July, 2013

EditorialDearest coeliacs,

Tunis is still surrounding us even though the meeting was in mid-May! The cause of this must be saffron and pepper spices that we have brought to our homes as a present from the amazing Hammami family, who was so generous to wel-come us and take good care of our meals there! In Tunis we met many coeliacs and they seem to be doing very well! At the time, on 17th and 18th of May, they were celebrating the World Co-eliac Day so they had stalls with gluten-free food in the main street to promote the community and many Tunisians got the chance to meet members of their community there. During our meeting, we discussed many things, but these are the most im-portant ones: GFM Europe, proposals for the Annual Project 2013/2014, Summer camps, External Speakers, etc.

Here is a brief update on our Annual Project, GFM Eu-rope: we have created a beta version of our map system which is currently being tested. We are planning to go online by the end of July, and have a test-phase until the conference in September, so stay tuned for updates on our website, in the bulletin and on our facebook page! When the time comes, please be generous and share your experiences with other coeliacs around Europe! Soon you will be travelling and the information you need on GF restaurants has to be built by you. As far as new proposals are concerned, we had a great choice: Coeliac Exchange Europe, Cookbook with recipes from all over Europe, Videos from all

member countries, Gluten-free couch-surfing, a new edition of „Just go“, and Internationally organized summer camps. Your delegates voted CEE- Coeliac Exchange Europe for our Annual Project 2013/2014! The goal of the proposal is to set up an inter-national event platform. We will be discussing about details in Amsterdam, at the Conference.

We are very happy and excited to announce that Anita van Schieveen is coming to the conference in Amsterdam to give us a two-hour workshop on how to use wordpress, our new system for the CYE website. After this workshop the delegates will be fully equipped to update info on activities from their countries on the CYE homepage.

Love, Mirjam, Giacomo, Lana

is a nonprofit civil entity that has been working for the celiac community , since 1978. It started as a group of parents that wanted and needed to improve the situation in Argentina. In those times, there were no specific products and had to cook even the sweets for their chil-dren. Our institution helps people who need to follow the gluten free diet for good. We know the importance of being in touch with others that are the same. Nowadays, there are 28 delegations along the country where volunteers work for helping celiac enjoy life . We do not want children growing up feeling as an ill person. We always say that ¨we are people, just eating different¨. We do so many activities to integrate and spread information about this condition, here in our country and also, to people from different parts of America . workshops are organized each month , and also a groups of volunteers are constantly working on having more gluten free options in restaurants and hotels. A guide of permitted food and medicine is published by the institution every year , to be deliver among the community . Although we have a law in Argentina, most of the products are still not labeled, so it is useful to have this guide. On 6th-7th , July we had the second . It is the greatest event for the celiac in our country that joins the best members of the medical community with the most important companies from the food industry from different places travel for this exposition to have the opportunity of buying specific prod-ucts at excellent prices, tasting new options, and listening to important specialized speakers. It’s a real pitty if you missed it

For further information, visit our websitewww.celiaco.org.ar

NEWS PILLS

Suyay Torres, Argentinia

We, the German youth board, are trying to establish a new proj-ect called “ZOELI - Jugendliche Deutschlandweit“, which you can translate as

.

The Coeliac Associ-ation has a contact person for almost every region in Germany who orga-nizes meetings to exchange experi-ences. There are already meetings, which are interesting for youth, but there are many, who are not. So we want to in different cit-ies to organize meetings as well, es-pecially for the youth, but of course, in cooperation with the contact per-son.

These should take place in a regular cycle if possible,

and should be more than just meet-ing to talk, but be more like having a barbecue or eating in a restaurant.

The most thing for us is to convey a positive feeling and attitude towards coeliac disease. Life can be fun even if you have coeliac disease – or rather it can be fun because you have coeliac dis-ease. Meeting other adolescents and having fun together, talking about problems in daily life and becom-ing . That is the basic idea of this project. Maybe you already have groups like this and have some hints for us. If you don’t, maybe you should think about starting some as well.

Anyway you can contact us via marvin.mueller@dzg-online.de.

Hannah Dreßen, Germany

The Italian Youth group has worked on a new project which has brought to the start of the collaboration of AIC (Associazione Italiana Celiachia), their national society, and Centro Velico Caprera (CVC), the most important sail-ing school in Italy (and the biggest in the Mediterranean), which is in these days going “officially” gluten-free by join-ing the network “Alimentazione Fuori Casa (AFC)”.

Coeliacs can from now on go and attend 1 or 2 weeks courses at the scuola both in Sardinia and Liguria and be safe about the find safe GF food. Moreover, we are also organising a 1-week course entirely dedicated to GF in September, from 14th to the 21st.

The Centro Velico Caprera (CVC) is a no-profit association with the mission of teaching the practice of sailing respecting the sea and the environment. It is lo-cated on the south shore of Caprera island in the centre of the “La Maddalena Archipelago National Park”. This unique area represents a delightful cruising ground of crystal clear, warm waters, stunning beaches, sun-shine and scenery.

Dropping anchor in sheltered coves, after an amazing sailing experience is a sheer emotion. This is one of the best places to gain experience as a sailor.

The course is aimed at the novice and provides a 7 days introduction to dinghy sailing. Courses are run on Laser Bahia (ideal training dinghy) with the onboard pres-ence of the school’s instructors.

The training is not only at sea, CVC sailing school continues on shore where you will meet your fellow crew members and after your evening meal your instructors will review the achievements of the day. The accommodation in the Caprera base is essential but captivating and you will enjoy sharing your experiences and forging new relation-ships. An entire base will be reserved for this unique op-portunity!

For more information and to join the course use:School’s facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/CentroVelicoCaprera

Official site:http://centrovelicocaprera.it/en/inside.asp

Sailing course- Giacomo Filippo Porzio, Italy

When I am sitting on the subway in Stockholm I often see people that I recog-nize. One day when I was going by subway I saw a familiar face, an old friend from kindergarten. I remembered her name but apparently she had a hard time remem-bering mine. I looked familiar to her but she could not put the finger on who I was, then she suddenly remembered; “You are that girl who got the strange food and al-ways vomited!”

Being a coeliac in Sweden is not so hard compared to other countries, we have a big assortment of gluten free food in the stores and it is not hard to find a restaurant where they know what gluten is. But there are times in Sweden when you do face challenges and especially as a child, I am referring to the school lunch. We have free school lunch in Sweden and everyone even the children with allergies have a right to it, which is of course great. But there has been many times when I have wished that we were allowed to bring our own food.

When I was four I was diagnosed with coeliac and at that time I went to Kin-dergarten, they did not make the food at my kindergarten and the company who made the food did not have much knowledge about gluten. Being in the situation when I had to trust the staff at my kindergarten I was often served food that con-tained gluten and that resulted in me vomiting often in front of the children in kin-dergarten. Starting school things got better but not perfect, as a seven-years-old (not –s after year) coeliac I had more knowledge about what food I could eat than the staff working in the school kitchen, I did not trust them at all. I remembered one time when we got meatloaf and I was told by the staff in the school kitchen that this time the meatloaf would be gluten free. I had already been ill by the meatloaf in school

before so I did not put so much faith in their words. So, I decided that the best way was to skip the meatloaf and not taking any chances, but of course my teacher just had to ruin that; “Hedda, you have to eat if you want to grow as tall and strong as your brothers”, and she put some meatloaf on my plate. I ate everything except the meatloaf, but when I was go-ing to threw it away my teacher appeared again. “I am not allowing you to throw that away, think of the children in Africa, they do not have food enough for the day and here you are throwing away perfectly fine food! I am not letting you leave until you have finished eating everything on the plate”. I tried to explain why I did not want to eat the meatloaf but she told me that I should put some more faith in that the staff did their job. Consequently I had to return to my table to eat my meatloaf. Since I already felt guilty because of my teacher’s words I took one bit of the meatloaf, but when I ate it I felt terribly wrong. One of my best friends who had been so nice to stay with me noticed that I started getting scared and he ate the meatloaf for me so that we finally could go.

That meatloaf was not gluten free and I have never gotten an excuse from the teacher who made me take that single bit made me ill. They did not change the rules and I still had to eat everything on my plate, even the things they plated. But I was lucky because every time I felt insecure about the things I had on my plate, my dear friend would eat it for me.

Furthermore I often meet children with the same experience, many of the children are often worried before school lunches, count hours after they have eaten or skip eating at school. When you are going to school you are in the position of having to trust the kitchen staff, but when you do not have faith in them, eating at school get you constantly worried. This is what I want to change in Sweden and that is one of the reasons why I joined my country’s coeliac youth society. Of course I also joined SCUF because I wanted to meet other coeliacs, to go to activities and to stuff myself with delicious gluten free food. But joining your youth group is a way of raising your voice and make changes.

Thank you SCUF for all that you have done for me and I will continue my work to get children in schools feeling safe when they eat their school lunch! Thank you very much.

Hedda Sonnek, Sweeden

Recently, I had my ‘big girl to adult transition’. Not the one you’re thinking of: the one where I go from being a stu-dent to being part of the working class. Yes, telling that was a bit of fishing for complements and felicitations (thank you by the way), but the experience forced me to think about myself. Making my resume and looking for those popular ‘competences’ that I have developed over the years, made me realize that a lot of them (and I don’t know that is a thing to be proud of or to be worried about) comes from me being a celiac. I hope, or I can image, that a lot of you are or will be in the same position, so this little thing might come in handy. It gave me some very strong competences! Here are some useful (or less useful) competences I have required:

- Efficiency: I can scan a supermarket in less than 2 min-utes to know if there is gluten free food around!- I can read superfast: my yearlong training of reading in-gredient lists have resulted in superfast scanning of texts, iso-lating important words (mostly ‘can contain, wheat, barley, rye, gluten’- Friendly: I can keep ‘my creative ways to kill someone and make it look like an accident’ fantasies to myself after someone who knows me already for 15 years offers me a cookie. A cookie. With gluten. And chocolate! I can just look at them, sigh and say ‘No.’ Massive self-control.

Why being a celiac is a valid complement to your resume

Extra! Extra! Wheat all about it!

- Creative: because I don’t want to offend the wrong peo-ple, I can immediately think of lies why I don’t eat the spring rolls/toast/… they are serving during an important meeting.- Thinking ahead/planning: I always have, wherever I go, the ‘celiac emergency kit’ with me (maybe I’ll expand on this in a later issue, also very interesting). I will never, NEVER go hungry or have tummy inconvenience!- Organisational skills: I can plan a 2 week trip without depending on the local shops for food. Without going over my maximum kilos of luggage. True story! - Independent: I’ll always bring my own stuff to a party.- People person: “who want my piece of the pizza? I can’t have it.” = Bam: 5 new friends! People person!- Language skills: I can identify the words ‘gluten, wheat, barley, rye’ in at least 8 languages!- Patience: After the 1.000.000 time someone asks me ‘don’t you want to eat that pasta?’ I still don’t (want to) rip their head of. ( Or better: I don’t do it. That the whole point at the end, the just not doing it.) After writing all of these competences down, together with the few I got from my education(‘cause yeah, I also had an education), I realised my resume was too long. So, I changed all the above to the one sentence: survived 20 years being a celiac. BAM! Let’s see if someone can beat that!

Lieze Steensels, Belgium

Swiss Youth Society, Switzerland

Bits ' n ' Bites Vla is a very common Dutch dairy product made from fresh milk. Vla is sold in cartons in the Dutch supermarkets. For Beat the Wheat I searched for a recipe. Here you find one for chocolate vla, but several flavours are possible.Ingredients for 4 persons:• 500 millilitre milk• 60 gram sugar• 25 gram cocoa powder• 25 gram maizena (cornstarch) 1. Mix

the sugar, cocoa pow-der and maizena. Stir this in 100 mil-lilitre cold milk.

2. Heat the rest of the milk, until boil-ing. Pour the mix into the hot milk while stirring con-tinuously. It’s thick-ening in a minute. Lower the heat and continue heating for two minutes while using a whisk.

3. Pour the vla in 4 bowls and cover them with plastic wrap (cling film).

4. Let it cool down.

Serving option:Also nice with some whipped cream!

Anita van Schieveen, Netherlands

Kiri Ku and Gnocchi

Ingredients--250g chicken or turkey white meat-2 eggs-flour-breadcrumbs-basil-rosemary

-salt-1 glass of yogurt-1dcl milk-100g ground peanuts-250g gnocchi-caper

Cut the meat into fillets (not too big) and spice it up (minced basil, rosemary, salt, pepper). Dip the meat in egg yolk, then flour, then egg whites and finally bread crumbs. That’s it, nothing unusual! Put milk, yogurt, peanuts and salt in a pan. When warm enough, add a spoonful of flour mixed with a little milk. As a béchamel sauce, mix on low heat until it thickens. Make noodles and mix them with the sauce. Serve with capers.

Who loves peanuts... a must-try! : D

Tea Gašpar, Serbia

: Cake: -2 eggs -2 dl sugar -1 ½ dl flour -1 dl potato flour -2 tsp baking powder -1 tsp vanilla sugar -1 tsp psyllium husk powder -1 dl hot water Other: -Whipped cream -Raspberries -Strawberries -Vanilla cream

In Sweden we often eat strawberry cakes on birthdays, holidays and other special occasions.

Oven: degrees Celsius. Beat the eggs and sugar until it’s blended. Mix all the dry ingredients together and carefully add it in to the eggs and sugar. Add the water and blend it together. Pour the batter into a buttered and breaded springform pan.

Put the springform pan in the middle of the oven and let it stay in for about minutes. Let the cake cool down and then cut in to three layers. Put vanilla cream and raspberries between the layers, cover the cake with whipped cream and a lot of strawberries.

SCUF - Swedish Youth Society

Travel Tale

“I’d like to have the bacon cheeseburger with onions, mush-rooms and the gluten free bun. Oh … and can I substitute the fries with mashed potatoes, please?” This is how you order your food as a celiac in New York City. Well, at least if the restaurant doesn’t have a gluten free menu. Living gluten free in New York is extremely easy, once you know how to approach it.

Of course, when I moved to New York in 2011 it wasn’t that easy to figure out. I didn’t know any celiac in the US and needed to first find my way. For the first days I got some recommendations from friends, who’ve been visiting the states before and with some Internet research it wasn’t a big challenge after all. New York has more than 500 restaurants competing with each other, so every-body is looking for something special to offer … e.g. gluten free menus. And that is also stated in the net. Some delivery sides offer a filter for gluten free (lactose free … ) dishes and there are also ‘gluten free finder’ apps for iPhone and Android available.

When I was sent to the US I stayed in a hotel for some weeks in order to find an apartment and to grow into the new lifestyle. The hotel didn’t really offer anything gluten free but gave me a good chance to look over the typical US breakfast: ‘bagels with and without chocolate cover, pancakes, peanut butter and jam, Danone

New York City

yoghurt and every other day some bananas or apples’. To find a gluten free breakfast is not easy but on the other hand it is also not usual to have any breakfast in NYC. More common is it to have a brunch … combined breakfast and lunch. And here the options start. Going to a nearby Deli generally of-fers you the classical omelet, sandwiches or burger choices. Again, sometimes with a gluten free menu accompanied, otherwise just ask the waitress.

It took me some time to find a suitable apartment. Not really that it is hard to find an apartment in New York, but the city is so cramped up and apartments are so small and close to each other that proper kitchens are not really on top of the wish-list when looking for a spot to live. Therefore, they are hard to find. After a while I made my decision for one with an extra long kitchen, which offered up to 3(!) m preparation space and had a small freezer to keep frozen food alive. An-other factor was important for me: in walking distance was a so-called ‘Natural Market’ which offered quite a wide variety of gluten free products… bread, bagels, rolls, frozen pizza and even chocolate glazed donuts.

Of course there are more markets like that available … most famous is ‘Wholefoods’, which sells kind of everything which is available on the gluten free US sector … from local products to international ones, like Schär.

To setup a life abroad also means to meet new people and make friends. I got quite soon the recommendation to try out www.meetup.com, a website initiated after 9/11 to connect people. Here the gluten free contact groups of NY

are rated as the most active amongst the 9,000 groups worldwide. These groups are offering loads of interesting activities … people who want to promote their favorite restaurants reserve a table and publish it online… no big applications needed, just RSVP online and have a good time.

Overall, New York is a great city which makes it quite easy to live in as a celiac, whether you want to go out, meet people or just want to impress your friends. And if you want to have some more detailed info, feel free to contact me.

Dirk Meyer, zoeli@dm-mail.eu, Germany