Jean Stevens, a food reporter from the NJ Herald News attended our Gluten Free Vendor Fair at the Gluten Free Market in January and was very interested in the topic of the Celiac and Gluten Free communities in the NNJ and NY-metro area. Somehow she found out about my mother-in-law's hobby of baking me delicious GF cookies and cakes and decided to make her dirty little secret (baking me GF cookies) known to the general public in an AMAZING article and multimedia slideshow...

She also published an accompanying article about all of the great, hard working GF vendors in the NNJ area. Enjoy:

Gluten-free local businesses
http://myheraldnews.c...

By Herald News, Herald News | 02/27/08 02:11 AM

Rose Bertani has two claims to fame in the gluten-free community: Her brother is the Mr. Ritt of the famed Mr. Ritt's gluten-free bakery in Philadelphia, and she's the founder of the Gluten Free Market in Fair Lawn.

Bertani opened the store in December 2006 after her brother, Richard "Ritt" Gallo, recommended she capitalize on the growing gluten-free market. He'd opened Mr. Ritt's in 1991 as a traditional bakery and soon began offering gluten-free goods. Their popularity grew so much -- mostly through online sales -- he decided to transform it to be entirely gluten-free. He sells artisan breads, cakes, cereals and muffins, as well as frozen pastas and other entrees.

"We have people coming in here diagnosed (with celiac) just a week, two weeks ago," Bertani said. "People are coming from all over. All ages, babies to elderly people. They're coming in and saying they've been misdiagnosed for years."

June Neblung remembers few customers at her mother's A1 Nutrition store in Passaic looking for gluten-free foods 25 years ago. Now, as the store's co-owner, she's seen the gluten-free customer base grow. Now, an entire aisle is devoted to gluten-free foods.

"It's not a trend," she said. People are really getting well adhering to the diet. It's definitely here to stay."

Two years ago, when George Kostiuk, the owner of Giorgio's Restaurant and Bar, learned that a friend had celiac disease and struggled to find tasty, gluten-free restaurants, Kostiuk took it to heart. He began serving gluten-free pastas, chicken and veal parmesans, beer and bruschetta, tiramisu and other desserts, all prepared in a gluten-free area of his kitchen.

Then, last November, his wife, Carmel, was diagnosed with celiac disease. Now the Kostiuks say few restaurants offer gluten-free dishes. With that in mind, they hope to expand Giorgio's menu and add gluten-free raviolis, pirogis, and fried calamari and mozzarella sticks, once they buy another fryer strictly for gluten-free frying.

"We try to make people feel normal," Carmel Kostiuk said.

Curious Cookie owners Kevin Klyne and his wife, Terri, a lifelong baker, launched their business in 2004 as an all-natural bakery. They began selling all-natural regular and sugar-free cookies from their bakery and café, online and in stores such as TJMaxx, Marshalls and Whole Foods.

"But then we got a lot of people calling and saying, have you ever tried gluten-free?" Kline said, whose sister suffers from a gluten-intolerance.

Within a year, they developed a gluten-free cookie and now sell four flavors. They make up about 30 percent of the company's online sales. A gluten-free brownie will be available in stores by March.

Aunt Gussie's Cookies and Crackers company president David Caine, his mother Marilyn Caine, and chef Theresa Braun just chose their favorite recipes for the final cookie in the company's new gluten-free line, set to hit shelves in March.

Marilyn Caine, a former secretary, founded Aunt Gussie's in 1981 as an all-natural baking company. She and son David decided to develop a line of gluten-free products in 2000. When another company closed its facility across the street from Aunt Gussie's headquarters last year, Aunt Gussie's bought it and began planning the line, available wherever its other products are sold.

Cris Caliz, founder of Pandero's Delights in Fairfield, developed the recipe in 1996 for his company's signature disk-shaped cookie, made with tapioca flour from the cassava plant, which is popular in most tropical countries. In 2003, in the middle of creating new packaging for the cookies, he and others in the company discovered through food lab tests that the cookie naturally contained zero gluten.

They'd never heard of the gluten-free concept, said Vladimir Perez, a company co-owner, but they researched the market and decided it couldn't hurt to market them as such.

The cookies caught on. Now the original, vanilla, lemon and chocolate chip versions sell briskly in small health stores in the Northeast and Midwest, including the Gluten Free Market in Fair Lawn. ShopRite stores just began selling them in December.

Tom Krummenacker and his wife, Darlene, founded Outrageous Foods out of their New Milford home last year, after their daughter was diagnosed with celiac. She came home crying from a birthday party one day, Krummenacker said, because she couldn't eat pizza, like the other kids were. He wanted to make a pizza she could enjoy, so he began tinkering with recipes. Once he developed what he and his daughter thought was a tasty pizza, he and his wife began a small business selling it.

*** You can read the rest of the article by clicking here. ***