Before You Buy  (page 13) If you are thinking of buying this book, either you or someone you know is unfortunately suffering from some type of food allergy or intolerance. Before making this purchase, it is very important that you thoroughly read the following:    This book is NOT intended to be a dedicated gluten-free cookbook. There are several gluten-free recipes in this book to choose from, but only by the fact that I was forced to omit wheat, rye, barley, and spelt flours from my family’s pantry. Some but not all of these recipes call for oat flour, which contains a very similar protein make-up to gluten. The gluten-free dishes are clearly marked as such. I am not an allergist, dietician, or a doctor. I am also not a chef. I am a wife and mother who loves to cook and happens to have a child who is severely allergic to wheat, milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, rye, barley, and spelt, and who was in the past, allergic to oats and soy. I simply wrote down the recipes I was forced to create, in order to keep my anaphylactic child alive and healthy. You will find some of these recipes call for soy or soy products, but will offer you an alternative ingredient. As my son outgrew his own soy allergy, I began to use it in my dishes. This book offers my original recipes without soy, as well as the later version of the same recipe made with soy. Although my son can eat fish, I have deliberately excluded all fish and shellfish from this book in order to keep it completely free of the top 8 most common food allergens. I’d like to pass my recipes on to you, in hopes of saving you a lot of stress and heartache. I have thrown countless expensive ingredients in the trashcan from recipes that flopped, in order to come up with the final ones that are in this book. I want to help other people out there and let you know there IS a way to feed your allergic child and the rest of your family a balanced diet even though you must eliminate key staple ingredients you may have grown up with.  Not every allergy-friendly cookbook can be free of every person’s specific allergies. If you are allergic to corn, naturally you will want to substitute the corn starch in some of the recipes for tapioca starch or another compatible starch. If you can have cow’s milk or wheat, by all means substitute them for the rice milk or rice pastas and flour a lot of my recipes call for. These recipes were created for my son’s specific food allergies and are free of the 8 most common food allergens. It is very important to have a close relationship with your allergist for the most benefit to you and your family.  If you are expecting a recipe book for easy, wholesome, homemade meals that your entire family can enjoy together that are free of wheat, eggs, milk, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, fish, and shellfish, then you are the type of family this book is catering to. I’m honored to share directly from my kitchen to yours, these great meals created out of my desperation and whole-hearted love for my son and the rest of my family.