Celiac Care Package

The University of Chicago's Celiac Disease Research Center is one of the foremost celiac research centers in the country.  Since celiac research is fairly new, they have a lot to find out about the disease Sophie lives with.  They not only are trying to do everything they can to learn everything there is to learn about celiac but they also strive to educate the public.  They have many very informative articles, pamphlets, and brochures that you can read and/or print at their website HERE. 

One of the services they provide is sending out a care package to those newly diagnosed with celiac disease in order to aid in the transition of your entire diet to gluten-free eating.  Besides the diagnosis being restricted to those that had a biopsy to confirm it is celiac, there are no restrictions for the care package.  A few months ago, we signed Sophie up to receive it.  We did receive it back in May, but I was a little slow on uploading pictures and never posted it. 

The care package arrived in a plain brown box, but once the box was opened, I could immediately see the care that went into this package.  Here's what it looked like straight out of the box:

Once we opened the beautiful packaging it was wrapped in, there was a lot more inside than I expected!  I suppose I thought we would receive a few sample sizes of some more common items or things that we would never use.  This was not the case!  Take a look at what all we received to try!

Altogether, there were 14 food items, plus a shopping guide (in which the people that publish this have verified thousands of products as gluten-free or not at the time of publishing, a $20 book), magazines, and other information on celiac and eating gluten-free.  It was amazing how much was in it, and most of it was full size items.  See the back box of Rice Chex?  That is a full size box.  The box of GF Bisquick?  That is also full size and at least $4 a box.  I get a good deal on it for $4.18 a box at our grocery store.  The package included snacks, GF cream of mushroom, GF cookie mix, GF oatmeal, honey dijon, and lots more. 

Since we received all these items, we were able to try things without spending what I would estimate to be definitely over $100 for all these items.  A couple of items were not very tasty and Sophie didn't like, such as the Plentils chips, but most of it is yummy, high quality food!  This was such a blessing!  God is so good to us!

If you know of anyone who has recently been diagnosed through a small intestine biopsy with celiac disease, please see THIS website for more information and how to sign up for this blessing!