I'm Susan

I'm in my 50s, I live in Kent with my husband and our three children, who eat me out of house and home (just not my own bread), and I've been coeliac since 2014. This site is the blog I wish someone had handed me on day one.

The diagnosis story

I spent about ten years being told my stomach was “probably just IBS” or “probably just stress” or, once, memorably, “probably just because you're a woman in your thirties.” I got tired, then more tired, then genuinely unwell: the kind of tired where you fall asleep in the car park before you've even gone into the supermarket. It took a blood test I basically had to insist on, followed by an endoscopy, to get an actual answer: coeliac disease.

There's a weird mix of relief and grief that comes with a diagnosis like that. Relief, because finally there was a reason. Grief, because gluten is in everything, and nobody warns you how much of your social life runs through bread, pastry, and a shared bag of chips.

Why I started writing this

The information out there for newly diagnosed coeliacs is mostly medical, or mostly about recipes, and there wasn't much for someone my age asking the actual questions I had: How do I tell my boss I can't do the team lunch at that place? What do I say to a waiter without turning it into a whole performance? Is this exhaustion coeliac-related or just… being 50? (Answer: often both, annoyingly)

So I started writing it down. Partly for myself, partly because I kept explaining the same things to other newly diagnosed friends and figured I may as well put it somewhere more permanent than a WhatsApp voice note. I'm into:

• ✧safe eating out: without turning it into a whole performance at the table.
• ✧recipes that actually work, not just “edible for a coeliac.”
• ✧the stuff nobody puts in a leaflet: energy crashes, awkward family dinners, and yes, croissants.

What I'm not

I'm not a dietitian, a doctor, or a nutritionist. I'm not precious about food photography and I will absolutely tell you when a recipe went wrong. Everything on this site is what's worked for me, personally, after 12 years of trial, error, and the occasional emergency trip to a garage for the only gluten-free thing on the shelf (a bag of crisps, obviously).

If you want the medical detail on coeliac disease, Coeliac UK is brilliant and I link out to them a lot. If you want to know whether the gluten-free sausage rolls at your local garden centre are actually any good, you're in the right place.

A few facts, for the nosy

Diagnosed

2014, age 39

Lives in

Kent

Family

husband, three children

Can't get through the day without

a proper cup of coffee and a biscuit that isn't sad

Most missed food since diagnosis

a decent bakery croissant

Most surprising gluten-free win

a Victoria sponge nobody could tell was gluten-free

Get in touch

Got a question, a product to recommend, or a gluten-free find? Head over to the contact page. I read everything, even if I'm slow to reply in the summer holidays.