Cooking with herbs and spices has always been something I've done since I learnt how to cook. This year though I have been introducing more and more variety into the herbs and spices in my collection, I've branched out into more exotic flavours.

My reason for my being more adventurous with the types of meals I'm serving up is due to the fact that earlier this year, I discovered I have coeliac disease. If you're familiar with coeliac disease you will know that the only way to deal with it is to have a gluten free diet. So I stocked up on items from the free from section in the supermarket and began my road to recovery on a gluten free diet. It wasn't pretty to begin with.

Us British are pretty much used to our national dishes being ridiculed for the blandness and lack of flavour, but I had always been somewhat adventurous with my cooking, using plenty of herbs and spices, the more flavoursome the better. I never did bland. So when I first began to encounter gluten free products, it was a bit of a shock.

I had never been a big bread eater, but foods seemed so limited when I began my gluten free diet that I tried anything gluten free that I could get my hands on. The gluten free bread was an eye opener. First of all, I couldn't spread butter onto it without the slice disintergrating in front of my eyes. With each flick of the knife, the slice would get smaller and crumbs would be the dominant force on the plate.

I encountered a lot of gluten free products at the start of my diet that I personally don't consider to be food. No foods should taste and feel the way those things do. Bizarrely, it was on discovery of a gluten free product that I actually fell in love with the taste of that I discovered that as well as being a coeliac, I'm also allergic to black and white pepper.

One of the major problems for me in gluten free cooking was the fact that I couldn't use of stock cubes anymore. Gone was the quick Chicken Soup Recipe that I used to turn to for something flavoursome and filling. Gone was my beloved Toad In The Hole Recipe that I always made as comfort food with lashings of onion gravy made from stock cubes. Then I discovered a gluten free vegetable stock powder, it was delicious. It also made me very sick. After a bit of detective work scanning the ingredients of that and a few other gluten free products that had also affected me, there was one common ingredient. Pepper.

Even if it was gluten free, anything with black or white pepper gave me an adverse reaction. If you look at the ingredients on products, you will see, especially black pepper, cropping up on an abundance of foodstuffs. So if my diet was limited due to the gluten free diet, it was now severely limited due to the pepper allergy.

I started to look into the ingredients of stock cubes to see if I could replicate the flavours they provided, and after a while spent down the herbs and spices aisle of the supermarket, and a bit of experimentation in the kitchen I nailed it.

Why didn't I just get myself some gluten free cookbooks? Lots of savoury recipes have pepper in them and besides, I love to cook and found myself a challenge. Herbs and spices have transformed what began as a tasteless diet of stodge into a varied, packed full of flavour diet that has seen me go back to basics, use old cooking techniques and eat far healthier than I did before the coeliac disease reared it's ugly, food limiting head.

Sure, I had always used some herbs and spices in my cooking, but not at the level I am now. If it weren't for the pepper allergy, as a coeliac I would have a reasonable amount of decent gluten free products available to me. But lots do contain pepper and so I've had to go totally back to basics and make most meals from scratch.

I used to love Chinese and Indian take aways, but these days thanks for the vast variety of herbs and spices available in supermarkets, I make my own versions. There isn't a cuisine I wouldn't try to replicate. Saturday evenings have become Experimental Saturday in our home. That's the day I'll usually try a new recipe, with the help of my other half. Some have been triumphs first time, such as a delicious chicken casserole packed full of flavour, or a sublime fish pie that's both creamy and rich. Some have been absolute disasters such as our attempt, well, various attempts to make a gluten free batter that doesn't resemble something out of a science fiction film. We've not cracked that one yet, despite following recipes. My idea of batter dosen't seem to be the same as some.

Just because I'm a coeliac doesn't mean that I have to settle for foods that are bland, and of questionable textures. I've discovered how to eat a more varied diet, with bags of flavour, all cooked by my fair hands. Not a sauce packet or jar in sight!

I've really gone back to basics with my cooking and it just proves that with a variety of herbs and spices to hand, you can make a really mundane meal into something delicious, without having to resort to the pre-made cooking ingredients that I used to rely heavily on. Now all I need to do is to find a cheap wholesale herb and spice merchant because those little bottles that you see on a spice rack don't cut it in my kitchen.

• Parsley
• Chives
• Tarragon
• Thyme
• Smoked Paprika
• Turmeric
• Cumin Seeds
• Coriander Seeds
• Ginger
• Chilli

I mainly use dried herbs for convenience as they last longer and are easier to keep. The only time I really use fresh herbs is when making my creamy sauce for fish pie, I'll usually use fresh parsley, but not always. The one tool that I use when working with herbs and spices is my pestle and mortar, I couldn't be without it. 

These are a very small selection of the herbs and spices currently scattered around my kitchen, but I find that these are the ones that I use the most. Cooking from scratch with herbs and spices instead of stock cubes, ready made sauces and ready meals may seem like a lot of faffing about if you aren't acoustomed to it, some people may not be able to find the time to make meals from scratch and that's understandable.

I've gone back to basics in the form of cooking before there were ready made products available to make meals from. It has opened my eyes to not only a new way of cooking, but a diet that is more healthy and varied than I had ever been accustomed to prior to having coeliac disease.

You don't need to be a slave to the free from aisle in a supermarket to have a wide variety of gluten free foods, invest in some herbs and spices and a whole new set of savoury dishes are on offer. It just takes a bit of imagination.