.

If you want to see more of my pictures, you can head on over to the album on Facebook.  By the way, if you’ve been looking for me, you can now find me at facebook.com/DelightfullyGlutenFree.  Just remember to say that you read my blog or something like that – I don’t “friend” people if I can’t figure out why they want to be my friend.  :)

More on Seattle and the GIG Conference coming soon!

June 10, 2009

Back Again

Filed under: 2009 GIG Conference, Travel — Cassandra @ 2:03 pm

Well, I am back from Seattle and the 2009 Gluten Intolerance Group’s Education Conference.  I had a wonderful time, listened to some great speakers, and ate a whole lot of food.  In the next couple of weeks, I will be sharing some of my trip with you.  I’ve got a magazine deadline and some kids that need attention, then you’re next on my list.  :)

Have you ever been to Seattle and/or a GIG conference?  What was your favorite thing?

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