Welcome to Gluten Free Plates!
Welcome to Gluten Free Plates!
This is a passion project to benefit any other foodies who have found themselves stricken with gluten intolerance, or even celiac disease, and need more resources for delicious food.
My restaurant recommendations will mostly be focused on Portland, Oregon to start, (which has so many wonderful gluten free friendly options,) with many more to come! Please drop me a line anytime if you have a restaurant recommendation for me to try in Portland, or anywhere really!
My recipes are all easy and suitable for any beginner cook, incorporating many hacks I learned long before going gluten free. Preparing delicious, quality food at home does not require a culinary degree! You just need an understanding of ingredients, flavor profiles and some very basic cooking techniques - even just hitting the right buttons on a microwave!
Please note, nothing on the Gluten Free Plates website is meant to be taken as medical advice and anyone with celiac disease should always do their own due diligence to ensure absence of gluten before consuming food, especially food marked as such in restaurants. Unless you are dining in a dedicated gluten free restaurant, there is always a risk of cross-contamination.
About Me
Hi! I'm Karena! I was raised in Northern California in the Sacramento area, the nation's Farm-to-Fork capital. After an 11 year stint in Los Angeles for career advancement, I moved to Portland, Oregon in 2022 and haven't looked back. Portland truly has consistently reliable amazing food from so many wonderful local establishments.
I've been a foodie since I reached adulthood and finally had the money to spend dining out and trying new things. I've done a vegetarian diet and a keto diet previously - both for health reasons, not calorie restrictive - and have been gluten free since 2018 when it finally became clear gluten had been causing worsening issues for me since about 2011.
It was doing a clean keto diet, which naturally eliminates gluten, that I noticed my constant stomach problems vanished. Gluten was confirmed to be the culprit when after 6 months, I began having some cheat meals and had no issues with things like rice, potatoes, sugar, etc. It wasn't until I had gluten that I was in agony again. You'll notice several of my gluten free recipes are also tagged "keto" as I developed them during that time of clean keto eating. These can be great for a keto diet, or if you're simple trying to get some extra protein with fewer carbs as many of us have found can be helpful as we get older.