About

Hi! I'm Emma Howard, creator of Emma's Gluten Free Mixes. I'm a seventeen-year-old lover of food and words and Jesus who lives out in the boonies of Hickman County near Centerville, TN.  

The Story:

I haven’t always loved good food. I used to be pickier than a koala about what I ate. But eventually, when I was about twelve, I became so fed-up (no pun intended) with eating the same four foods all the time that I renounced my pickiness and decided to find out what sorts of other food this world contained. In the past five years I have had an unjustifiable amount of fun chopping, sautéing, smelling, rolling, licking, whipping, and broiling different foods in all their textures and flavors. I love good food.

But, it hasn’t always been easy to make good food. Over the years for various health concerns, my mother has had us do just about every diet in the book: raw, vegan, vegetarian, whole-grain, GAPS, FODMAPS, paleo, dairy-free, nightshade-free, grain-free, etc., etc., etc. Naturally, it can be rather hard to find delicious food that is supposed to be made out of… well, sometimes it was hard to figure out what I could make it out of. Cooking this way has kept me on my toes (quite literally most of the time, with trying to get things off the top shelf) and I am thoroughly grateful for the challenge it always is.

My dad has had to avoid gluten for as long as I can remember. One day six-year-old me was watching my mom roll-out pizza crust on the kitchen island and I asked her why Daddy couldn’t eat the pizza. She explained that she was pretty sure it was the “gluten” in the flour, the stuff that made the dough stick together as you kneaded it. “Neat!” I thought, “The flour makes stuff to stick itself together with!”

By the time I was fifteen, my mother and all three of my sisters had found out that they too needed to stay away from that sticky “gluten”. That left only me and my two little brothers free to eat whatever we wished. I was co-head-cook in the house by that time and now had to figure out what on earth to feed the 5/8ths of the family who could no longer eat pancakes or tortillas. Google to the rescue!

Over the next two and half years I spent collective months of my life researching, experimenting, cooking, and (every once in a while) perfecting dozens and dozens of gluten-free recipes. My family was gracious in my failures and positively rhapsodic in my successes, providing me with a heartily supportive crowd to learn on. My Dad really tried to encourage me to do something with all of the gluten-free knowledge I had acquired over the past few years, but I couldn’t come up with anything that really stuck.

Then in September 2013, a chance for me to have a booth at the Franklin Farmers Market during “Crafter’s Month” came up. I talked about it with the family and everyone said, “Go for it!” So, I pulled out my best gluten-free recipes and set to work creating Emma’s Gluten Free Mixes. My products met with an amazing reception and I decided I would come back the next summer to sell again.  

Now I’m starting the 2014 summer market at the Franklin Farmer’s Market and can’t wait to see what happens!