Pamela's Products Chunky Chocolate Chip Cookies, Gluten-Free, 7.25-Ounce Boxes (Pack of 6)
Pamela Giusto-Sorrells' grandfather, Matthew, in front of the Golden Crescent, circa 1941.In 1941, Pamela Giusto-Sorrells' grandparents owned one of the first health food stores in San Francisco, the Golden Crescent. It was a small neighborhood natural food bakery and store offering "brick-like" rice, soy, and potato/lima bean breads, as well as rice and soy cookies. These were some of the first available gluten-free foods. In her youth, she had one of the few "female" jobs in the bakery as a cookie packer. Even as a child, and then as a bakery employee, "I was continually amazed that dedicated customers were so thankful to find our gluten-free foods. I personally thought these products looked and tasted awful and wondered why people ate them. The typical reply was, 'Let them be happy there is something on the market for them to eat,'" she says.Always the dessert baker at home, and after all those hours on the cookie line in the family business, she started experimenting with wheat-free baking. The challenge was to make products that tasted so good that no one would be able to tell that they were wheat-free. "My career was born," she says. "In 1988, I left the family business taking one small pallet of my belongings with my first forklift and moved two blocks away." On April Fool's Day, Pamela's Products became an independent business featuring wheat-free and gluten-free foods, each bite prompting the incredulous food lover to ask: "Are you sure these are wheat-free?"Pamela's, based in Ukiah, Calif., continues to maintain its indulgent reputation by using the finest natural ingredients, and always striving to delight the customer with delicious, decadent wheat-free and gluten-free cookies, biscotti, and baking mixes. Its products can be found throughout North America.Why Wheat-Free & Gluten-Free?People who have a wheat allergy or gluten sensitivity suffer a range of physical symptoms (for example: abdominal bloating, diarrhea, gas and low energy) as a result of eating certain grains. Gluten Intolerance, also known as Celiac Sprue, irritates the intestinal lining preventing the absorption of nutrients into the body through the small intestine. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, possibly oats, and other grains.