When I discovered that I was a coeliac the first thing that hit me was a wave of relief, I'm very thankful that it wasn't something more serious. The second thing that hit me was what on earth am I going to eat from now on?! I was already familiar with the free from aisle of the supermarket where we shop because previous to discovering I was a coeliac, I had been following a calorie controlled diet and had discovered some low calorie, low fat crackers that tasted pretty damn good. They happened to be gluten free.

From the basis of the crackers I figured that gluten free foods would be just fine. There was quite a good choice of products so I wouldn't be going hungry anytime soon. Then I tried gluten free bread and it brought me crashing back down. Was this the kind of food that I would have to eat for the rest of my life?! Bland, stodgy and unlike anything I had ever had the misfortune of tasting before.

Once I had established what I could and couldn't eat on a gluten free diet I started to experiment with recipes. I didn't have to rely on the pre-made stuff from the free from aisle. A meal that always went down a treat in our home was fried chicken in a floury batter. Sometimes I would make Tempura and throw all manner of things in, we always enjoyed those deep fried meals.

But now I couldn't eat plain flour and so I couldn't make any batter. We searched on the net for a gluten free batter recipe and found a few that we thought sounded good. This is when Experimental Saturdays began in our kitchen. I had always used corn flour to make roux's for sauces, so I was very familiar with that ingredient. Or so I thought.

We had found a batter recipe that replaced plain flour with corn flour, it sounded perfect! There was much excitement at the prospect of once again having homemade fried chicken but that excitement soon turned into the creation of 'strange thing'. We had got the term 'strange thing' from a TV show called Come Dine With Me. It's a competitive entertaining show that sees strangers hosting and going to dinner parties and then scoring the efforts. In one particular episode a woman who had devised a challenging menu created a dish that was basically vegetables incased in pastry parcel, with a face made from pastry on top. she called it 'strange thing'.

We thought that it was pretty damn strange, but nothing like what happened when we tried to make our first gluten free batter.

So the recipe that we had chosen to replicate involved corn flour and water. Have you ever mixed corn flour and water? It seems fine at first, and is a good way of thickening a sauce that's a bit on the thin side. But try to make batter with it? 'Strange Thing' was well and truly right there on our kitchen surface in a plastic container.

The only way I can describe what had happened to the batter mixture is that on appearance it seemed fine. It was only when trying to stir it that we found it had evolved into a super strong substance that you literally had to fight with in order to get the fork through it. On appearance it was liquid, but on touch it was a thick glue like substance that defied stirring.

This was gluten free cooking at it's worst. We had to abandon that recipe

Details are hazy, but we then went on to make another batter just from egg. We dusted the chicken in corn flour then covered it in egg, with some herbs and spices thrown in. At first, we were pretty pleased with the result, it tasted good. It was only when the chicken had been out of the oil for a few minutes that the true batter presented itself.

What had tasted quite lovely and with a good texture minutes before, had now turned into solid lumps of chicken. If you pulled the batter off, the chicken was still lovely and moist, but it was now entombed in a solid batter. I actually threw a piece of battered chicken against the wall to see what would happen. It bounced right back as through it were a tennis ball.

We tried a few more times with different recipes we had found, using plain flour that was gluten free. The same things happened. The batter started off okay as soon as you took it out of the oil, but a few minutes later it was solid. On the plus side, when first out of the oil it tasted fine and you only had to eat a few mouthfuls before your were full, but a belly full of solid batter isn't my idea of fun!

One batter recipe that did turn out okay was a Phil Vickery Popcorn Chicken recipe. I say okay, the batter wasn't really that great at all, it was just surpassed by something far worse. The batter was made from the corn flour and egg mix we'd tried before, what was different about this was that you soaked the chicken in condensed milk, apparently to make it more succulent.

It was succulent, but no more so than the regular chicken I cook, what it was though was sickly sweet after a few mouthfulls. My tastebuds didn't know where to hide. By this time, the batter had been forgotten about, it was by no means a success, but we had managed to create something even worse than gluten free batter.

Then there was an experiment in coating the chicken in corn meal / polenta, I can't even remember how bad that turned out but I remember throwing it at the wall and it just dropped. It was so hard. Yuck!

The last time we tried to make any form of battered food was when we saw a product down the free from aisle that was called 'All Purpose Crumbs'. These crumbs were (according to the packaging) the perfect alternative to bread crumbs. Fantastic, so we won't have batter, we'll have breaded chicken instead. I was happy with that compromise.

Let me just tell you now, never, ever under any circumstances use All Purpose Crumbs for anything edible. Have you ever tasted road grit? I haven't as I'm sure neither have you, but I can only hazard a guess that road grit is the closest thing you could come to eating other than All Purpose Crumbs.

The chicken covered in those All Purpose Crumbs looked fine to begin with, but the taste and texture of those crumbs was a whole other story. It was gritty, dry and had absolutely no taste. After much face pulling and WTF's?! My other half had a look at the packet. All Purpose Crumbs was actually in fact, ground rice. Uncooked ground rice. Do you have any idea other than what I've told you about just how bad uncooked ground rice is?!

We gave up on the batter recipes after the incidents of Strange Thing and All Purpose Crumbs. We reference them from time to time, look back the the culinary disasters we had trying to come up with a gluten free batter that wasn't inedible. We failed.

A while ago, me an the other half started talking fondue, I'd had the oil version, he'd had the cheese. I'm a big cheese fan, I can't get enough of it, so cheese fondue sounded like a really tasty meal. We bought an electric fondue pot, stocked up on cheeses, but we had a problem, the ideal thing to dip is bread, and as I can't have bread with gluten in it, and don't like the gluten free version, what would we use?

I simply hate all the gluten free breads I have tried, and besides, they crumble way too easily to be using them in fondue. We discovered two types of rolls that are perfect for the job and they - unlike the breads I have tried - taste lovely.

Dietary Specials Ciabatta Rolls and Tesco Multi Seed Rolls are not only perfect for fondue, but they're the perfect substitute for those awful gluten free breads.

Of the gluten free foods that I've tried, the following brands and items stand out:

• TRUfree - Crispbreads, Bourbon Biscuits, Choc Dips, Pretzels, in fact, I've not had one product from TRUfree that I haven't liked.
• Prewitt's - Make delicious cookies in a range of flavours. Sultana and Apple and triple chocolate being the ones I've tried.
• Free To Enjoy - As a huge cheese fan I have to have cheese crackers, these are the best I've tried.
• The English Provender Co - They make delicious chutneys my choice of which is Bramley Apple.