San Diego Resources
The following are resources for gluten-free living specifically in the San Diego area. For resources on a national level, click on National.
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Danna Korn
GlutenFreedom
www.GlutenFreedom.net
858-395-5421 |
"Teaching people to live . . . and LOVE
. . . the wheat free/gluten-free lifestyle.” |
Danna resides in the San Diego area and offers a consultation service for living gluten free. Considered one of the foremost experts on the gluten-free diet and medical conditions that benefit from it, Danna has been researching celiac disease and gluten intolerance, and has been "living – and loving – a wheat-free/gluten-free lifestyle since 1991". She is the founder of the national support group Raising Our Celiac Kids (ROCK). She is the author of the books:
- Wheat-Free, Worry-Free
- Kids with Celiac Disease
- Living Gluten Free for Dummies
The GlutenFreedom website provides up-to-date information about celiac disease and testing. Through her company, GlutenFreedom, Danna provides consultation services to:
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Individuals and families (in person, phone, and e-mail)
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Health care/nutritional professionals
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Corporations (including health food retailers, testing companies, restaurants, and self-insured companies)
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Don Baisch
9dwb9@sbcglobal.net
Don was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in 1989. He is one of the founding members of the Celiac Disease Foundation, and is also a member of the San Diego CSA/USA Support group, GIG, ACS, and CCS. Now retired from the Xerox Corporation, Don does a large amount of research in supporting the work of the Celiac Disease Foundation with the medical community.
Continental Catering
Dessert by Design
"I am getting married in a few months and found two places that I highly recommend
for Celiacs. First is Continental Catering. They have been fantastic working
with me to create a menu for my wedding where everything is gluten free! They
make almost everything in house, so they are able to leave things out or substitute
GF items in order to accomodate the celiac diet.
I also recommend Dessert by
Design. They are creating a GF wedding cake for me and said yes right away
when I inquired
whether or not they would be able to
accomodate my needs."
Laura Irwin, San Diego, 11/05
Mari Made Gluten-Free Bakery
http://www.marimade.net
". . . I have been busy working on my own gluten free baking endeavors. I started out with a gluten free cooking blog called Mari Made, http://www.marimade.blogspot.com, where I share recipes and reviews of gluten free products I try and places I eat in San Diego and also while traveling. I started to get requests from blog readers for baked goods so I decided to start my own gluten free baking company, Mari Made Gluten Free Bakery. Currently I offer delivery in San Diego and am working towards offering mail-order as well." Rachel Marie Helmer, Mari Made Bakery 9/08
On fire Food Company
Caterer
http://onfirefood.com/index.html
"Where food and style mingle"
Jan Pruitt, co-facilitator of the San Diego CSA group, highly recommends this caterer as being knowledgeable about our GF diet, as well as serving delicious food. 6/08
Dining Details
Personal Chef Service
"I would like to introduce myself and my company,
Dining Details. We are a personal chef service that
specializes in special needs diets, including diabetes
and celiac. We take our clients' health very very
seriously, and have developed a very high level of
trust with the clients for whom we cook.
Recently, one of our clients, a 25 year old, severely
affected by celiac, and diagnosed only 1 year ago,
says that she has never felt so good, and so "normal" since she has been eating our custom made cuisine. We
have her on the "specific carbs" diet, with the
purpose of healing her system after 25 years of not
knowing how or what to eat. Her family is over-joyed
to know that their daughter is on the road to
recovery.
We would like to be able to introduce ourselves to
more people with gluten intolerance, and those
involved with those who suffer from this disease. It
is so difficult to know how to eat or where to find
good, healthy, nutritious food that heals this type of
disease. We want to help.
Eat Deliberately. Food is Precious."
Julie Ellard, 4/3/08
CEO Dining Details
Everyday Gourmet
Personal Chef Service
Marilyn Kovach, Owner
chefmarilyn1@netscape.net
760-753-7343
Marilyn is a personal chef that has cooked gluten free meals for both Jan
Pruitt and Kimberly Duvall, our CSA San Diego Chapter leaders. She also
catered our first "Celiacs Laugh Dining In" at the Johnson home in September
2006.
The French Gourmet
"Yes, we make flourless chocolate cakes as well as crustless cheesecakes.
They are available in any size. Please feel free to contact me, Isabelle Kauffmann,
at 858-488-1725 ext. 313 if you have more questions or need more information."
The French Gourmet does catering, wedding receptions, etc. They are located at 960 Turquoise Street in Pacific Beach. For catering information, see their website www.thefrenchgourmet.com or call 1-800-929-1984. You can also email questions to catering@thefrenchgourmet.com.
Healthy Creations
www.healthycreations.com
"We have an organic meal assembly store (similar to Dream Dinners and Super Suppers) in Encinitas and we offer a gluten-free alternative for almost all of our meals. I don't know if you are familiar with these types of places but basically we prep all the ingredients to make a meal, then people come in and put the meals together following our posted recipe. It saves them a lot of time and since we have an entirely new menu every month, it offers them variety. Since it can often be more time consuming to prepare gluten free meals, we offer away to make it faster!" Rhiana Glor 9/08
Homemade Gourmet - Delivered Mixes
Diane Knoll
760-942-5815
hoovercleo@aol.com
Diane is a direct sales distributor here in San Diego for the national company Homemade Gourmet. Homemade Gourmet's mission is "to bring families back to the dinner table by providing quality affordable, easy-to-prepare meals". The products are mixes that with just a few ingredients and simple instructions turn into quick, delicious menu items . . . and 56 of the mixes are gluten free! Very popular in the mid-west, the company is expanding to the west coast as well. The mixes, which include beverages, entrées, salads, appetizers, desserts, and more are sold only by direct sales, and most range in price from $3.50 - $6.00. You may visit www.homemadegourmet.com to look at their products, but the gluten-free list may only be obtained from Diane. She also has lists of other major allergens in the items, if needed.
Contact Diane for:
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The gluten-free list of Homemade Gourmet products
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Purchasing products. She has "a well stocked inventory", or orders them for you.
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Advice on products and cooking tips
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Hosting an in-home party
Toovaloo Pizza Crusts
These nutritious pizza crusts are made here in San Diego. GFCF, rich in protein, fiber and essential fatty acids. Call Marka Haack to place your order 760-815-7036 or see the website at: http://toovalooglutenfree.com
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Arbonne
"Arbonne is a health and wellness company that provides pure, safe and botanically-based
products in 6 different categories: Nutrition, Weight Loss, Anti-aging, Cosmetics,
Aromatherapy and Personal Care and we have products for men, women and children!
It
would be my pleasure to share further information with everyone in our group
specifically, and of course with anyone that is interested in getting
a discount on pure, botanically-based products. We are so confident that everyone that uses these products love them, that we even offer a 45-day
money back guarantee if there is dissatisfaction!"
Barbara Droutman 3/07
951-672-1714, 951-719-5415, brdroutman@ca.rr.com
RJ's note: See GF Arbonne list.
Susan Algert, registered dietician at the Warren Celiac Centers does nutritional counseling.
Warren Clinical Celiac Disease Center
http://celiaccenter.ucsd.edu
Patients are seen at the
UCSD Thorton Hospital as well as the Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego. See Warren Celiac Centers to learn more.
Prometheus Laboratories, Inc.
www.prometheus-labs.com
888-423-5227
Prometheus Laboratories specializes in the treatment, diagnosis and detection of gastrointestinal, autoimmune, and inflammatory diseases and disorders. They are highly regarded in the professional community for their testing of celiac disease. In the Resource Library section of their website are two videos you can watch concerning celiac diagnoses.
The following are quotes from Danna Korn, an expert in the field of celiac disease
(see "Consulting" above) that emphasize why a lab such as Prometheus Laboratories
is important to use:
"You can have your blood drawn at any doctor's office or lab . . . But where
the testing is done is extremely important, since even reputable labs very
often
do these tests improperly. . . . the reading of the tests is subjective, and
the results depend upon the technician's interpretation . . . You have a right
to know how the test is being done, and to ask that your blood be sent to a
specialty lab for testing, although your insurance may not cover the cost of
the test if
you do so."
Physicians
The
following are personal recommendations from patients for gastroenterologists
in San Diego. The recommendations have either been submitted to this website
or to an interactive website. Neither inclusion nor omission in the following
list should be construed as endorsement or lack of endorsement from this website.
Please consider sending in your own recommendations, especially if you can give
specifics of why you particularly like a particular physician.
Dr. Gregory Harmon, Assistant Physician in Medicine (see Warren Celiac Centers)
The following gastroenterologists were recommended by various members of the
CSA Support Group at the March 2006 meeting:
Dr. S. Master at Kaiser, San Marcos
Dr. Neil Hirschenbein, UTC
Dr. Bruce Johnson, Sharp.
The following physicians have been recommended to Helen Foreman from newly
diagnosed patients when they have called her for CSA information (sent
to this website 6/06):
Dr. Thomas Eastman in Murrieta (no data)
Dr. Greg Aadigo in Murrieta (951/600-0288)
Dr. Robert Goldklang in La Jolla (858/453-5200) and in Encinitas (760/983-0441)
Dr. Leeder (woman) in Carlsbad/Oceanside
(760/434-1995)
The following was taken from the SillyYaks Yahoo site on 6/26/06:
"Dr. Cheryl Shanmugam is in N. San Diego County.She is a pediatrician in practice with our pediatrician. She has celiac and
has a child with celiac. She's not a GI doc but does have first hand experience
with
diagnosis. We don't usually see her for appointments, but when we have, I
found her to be a compassionate woman who was willing to listen and not dismiss
my
observations."
"We stayed at Sommerset Suites Hotel. It is in Hillcrest and is very convenient to most other places you might need to go. The staff was very courteous and nice. Overall we very much enjoyed our stay and would stay there again. My only complaint is I have food allergies and that is why I needed to have a kitchen in the hotel room, to make eating easier. I called ahead to ask what all was included in the kitchen. The website is misleading stating that is "fully equipped". It is in fact not fully equipped at all. It barely had enough for us to cook with. I did bring my own mixing bowl, measuring cups and spoons, etc because I was told there would not be these items there. I didn’t even have oven mitts to remove things from the oven. But just as well because there wasn’t a dish to cook in the oven with. Very bare bones. I feel the website should be more honest about what the kitchen is equipped with. People rely on that information, esp. when there are specific needs involved such as food allergies. I cannot just go out to eat to any restaurant. I need to prepare most of my meals myself and even know this kitchen did have a stove, oven, refrigerator, and dishwasher there was not adequate cooking supplies to go with it. It makes it very difficult to have to bring items with me from my kitchen to supplement what they don’t have. That's not why I stay at a hotel with a kitchen.
My one other request would be is to provide a small amount of cleaning supplies. When you are cooking your own meals you need to clean up after them. For example, there is not a cutting board so we cut chicken on a plate but some juice spilled over on the counter. Clearly, this is not a something we are going to leave for the cleaning ladies to get the next day. So we had to go down to the front desk and ask for something to wipe up the mess with. It was just a hassle. We also had to do the same with washing the dishes and running the dishwasher and they only gave us barely enough for one day. I just think for as much as we paid for the room and the nature of the room (being a kitchen hotel room) that a few basic cleaning supplies need to be included. Hopefully, they will change this but if they don’t, it was still worth staying there even though that part was a hassle." Jayn Anderson,
Greensboro, North Carolina, 11/08
"We stayed in the Sommerset Suites Hotel in
the Hillcrest area. The hotel provided
a free breakfast which my nonceliac husband enjoyed, while I prepared
my daily breakfasts in our hotel suite kitchen from supplies I purchased
at Whole
Foods
(711 University Avenue in Hillcrest). I carrried 'safe' lunches (purchased
at Whole Foods or other nearby grocers) in my backbpack for most of our
activities in San Diego. We only visited restaurants for dinners about every
other
day, because we often brought enough leftovers for another meal to keep in
the refrigerator
in the hotel room."
Susan Corning, Seattle Washington, 11/04
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