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: :
: Excerpts from _Celiac Connections_ :
: ---------------------------------- :
: Jan./Feb. 2000 Barbara Jordan, editor :
: The Celiac Disease Resource, Inc. :
: PO Box 621 :
: Glenmont, NY 12077 :
:......................................................:
Pamela's Story
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Yes, there is a Pamela behind the cookies. But not just any
cookies--they're also wheat free and gluten-free. BUT WHY you ask???
Am I Celiac? No, simply a third generation in the Natural Food
Industry.
I grew up in the natural food business and one of my first jobs in my
family's bakery was wrapping our rice and soya cookies. I thought
they were awful and I always wondered who would want to eat them? I
also knew there was a need for wheat-free products as many people were
choosing to or finding better health when eating a wheat-free diet,
and others had to because of Celiac Sprue. I couldn't imagine never
being able to walk into a store and buy cookies, cake, bread,
crackers, pretzels, pancake mix, or brownies because they all
contained wheat! Or when you did find something, it tasted like the
cookies I was wrapping. What would you eat? Imagine being a kid and
having to eat this stuff!
I wondered if I could make products that met special dietary needs
like Celiac, but tasted great and looked normal? Wouldn't everyone
buy them if they were good? And, if I changed that drab health food
packaging, wouldn't they also be more appealing? Who would want to
eat something that looks like it tastes--bad? The challenge turned
into a business called Pamela's Products.
In 1941, my grandparents, Matthew and Amelia Giusto, bought one of the
first health food stores in San Francisco and named it Giusto's Golden
Crescent. As young boys, my dad and uncle worked everyday after
school in the small, in-store bakery. They would help bake whole
grain breads and special allergy products that Grandma sold up front
along with vitamins while my Grandfather was out peddling the bread to
other stores. My grandparents actually had gluten-free bread (if you
could call it bread) and those rice and soya cookies way back in the
1940's. Years later they sold the store and became a wholesale
supplier of natural and organic baked goods, fresh milled flours from
their own mills, and a distributor of natural and organic baking
supplies. My father and uncle eventually took over the business in
1965 and later started me in my career as a cookie packer.
As a little girl baking at home I always tried to fool my dad by
baking cakes that looked as if they came from a bakery. Later as an
adult I would try to fool him with my wheat-free products. Could I
make products that looked normal and tasted so delicious that no one,
not even Dad, would know they were wheat-free?
My father indulged my baking but expected me to marry and have kids,
not run the family business. So in 1988, I left the family bakery
with my one little pallet of belongings and my first forklift.
Pamela's Products became an independent business featuring wheat-free
and gluten-free foods on April Fool's Day.
Today I sell 19 different items: 14 cookies, 3 biscotti, and 2 baking
mixes. I continue to do the product development myself, always trying
to improve upon recipes and create additional wonderful foods that
look and taste "like the real thing". I still work closely with my
family's business as they mill all my rice flour and package my baking
mixes. And for Dad, I got married and had a baby...
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